Local Sustainable Homes

How to Make Them Happen in Your Community

Chris Bird

• Editorial: Green Books
• Año: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780857840172
• Categoría: Economía
• Categoría: Desarrollo sostenible

While politicians talk about sustainable housing, thousands of individuals, groups and organisations are busy putting ideas into practice now pushing the boundaries to cut carbon emissions far beyond government targets. Where are the examples we can all learn from, and how are they bringing sustainable housing closer to reality in our communities? What are the obstacles to making low-carbon housing the 'norm' rather than the rare exception? Which housing associations are building Passivhaus homes for the elderly? Which councils are leading the way?Local Sustainable Homes covers everything from finding land and getting planning permission to installing alternative energy options and sourcing local materials. Projects range from building a roundhouse in the woods to refurbishing council flats in Sheffield, and from developing an eco-cluster in rural Dorset to creating sustainable social housing in Kirklees.

CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE HOUSING?

“Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be sustainable or believe to be energy-efficient.” With apologies to William Morris

You could do worse than look in the Oxford English Dictionary for a definition of sustainable housing. ‘Sustainable’ – ‘able to be sustained or upheld at a particular level without causing damage to the environment or depletion of resources’ and ‘house’ – ‘a building for human habitation’.

I don’t have a problem with the definitions but, in my dictionary at least, they are 768 pages apart – a reflection of how separate the two concepts are in the real world. Our homes are just not sustainable. In the UK almost 30 per cent of all energy use is in domestic buildings, so our houses are responsible for over a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. A breakdown reveals that 28 per cent is used for space heating, 22 per cent for water heating, 10 per cent for cooking and 40 per cent for lighting and appliances. As summer temperatures rise, energy savings from improved insulation could be more than offset by increased use of domestic air conditioning.

But these figures underestimate the impact of housing because they don’t include the construction of buildings, infrastructure or demolition. Building shelter is estimated to use 16 per cent of the world’s freshwater supply, 25 per cent of timber and 40 per cent of fossil fuels and manufactured materials. The housing industry contributes around 50 per cent of all pollution in the world, with cement alone responsible for 8 per cent of total greenhouse gases.¹ And house building is a very wasteful industry. Around 20 per cent of all construction waste in the UK is caused by over-ordering materials that are then sent to landfill.

“For every new house built, one is thrown away!”²

Katy Jackson

Why do we need sustainable housing?

So housing makes a big contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and hence to climate change, and for that reason alone has to change. As Paul King, Chief Executive of the Green Building Council, says: “Our homes and buildings should be in the front line in the battle against climate change, rising fuel prices and energy security”³

But there’s more. As we reach peak oil, it becomes increasingly difficult to continue building and using our houses in the same old way. Look around your home. What can you find that doesn’t depend on cheap oil or other fossil fuels for its extraction, processing, manufacture, synthesis, transport or installation? Not much. Bricks and clay tiles are fired in kilns heated by gas or electricity (itself likely to be generated from burning coal, oil or gas). Cement and plasters are also energy-hungry materials. Plastics use energy in their production and oil as a raw material, and metals, another non-renewable resource, require enormous amounts of energy for mining, extraction and fabrication. Even natural materials such as stone and timber are likely to be transported hundreds or even thousands of miles.

There are also good social reasons why we need sustainable housing. In a typical winter, around 25,000 people die in the UK because they can’t afford to keep warm in their own homes. As many as 4.4 million British homes, 20 per cent of our total housing stock, fail to provide adequate thermal comfort – and this figure is rising as fuel prices increase. Millions of people live in fuel poverty, defined as spending more than 10 per cent of household income on fuel for space heating, and this is increasing alongside fuel prices. Average household gas bills in the UK rose by over 100 per cent between 2003 and 2008, and electricity bills rose by 70 per cent.

Poorer people tend to live in less energy-efficient houses but actually have smaller carbon footprints than those in ‘Middle England’. A study of household carbon emissions by postcode showed that middle-class areas, such as Rickmansworth and Gerrard’s Cross, were the worst polluters, with more than 36 tonnes per household, while less affluent communities in Stockton-on-Tees, Newcastle and London were responsible for less than 15 tonnes per household.⁴ Although travel and consumerism are responsible for much of this difference, larger houses are a significant part of the problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests, probably optimistically, that we must reduce household carbon emissions to around 2 tonnes to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. An average household in India has a carbon footprint of just 1 tonne. Poorer households, without any choice, have a head start when it comes to reducing carbon emissions.

Housing in crisis

According to Shelter, the leading charity for the homeless, less building, increasing demand and rising costs have created an affordability crisis. Large numbers of people are priced out of buying or even renting a home. The problem is particularly acute for young people on low salaries, with public-sector workers effectively priced out of London or the South East. In England:

• Nearly 80,000 households were found by local authorities to be homeless in 2008/09.

• There were almost 1.8 million households on local authority housing waiting lists in April 2008.

• At the end of June 2009, 60,230 homeless households were living in temporary accommodation.

• More than half a million households live in overcrowded conditions.

Poor housing wastes more than just energy and resources. According to ‘The Real Cost of Poor Housing’, a report from the Building Research Establishment, it also costs £600 million a year in healthcare.⁵

Why are we in this mess?

Enough facts and figures! You get the picture. Housing makes a big contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and we need to do something about it. But before we rush into action let’s consider why we’re in such a mess.

