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The occupants of six new homes in Northampton have something special in common: their houses are officially classified as ‘zero carbon’. The One Earth Dwellings at Upton Square, Northampton are the first commercially available homes to achieve the maximum level 6 rating of the Code for Sustainable Homes.
Achieving this required considerable team-work and inventiveness on the part of the design team. The houses were built using pre-fabricated glue-laminated timber frames, assembled on site. Their design optimises the capture of solar energy and daylight, with a biomass boiler providing additional heat. There’s on-site renewable electricity generation (with excess electricity exported to the national grid), and rainwater is harvested for domestic use in toilets and washing machines.
Upton Square is a showcase for how to reduce the environmental impact of housing in the UK. The homes are being monitored to log their energy consumption and production, and this data is expected to enhance similar projects in the future.
"These zero carbon homes set new standards for the housing sector."