This group of people should be running the government department responsible for affordable housing nationally. It’s so bloody obvious what is needed but short sighted politicians are just out for themselves. Well done
Yes, they should be. But unfortunately, they don't have spare money with which to fund the Conservative Party. Unlike the fossil fuel and house building industries, which do. This is why we have high dependence on gas and oil for domestic (and industrial) heating and c**p housing standards. Does anyone remember David (now Lord) Cameron's "Get rid of the Green Crap"? That came after hugging a husky had got him elected. Part of that was doing away with improved building standards. Actually, it was reducing the current standards. Utter hypocrisy. Sorry, I got that wrong. Utter corruption.
I wouldn’t be so kind as to call them short sighted, they’re just down right lazy and can’t be arsed pulling their finger out and getting things like this done. If a small community can make it happen, they have no excuses.
Great to see efficient housing being build. I’m saddened by development sites in my local area building homes that only just meet the building regs in terms of insulation levels. They include just 3 or 4 solar panels to improve the EPC but don’t fill the roofs even though the additional costs would be minimal.
Where I live in Pennsylvania the local community land trust has also started building passive houses because they were finding that the people who lived in their affordable homes were spending up to a third of their housing costs on heating. And it's a total win for the environment!
It's about time the UK gov passed legislation to force the building sector to adopt standards like Passivhaus, at the very least have a target % of new builds, that then increases over time.
Where do I start, I know you have good intentions, but it’s more complicated than that. For a start, I am architectural technologist working for a EPC company, and why do you think this is, because things have got so complicated and difficult they needed someone technically minded..just to understand the complexity of the building, I would say most of the homes are made by house builders, and they’re looking to produce as much as possible for the least amount of money, so everything is to the wire,. And 90% of the builders don’t understand the technical specification needed..
Many builders simply push back against new measures for energy efficiency - there are many very vociferous ones here on TH-cam (hello skillbuilder!). The way to overcome this is better training coupled with stringent and strictly enforced regulation. It simply is not good enough to say it is too complicated and/or too expensive. Here we have a perfect example giving the lie to those arguments.@@IDann1
Applying efficiency targets to newly built homes is too slow to have an impact in 10 or 20 years. Last years new builds were about 1% of all dwellings in the UK. Old houses need to be refurbished and new houses need to be built. If we had a 10% of UK dwellings being refurbished at the same time, it would be 2 million dwellings and a lot of nuisance from building and logistics. Building new towns and cities away from those that already exist seems to me the best way to make a dent in long term emissions, obviously at the expense of short term emissions.
@@IDann1 So what you're saying is the industry are entirely focused on their own enrichment, don't give a hoot about quality if it impacts their bottom line, and will keep doing whatever the government let them get away with. Which leads us back to OP's point: they have to be forced to do it with regulation. You may be surprised to learn this my friend, but whether or not a bunch of land bankers and cowboy builders are able to feather their nests to a level that meets their tastes is not of great concern to most people. Newbuild housing now has such a bad reputation for shoddy workmanship and corner-cutting that many people won't buy one at all unless they have no other choice, so letting the industry do whatever they want hasn't resulted in quality housing. Time for the great God of the Market to have his way I say: regulate to insist on Passivehaus standard for all new builds, no ifs, no buts, and if the current companies go bust because they don't believe it's possible to make enough money, oh well too bad so sad, someone else will step in. Because what, you're really going to argue it's *not possible* to make money building energy efficient affordable homes? When much of Europe's building industry already does exactly that? I'm sure exactly the same arguments were bandied about when the big bad government stepped in and insisted the industry stop packing people's walls with asbestos or build houses that wouldn't collapse under their own weight - it's too haaaaaard, the alternatives are too coooostly, the industry will colaaaaaapse waaah waaah waaah - and yet somehow they managed. All industries will always portray any potential change to their methods and standards as a catastrophe because they don't want it to happen, not because it will actually bankrupt them, but because they're set in their ways and don't want to be bothered figuring out new workflows or deal with retraining - that isn't a reason not to force them to change.
