Green in the UK - ZEDFactory Ltd.
24 Jun '07 from JohnCommoner
The UK is one country that's really, really caught the bug when it comes to green building. The nation appears poised to take a real leadership role, and there's a lot of great stuff happening there. It tends to be a little groovier, and usually a whole lot greener, than what's coming out of the USA. Not that we don't have great stuff here - we do - but I like what I see the Brits doing.
Here's a great example of the UK's finest: ZEDfactory Ltd. ZED stands for Zero (fossil) Energy Development. The firm does everything from urban design and master planning to multi-family residences to individual homes to eco-refurb to landscaping. Everything is low energy / low impact.
In the HomeZED, timberframe construction is combined with high thermal mass and heavy insulation. Passive strategies compliment the construction methods for simple, natural heating and cooling. The home has ample daylighting, and produces more than its own energy needs via renewable energy sources and sells the excess back to the grid. Prototypes are already being built. I think a HomeZED would be well suited to our climate here in southeast Michigan , and I could definitely see myself living in one.
Here are two other examples of ZED's great green homes:
The stunning, earth sheltered "Bath Springs" house (I'd move in here in a heartbeat).
The RuralZED Carbon Neutral Kit Home - a timberframe kit house with "fully integrated renewable micro-generation technology." These houses are highly flexible and can be built by the DIY types, or by developers who choose to combine them into multi-family units.
Shouldn't every neighborhood look more like that? I really like what ZED is doing. Their homes look very practical. I think this is what the future of green design really looks like - affordable and realistic, yet not sacrificing in sustainability. Something that is adaptable to differing development scenarios. I hope to see more work like theirs here in the United States.
Image credits - ZEDfactory Ltd. site
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ZED houses
they really do seem great-- very comfortable, great looking, pretty smart of those Brits. I'm thinking of these as similar to some of the prefab designers I know in the US, though using wood rather than steel, and perhaps with more focus on passive power generation. Does that seem right? I know that Steve Glenn for example is striving for the zero fossil concept with his projects (notably his Z6 house) though he's not completely there yet with his initial designs. - maxmsf
Great Idea
John, this reminds me of the famous Atlantic story from the Rocky Mountain Institute called Brittle Power, which was written over twenty years ago recommending just such a distributed approach to power generation, but for reasons of national security! Seems our power grid is one of our biggest points of vulnerability, but if each house generated its own power, we'd be much stronger in our ability to cope with a natural, or unnatural, disaster. Makes sense--imagine New Orleans during the crisis, if each house was generating electricity. How many more people might have survived....I'd love to see Homeland Security funding ZED homes.
Blackouts Are Scary!
JohnCommoner
www.futurehousenow.com
Great point. I live in Detroit, and the blackout four years ago was scary. Total grid failure of the Northeastern USA, from NY to Detroit, and a big hunk of Ontario. It only lasted a few days, but had it gone on a couple more I think some things would've gotten ugly. Fortunately, we live on the very edge of it - half our town had power and half didn't (my half) - we were able to drive out of it and stay with a relative who lived just ninety miles away. It was also extremely hot that week. Part of the cause of the grid failure was the huge load from everyones' AC blasting. Sadly, my own house, a typical bad stick frame spec home, is absolutely unlivable without it - it gets sooo hot when temps rise above ninety. Stifling actually. I had a newborn child at the time. Not fun. I learned two key lessons. First, for several reasons, I want a house that does not need air conditioning to stay cool. Second, as you suggest, a dispersed grid would be more robust and resistant to disasters, attacks, grid failures, etc.