Should greens buy eco-homes?

From an ecological point of view my house is rubbish. It was built 110 years ago when the ventilation to prevent rot was seen as more important than energy efficiency, it has solid brick walls, it is the northern one of a pair of semis and it is down in a dip where the sun seldom strikes when we need it in the depth of winter. We have done what we can to improve it from a carbon point of view - blocking holes in the wall, replacing single with triple glazing, doubling the attic insulation and adding some to smaller roof cavities, upgrading the boiler and putting in a solar hot water system, but I doubt the house has a better carbon footprint than a well made modern house. I have a dream of building my own zero carbon home, but the question remains, why don't I move into a well built modern home? My personal carbon footprint would be instantly cut.

The simple answer is location, location, location. I live within walking/cycling distance of the city centre in a wooded river valley where I can hear the owls cry in the night. You can't beat that on many levels.

But, more importantly, would a non-green have lavished the eco-love (and money!) on this house that it needed? Probably not, and while I was tucked up in a modern house feeling smug, someone would be sitting in this one, complaining about the fuel bill, while the inefficient boiler pumped out the carbon.

So, with a huge number of poorly performing houses out there, there is a strong argument that greens should buy houses with a huge carbon footprint and do their best to cut that footprint as much as possible, going above and beyond what a home owner would normally do. Then Joe and/or Jo Public can buy a modern house and have a lower carbon footprint by default. Everyone's a winner!

UK Govt Announces Green Home Makeovers

Today the UK Government announced a package of green measures for every home in the UK. For some reason this will not start until 2013, which would be after at least one general election, but as the other two main political parties are proposing similar measures, this is unlikely to go away.

Very welcome, but maybe a little more haste would be in order.

There's plenty of work to do too, with the Energy Savings Trust estimating there are 7.3m cavity walls that could be filled with insulation, 7m solid walls that could be insulated, and 12.9m lofts which do not have the recommended depth of insulation, and 4.5m G-rated (the least efficient) gas boilers.

The Green, Green Grass...

After 5 years of resembling a building site, we finally got our garden in shape this summer. This was a good opportunity to flex some green muscle.

We broke up a lot of concrete and replaced it with grass - a permeable surface which absorbs rain. You may think this is insignificant, but, as I write, half of Newcastle is under water and people are being evacuated from their homes. Our drainage and rivers cannot cope with the rapid run-off from hard surfaces, and this is our small contribution to reversing the trend of concreting over front gardens.

The benefit of all this rain is we haven't had to water the lawn and I'm going to try and feed it with homemade fertiliser next year. The grass cuttings will also balance the hedge clippings in our very dry compost heap - I've bought a push mower for when it dries out enough to cut.

Other green features include reclaimed flag stones, a retractable double washing line (we never have owned a drier anyway) and several bird feeding stations. We'll be stocking it up with more wildlife friendly plants in the next year.

The eco-bandit in all this greenery is the pressure treated wood deck. We would have preferred a stone patio, but the cost was prohibitive.

Green Home Improvement: Wooden it be nice...

Wood is one of the most sustainable building materials - non-toxic with a solar-powered 'manufacturing' process and it is easily recyclable. The main thing you need to be careful about is where it comes from and this is made easy because of the well-respected Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accreditation. If your wood has the FSC logo, you can pretty much trust that it is OK.

There are other sources of sustainable wood. The treads on our stairs (right) were made by a local company who get their wood from tree surgeons, so we knew the wood was local and would otherwise go to waste.

Another important issue with wood is preservatives as most are toxic (they have to be to kill rot and fungus). The excellent Greenspec website has some excellent advice on wood preservation, how to avoid it and what the best options are if you must use it.

Lastly, wood boards such as MDF and chipboard are normally manufactured using toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde to bond the wood particles together. These volatile chemicals 'off-gas' during the product's life which affects the indoor air quality and has been linked to sick building syndrome. It is best to avoid these upfront by only using ZF (Zero Formaldehyde) products (eg Medite Ecologique MDF which is ZF and FSC certified), but if you can't source them, then certain houseplants such as spider plants will happily suck up as much of the gases as they can.