No contest for carbon neutral homes

Four Housing Group’s solar-powered housing project in South Shields was initially drawn up as part of a competition but work is now underway to turn the concept into reality

The idea for the development was first mooted over three years ago as partof a competition run by the environmental charity Groundwork South Tyneside and Newcastle which was looking to use hydrogen as a possible source of heating.

Over the years the design has evolved and the hydrogen angle has now been dropped in favour of 21 carbon negative homes in the town’s Rekendyke area, which are expected to be completed early next year.

The £3.9 million scheme has received £1.7 million in HCA funding and is also backed by South Tyneside Council and One North East as well as Groundwork South Tyneside and Newcastle.

“Reed Street will help to set a new standard for green living in the North East,” said the HCA’s Brian Peel. “The homes will be carbon negative, meaning that they generate more energy than they use, as well as improving a key gateway to the town’s riverside regeneration area.”

The groundbreaking Reed Street scheme will comprise nine new houses and 12 apartments, forming one of the largest solar-powered housing projects in the U K.

The properties, which will be available for rent through Four Housing Group, boast a range of eco features which take them 30 per cent beyond Level 6 – the highest available score – on the Government’s Code for Sustainable Homes.

The timber-framed homes will be orientated to ensure that south-facing windows and solar panels catch as much sunlight as possible and will have extra levels of insulation and a biomass heating system. The north-facing aspects of each house will be linked to the next property, providing a further barrier against heat loss – inspired by the behaviour of Emperor penguins, who huddle together to protect themselves from the harsh north wind.

As Lynda Peacock, director of development at Four Housing Group, explains: “We tried to look at nature because nature tells you a lot more about how to do things. If you look at the extremes of the world, the Antarctic or the North Pole, you see animals and people living in that environment. If you think of an igloo it hasn’t got sharp sides, it is curved, and yet the wind bounces off it and you wouldn’t think that you could go into snow and be warm. I think a lot of the time we ignore what is staring us in the face.”

Because of Reed Street’s North-facing location developers were faced with the challenge of designing something that only had one North facing wall and its status as a brownfield site brought extra difficulties.

“The site formerly had terraced houses on it and then it was later used by a manufacturing works as their car park so it had been used in a waynot for housing and there was a bit of a road map underneath with lots of connections for electricity, water, it has got all of the problems you would have with a biggish brownfield site,” explains Peacock. “But if you are going to build something that is carbon negative you want to look for something that you could build anywhere not something that would just work on a Greenfield site or a perfect site because I don’t think there are perfect sites.”

Situating the propertes in order to maximise natural light and make use of the energy available from the sun is key says Peacock. “You can’t just look at the site and say I am going to put 20 houses there and build them in what looks to be the easiest way possible or say I will build it out in brick and block or I will worry about what I have got to do and maybe stick some PV on the top of that and make it work. T hey have to be orientated in the right way and you have to really just look at every aspect of it.”

Reed Street is clearly leading the way in terms of how future homes will be built, and while constructing properties to meet Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes is no longer extraordinary, a development in which all of the homes meet such a high standards is.

And while Peacock acknowledges that building to this level is not the “cheapest option” and is a big ask in the current climate, she is confident in the benefits of these carbon negative homes.

“You have to look at the lifetime costs of the building, not just how much it cost to build, it is the fact that it is going to have this benefit for its natural life,” she explains