This is brilliant, well done to them- there's a CLT in my village in Devon which sounded so promising but unfortunately they built shoddy houses, most over 500k so completely unaffordable and the ones that were shared ownership, the mortgage rates were ridiculous. They are now trying to build even more on the land that was designated for the community, utter shambles and greed by developers
Inspiring but at the same time deeply depressing. The first Passivehaus in the UK was built in 2010 and people were saying it was the future. The truth is that since then 1500 Passivehauses have been built in the UK representing c.0.05% of new builds. The UK house building industry, whether building for private sector or social sector, has no interest in building the way Passivehaus requires. The want to build quickly and cheaply the same way that houses have been built for at least the last 100 years.
I'm pretty sure there were passivehouses in the UK before 2010. That was when Larch House in wales, the first zero carbon (code 6) UK passivehouse was built but there had been others earlier. Failing to find the actual first right now. Wales 2006, maybe? Architects journal says Wales 2009. I think there were uncertified ones before that. 2006? BUt yes you are quite right that the big housebuilders have been holding back progress for a couple of decades now.
@@xxwookey Code 6 homes and PassiveHaus homes are technically different but there are a lot of similarities. Code 6 homes are probably even rarer in UK than Passive homes. In both cases if it is not certified as a Code 6 or Passive House we cannot call it that. Depending on which website you believe the first Passive house was completed in late 2009 or early 2010 (I guess it may depend on how you define completed). The first code 6 home could not have been built before 2007 because the code did not exist until then and it was scrapped in 2015. By 2011 only 31 Code 6 homes had been built in the UK. Code 6 was scrapped allegedly following pressure from UK house building industry.
@@justinstephenson9360 IMHO passivehouse is a technical standard not a certification, so I'm perfectly happy to call anything that meets the requirements according to PHPP a passivehouse whether or not it actually got certified. But yeah I can't actually find any in the UK before 2009, without looking through back-issues of passivehouseplus/greenbuilding magazine. So fair enough: 2009/2010 it is.
@@xxwookey I visited a passive house under construction in 2006 or 2007. Somewhere near Cheltenham. I crashed on the architect's floor on the way to the first Transition Towns conference. I forget his name, the friend of a friend.
Well done all at Lune Valley CLT. Shows what can be done. Germany has been doing 100% passivehaus on new build for 2 years, as have France and Ireland. Exeter Council too. Scotland will be 100% PH in 12 months time. We COULD do it in England if politicians cared more about climate, fuel poverty and comfort and less about party donations from big house builders.
A great video showing what can be done. This is ideal for those with little monthly income and will enure they can stay warm and comfortable. All new homes should have this as well as solar panels, an Air source heat pump and capacity for a battery and EV charging. Also Imogen has been very busy and great to see more of her videos.
Yes, I agree. It’s so obvious that it is a good idea. We need to investigate the layers of corruption that have prevented people from living in energy efficient homes.
Having worked for a housing association, I wish they were all like these people. Well done to everyone involved. This is what we should be doing nationwide.
What an inspirational project, would love that the same would get done here in Slovenia ❤❤ Everything Electric team great work with spreading work that is done in sustainable living, ❤😊
Great project. UK really needs to up its game when it comes to housing standards and proper enforcement of those standards. There are too many developers building shoddy houses out there.
These look very similar to ones that were built in Peterborough a few years ago by the football stadium. Reaonable to buy as well (around 170k), rainwater harvesting, large interior, triple glazed, very thick walls , 3:42 solar water heating and hvac.
3:00 or so in hits the nail on the head - supported funding for the scheme. No one is disputing Pasivhaus is an excellent standard for new dwellings, however without outside funding it is for the most part not achievable for one offs or any scaled housing development. For a one off scheme, is there any sense paying (for example) £350,000 to build a house which will have a market value of less than that? The only way you can offset these costs is through 3rd party funding.
Your so right about EPC, my house is 10 year’s old and I’ve just renewed my EPC., because I’ve Solar panels, a Powerwall and I’ve upgraded my loft insulation my new EPC is now “A rated”. However when my heat pump is installed it would reduce my EPC even though I’ll have removed the gas boiler. Now we’re on earth is the sense in that, what on earth is our energy minister in this benighted government up to. What’s even more ridiculous I’m getting a £7500 grant to fit a heatpump whilst near 2000 house are being built around me all with gas boilers. Even a child in primary school would wonder at the sense of it.
