Sustainable homes

Timon Singh

When it comes to green or sustainable homes, installing solar panels on the roof or a small wind turbine will do something to cut down on your home's carbon footprint, but more and more people, as well as construction firms, are making an attempt to make homes as environmentally as possible from the foundations upwards.

In Europe, almost half of total emissions come from buildings and the construction industry, so it makes sense to address this and make the industry more sustainable.

General construction work uses an inordinate amount of energy, water and raw materials and more often than not, generate large amounts of waste and potentially harmful atmospheric emissions. As a result, companies are facing demands to make environmentally friendly and eco-efficient buildings, whilst at the same time minimising their actual impact on the environment.

These days, the eco-design of sustainable homes is an industry in itself with designs ranging from the practical (solar panels on roofs, sustainable wood being used in construction) to the down-right bizarre (homes made from rubbish, buildings made from straw and rice or apartments made from old shipping containers). Nothing is ignored is seems when it comes to building truly sustainable homes.

Sustainable building design

It's not just the resources that the home is built from that make it sustainable. Utilising and recycling resources like water can cut down not only on emissions, but on cost.

Systems within the home such as motion activated lights, natural ventilation and a ground source heat pump can also act to reduce heating and cooling costs.

However, to make sure homes are as sustainable as possible, on 13th December 2006, the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), in the UK launched the Code for Sustainable Homes - a new national standard for sustainable design and construction of new homes.

The sustainable home code

The Code measures the 'whole home' as a complete package, assessing its sustainability against nine categories:

• Energy/CO2
• Water
• Materials
• Surface water run-off
• Waste
• Pollution
• Health and well-being
• Management
• Ecology

The minimum standards for Code compliance have been set above the requirements of Building Regulations. The Code is intended to signal the future direction of Building Regulations in relation to home carbon emissions from and energy use, providing greater regulatory certainty for the home-building industry.

The Code uses a 1 to 6 star rating system to show the overall sustainability performance of a new home. It sets minimum standards for energy and water use at each level, which provides valuable information to home buyers and offers builders a tool with which to differentiate themselves in sustainability terms.

The levels of energy efficiency for the code (standard percentage better than Part L1A of the 2006 Building Regulations) are:

• Code level 1 - 10%
• Code level 2 - 18%
• Code level 3 - 25%
• Code level 4 - 44%
• Code level 5 - 100%
• Code level 6 - zero carbon

For the US, the LEED certification program acts as the standard for making homes and buildings sustainable.

The future of sustainable homes

Currently architects around the world are planning the cities of the future to be as smart and as sustainable as possible. As such, more and more research is being done into make our homes as eco-friendly as possible, but whereas it is the builder's responsibility to utilise the right materials, it is our responsibility to make sure the systems we install are as sustainable as possible.

This can be done by using energy-saving bulbs, renewable energy, recycled water or, as one designer has theorised, living on a solar-powered floating boat.

Main image from Bere: Architects

Relevant articles:

The Last Resort: Sustainable floating homes | Waste & The European Union Landfill Directive | European energy dependency to increase? | What's in the new UK energy bill?