Supersized savings

One hundred: the number of letters on a Scrabble board, the number of years in a century, the number of pennies in a pound. And now it could also be the number of pounds needed by a tenant to pay for heating and hot water in a new build social home.

Glasgow Housing Association has teamed up with PRP architects and construction company City Building to design and build a home they hope will help fight fuel poverty and tackle climate change simultaneously. To do this, they have taken the estimated £1,100 per year cost of heating a typical three-bedroom home in Glasgow, and set a goal of slashing it by £1,000.

Work is expected to complete this month on four prototype three-bedroom semi-detached homes. If tests demonstrate they can deliver the massive heating bill savings, then more houses will be built and piloted with tenants later this summer. If the pilots meet with tenant approval, then the model, dubbed the ‘Glasgow house’, will be rolled out across the city. And Glasgow - the largest city in Scotland and the third most populated city in the UK - needs the scheme more than most.

The statistics are sobering. According to a 2007 tenant survey, 85 per cent of tenants are ‘economically inactive’, which means they do not earn anything. It found that 28 per cent of GHA tenants fall into the fuel poverty category with a household income of £10,400 or less. Given that almost one in four people living in Glasgow are either GHA tenants or have their homes managed by GHA, the housing association is in a unique position to make an economic and environmental difference with this scheme.

‘We wanted to find a solution that was conscious of meeting the Scottish government’s sustainability targets - but the priority was overcoming fuel poverty,’ explains project manager Jennifer Conway. ‘We needed the construction to be straightforward for the purposes of training apprentices, and the technology to be simple for tenants to use without too many high maintenance renewable add-ons.’

The result is a design that marries sustainable economics with simplicity. The Glasgow house prototypes have been designed as a cube - the most efficient form after a sphere - and have been oriented for maximum solar exposure. They have also been built with insulation as the priority - solar-thermal panels are the only renewable add-on.

To test the most efficient means of insulation, two blocks of semi-detached homes are being built as prototypes. One uses cellular clay blocks, which are designed to absorb heat and remain airtight, with external wall insulation and render finish.The other will have highly-insulated timber frame with pre-manufactured floor and roof sections and external walls in facing brick. Both will be highly insulated and will have windows and sun rooms to capture the sun’s energy. They will be constructed to minimise heat and energy loss.

Although GHA is not targeting any specific sustainability rating, Ms Conway expects to hit eco homes ‘excellent’.

Stuart Carr, of PRP Architects, compares the design formula to that of a McDonald’s Big Mac. ‘It gelled one day in our minds that we ought to design a house to a particular recipe - like the Big Mac. It works because it has a certain mix of ingredients - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We are not trying to do a Passivhaus which requires the tenants in them to sign up to a certain way of living. The clay blocks are like Lego; it is easy for trainees under supervision to pick up. It is obvious to me that once a few of these have been made, it will be easy to roll them out elsewhere.’

Assuming the prototype achieves its target fuel cost reductions, the model could be adopted across the UK. Already the project has received expressions of interest from a number of other housing associations and local authorities drawn to the Big Mac model. Confidence in Glasgow is certainly high. Not only is GHA planning a sustainable living education scheme for tenants, it is even looking for ideas on what tenants could spend their extra £1,000 a year on.

Have your say

You must sign in to make a comment