As someone who's worked as a housing officer in a social housing environment, and had to deal with my share of rent arrears, I can only say that I see HUGE benefits to landlords, both social & private, to ensuring your properties are are as energy efficient as possible if you want ensure a higher proportion of them as possible reliably produce the rental income your looking for. If tenants have to choose which bill to pay less often, fuel or rent, in this case, that's a win-win for everyone.
@@ecok That's interesting. Though I do wonder if that depends on the lender. According to my admittedly, (very) limited understanding, mortgage lenders, at least up until recently, haven't readily understood the value of green technology in terms of mortgage repayment affordability and on resale values as a means to protect their investments.
Fantastic story, great people and a job well done! Hopefully the right people hear it! - Imogen, you are doing so great while the rest is downunder! So looking forward to your piece on V2X!
Great video and well done to everyone involved! I hope you do get to spread the word and this becomes a more and more normal way of building! I'd love to see some detail on the housing build and later, perhaps feedback on what it's like living there?!
It would be good to see the details on what is involved in building these passivhouses. That would spread the message even further because people can then copy it where they can.
I fully endorse the comments on EPC ratings. I am looking at how we might improve the energy efficiency of let properties we have. The properties are old and some are listed and all except one have oil fired central heating. No gas here. The exception has electric central heating. However the EPC rating of the electrically powered property is poorer than the oil fired property. My understanding is that this is because when EPC ratings were introduced 40% of electrical energy was derived from coal whereas today only about 1% annually comes from coal. I understand the EPC system is under review but no idea what the time frame is 10:2710:27
Sadly 3-bed terrace would cost about £~200K to "upgrade" to Passive Haus / EnerPHit standard. The sooner Regs require Passive Haus the fewer that will have to be (unaffordably) upgraded later.
The fuel poverty point is a really good one and this is a really important issue. Totally agree. I would quietly say that the cost of building homes is not, however, the actual barrier to building more homes generally/housing costs irl. I know people say it is but that really isn't true. ...that said I am (and I think we should all be) very supportive of the project in the video and projects like it.
Couple of things: no mention of car charging and there seemed to be lots of steps everywhere, were there slopes too for prams and wheelchairs? Other than those two points which I hope someone will quash, seems a great idea and more parish councils ought to look into this sort of thing instead of granting permission for boxes with not even a solar panel in sight.
This was my thought about car charging. I could see this design might work in a large town or city where you are discouraging people having cars, but in a village it seems a bit odd. Or maybe they are targeting poorer people so if you can't afford heating then your can't afford a car. So maybe the lease agreement states you can't have a car. I'm also amazed that they don't have solar, seems a crazy to have not added it when they built them considering the aim of the project was low energy costs.
@@gavjlewisyeah, I nearly mentioned that and thought maybe they were so sealed they don't need much heat but they must use electricity of course This is admirable and I love that's it's community based. However I still think the best housing project to have featured on the Fully Charged/ Everything Electric Show is the one in Wales, Sero homes was that the company? Can't remember and I'm nodding off now. 👍
I think I can see chargers in the overhead shots, not exactly clear though. Where there are steps there are ramps or it's approachable from the other side (I was under the impression that ramps or equivalent were a legal requirement now...) No sign of solar... maybe that was a cost saving 🤷♂
@@mastweiler22 It's mentioned in another post that there are a couple of Podpoint public charging posts in the general parking area at the front of the the development. But as pointed out if you need this social housing because you can't afford to pay for heating then you probably aren't affording an electric car.
@@gavjlewis Can't afford EV now, but I think short sited not to have charging installed for when "everyone has one" ... but maybe infrastructure is in place and will just need rolling-out in the future.
