News & Exhibitions

World’s most sustainable home costs just €50 per year to heat

11 June 2007

Irish-company Kingspan Century today unveiled the most sustainable mainstream home in the World. The zero-carbon home, entitled ‘Lighthouse’, has unrivalled levels of efficiency in design, construction method, energy, CO2 emissions and its carbon footprint. It costs just €50 per year to heat and produces it’s own electricity.

The house was unveiled in advance of the Offsite 2007 show at the headquarters of the world-renowned Building Research Establishment (BRE) outside Watford, England.

This high performance, sustainable home, is the first to achieve the British Government’s 2016 standards for sustainability, energy efficiency and carbon emissions, which are almost 100% greater than the current Irish building standards.

Speaking at the unveiling, Kingspan Century Chief Executive Gerry McCaughey said: “This house is the most significant event in the development of sustainable zero carbon housing the world has ever seen. It was devised to prove that the most advanced sustainable homes can be delivered at an affordable price. It’s success will challenge governments all over the world to set the highest possible standards for new housing developments.”

“It also proves that new developments need not be dependant on traditional energy sources, or have a negative impact on the environment,” he added.

McCaughey called on the Irish Government to follow the British Government’s vision in tackling carbon emissions from the housing sector. He said: “It is welcome that the Irish Government is improving energy standards by 40 per cent in 2008, but there is no strategy in place to continue those improvements. This house is almost 100 per cent better than the current Irish standards and it proves that the promised 40% increase should be seen as a starting point to even greater energy efficiencies, and not a dead end for complacency. What we need in Ireland is a vision for the future of sustainable homes, similar to the UK, where the government has devised a Code for Sustainable Homes that runs to 2016 and outlines what the housing sector needs to do to reduce carbon emissions.”

The 93.3m2, two and a half storey, two-bedroom house, is designed in line with the British Government’s Lifetime Homes and Scheme Development Standards (SDS). Every building material and component used has been specified for its ability to optimize the house design’s overall sustainability credentials.

The ‘Lighthouse’ building is constructed by using Kingspan Century’s TEK Building System. This high performance system, based on Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS), delivers very high levels of thermal insulation and airtightness, to ensure that the designed heat loss values are achieved in practice.

This airtight building fabric has been designed to provide generous daylight levels, and includes photovoltaic solar panels, which generate electricity.

The building also includes:
- A wood pellet boiler heating system
- Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery
- Low water usage
- Greywater recycling for WC flushing
- Rainwater harvesting for washing machine and irrigation

‘Lighthouse’ will form part of Kingspan Century’s entry into the British Government’s Carbon Challenge competition. The competition is the next step up from Kingspan Century’s winning designs in the British Government’s £60,000 ‘Design for Manufacture’ competition. The company is once again working alongside Sheppard Robson, Arup, MacFarlane Wilder and Davis Langdon to realise this vision for the delivery of affordable and sustainable homes.

The aim of the competition is to set the highest standards of sustainability for the construction industry to meet on specified brown-field British Government, local authority and housing association sites. It is also a showcase to implement the British Government’s Code for Sustainable Homes, which is a very ambitious road map to reduce emissions from housing between now and 2016.

In Ireland Kingspan Century will be offering the ‘Lighthouse’ concept to builders and people building one-off homes as a complete package. “This home will be offered to customers as a full service package. We will be able to advise our customers about how to source and install sustainable technologies on heating, water usage and energy efficiency,” said McCaughey.

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