The architect and author James Wines blames, among others, the great modernist pioneer Le Corbusier. In 1923 Le Corbusier, in homage to a new wave of industrialism, proclaimed: “There exists a new spirit! Industry, overwhelming us like a flood which rolls towards its destined end, has furnished us with new tools adapted to this new epoch, animated by the new spirit.” A spirit that, Wines argues, is now “tarnished and discredited in the face of current environmental realities.”⁶

Le Corbusier can hardly be blamed for the arrogant attempts to control and dominate nature that are central to modern industrial societies, but, by embracing this spirit and founding an architectural movement that sees houses as ‘machines for living in’, he did contribute to our current situation. Wines suggests:

“dumping all of the ego-motivated excesses associated with most architecture of the Twentieth century in favour of a more socially responsible and environmentally integrated approach … to progress from ego-centric to eco-centric.”⁷

So what would architecture that put ecology ahead of ego look like? Part of the answer can be found in the natural building movement.

Natural building

In the past few decades the eco-centric approach has progressed under the title of ‘natural building’. Crucial to this are decisions about how, where and why to build, as well as about the choice of natural materials. Natural building emphasises low-tech methods, broad rather than specialist skills, respect for the local environment and regional traditions. It encourages self-build, not just as a way for owner-occupiers to save money but also because of the psychological benefits of hands-on building with natural materials. Natural building involves systems and materials that emphasise sustainability by focusing on durability and the use of minimally processed, plentiful, renewable and salvaged materials to produce healthy living environments. It tends to rely on human labour more than on technology, and it varies with local ecology, geology and climate, the character of the site and the needs and personalities of the builders and users.

If we limit ourselves to local and natural materials, won’t that make our houses boring? Certainly not. Some of our most beautiful houses are built with a limited palette of materials from the area. Picasso puts it nicely:

“Forcing yourself to use restricted means is the sort of restraint that liberates inventing. It obliges you to make a kind of progress you can not even imagine in advance.”⁸

Eco-housing pioneers were inspired by Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, the self-sufficiency movement associated with John Seymour and the ‘natural’ homes showcased by the Centre for Alternative Technology to build for personal and planetary health.

In his influential book about our consumer society, Affluenza,⁹ Oliver Tickell identifies a strong association between self-esteem and housing. Bigger homes, frequent remodelling and obsessive DIY for little real benefit are symptoms of our addiction to consuming as a way to boost our sense of self-worth. Housing is just another part of our consumer culture; but natural building can be the antidote.

Step into any good bookshop and you’ll find dozens of books about natural building. Straw, cob, rammed earth, timber frame, lime, hemp and earthships all have passionate advocates, some of whom you’ll meet in this book. In recent years the use of natural and sustainable materials has started to penetrate the retrofit market. Wool, woven hemp and recycled newsprint insulation are widely available. The big DIY stores promote ‘Earthwool’ loft insulation made from recycled plastic bottles and have a range of ‘environmentally friendly’ products to make our homes and gardens more sustainable. Of course, a lot of this is ‘greenwash’ – do we really need fountains and garden lights powered by solar energy? – but it does reflect a growing awareness of natural materials and the need to reduce the damage our homes do to the environment.

What makes housing sustainable?

If we take a narrow definition of sustainability, then we can end up talking about houses that cope with the challenges of climate change and peak oil while actually contributing to these problems; homes that might be wonderful places to live in but part of the problem rather than viable solutions. A home that runs entirely on renewable energy but requires enormous quantities of materials and energy to build is not sustainable. So we need a holistic understanding of sustainable homes that encompasses the total impact of housing on our planet.

Inspired by nature

Nature can provide the inspiration as well as the materials for building. Antoni Gaudi and Frank Lloyd Wright looked to nature for inspiration long before words such as ‘ecology’ were in common use. Gaudi studied the intricate structures of leaves, flower stems and tree trunks as models for the structural systems used in his buildings. Visiting his Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is like walking beneath a forest canopy. Wright was influenced by geology and seasonal change. His iconic ‘Falling Water’ illustrates how a house can be an extension of its environment and use materials drawn from the local area.

William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement celebrated natural forms and materials in building design, and more than a hundred years later buildings are still inspired by nature. In Zimbabwe the high-rise Eastgate Building is designed to mimic the way that tower-building termites in Africa construct their mounds and use passive ventilation to maintain a constant temperature. The building uses less than 10 per cent of the energy used in conventional buildings. (See the case study at www.biomimicryinstitute.org.)

The Eastgate building in Zimbabwe mimics the passive air circulation used in termite mounds.
Photograph: Michael Pearce / Aga Khan Trust for Culture

This is a big ask, but anything less is really avoiding the problem. If we consider energy use in a finished building but ignore ‘embodied energy’ – the energy used in the materials or in construction techniques – then we’ll have a false idea of the carbon footprint of that property. If natural materials are transported long distances, then the true environmental impact may be higher than if synthetic local materials are used. Even a home built with sustainable and local materials that runs on little or zero energy may be unsustainable if it fails to encourage environmentally friendly behaviour, is sited a long way from employment opportunities, doesn’t form part of a viable community or has an adverse effect on biodiversity, the water cycle or the availability of land.

Even what a house looks like can affect its sustain-ability We might disagree with Germaine Greer when she says that “new homes are universally ugly, and eco-homes are the most horrible of the lot”,¹⁰ but if her point is that aesthetics are an aspect of sustainability then she is right. Homes and communities that speak to people in ...

Índice

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Introduction by Rob Hopkins
• 1 What is sustainable housing?
• 2 Making the case for change
• 3 Sustainable housing in Totnes
• 4 Refurbishment and retrofit
• 5 Building together
• 6 Sustainable housing in Brighton
• 7 New build
• 8 Social housing
• 9 Sustainable housing in Stroud
• 10 New tricks with old bricks
• 11 Land, planning permission & finance
• 12 Sustainable housing in Sheffield
• 13 Materials and skills
• 14 International and green: lessons from around the world
• 15 A look into the future: Stroud, Brighton, Sheffield and Totnes in 2030
• References
• Resources
• Index