Cost per unit to build? The bigger problem is people having no home that they can afford to buy. Reason I ask. My local council wanted to build affordable homes. Aim to price them at about 150,000. But then during the planning phases, so much red tape and mandates etc. The need to add solar and battery storage, the need to add heat pumps, then EV chargers and drives etc. The list kept getting longer, so much so all the add ons drove the price well above 200 to 250,000 per unit. Which then means they are no longer affordable to buy. Getiing on the housing ladder is far more important than heating. Simply because people need a place to stay in the first place. With out which. Running cost is irrelevant.
Thanks for this. Here in Canada we have the same or maybe even a more serious problem given our colder climate. As an Oil & Gas producer we have got a break on some energy pricing but still far too many pay way too much for the inefficient energy they consume. It gives me hope that someday the bureaucracy and red tape will get out of the way and let serious folks get on with it.
This is what I've been saying for the longest time and have wondered why everyone in the world isn't doing this. If everyone had passive houses, the transition to renewable energy is much easier because you don't need to figure out a way to supply people with a whole lot of energy that they're going to throw away anyway. Efficiency is the name of the game.
How many units were built in this development, and at what total cost? And how are they purchased or rented? Would be very helpful to have some actual numbers, and interviews with the building contractors.
I live in a Passive Haus, and I am funding the building of small groups of passive houses. We reckon about 5% more on building cost (so not including cost of land). Winter fuel is 90% less than Regs. Not a huge saving (Regs 3-bed £~1,000 winter heating, £100 Passive Haus) but so much more comfortable year round and other benefits too.
Again people are not looking at the bigger picture on this development. Waxing lyrically on shared spaces and parking away from the house and forgetting completely about home EV charging. This creates another situation where being on low income is more expensive because you cannot charge your EV at home overnight on low cost electricity. They really put on the blinders on this project.
Exactly. In inner cities with no parking close to home and high flat occupation EV buyers are going back to ICE cars because they can't afford the public charging rates. Even if this little oasis does have home charging rates...
Many tall buildings in NYC have all aluminium frames for the windows 🪟 and you can feel the cold from outside straight through them. Heat will of course transfer in the summer. All requires more energy for heating and cooling.
Thank you for highlighting this project but I think it would benefit from a deeper dive. What about making a podcast on this for your other channel? You could explore the technicalities that you could only touch on here
I wonder how much more expensive these homes cost to build over more conventionally built houses? A great video and a great idea. Let us hope passive homes become the norm across the industry.
I used to test homes with a blower door and thermal imager. It is amazing how bad new construction is in the USA. Air sealing and thorough insulation would be so much better if the workers actually cared about what they are doing. Instead, the mantra of "not my house" and getting on to the next project seems to be what guides them.
I live in a Passive Haus, and I am funding the building of small groups of passive houses. We reckon on ~5% more on building cost (not including land). 90% reduction on winter fuel (compared to "regs"). Much more comfortable - nice even temperature; mechanical ventilation has additional benefit for respiratory problems (Wife and I have not had a winter cough / cold since we moved in 7 years ago).
Excellent topic which needs far more attention and could I suggest needs more information about what building techniques were used and if this approach could be scaled up to be used right across the country? What about building cost and energy efficiency comparisons do they have heating systems and what have they used for this? So many questions can only mean one thing that you’re already working on a follow up video? 😬
I actually ran for election years on on the platform of Community Land Trusts in combination with Limited Equity Cooperatives. Unfortunately I was out spent 16-to-1 to someone who took donations from big developer and real estate special interest. I broke 40% of the vote just by knocking on doors and talking about CLTs and LECs; people saw the potential.
Air Tight means that all exhaust air goes through heat exchanger in the mechanical ventilation (which recovers 95+% of the heat). I live in a Passive Haus, the insulation means that it drops 1C in freezing mid-winter if I go away for the weekend and turn everything off, slow to overheat in Summer Another element is that inside glass surface of windows not more than 4C colder than room - so that cold air does not “fall”. Even if air tight that falling cold air would create the feeling of a draught. Thus triple-glazed windows (also great for sound insulation)
While certainly nice, this assumes building a new, highly efficient home will result in lower total emissions over its lifecycle compared to continuously retrofitting and maintaining an older, less efficient building. Since there simply is not enough unused land in the UK, the only option is removing existing structure or we stop growing food and use the farmland.
