GRAND GUIDE Ten TV homes

10

Most memorable eco T V houses

Inspiring projects that show how, over the years, Grand Designers have pushed sustainable construction to its limits

Superlatives abound when it comes to describing each and every one of the 100-plus Grand Designs projects that have appeared on our screens over the years. They are all examples of obstacles faced and solutions found; of ingenuity, grit and determination; of homemaking dreams realised. This selection of some of the most outstanding eco-friendly buildings demonstrates what can happen when there’s a passion to create something exceptional.

1SUSTAINABILITY PIONEERS To gain planning permission for their four-bedroom new-build, Helen Seymour-Smith of Seymour-Smith Architects (seymoursmith.co.uk) and her husband Chris, an architectural designer, built their house beneath a period hillside barn, making it all but invisible to passers-by.

The property is in the Cotswolds countryside and, at the time, the regulatory stipulations for rural areas made allowances for such ‘groundbreaking designs’. But even more exceptional was its certification as a Passivhaus – the first of its kind in England. Wrapped in foam insulation, the building has walls and a roof made of eco-friendly concrete panels which soak up and store heat, and its windows are triple-glazed with insulated frames. ‘Part of our reason for doing this was to show people it can be done,’ said Chris.

2HIGH THERMAL MAS S When Richard Bennet t and Felicia Böhm bought a cavernous concrete underground reser voir near the Humber estuar y in Yorkshire, they planned to harness the thermal proper ties of the ground to reduce their energy use.

Working to the principles of a low-carbon build, the couple recycled as much of the struc ture as possible, so the rubble from the roof was used to help fill in the cour t yard. Ever y thing else, including the suppor ting steel pillars, was stripped out and sold for recycling.

The temperature inside the three-bedroom home is kept constant thanks to a whole house ventilation system. In summer, the building is passively cooled by the high thermal mass of the concrete walls, and in colder months an 8.5kW air-source heat pump supplies a radiator circuit in the 1.2m-deep floor void.

3MEETING BUILDING STANDARDS Natasha Cargill’s periscope-like t wo-bedroom home in rural Nor wich, Nor folk, was subjec t to Paragraph 55 of the National Planning Policy Framework. Back in 2013, this meant that only the most architec turally innovative, energy-ef ficient, eco-friendly building would do.

The plan was to make the house sustainable from the foundations up. It sits on an insulated slab cast from eco concrete, where much of the cement content has been replaced by fly ash and waste from furnaces and power stations. The staircase is also made from this material, providing a thermal mass that absorbs and releases heat, warming the home in winter and cooling the building in the summer. The struc ture is timber-framed, skinned with fibre panels and stuf fed with carbon-neutral insulation. An array of solar panels on the sedum roof supplies elec tricit y.

‘Constructing an eco-friendly house on a 45-degree slope presented a unique challenge to balance function, performance and aesthetic’

TAMING THE TERRAIN The grassy

4hillside in rural Derbyshire on which ecologist Fred Baker and his wife Saffron built their home was so steep that it was unsuitable for cows to graze on. ‘Constructing an eco-friendly house on a 45-degree slope presented a unique challenge to balance function, performance and aesthetic,’ said project architect Matthew Lewis of Arkhi (arkhi.co.uk).

Local farmers quarried out limestone to create a base for the three-bedroom earth shelter house. ‘Solar energy is soaked up by the thermal mass of the building, which retains warmth through the year,’ said Fred. Clad in larch boards and local stone, the property now looks rooted in the landscape.

5A NATUR AL MARVEL It took Kevin McCabe nine years to complete his gargantuan east Devon home. Located in Ot ter y St Mar y, the proper t y includes a four-bedroom main house and a three-bedroom annexe linked by t wo sun spaces plus a greenhouse – a footprint of 1,250sqm in total.

The enormit y of the task Kevin set himself is all the more astounding because the entire structure is made from cob, a labour-intensive mix ture of clay, straw, sand and water. Using it on such a scale had never been at tempted before and drew interest from international exper ts and prac titioners.

‘Properly built and correc tly maintained, cob is the most comfor table material to live in as it regulates heat and humidit y naturally,’ said cob building specialist Kevin (buildsomethingbeautiful.co.uk). ‘At the end of its life, which could be 1,000 years or more, it can meld back into the soil and be reused.’

