Breaking the code

Meeting Level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes is a worthy achievement, but the North East’s Four Housing Group (4HG) intends to go all the way and beyond – to break the code’s highest level and truly exceed all expectations

Forget the Code – almost. The County Durham-based Four Housing Group (4HG) is taking green building into hitherto uncharted territory with a bold proposal to design and subsequently build a home that exceeds the highest level – six – of the Code for Sustainable Homes.

If the project comes off, it suggests profound implications for the zero carbon agenda, whether that is in terms of construction, building material usage, energy efficient technologies, and the way that homes are orientated, but also for the way we live our domestic lives in the modern world. All of these inter-related aspects will be subject to intense monitoring and scrutiny if the scheme becomes a built reality.

It’s called a ‘carbon negative’ project, since the majority of materials to be used in its construction have captured carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locked it away in its substance. Materials such as timber – sourced from certified sustainable forests – and other plant products like hemp and wood fibre.

“We’re not quite re-inventing the wheel, but what we have discovered is that attaining Code 6 isn’t quite zero carbon,” said David Brown, head of development and regeneration at 4HG. “So to get to carbon negativity we are something like 20 to 30 per cent beyond the levels required for Code 6. Basically, it will generate more energy than the people living there will consume.”

Energy generation is to be achieved through the use of photovoltaic solar power technology, assisted by design features – such as orientation – to make the best use of the sun’s energy. The solar cells will also be augmented by the use of a district biomass heating system.

Eco-friendly technology such as this, of course, is only as effective as the building fabric, so the properties are designed to maximise their insulation and air-tightness levels, for instance. In that way, it ensures that energy used to power the house is reduced and used to best effect.

“With a design ethos to invest heavily in the fabric of the building before even considering the renewable energy technologies, it ensures the fabric is correct,” Lynda Peacock, director of development added. “We have adopted a very natural ethos, with natural materials – timber, hemp, lime render – and wherever we can find an eco-friendly product we have tried to incorporate that.

“We could have gone down the route of using recycled steel, recycled polystyrene or other processed products with proportions of recycled material, but we took the view that it was better to make use of natural products that embody carbon in their growing process, soaking it up out of the atmosphere, while the lime render gets away from cement.”

Manufacturing cement is an energy-intensive process, so moving away from its use scores some further carbon wins for 4HG, though it hasn’t been able to entirely cut the material’s use out of the project. Some will be used in piling for the properties’ foundations, though by compacting the earth it is expected to keeps its use to the minimum.

Funding permitting, work is expected to commence on site later this year, but it is only once the property is complete that the real work begins. That’s when the materials, the techniques, the technology and the design – as a living home – will be put through its paces to see how it measures up. The data generated from this house will be compared with more conventional developments, be they 4HG’s or those of other organisations, so that the performance can be rated and the lessons learned applied elsewhere.

4HG has its expectations – its theoretical projections – to test and monitoring the performance will verify that initial viewpoint. Or invalidate them – such is the nature of the scientific method. To provide proper objective scrutiny of the performance, 4HG is working with a local university to monitor the home.

“The building will be monitored for at least five years and potentially 10 years,” Brown said. The questions the investigation will seek to address aim to be comprehensive: how do people live in this environment? How did the building operate? How did the people operate? For the family who will subsequently live in the property, that’s going to be intrusive, having their energy and water use under the microscope. So, it goes without saying they’ll need to be a special breed – in a sense they’ll be pioneering spirits themselves, committed to the emerging ‘green lifestyle’.

“A property is only as eco-friendly as the person who lives there,” Brown explained. “The tools are there for the person, but if they crank the heating up and open all the doors and windows, then the efficiency of the house will diminish. That’s why we need people who are ‘signed up’ to the lifestyle to use the facilities as they should be used.”

Most of 4HG’s developments, even though they are built to an exacting Level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes, are rather more conventional compared to the ‘carbon negative’ project, typically consisting of mixed tenure schemes, as well as a mix of family sized and starter homes. The organisation works with member housing associations, Three Rivers Housing and Berwick Borough Housing to identify need and develop appropriate schemes.

But the zero carbon project isn’t the only innovative project the organisation is working on. In Gateshead, 4HG is working with the Cyrenians – a charity that works with the homeless – and a local junior football club on a forthcoming scheme that will combine 20 units of homeless accommodation with sports facilities for the community.

Rather than simply create a homelessness scheme in isolation, 4HG and its partners wanted to create a scheme that links both the establishment and its residents in to the community. The reasoning behind that is two-fold; on the one hand it helps the homeless find their feet within the community again, but it also helps to overcome any stigma surrounding homelessness – and the homeless – that may exist in some communities.

The project is very much part of the inclusion agenda, to show people that the homeless are very much a part of the community. Brown said: “They are in a situation where many of us might automatically exclude them. These are ordinary people, who have found themselves in this situation.”

Life skills, such as paying bills and managing tenancies, will be offered to the homeless residents as part of their support package. Though 4HG’s portfolio of skills includes homelessness support services, in this scheme those aspects will be provided by the Cyrenians. 4HG will look to provide training, in construction skills for instance, while the Redheugh Junior Football Club will benefit from the use of the sporting facilities, as indeed will the wider community. Like its ‘carbon negative’ sister project, the Gateshead scheme is still at the design stage at present. It is hoped that funding will enable work to commence on site this year. Even without these schemes 4HG has invested a total of £15 million into the North East over the next 18 months.

These days, ‘innovation’ is a commonly invoked stock word, but 4HG’s projects are demonstrating that the word does indeed have clout – and substance.