Eco build on a budget

1. Minimise waste

When we started clearing the site, we assessed what we needed to remove – decking, conservatory, plants, sheds, steps – and what we could do with them. Here are some of the solutions we came up with:

Freecycle - We were able to pass on some willow screening, bamboo hedge and assorted plants to Freecycle members. When it’s all done, we will freecycle any topsoil or building materials we have left over.

Re-use – While the sheds had to move, we still needed somewhere for our bikes and tools. We dismantled the decking (which was only about two years old) and used the wood to build shed number one, which has the look and feel of a log cabin. Then we took apart the existing sheds (possibly as old as the house) and used whatever was salvagable to build shed number two. We found some interesting things in the shed, which were also re-usable – a brand new timber and glass door, which became the door of shed 1, and a very funky art deco bath panel which must have been an original feature of the house. The bath panel is destined to become a centre-piece as a splashback in our new kitchen. The conservatory found a second life as a porch for a friend’s cabin. Some of the blocks and bricks we uncovered were also reusable.

Recycle – Breaking up the shed floors, steps and conservatory foundations generated a lot of rubble. We sorted some of this into two bags – one for hardcore and one for small stones for use in a French drain. The remainder went into a skip, but not just any skip. We sourced a local provider who takes the contents of the skip and recycles it into hardcore, which he then sells on. We used some of this recycled hardcore later on. 

2. Make the most of what you’ve got

Volunteer labour – If you’re very lucky, you know electricians, carpenters, brickies or plumbers who are willing to help you out. If you’re not, you may at least have some enthusiastic mates who can be roped in to dig, clear, shift or other non-skilled tasks. Promise them pizza and beer (when the work’s done!) to get them motivated. In this spirit, we enlisted the help of colleagues, friends, neighbours, our children and our friend’s children (not with offers of beer, obviously!).

What’s in the shed? - Most of us have tools lurking at the back of our shed. What about your family and friends’ sheds? If you can borrow wheelbarrows, cement mixers, gravel sieves, ladders etc you will keep your costs down and reduce the eco impact of your build. Many people buy these things new when building their once-off extension/conservatory/garage and they never see the light of day again. Ask around or try Freecycle. You may get lucky with left over bricks, blocks, hardcore or sand too.

3. Watch your impact on wildlife

Although this is a small project with little impact on the local environment, it’s always good to be mindful of who or what you share your space with and do your best to minimise their disruption. 

We moved all the plants out of the way – some down the garden, some to the front and gave the rest away. However, no one wanted a 5 metre high eucalyptus tree that had to be moved to make way for the new sheds. As a non-native species, it had little wildlife value so we chopped it down and it is now drying out for fire wood.

Demolishing the sheds, we came across a frog who appeared to have been living under them. We relocated him to under the new sheds at the end of the garden. After the trenches were dug out, we had some regular visitors – honeybees and wasps kept returning to a particular seam in the soil. No idea why, particularly when the bottom of the garden is full of fruit bushes that they should be interested in. When we were filling in the trenches, we made sure none of them got trapped. Did you know – honeybees are an endangered species?

4. Do what you can by hand

Rather than hire equipment that uses electricity or petrol, figure out what you can do manually. Barrow your hardcore, mix your own mortar, handsaw rather than power tool, dig and sift your gravel. Know where to draw the line though – call in the digger for the main excavations. Don’t overdo things – you’re no good to the project if you strain your back or are laid up with exhaustion.

5. Use environmentally responsible companies

While it can be difficult to identify companies with strong environmental policies, as opposed to the ones with green marketing slogans, it is worth seeking them out. Only by giving them your business will companies like this become the norm rather than the exception. For example, we got our skips from Binn Skips specifically because of their recycling policy.

