Jane Austen’s Emma put it best. “There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort,” said the matchmaking heroine, who clearly knew more about domestic harmony than she did about the secrets of her own heart.
Today, most of us want low-bill, energy-efficient, draught-free, comfortable homes. Strange, then, that the nation’s housebuilders and government struggle so hard to get such an apparently simple thing right. The sector has been mired in scandals, from shoddy workmanship to policy U-turns, and technology that’s anything but user-friendly.
Figures released last month by the Europe-wide Energy Efficiency Watch reveal that the UK is now 27th out of 28 in the European league table for reducing demand for energy, down from 13th in 2012.
“Changes in government policy for both new-build and existing homes mean targets for energy efficiency have been significantly reduced in the past three years,” says Dr Jan Rosenow, senior research fellow at the Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand at the University of Sussex. “This means more people will be exposed to high bills, cold homes and fuel poverty for longer.”
Yet in a recent survey of people’s attitudes to low-energy-bill homes, two-thirds of respondents said that in their next move it would be important, or very important, to have features such as high levels of insulation, solar panels or triple glazing. The survey, conducted for Britain’s leading research institution into low-energy homes, the Building Research Establishment (BRE), also revealed that one in five people were so keen to buy a green home, they would be prepared to pay more for one, as long as the builder could guarantee bills would be lower. In another poll of those living in low-energy homes, all respondents said they “wouldn’t ever want to move back” to a traditional house.
Advertisement
In response to its findings — and after the Code for Sustainable Homes, a benchmarking system for building new properties with high levels of energy efficiency, was torpedoed in 2014 by the coalition’s assault on red tape — the BRE is this month launching a new scheme for buyers to assess whether the home they are buying will really save them money on their bills. It’s a sort of TripAdvisor for new green dwellings. The Home Quality Mark (HQM) subjects new properties to more rigorous tests than the energy performance certificate assessment, which has been shown to be unreliable as it is often based on calculations made at the design stage, rather than actual testing once the home has been built.
Gwyn Roberts, the head of new homes and communities at BRE, says additional tests, such as thermal imaging and making sure all the equipment — such as mechanical ventilation systems, which are often wrongly installed — actually works properly, will be undertaken on homes applying for the HQM.
The first HQM will be awarded this week to a modest, brick-faced home built by the specialist brick-making company Wienerberger. As well as being constructed with an innovative new clay-block building technique, the house is designed to withstand several feet of flooding. User-friendly features include a ground-floor heat-recovery unit so occupants can change the filter easily. “A high proportion of heat recovery units fail because they are located in the loft and people don’t change the filter as often as they should, so they cease to work properly,” says Paul Surin, head of built environment at Wienerberger.
The company’s design is being constructed at sites in Staffordshire, Surrey and East Anglia, and will cost just £120,000 to build. Fuel costs will come to about£200 a year, compared with £1,300 for an average home.
Other simple yet effective design changes on some of the homes in line for HQM accreditation include changing the location of the letterbox. In a development of new Swedish-style homes in Northumberland, the letterbox is on the outside of the house, rather than in the front door. “This ensures the tight seal around the door is not compromised, and energy cannot escape through the letterbox,” says Colin Willetts, sales and marketing director of Trivselhus by Esh, the firm building the 16 properties on the outskirts of Hexham.
Advertisement
Another design set to receive the HQM this year is the Zero Bills Home by Zedfactory, which has an innovative roof shape to accommodate solar panels with an output of 7.5kW, nearly twice the average 4kW capacity of a domestic roof. The design extends the roof further down the top of the house, maximising exposure to sunlight throughout the day. “The panels come with a storage battery, which means the house will be self-sufficient in energy, even during the night: a major breakthrough in solar electricity,” Roberts says.
Every home built by 2030-2050 must be low-carbon — a target we seem a million miles from achieving. With the government having removed subsidies in renewable energy, and watered down regulations, the only real driver of the change needed will be consumer demand, Rosenow says.
The “big ideas” being floated this year may provoke more demand for low-carbon homes, which can be 5% to 10% more expensive than their conventional counterparts. One is the change to mortgage affordability criteria, currently being assessed by the BRE with the Nationwide building society. This will mean the default running costs data for a low-energy home will be reduced by as much as £1,000 a year, if it meets requirements, making green homes more affordable. Another proposition, floated by the energy and climate change select committee, is to offer reduced stamp duty on low-energy homes.
These bold proposals, combined with the new HQM, will be welcome reforms to an area until now mired in regulatory confusion and U-turns.