SLOW-BUILD

6APPROACH Ed and Rowena Waghorn spent more than a decade building their home, and there was still work to be done last time Grand Designs visited. ‘We’re awaiting an exciting bit of roof made from traditional copper shingles. I’m really looking forward to doing this,’ said Ed, who studied furniture and product design and constructed much of the house himself.

The five-bedroom timber-frame property in Herefordshire is the longestrunning project followed by Grand Designs. Features include a galleried hall with a window that has a frame made from a single tree. The building is mainly post and beam, with strawboard and rendered walls. For Ed, Rowena and their four children, the project – finished or not – has been an integral part of their family life.

FEAT OF ENGINEERING With its arched roof,

7this four-bedroom home by Richard Hawkes of Hawkes Architecture (hawkesarchitecture.co.uk) and his wife Sophie was a risky experiment – so risky that Richard admits it was the most challenging thing he’d ever built. The house used 26,000 locally made clay tiles glued together with plaster of Paris.

The insulation provided by a green roof was an essential element in achieving Passivhaus standard.

The timber frame is heavily insulated with a 300mm-thick layer of recycled newspaper pumped into the exterior walls, and sheep’s wool – chosen for its acoustic qualities – in the internal partitions. The entire structure is wrapped in a metallic fabric that is heat reflective, waterproof, yet vapour permeable and makes the building airtight. Doors leading outside have triple seals to prevent air leakage and contain a 50mm-thick air vacuum. Finally, the couple invested in triple-glazed, argon-filled windows, which have nifty inbuilt blinds to help control solar gain in the summer.

8LOW-IMPACT CONVERSION With no prior self-build experience, Ed and Vick y Versluys embarked upon conver ting a semi-derelic t concrete and brick cowshed in Winsham, Somerset. An eco-sav v y approach is writ large in this of f-grid threebedroom home, which includes reclaimed timber floors and a nor th-facing roof of tiles made from recycled plastic bot tletops.

The building is ex ternally insulated and clad in agricultural timber board, with glulam beams and a weatherproofed laminated timber roof anchoring it to the exposed site. A struc tural engineer helped with the roof span calculations. ‘ We also had an architec t on board to help us with the Building Regulations ,’ admits Ed.

A wood-burning stove and conne c ted boiler cater s for the heating ne eds of the 270sqm building , with ten photovoltaic roof panels and a wind turbine generating electricit y. Following four unsuccessful at tempts at drilling a borehole to bring in a water supply, the couple switched to a waterhar vesting system.

EW WALL, CHRIS TUBBS, MARK BOLTON PHOTOGR APHY MATT CHISNALL, ANDY HASLAM, DARREN CHUNG, FIONA WALKER-ARNOTT, ANDR 9 RECL AIMED, REUSED, RECYCLED Using reclaimed materials , local stone and modern technology, Daren Howar th and Adi Nor tje built a handcraf ted house in Brit tany, France, that enabled them to live of f-grid. The projec t followed ten years of research into Ear thship homes , which nestle snugly into the ground and are made of natural and recycled materials.

The walls of the three-bedroom house were construc ted from a high thermal mass material that maintains an even temperature by absorbing the sun’s heat, releasing it when the weather cools. ‘ We used old t yres and packed them with 150 tonnes of ear th,’ said Daren. PV solar panels supply electricit y and solar thermal tiles heat water. ‘It was great to see the technology come together as we were tr ying a lot of it for the first time,’ he explained.

10 A TINY TRIUMPH With a plot measuring just 10x4m, architec tural designer and Passivhaus consultant Joe Stuar t (warehome.co.uk) built a third of his east London home underground.

The result is a piece of bijou brilliance, a 115sqm Passivhaus-accredited building set over three levels with a roof terrace. Joe quit his job to work on the project, and was suppor ted by his girlfriend Lina, a ser vice designer, and his parents.

‘You really can live comfor tably in a small space if it’s carefully considered at the design stage,’ says Joe. It may be the smallest two-bedroom house in London, but the proper t y squeezes in two double bedrooms, a kitchen/dining/living area, snug, bathroom, wet room, studio, terrace, office and a spacious storage area.