It’s high time to consider taking simple action to make your home energy-efficient – it’ll help the planet and save you money.

Small changes really will add up to a big difference. If each of you were to put down this magazine and do just one of the simple suggestions that follow, the collective impact on sustainability would be greater than a year of my efforts engineering green housing developments.
Forget the image of sandals and hair shirts: sustainability is mainstream. It’s time to consider sustainability in all the decisions you make on site or at home. Of course buildings aren’t the whole story: try to see your actions in the context of other lifestyle choices, say buying food from Kenya or plane tickets to Rome for a penny. But sustainability, like charity, ought to begin at home. What should you do first? Unfortunately, there’s no single panacea, but don’t let this paralyse you into doing nothing.

Think whether the design of your house promotes economy. The challenge is to convince yourself that ‘less is more’. It’s easier and cheaper to incorporate sustainability measures into a new-build design than a refurbishment, but making existing houses greener is more crucial, as there are already so many.

Sadly, being efficient by choosing a better fridge is not nearly as sexy as a solar panel, but at first, simple steps will give you more bang for your buck. So what’s stopping you?

Electricity

The growing plethora of electrical appliances is rapidly becoming a major new energy burden. Having home computer networks, set-top boxes and the TV on permanent standby can undo all the good work of your A-rated kitchen appliances. A plasma TV is greedy, consuming six times more energy than a flat screen LCD TV, although picture quality is roughly equivalent.
Heard of parasitic loads? Not a new household bug, but a small continuous drain of electricity from devices like mobile phone chargers and standby functions. Turn these off at the socket when not in use.

Choose lighting carefully. Avoid low-voltage recessed spotlights or classic lightbulbs in favour of low-energy compact fluorescent lamps or even LEDs. Look for the new low-energy lightbulbs that come on more brightly, and with a flicker-free start (020 8366 1166; gelighting.com). Bulbs might cost more, but with your electricity savings, the investment will be re-couped in less than a year, and you’ll go on saving money.

Water

By reducing water use you also reduce waste water, which needs processing, and by saving hot water you conserve energy too. New toilets have a maximum six-litre flush, and the better ones are designed to flush with only four litres (01484 854 898; greenbuildingstore.co.uk). Garden watering is also a drain on resources – can you store rainwater from your roof with a water butt? It only needs to fill up 50 times for you to recoup your costs. With new-build or major refurbishment you could always go one step further and install a rainwater harvesting system, which will provide stored, filtered rainwater to flush the toilet (it’s not clean enough to drink). Tanks are often bulky – it takes a tank of roughly 1,500 litres capacity to supply half the toilet flushing needs of an average house – so they are buried underground. We recommend
Eco-Vat by Polypipe Civils (01509 615 100; polypipecivils.co.uk). Be prepared to spend £2,000-£3,000.Recycling waste water from baths and showers, so-called grey water, can be complicated as you’ve got to deal with soap, hair and bacteria to boot. The systems on the market are best suited to a new-build. It can also be difficult to deal with water from the ground floor of properties without basements, as the kit must be lower than the bath or shower. I’d advise leaving grey water until last.

If you can’t afford expert advice on how to make your grand design greener, start with these headings and do a self-assessment. Are you buying new from a housebuilder? Ask if the house has an Ecohomes rating (breeam.org): if not, why not? Expect ratings of ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’, so vote with your feet.

Passive solar gain

Does your design respond to the orientation of the site? South-facing windows allow in light and heat from the sun which can reduce electricity and gas bills. But think about how to keep out the sun in the summer.

If you’ve paid attention to the orientation of your home then when it comes to fitting a solar panel, your roof is more likely to be facing in the right direction for maximum output.

Look for inspiration from the buildings around you, as vernacular architecture is heavily informed by the environment. Check which way they face, and whether they have porches to combat cold winds.

Have you considered how much thermal mass your house has? In a nutshell, this describes how much heat a structure can store. If a house can absorb heat, while inside the temperature only rises slightly, it is ‘thermally heavyweight’. A concrete block wall has about twice the thermal mass of a plasterboard stud wall. So, depending on how you use and ventilate your house, thermal mass can save you energy – it
can reduce peak summertime temperatures and therefore avoid air conditioning (think of those big stone houses in the Mediterranean). Concrete has environmental issues, but by choosing the right materials (see Foundations), the balance of advantage is with heavyweight houses as the climate gets hotter.

Materials

Using appropriate materials is key to a greener new-build, and if they are made and sourced locally, this also saves transport costs, or so-called road-miles. Wood is a fantastic material: it is renewable, and when grown, it absorbs and removes carbon dioxide (CO2) – one of the principal causes of global warming – from the atmosphere. The market for recycled materials is already well established in some places. Look for suppliers of recycled products like Warmcell recycled paper insulation, reclaimed bricks, or recycled rubber carpet underlay from Construction Resources (020 7450 2211; constructionresources.com).

Foundations

Nearly all houses use concrete foundations to spread the weight of the building. Making cement, the active ingredient in concrete, uses a lot of energy and emits CO2. So, ask your structural engineer or builder to  add large aggregate to bulk out the concrete, which saves cement. Ask about recycled aggregate such as crushed waste concrete, which can be reused with hardly any impact on strength. You can also substitute up to 50 per cent of the cement with  pulverised fuel ash (PFA), a waste from power stations, from Scotash (01259 730 110; scotash.com) – this can also be used for internal walls, and it only costs marginally more. Better still, use steel screw piles rather than concrete. For a small single storey extension these will cost about £4,000 (installed) compared to £1,000 for concrete (01727 821 282; screwfast.com).

Heat exchange/ ventilation

Your home needs ventilation in the right places and at the right times to prevent moisture building up. Too much ventilation and you’ll lose heat in winter; too little risks mould growth. Building regulations (Part F) provide statutory requirements.

For a new-build, why not consider a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery? This takes heat from the exhaust air and uses it to warm the incoming fresh air – so you need less heating. A unit sits in the loft or a kitchen cupboard and you’ll need space to run ducts to the bathrooms, kitchen and living room. A system costs between £1,000 and £1,500, available from Vent Axia (01293 526 062; vent-axia.com) or Nuaire (029 2088 5911; nuaire.co.uk).

Words: Adam Ritchie