Only 6% of the land area of the UK has any kind of development on it, that is a house, road, factory etc. But yes a lot of the existing housing can't be made energy efficient within a sensible budget.
Affordability is three parts Purchase price , fuel costs, maintenance Passive house has always solved the latter two it’s exciting to see it’s all the first one too
I built an energy efficient home 30 odd years ago after studying passive thermal design for 20 years or so. The trick is to design it from the ground up taking as much advantage of environmental factors as possible. It takes time and careful attention to detail in the design, but the results are well worth the effort. I lost my house through divorce. I'll do better in my next life.
@@Oppledom SAPs are getting replaced soon, with something a lot more complex as you may array know, but I can't see it working at the moment, looking at it, it looks to be far too much information needed,. It's a struggle to get the information needed from the we builder now,..let's see what happens next, it's like my job is changing all the time, I don't have the time or the manpower to go full thermal dynamics route.
Really interesting project & great initiative. Shame that there wasn’t a bit more detail on the house feature such as the amount of pv, battery storage, heating type etc.
8:30 this is what the industry needs to address the amount of not fit for purpose layers of materials used and the amount of trades needed - anyone should be able to build a passive home without any special knowledge as the better designed sips (that are fire/water resistant, insulating, structurally capable, and have the interior and exterior finish and colour on already) are the only product available. wood batons and plasterboard that needs painted has to GO. and designers need to look down and see how much space they occupy and reduse floorspace accordingly so homes arent excessively big.
Visited passive energy show houses back in 1981 in Milton Keynes. They had all the technology then but successive governments have refused to implement legislation to enforce those higher energy efficiency standards.
great, bypassing companies like Story Homes who seem not to be interested in affordable housing or low energy buildings, not a solar pannel on any of their catalogued homes.
You should make a video about hempcrete as a building material. It is carbon negative and a very insulating material with a lot of other interesting properties.
I’m sick of government saying “I would love to help but it’s not my department”. This village run initiative should be the standard for all council (or state-funded here in Australia) homes.
Lune "Walk"... Nicely built with an apt name - transport relegated to the outskirts of the development and not a single disabled access ramp in sight. Help, but not for the most vulnerable.
I wish I could modify my house to be fuel positive, or even mostly self sufficient. Unfortunately, as a mid-row terraced house (a small 2 bedroom house) there is not that much roofing area to work with makes being able rely on the solar I could generate unlikely as well as an expensive thing to get installed.
It would have been interesting to touch on the price of building these as passive houses. The book "Energy Smart Housing Innovation" by Holger Gross (2010) has a table estimating that the Lindås Passive House Project (2001) was cost-neutral. I suspect that the passive house label has attracted a cachet.
It is absolute insanity that the Passiv Haus standard isn't mandatory for all new build homes. It should also be standard for offices and other similar buildings.
Where there’s a will there’s a way as demonstrated - sadly those with vested interests in the wrong places have the say in what should or shouldn’t happen and thus those in the greatest need to not spend so much end up paying the most…
Nice houses. The film could do with more numbers, my own concern being build cost. The UK is not that cold, so hitting PH standard should not be that difficult. You shouldn't need particularly thick walls for the required insulation and airtightness is just really build quality, simplifying the house shape (these houses are simple boxes) to minimize difficult spots, and getting all the trades onboard. However, it will still be more expensive than a regular build and lets not kid ourselves that build cost doesn't matter. The main "housing crisis" in the UK is affordability, not fuel poverty. fwiw, I live in Japan and getting a PH level house here means using a boutique high quality builder who will charge 50% more than a regular builder who will get you near PH with external insulation or spray foam. In that situation, PH becomes overspec because the marginal energy saving (a couple of hundred) is not justified by the large bump (tens of thousands) in build cost. Build cost matters more in the UK than Japan thanks to the UKs high interest rates.
No mention of build costs, you're looking at 25k ontop of normal building costs. AND 66k total over 30 years ownership. Rent will need to be an extra £185 a month on these *affordable* homes to cover the cost of system maintenance and materials. The embodied carbon is much greater aswell.
