TROUBLE AHEAD

By Mark Brinkley, author of The Housebuilder's Bible

2006 saw the launch of the Code for Sustainable Homes, the UK government’s vision of how we should be building in years to come. It calls for a radical overhaul of the housebuilding industry and sets out a series of increasingly exacting steps, ranging from Level 1 which is slightly in advance of current building regulations, right up to Level 6, which is defined as a zero carbon home. By 2016, the code suggests that all new homes should be built to Level 6 standard.

Whilst you would imagine that this would be music to the ears of progressive housebuilders, the Code actually presents a number of intractable problems to small developers and selfbuilders. The Code is implicitly aimed at large housebuilders, working on sites with 50 homes or more, and many of its demands are unsuited to the one-off housebuilder.

For instance, Level 6’s insistence that homes generate enough renewable energy to cover their annual energy usage is much easier and cheaper to meet on an estate-wide basis. A single house may not have enough roof space to accommodate the requisite amount of photovoltaics, the roof orientation may be wrong, and its very unlikely that a back garden will ever make a suitable site for a wind turbine. Whilst you can build an ultra-low energy house on any site, only certain sites can cope with renewable power plant.

The Code also calls for numerous other eco-features besides being zero-carbon. The maximum water demand is so exacting that it can only realistically be met by installing a rainwater harvesting plant. Whilst this is something many people would choose to do voluntarily, there are many sites where this too is not practical or advisable, for instance where the garden is liable to flooding.

Under the assessment regime being set up, each and every development has to be judged against 34 eco-targets; to reach the top score, Code Level 6, developments have to score straight As on over 90% of these tests. As it stands, there are many small sites and replacement dwelling opportunities which will simply not be developable after 2016, because the Code is so prescriptive about what should and shouldn’t be done.

This would all seem to be something of an unintended consequence of rolling out the Code for Sustainable Homes across all housing developments, large and small. The government has not yet decided to make the Code mandatory but it seems likely that it will. Before this happens, the selfbuild industry and the custom home builders need to make it clear that whilst they welcome the move towards higher building standards, the Code as it is currently defined is far too restrictive and will actually act to prevent a lot of very green homes being built, because they are not green enough.  To see what Baufritz has to say about the Code for Sutainable homes click here.