Carbon negative house. Someone’s beaten me to it!

So this weekend is Open House in London. It’s where places sign up to be open to the public and people can go and look around buildings for free.

The one that caught my eye is 3 Acorns which is a Victorian house owned by Donnachadh McCarthy, an eco-auditor (amongst other things). He converted his 1840’s Victorian terrace home into a retro-eco home, just like I want to do!

Unfortunately I am busy this weekend, so probably won’t be able to go visit (although I might try to regardless), but I have been reading his website with great interest.

The first thing that came to mind is I was dismayed that his wind turbine was not producing much electricity at all! I may need to rethink my ideas for a micro-turbine. However his one was installed in November 2005. I am hoping that in 2014 when I am ready to start thinking about turbines that Ecotricity’s Urbine is ready for market. My hope is that it will be more efficient (due to being vertical axis) to make it a viable option (although I guess depending on whether the area the house is situated gets enough wind is a bigger consideration). Also I don’t know what the garden situation would be like, but I’d prefer a free standing turbine as they are supposed to be more efficient (but more expensive). So that might eliminate the problem the 3 acorns house is experiencing with vibrations.

Then the second thought was, I don’t think that this is a good model for a sustainable house. Obviously Donnachadh knows what he is talking about and has created a house that has achieved exactly what I want to do, but… I don’t like the idea of a wood burner.

Yes you can argue that it’s carbon neutral as the carbon produced from burning the wood is offset by the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere as the tree grew. But this is not what I take issue with.

I want my house to be energy independent. His house used 48 wheelie bins of wood in a year. It is reliant on there being a supply of wood. Obviously this isn’t going to be a problem for one household, but if you were to scale this up and asking every house in the country to become carbon neutral, where would you get enough wood?

Also a common complaint of non-environmentalists is that we all want society to regress so we’re all back living in caves. These people are of course idiots, but I do think that we have the technological advancements that allow us to have a zero carbon house without having to resort to huddling round a wood fire to keep warm. I think people are more willing to make a switch to renewables / low carbon solutions if they are easy and familiar and seem like an 'upgrade'.

If you are producing enough electricity to feed back in to the grid, why not use that electricity to heat the house? Of course it might not be viable, or it may be more efficient to do things this way. I guess the only way to find out would be to visit the house on Open House weekend!

Regardless, it's provided me with a lot of inspiration, hopefully I'll be able to surpass 3 Acorns.

EPCs and a (theoretical) plan of action

So I’ve been doing research in to the best way to start retrofitting once we finally have our property. And it seems the best place to start is with the EPC. An EPC is an Energy Performance Certificate. The person selling a house needs to obtain them before they can sell. So when moving in to a new property you will receive a copy (a lot of property sites include them among the photos of the property).

They contain the building’s current Energy Efficiency Rating and Environmental Impact Rating. The first is your houses energy efficiency, the second is your houses impact in terms of CO2 emissions. It also includes ways that you can improve the ratings. Examples would be things like:

Cavity Wall Insulation

Draught Proofing

Condensing Boiler

I think starting with the list of suggestions on the EPC of the house will be the best place to start as it gives a good breakdown of costs of each solution and the benefits gained (in terms of money saved).

But in addition to making my new home energy efficient, I also want to make it zero carbon (or as close as possible). I have thought about this a lot and I think the only viable solution is to remove gas and have a completely electric household.

Green gas does exist. I currently buy my gas from Ecotricity (love them, more on them later) using their green gas tariff. But although they currently source their green gas from the Netherlands, I don’t believe they are supplying 100% green gas to their customers. And Ecotricity is working on establishing green gasmills in the UK but even then I imagine it would take years for supply to meet demand, and in the meantime continuing to contribute to the demand for gas encourages exploration of controversial techniques like fracking.

Plus, although I could just switch everything over to electric and buy my green electricity through Ecotricity the bills would be huge (hopefully less once I completed all the energy efficient solutions). I think the price of gas is going to increase in the coming years in a way that electricity isn’t.

For me the ideal solution is to generate my own renewable energy for the house, making it completely energy independent (or as much as possible). I have a passion for renewable energy, so having solar panels or a micro turbine was always my plan, but even if that were not the case I think my plans for energy efficiency would lead me down this path.

So having considered all this, the list of retrofitting improvements I’m planning to consider for my futurefitted house is:

Solar panels

Wind turbine

Ground source heat pump

Electric oven (with induction hobs)

Low-e double glazing

Loft insulation

Cavity wall insulation

Draught proofing

LED lighting

Note: I'll justify the solutions I've picked and the choice for them over other possible solutions in further blog posts.

For now this seems like a fairly complete list, but it is only once we manage to buy a place and get the EPC that any firm plans can be made. It will be interesting to see how the reality differs from today’s plan.

A welcome

Ok, so the idea behind this blog is to document my attempts to achieve my goal of making my house zero carbon and as energy efficient as possible. To create a sustainable house.

Before I can get started there's one small issue to address. I don't actually own a house... My tenancy is up in February 2014, and then my girlfriend and I will be buying a place. But I've been researching in advance and am just too enthusiastic about getting started to wait until then. So I thought I'd start now and it can also document any planning I do (and how this eventually differs from what becomes a reality when put in to practice).

Finally to explain the name of the blog. I'm fully expecting to have to retrofit an existing house as it's unlikely we'll find (be able to afford) a super environmental, efficient new build. But as I don't actually have a house yet, I'm not retrofitting anything yet, I'm making retrofitting plans for the future. Futurefitting.