Green Houses

The drive towards creating 'greener' housing is gathering pace. In May all new-build homes in england must be rated against the Code for Sustainable Homes. It will be compulsory for house builders to give new homes a star rating between one and six or issue a nil-rating certificate. This measures nine categories of sustainable design, including how the new building uses energy and water and how waste is dealt with.

The aim is to make as many new homes as possible 'zero carbon' which means they will generate sufficient energy and waste very few resources. New home buyers will be able to find out how sustainable they are before they buy. the star rating has been designed to make the code easy to understand. the government hope that the new system will encourage home buyers to choose energy efficient homes and make all new homes zero carbon by 2016.

It is estimated that Britain's homes produce 30 per cent of the country's CO2 emissions that contribute to climate change. It is hoped that many more properties will be built with less polluting and recyclable materials. Barratt's Hanham Hall site near Bristol aims to be the first zero carbon development in England, meeting level six of the Code for Sustainable Homes. The site will have 200 homes and it is thought that it will cut a families carbon footprint by up to 60 per cent. One way they will do this is by slashing water usage by recycling rainwater run off from the roofs so that it can bbe used in toilets, washing machienes and gardens.