Homes project to put region at cutting edge of ‘green’ design

A scheme that aims to put the region in the vanguard of sustainable design – and won’t be subject to rises in fuel prices – is going on the market.

The development of four “live/work” units on the outskirts of Walkington, near Beverley, on a site once used for windmills, is the first in the area to attain level six of the code for sustainable homes, the highest standard of energy efficiency.

The homes, which will be built on the site now occupied by Nicky Dunning’s agricultural engineering business in Coppleflat Lane, will generate their own electricity from wind turbines, collect rainwater and use solar power to heat water.

Excess energy will be fed into the National Grid, reaping as much as £60,000 for the householder over an 18-year period.

There is now full planning for the development and Mr Dunning is now looking for buyers to turn the plans into reality, be they self-builders or people wanting to move into a finished home.

Mr Dunning, whose family history on the site extends back 200 years to his great-great-great grandfather Robert Dunning, a farmer and corn miller, said it had been a “very steep learning curve”.

He said: “I think it makes people aware of how they can utilise what is on Planet Earth and get away from fossil fuels.

“Whoever buys it doesn’t have to go through the planning route, all the conditions are accepted, they can go tomorrow.”

Mr Dunning will continue to live at Mill Cottage. He added: “I think it will appeal to people who want to live in a house that is very cheap to run; the wind is for free, it blows everyday.

“This is a proven wind generation site. There were two windmills here, a post mill and a tower mill – we do know there’s enough wind to generate the turbines every day.

“Your heat out of the ground is there permanently and daylight is there for the PV panels.”

The south-facing houses are being built on a “Beco” system, which uses polystyrene blocks with a concrete core that sucks up the heat in the summer and slowly releases it back.

The roofs will be covered with a living carpet of hardy sedum plants, and each property will be able to store 6,500 litres of rainwater for flushing toilets, washing machines and watering the garden. Heat will come from a ground source heat pump which use pipes buried in the garden to extract heat from the ground, with any extra top-ups needed provided by the smallest type of woodburning stove.

The 12-metre vertical access wind turbines – which spin round like a toilet roll on a tube – are far more efficient than the usual wind turbines and are supposed to be quieter than a tree.

Urban designer Phillip Boaden from Weel-based Kobi Co said they were “Formula One” houses. Several hundred pages of documents had to be submitted to planners to prove they really were going to be “zero carbon”.

He said: “There is no question they are cutting-edge and you will need far-sighted people to invest in them, to see them as a property, which over its lifetime will create an income and that they will be living in at nil cost.

“They won’t be affected (by spikes in fuel prices)

“They will sit there, bubbling away and producing electricity, being thermally efficient and being comfortable places to live and doing their job.

“Certainly they are going to create in excess of 3KW per hour of electricity per annum more than the house will consume, which we calculate could mean as much as £60,000 over 18 years.”