HomeZED

Client: Mail on Sunday
Description: Single dwelling on a 9x9m plot
Start: April 2007
Notes:

How to live? The latest challenge is to be green and enjoy it.

This is one way we can achieve comfort with a clear conscience. Home ZED offers impressive space and living standards whilst generating all it’s own energy on site.

The house blends innovative technology with traditional materials. It incorporates an exposed timber frame combined with thermally massive interior finishes and deep insulation as part of proven energy and construction strategies. Comfortable levels of light, shade, heat and coolth are achieved using simple methods focusing on passive systems and occupant control. This construction system has been prototyped and is being used on a housing scheme in the UK which is currently being built.

The timber post and beam structure, the arrangement of the living spaces and the thick insulated walls are expressed on the south elevation with large overhangs. Traditional pantiles wrap from the roof down the north elevation to a brick plinth that wraps around the ground floor.

The house is arranged over three stories. The living spaces are located at first floor where there is the greatest floor area, and where views, light and privacy are maximised. Children’s bedrooms are at ground floor with direct access to a garden. The master bedroom is on the second floor with en-suite, a roof terrace and a gallery overlooking the double height space of the living room. To accommodate an expanding family, this space can be converted to provide a fourth bedroom.

The materials have been carefully selected and the building detailed to achieve a 125 year building life span. The house of the future as described here can easily surpass level 5 of the new code for sustainable homes.

Central to the environmental design is the concept of load reduction - the various techniques and technologies incorporated, greatly reduce the amount of energy required to heat and light the house and to run domestic appliances and consumer electronics. When the energy load of the house has been successfully reduced, a Zero Carbon House becomes possible. This load reduction is key to living sustainably on a fair share of national resource found within UK boundaries.

This house has been calculated to provide enough electricity to power the house and more. The excess can then be sold back to the grid, making the house carbon negative - or can be used to run an electric car.

Home ZED has been designed using ZEDfactory’s proven building physics model and the ZEDstandards construction code which is the basis for the governments code for sustainable homes. Home ZED easily meets code 6 requirements , the highest standard in the code for sustainable homes