We are sourcing our counter top from an English company that makes them out of recycled glass. This a much more eco option than non-local granite (which may have travelled thousands of miles from where it was quarried), laminate counters (which are plastic coated) or wood which is not from an FSC-certified source. Kitchens were a big issue for us – it was virtually impossible to find any suppliers with an environmental policy, let alone one that actually sourced their materials sustainably. In the end, we went for Ikea for our kitchen units - they have a sustainability policy for all their materials and every time we swipe our loyalty card they plant a square foot of forest with the Woodland Trust.

Use local businesses where possible. Not only does this support the economy of your local community but the less distance your tradesmen and products have to travel, the smaller the carbon footprint of your building will be.

6. Source materials yourself

To guarantee that our timber came from sustainable sources, we sourced it ourselves rather than leaving it up to the joiner. Locally produced sustainable materials are ideal as they minimise transport emissions, but this is one of the areas where you may have to compromise. Living in Scotland, we very quickly realised that many of the eco products we’d been researching are made by English companies with poor supply networks north of the border.

One of the problems we found was that, while Scottish retailers were willing to order in eco products on request, they would only to so for a certain minimum order – way beyond the needs of a small self-build. This was particularly true for the small amount of blocks we needed. We specified a lightweight 7 Newton block (lighter means less concrete and better thermal properties than standard blocks) for our foundations. We contacted manufacturers for a list of who they supplied in Scotland and rang every one of these within the central belt. Not one had the blocks in stock, nor were they willing to order in any less than a full artic truck load. Only one provider (Travis Perkins in Perth) was helpful and willing to offer an alternative – an Albatherm block from Brand and Rae made with 75% recycled materials and class 1 aggregate (heavier and not as thermally efficient but a good compromise). More importantly, they were available! 

Another issue is that English and Scottish building regs are different so what is available off the shelf in England does not always fit Scottish needs, for example windows. Getting them made to fit increases the price tag exponentially.  We went for off-the-shelf, FSC-certified, Scandinavian timber frame, triple-glazed windows from a builders’ providers in Dundee. In terms of transport emissions, travelling from Sweden to Dundee by boat is probably not much different than transporting from England by road.

7. Insulate, insulate, insulate

Insulation is probably the most important part of any building in terms of reducing energy consumption - in the use of the building and in its manufacture.  There is a huge choice of insulation materials but many of them are based on the petrochemical industry.  We chose to use a natural hemp/cotton insulation material because it comes from renewable resources, is UK grown, requires minimal manufacturing and will eventually, at the end of the building’s lifespan, be fully biodegradable.  The building regulations are finally updating themselves to higher standards of insulation but these should be seen as a minimum and not a target to be met.  The Scottish regulations stipulate a minimum U-value of 0.3 for walls, 0.25 for floors, 0.2 for roofs and 2.2 for windows.  We chose to up the ante – our minimum standards are 0.18 for walls,  0.18 for the ground floor,  0.16 for the roof and 1.8 for all windows and doors. 

What’s a U-value? – U-values are important to an eco-builder. They are the measure of heat transmission through a building part or thickness of insulating material (expressed as W/m2K) that will flow in 1 hour through 1 square metre of the material from air to air with a temperature differential of 1oC. [Thanks to the Green Building Bible 3rd edition Vol.1 for the definition.] The lower the u-value of your insulation, walls, roof, windows and doors, the less heat you lose through them and the warmer your house is. When sourcing materials, check if the U-value is for the material as bought or as fitted. For example, a badly fitted triple-glazed window will lose heat through gaps around the frame no matter what the U-value of the glass.

Insulating the old part of the house is also essential, otherwise it will create a ‘cold bridge’ that will leak heat away from the extension. The existing house has suspended timber floors with a gap underneath of about 120cm. This means that heat is lost under the floor and also that it’s very noisy with bare floorboards! To reduce the heat loss and to improve the acoustics, we are insulating under the floorboards within the depths of the floor joists. We are also filling the external wall cavity with insulation. Thanks to our energy supplier Scottish Hydro, this is costing us very little. As part of their Better Plan tariff, they provide grants for wall and loft insulation and give cashback incentives to customers who reduce their energy usage in a year. They supply a free energy monitor which will help you identify which of your appliances use the most energy so you can turn them down or switch them off.

