Housing Expo' homes up for sale

24 homes from last year's Scottish Housing Expo are now up for sale.

The Press and Journal reveals all in interview with the agent on site, who took the reporters around some of the homes.

The homes were all built with energy efficiency in mind so once you get past the designer price tag, you'll have a property that is hugely energy efficient.

Featuring eco-friendly heating systems, the properties, despite the large amounts of glass used which create a very open and airy feel, are deceptively warm, even in cold weather thanks to state of the art insulation materials and techniques used in the construction.

It's a bold glimpse of what eco-friendly communities could look like in the future and we can only hope that the construction techniques used find there way into mainstream construction as a matter of urgency.

Bizarrely, the article doesn't mention whether any of the homes have renewable energy sources like solar panels installed on them - even a community wind turbine?

photo credit: accretion disc

Getting unnecessarily excited over eco-friendly homes

When a tweet popped up the other day announcing a new eco-friendly housing development in Northamptonshire going up for sale, I got very excited at the prospect that finally, eco-friendly property construction had come of age.

So I was a little disappointed when I read on, only to discover that there were no community solar panels, no estate wind turbines... not even a deep geo-thermal well for the close.

What lucky buyers will get is a property constructed from the latest energy efficient materials, including the floor, walls, windows and roof plus a heat recovery system which will draw hot air from shower and bathrooms and pump that heat back into the home.

Some of the properties will include a GasSave heat recovery system which re-circulates heat from the exhaust flu to pre-heat the mains water entering the system.

Taps and showers are fitted with water saving restrictors and even the bath is designed to require less water.

Finally, all the Taylor Wimpy homes come with composting bins and water butts to help owners recycle and re-use as much natural resource as possible.

Shame about the lack of a wind turbine though....

photo credit: woodleywonderworks