The University of Manchester built a massive shed a couple of years ago & inside it they built a couple of houses so they could research how efficient they were in adverse weather conditions. (They can create very hot or very cold conditions artificially) I thought I’d have a look at what materials & systems they were trialling. To my surprise they’ve nothing there that betters the house I built in 2008. The UK needs to stop talking & just build energy efficient houses. Everywhere else in Europe has done it, the UK just needs to catch up.
Cambridge decided that all its social housing would be Passivehouse in 2021. Some have been built and more are coming. Exeter has been doing this for a decade, and demonstrating that passivehouse builds can cost no more than conventional ones. They even have a passivehouse leisure centre now. Brussels set this as the requirement for all buildings in 2017. Scotland requires it (well, equivalent) from Jan 2025. We need the building regs to say this in the rest of the UK, but the current proposed revision is nowhere near, and we will keep getting mediocre houses until we set adequate standards. I've been converting my house to the passivehouse retrofit standard, mostly DIY. This demonstrates that you don't have to spend 100 grand (which very few people have) on a deep retrofit. th-cam.com/video/OVcvk9Wnyw4/w-d-xo.html Not quite as good a purpose-built passivehouse, but pretty bloody good by British standards.
To be fair building regs in 2024 require a good level of insulation e.g. walls 0.18 vs passive house 0.15. Yes to get an EPC A you really have to have solar as that gives you the extra 10 points you need to move from B up to A.
Can you imagine a builder like Persimmon trying to build passive houses? They'd leave a gaping hole in the tiny matchstick house walls and sign it off as done. On a more serious note, why is EES not fighting for legislation change? You've got the platform to help make it happen.
This group of people should be running the government department responsible for affordable housing nationally. It’s so bloody obvious what is needed but short sighted politicians are just out for themselves. Well done
Yes, they should be. But unfortunately, they don't have spare money with which to fund the Conservative Party. Unlike the fossil fuel and house building industries, which do. This is why we have high dependence on gas and oil for domestic (and industrial) heating and c**p housing standards.
Does anyone remember David (now Lord) Cameron's "Get rid of the Green Crap"? That came after hugging a husky had got him elected. Part of that was doing away with improved building standards. Actually, it was reducing the current standards. Utter hypocrisy. Sorry, I got that wrong. Utter corruption.
Wait till virtue signalling labour politicians get in and make homebuilding totally unviable
@iscadean3607I’m afraid not just conservative. Watch Labour try and do this via central control and a gov department.
I wouldn’t be so kind as to call them short sighted, they’re just down right lazy and can’t be arsed pulling their finger out and getting things like this done. If a small community can make it happen, they have no excuses.
@@GrahamRead101how do you do this without central control of some sort? It needs driving and driving hard. Free market won’t do it.
Inspirational stuff from the Lune Valley CLT, this should be on national news. Really well presented by Imogen
How wonderful to see Charles and the CLT being so caring and finding solution for ALL. So rare these days. Well done Charles and thank you
Great to see efficient housing being build. I’m saddened by development sites in my local area building homes that only just meet the building regs in terms of insulation levels. They include just 3 or 4 solar panels to improve the EPC but don’t fill the roofs even though the additional costs would be minimal.
More of this type of content please!
Where I live in Pennsylvania the local community land trust has also started building passive houses because they were finding that the people who lived in their affordable homes were spending up to a third of their housing costs on heating. And it's a total win for the environment!
I also live in Pennsylvania and I'm wondering what areas in the state are doing this kind of work. Thanks!
@@HSH-go-ev the State College Community Land Trust is the one I was talking about! Not sure about others
It's about time the UK gov passed legislation to force the building sector to adopt standards like Passivhaus, at the very least have a target % of new builds, that then increases over time.
This is difficult because housing builders are a powerful lobby group
Where do I start, I know you have good intentions, but it’s more complicated than that. For a start, I am architectural technologist working for a EPC company, and why do you think this is, because things have got so complicated and difficult they needed someone technically minded..just to understand the complexity of the building, I would say most of the homes are made by house builders, and they’re looking to produce as much as possible for the least amount of money, so everything is to the wire,. And 90% of the builders don’t understand the technical specification needed..