8. Last step – adopt a green lifestlye

Once you’ve completed your fabulous eco-home, you’re not quite there. If you fill it with energy guzzling appliances, keep the heat on in empty rooms, tumble dry rather than line dry and drive to work/school every day, you won’t be an eco household.  If you’re contemplating an eco build, this may seem obvious but research has shown that many people who occupy energy efficient houses ‘offset’ the environmental and financial gains by buying appliances like plasma screen TVs or taking long-haul flights.

This doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice the good life, you just need to make intelligent choices. Given that energy costs are rising and, post-peak oil, will continue to rise, reducing your energy consumption is likely to improve your cashflow. I like scientist Amory Levins’ idea of ‘elegant frugality’  (http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,2266535,00.html) – to live well but within your means and the resources of the planet. To calculate how many planets you’d need to support your lifestyle, visit www.ecofoot.org.

Some of the most effective actions are also the simplest. Here are our top tips:

Unplug – switch off electrical appliances when you’re not using them and especially at night. The ‘red dot’ of standby uses up power too. Mobile phones use a huge amount of energy (and money) charging overnight when all they need is a couple of hours. Charge them in the morning while you’re having breakfast and keep an eye out – as soon as they’re fully charged unplug them.

Switch – to a green energy provider or to a supplier with a genuine green tariff. All of the energy companies claim to have a green tariff but, if you look closely, they are charging you for the bare minimum amount of renewable energy the government insists they provide. Unfortunately, signing up to a green tariff or company does not mean that your energy will be sourced exclusively from renewables. As long as you are hooked up to the national grid, your energy comes from the ‘pool’ of diffferent sources. What makes a green tariff genuine is that the money you pay for your power is invested in increasing the capacity from renewable sources such as wind farms, hydroelectricity, solar and (one day) tidal. The more consumers who demand this, the more cash will get invested. Visit http://green.energyhelpline.com to see where your energy comes from and which suppliers are the most green.

Walk – it may seem simple but you’d be amazed how many people just don’t. On our road, which is five minutes walk from the school, we are the only family that walks every day. The other families all travel in separate cars. Where we live in Perth it is possible to walk into the town centre in 15-20 minutes and the bus network is excellent. There are also regular bus and rail links to Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow for commuters. Not everyone lives this close to work/school or has access to this level of public transport but if you do, use it! And if you don’t, cycle!

Waste (not waste) – the old adage Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is still sound. Reduce by only buying what you need, avoiding over-packaged products and bringing your own bags to the shops. Reuse whatever you can, such as bags, containers, boxes, paper. Recycle according to what facilities are available in your area (and lobby for more). Compost food scraps and garden waste – if you have a garden and don’t already have a compost bin, get one.

Wipe - Use recycled toilet paper – millions of trees are felled every year just to wipe the arses of the world.  Buying products made from recycled materials, such as paper, plastic and glass, stimulates demand for them which will increase the availabilty of green products and make them cheaper. Sometimes these products come at a premium, which I really can’t fathom when their raw material is so cheap, but not always. If you have a box delivery scheme in your area, you may be able to buy local, organic, seasonal vegetables for less than supermarket-bought veg and without the airmiles and packaging.

Plant - no matter how ‘green’ we are, our lifestyles will still leave a carbon footprint. We can do our best to reduce this but we can also create our own carbon sinks – i.e. trees. I’m suspicious of the ‘carbon offsetting’ industry as there doesn’t seem to be much accountability for the companies involved and a significant percentage of what you pay is their profit. If you have a garden, plant trees yourself. If you don’t, see if there is a community woodland or nursery in your area and volunteer. Otherwise give money directly to woodland charities with active tree-planting programmes. It’s essential that trees aren’t just planted but managed well – a tree that dies of neglect will release all that carbon right back into the atmosphere.

For more ideas, check out www.wearewhatwedo.org and remember:

small actions x lots of people
=
BIG CHANGE