There’s no way of escaping it: everywhere you go these days you leave dirty great carbon footprints revealing, for the world to see, just how wasteful and unsustainable your lifestyle is. From the type of car you drive (you do drive, don’t you?) to your choice of grocery provider (could we be talking supermarket here?), you wear your green credentials on your sleeve.
But however guilty you feel about your turbocharged SUV and penchant for Peruvian asparagus at Christmas, the likelihood is that your home is your most carbon-rich, energy- burning crime. So, if you’re really serious about reducing your impact on the environment, the best place to begin your quest is at home.
It is insulation that is the biggest single contribution you can make to reducing a house’s carbon footprint. “We still let a huge proportion of our energy escape through windows, roofs and walls,” says environmental campaigner Brigit Strawbridge. “But other options, like solar hot water, are both efficient and surprisingly affordable.” Strawbridge is best known as the diminutive but feisty martriarch in the BBC2 series It’s Not Easy Being Green, which documented the Strawbridge family (Brigit, husband Dick and grown-up children James and Charlotte) as they struggled to convert a 300-year-old Cornish farmhouse into a comfortable yet environmentally friendly place to live.
Anybody who is serious about reducing their carbon footprint can start making changes immediately, says Brigit. “It’s a doddle. What’s not easy is making decisions – whether biofuel crops are a better option than using the land to grow food, if investing in solar electricity will save money and the environment – these are all questions that you have to think hard about.”
Earlier this month she encouraged home-owners to adopt a whole range of energy efficient measures at a weekend promoting green energy, low carbon, environmentally conscious lifestyle options at Hallsannery Centre near Bideford, North Devon, courtesy of the Torridge Action Group for Sustainability (TAGS for short). Visitors from across the country learnt the virtues of biomass boilers and the need for the thickest possible layers of insulation, and were taken to see dozens of different homes and businesses which have already invested in sustainable energy-saving technology. “My message is that you can switch to a greener lifestyle by making changes gradually, and the best time to start is now,” says Brigit.
Case study: In a wood
Margaret Furniss, a single mother on a low income, moved into a pre-fabricated wooden bungalow near Bideford, Devon, 40 years ago. It had been cobbled together by a local carpenter in 1928 and was clad inside and out with asbestos-cement sheeting. Lacking any proper insulation, the bungalow was freezing and the interior walls streamed with condensation.
Over the years Margaret has gradually transformed it into a low-energy, sustainable home. She has done most of the work herself and used recycled materials wherever possible. First to go was the interior cladding which she replaced 35 years ago with foil-backed plasterboard and glass-fibre insulation. Then she replaced the external asbestos sheets with bitumen-impregnated fibreboard and clad the outside with locally sourced timber boards.
The bungalow is heated by a wood-burning Clearview stove in the living room which has a wraparound boiler feeding radiators in the other rooms. This is supplemented by heat gathered in Margaret’s solar conservatory which runs the full length of the bungalow’s south-facing wall. “I built that all myself and glazed it with old secondary glazing units I got from the local recycling centre,” she says.
Rainwater is harvested in three water butts, and “grey water” from the bath and shower is stored in a large tank under the conservatory. This is used to flush the toilet and water the garden. “The outflow from my septic tank goes into a soakaway where I’ve planted lots of willow trees which I hope to harvest as biomass for my Clearview,” says Margaret.
Case study: Danish eco-house
Perched on a steep hillside above the Devon village of Bishop’s Tawton, Emma Gordon-Lee’s house is evidence that low-energy living can be stylish and affordable. The timber-framed four-bedroom house was imported in kit form from Denmark by the manufacturer’s UK agent, Barnstaple-based Green Havens, which is owned and run by Emma’s father, Alan.
Designed for Scandinavian winters, the house is heavily insulated, with 12 inches of recycled glass-fibre insulation in the walls, 10 inches beneath the floors and 16 inches in the roof. The windows are all triple-glazed and the whole structure is sealed with an air-tight vapour barrier.
So long as the outside temperature doesn’t fall below freezing, the house needs no heating at all. Instead it uses an air-to-air heat pump to ventilate the house and re-circulate heat. “It works like a fridge in reverse,” says Emma. “In all the warm rooms, like the kitchen and bathroom, the warm moist air is taken up into the roof and into a heat exchanger which extracts the energy to heat fresh air coming into the house from outside. The stale air is then vented into the atmosphere.” Outside, rainwater is harvested and stored in a 6,000-litre tank under the recycled-plastic decking area in front of the house. This is used to flush lavatories and supply the washing machine and dishwasher. Waste is fed into a Klargester “Bio-Disc” unit at the bottom of the garden which aerates the waste, stimulating bacterial digestion and discharging run-off into a reed-bed filtration system.
The roof is covered with insulated concrete pantiles.
Case study: Strawbale cabin
Tapeley Park, the country estate of landowner and environmental activist Hector Christie, is a melting pot for low-energy building methods. Mr Christie intends to have the whole estate generating its own electricity by the end of next year.
In a quiet corner of the estate is a small strawbale cabin built by Rupert Hawley as a “green building” workshop for people interested in low-cost, low-energy building methods. The cabin is constructed with straw bales stacked up like giant Lego bricks and pinned together with lengths of hazel and steel reinforcing rods. The thick straw walls, rendered inside and out with a rough mixture of clay and sand with a final coat of limewash, provide ample insulation.
A reclaimed wood-burning Rayburn doubles as a cooker and central heating, while two nine-watt solar panels provide enough electricity to light the cabin and run a laptop.
Original article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/green/3359561/Eco-homes-20-ways-to-make-your-home-greener.html