Many builders simply push back against new measures for energy efficiency - there are many very vociferous ones here on TH-cam (hello skillbuilder!). The way to overcome this is better training coupled with stringent and strictly enforced regulation. It simply is not good enough to say it is too complicated and/or too expensive. Here we have a perfect example giving the lie to those arguments.@@IDann1
Applying efficiency targets to newly built homes is too slow to have an impact in 10 or 20 years. Last years new builds were about 1% of all dwellings in the UK. Old houses need to be refurbished and new houses need to be built. If we had a 10% of UK dwellings being refurbished at the same time, it would be 2 million dwellings and a lot of nuisance from building and logistics. Building new towns and cities away from those that already exist seems to me the best way to make a dent in long term emissions, obviously at the expense of short term emissions.
@@IDann1 So what you're saying is the industry are entirely focused on their own enrichment, don't give a hoot about quality if it impacts their bottom line, and will keep doing whatever the government let them get away with. Which leads us back to OP's point: they have to be forced to do it with regulation.
You may be surprised to learn this my friend, but whether or not a bunch of land bankers and cowboy builders are able to feather their nests to a level that meets their tastes is not of great concern to most people. Newbuild housing now has such a bad reputation for shoddy workmanship and corner-cutting that many people won't buy one at all unless they have no other choice, so letting the industry do whatever they want hasn't resulted in quality housing. Time for the great God of the Market to have his way I say: regulate to insist on Passivehaus standard for all new builds, no ifs, no buts, and if the current companies go bust because they don't believe it's possible to make enough money, oh well too bad so sad, someone else will step in. Because what, you're really going to argue it's *not possible* to make money building energy efficient affordable homes? When much of Europe's building industry already does exactly that?
I'm sure exactly the same arguments were bandied about when the big bad government stepped in and insisted the industry stop packing people's walls with asbestos or build houses that wouldn't collapse under their own weight - it's too haaaaaard, the alternatives are too coooostly, the industry will colaaaaaapse waaah waaah waaah - and yet somehow they managed. All industries will always portray any potential change to their methods and standards as a catastrophe because they don't want it to happen, not because it will actually bankrupt them, but because they're set in their ways and don't want to be bothered figuring out new workflows or deal with retraining - that isn't a reason not to force them to change.
This is brilliant, well done to them- there's a CLT in my village in Devon which sounded so promising but unfortunately they built shoddy houses, most over 500k so completely unaffordable and the ones that were shared ownership, the mortgage rates were ridiculous. They are now trying to build even more on the land that was designated for the community, utter shambles and greed by developers
Inspiring but at the same time deeply depressing. The first Passivehaus in the UK was built in 2010 and people were saying it was the future. The truth is that since then 1500 Passivehauses have been built in the UK representing c.0.05% of new builds.
The UK house building industry, whether building for private sector or social sector, has no interest in building the way Passivehaus requires. The want to build quickly and cheaply the same way that houses have been built for at least the last 100 years.
I'm pretty sure there were passivehouses in the UK before 2010. That was when Larch House in wales, the first zero carbon (code 6) UK passivehouse was built but there had been others earlier. Failing to find the actual first right now. Wales 2006, maybe? Architects journal says Wales 2009. I think there were uncertified ones before that. 2006? BUt yes you are quite right that the big housebuilders have been holding back progress for a couple of decades now.
@@xxwookey Code 6 homes and PassiveHaus homes are technically different but there are a lot of similarities. Code 6 homes are probably even rarer in UK than Passive homes. In both cases if it is not certified as a Code 6 or Passive House we cannot call it that. Depending on which website you believe the first Passive house was completed in late 2009 or early 2010 (I guess it may depend on how you define completed). The first code 6 home could not have been built before 2007 because the code did not exist until then and it was scrapped in 2015. By 2011 only 31 Code 6 homes had been built in the UK. Code 6 was scrapped allegedly following pressure from UK house building industry.
