Last Updated: 1 July 2004
Article by: Ken Walton

ECO-FRIENDLY AND PERFECTLY ORDINARY
I spent last winter living in a brand new flat in Germany, designed to the latest environmental standards. I got quite used to wandering around in t-shirt and shorts, looking out through my French windows at the snow, high winds and temperatures of -9ºC. And my fuel bills were lower than they've ever been in England. So when I got the chance to have a look round Lancaster's own environmentally friendly house, a converted council house on Willow Lane, I jumped at it.

This was my first attempt at investigative journalism for Virtual Lancaster; I suppose I should have prepared a list of intelligent questions, but I thought I'd play it by ear. With my photographer and DIY expert Marian, we set off on our environmentally friendly feet and soon found ourselves outside an apparently normal house. It's easy to think of the “eco-house of the future” as being either unbearably futuristic (all glass walls and open plan living areas), or unreasonably rustic (straw bale walls and compost loos). 54 Willow Lane looks perfectly normal.

Mary, the house's owner, was obviously no stranger to showing journalists round, and started by pointing out the solar panels on the roof. Basically, they're black radiators filled with water and anti-freeze, which warm up the water in the hot water tank via a coil of tubing; the day we visited, (a day of sun and clouds), the digital thermometer in the airing cupboard was showing the hot water at 59°C with no other heating involved.

Apart from the solar panels, the only obvious new thing on the outside was a porch, designed to keep the heat from the living room in when the front door was opened. Built with a green oak frame, and with much recycled material (old stones from a 70's fire surround, a door from a house down the road that was having UPVC fitted, lots of off-cuts, etc.) it just looked like a porch; if I hadn't known about it's green credentials, I wouldn't have looked at it twice.

Inside, in the living room, the most impressive piece of “tech” was the gas fire. Looking like an average sealed, coal effect gas fire, it is, in fact fitted with a catalytic converter, so that hot waste gases, instead of disappearing up the chimney, are cleaned and sent back into the room as warm air. Less high-tech energy-saving solutions included pelmets over all the windows (which prevents cold air escaping from behind the curtains), and a small shelf over each radiator, which send warm air back into the room, rather than up to the window, where it will cool down.

In the kitchen, the gas boiler for the hot water and central heating was a “condensing” boiler, apparently 90% efficient, instead of the normal 75%. The flooring was a bouncy black material, flecked with blue, of the sort more often found in gyms; pleasant underfoot, and made from old tyres and trainers.

In the stairwell, a small velux window had been fitted in the roof, which makes the stairwell much lighter, and stops the need to put the light on when going upstairs during the day. And in that high ceiling above the stairs, that is usually wasted space in a house, a clothes drying rack had been fitted, which catches all the warm air rising up the stairwell.

Some of the windows were newly double-glazed, but others had more old-fashioned double windows in them. The ethos was not to throw all the old stuff out and replace it with new (which would be less than entirely eco-friendly), but to replace the stuff that did need replacing with more efficient equipment and more recycled materials.

Extra insulation, made from recycled newspapers, was laid in the loft, and the sloping roofline in the bedrooms was insulated with sheep's wool and boxed in; sheep's wool is supposed to be longer lasting than glass fibre, breathable when required, and is good for Cumbrian farmers.

There's really too much to go into all of it; a lot of the details are invisible to the uneducated eye. Once paint's dry, you can't tell that it's based on citrus oil instead of petrochemicals, and makes the house smell of lemons when you're decorating. You can't tell the bath's been insulated unless you have a bath in it, and notice the water stays warm longer.

We weren't invited to take a bath and prove this, though we were constantly entertained by a young visiting neighbour's plate-spinning skills, and ended up crawling round the floor playing carpet croquet, something journalists from more conventional newspapers probably missed out on.

Ken Walton

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