Home comforts in a green house

ANYONE wanting to see a vision of what 21st-century living might look like, would do well to pay a visit to Netherton.

For the past four years, David and Sandra Taylor have been undertaking a labour of love at their home village, near Huddersfield, building a unique eco-home which they finally moved into on Christmas Eve.

The majority of the three-bedroom detached house is buried underground to maximise energy efficiency, while an impressive array of additional environmental measures are employed to ensure the property – named Tenters – is as close to zero-carbon as possible.

"We've lived for the past 27 years in a big, draughty old house with low energy efficiency," Mr Taylor explained. "The idea of a modern eco-house is to live in a much more sustainable environment."

The 'earth-sheltering' design eliminates the effect of wind-chill in the winter and provides a cooling influence in summer, helping to save energy. Local stone and sustainable wood have been used for the exterior construction, while 70 sq m of roof has been planted with grasses, wild flowers, sedums and lavender.

Rainwater is collected from the roof and stored in a huge underground tank, from which it is taken for flushing toilets, irrigating the garden, supplying the washing machine and washing

the car.

Underfloor heating is supplied by a wood pellet-fired boiler, and a special ventilation system provides fresh-air replacement while retaining over 90 per cent of heat within the dwelling.

The wiring system is installed with a weather station which controls heating and ventilation by detecting climatic changes outside, while all the electrical lights are low energy and can be dimmed to make further savings. Huge skylights and triple-glazed windows provide large amounts of natural light.

Having only recently moved in, Mr Taylor said it was too early to say precisely how low the house's carbon emissions will prove to be.

"We're hoping to run it for a year and then do the costings," he said.

Constructing the house was "not cheap", Mr Taylor admits, but also points out that the Government has decreed that all new homes must be carbon-neutral from 2016.

"It's a long-term investment," he said. "A growing number of people are interested in this sort of thing. In another 10 or 15 years this might well be the norm – it's definitely heading that way. All it takes is a lot of research."

And how is Tenters as a place to live?

"We love it," Mr Taylor said. "We love the amount of daylight we get through the big skylight, which illuminates the whole of the top floor. We love the views. And we love the warmth of the place."