@@justinstephenson9360 IMHO passivehouse is a technical standard not a certification, so I'm perfectly happy to call anything that meets the requirements according to PHPP a passivehouse whether or not it actually got certified. But yeah I can't actually find any in the UK before 2009, without looking through back-issues of passivehouseplus/greenbuilding magazine. So fair enough: 2009/2010 it is.
@@xxwookey I visited a passive house under construction in 2006 or 2007. Somewhere near Cheltenham. I crashed on the architect's floor on the way to the first Transition Towns conference. I forget his name, the friend of a friend.
Was Bedzed in London passive house standard? If not was close to it.
Thanks EES. Great episode. I agree this is very inspirational it should be the standard around the country.
Well done all at Lune Valley CLT. Shows what can be done. Germany has been doing 100% passivehaus on new build for 2 years, as have France and Ireland. Exeter Council too. Scotland will be 100% PH in 12 months time. We COULD do it in England if politicians cared more about climate, fuel poverty and comfort and less about party donations from big house builders.
Brilliant. Congratulations to everyone involved, especially the people who took the initiative and got it started. Hopefully thi does go viral
Fantastic to see , the group of people should be showing everyone how it's done around the world, we could use it in Aussie
A great video showing what can be done. This is ideal for those with little monthly income and will enure they can stay warm and comfortable. All new homes should have this as well as solar panels, an Air source heat pump and capacity for a battery and EV charging.
Also Imogen has been very busy and great to see more of her videos.
Yes, I agree. It’s so obvious that it is a good idea. We need to investigate the layers of corruption that have prevented people from living in energy efficient homes.
Inspirational people - thank you Imogen for a well constructed video that showcased the technology & social approach. 👏👏
Having worked for a housing association, I wish they were all like these people. Well done to everyone involved. This is what we should be doing nationwide.
Great job, Imogen 👍
Amazing to see a nunber of good ideas come together in a great project like this one!
This is at the end of my road, less than 100m away from where I'm sitting right now. It was very interesting to get this insight into the development!
What an inspirational project, would love that the same would get done here in Slovenia ❤❤ Everything Electric team great work with spreading work that is done in sustainable living, ❤😊
Im sure you could talk to them strength in numbers 😊
Great project. UK really needs to up its game when it comes to housing standards and proper enforcement of those standards. There are too many developers building shoddy houses out there.
These look very similar to ones that were built in Peterborough a few years ago by the football stadium. Reaonable to buy as well (around 170k), rainwater harvesting, large interior, triple glazed, very thick walls , 3:42 solar water heating and hvac.
3:00 or so in hits the nail on the head - supported funding for the scheme. No one is disputing Pasivhaus is an excellent standard for new dwellings, however without outside funding it is for the most part not achievable for one offs or any scaled housing development. For a one off scheme, is there any sense paying (for example) £350,000 to build a house which will have a market value of less than that? The only way you can offset these costs is through 3rd party funding.
Your so right about EPC, my house is 10 year’s old and I’ve just renewed my EPC., because I’ve Solar panels, a Powerwall and I’ve upgraded my loft insulation my new EPC is now “A rated”. However when my heat pump is installed it would reduce my EPC even though I’ll have removed the gas boiler. Now we’re on earth is the sense in that, what on earth is our energy minister in this benighted government up to. What’s even more ridiculous I’m getting a £7500 grant to fit a heatpump whilst near 2000 house are being built around me all with gas boilers. Even a child in primary school would wonder at the sense of it.
This is what we need more of! Well done to all those involved! A very uplifting video.
As someone who's worked as a housing officer in a social housing environment, and had to deal with my share of rent arrears, I can only say that I see HUGE benefits to landlords, both social & private, to ensuring your properties are are as energy efficient as possible if you want ensure a higher proportion of them as possible reliably produce the rental income your looking for. If tenants have to choose which bill to pay less often, fuel or rent, in this case, that's a win-win for everyone.
My understanding is that Mortgage also more readily available for Passive Haus (utility bills lower, so less chance of defaulting)
@@ecok That's interesting. Though I do wonder if that depends on the lender. According to my admittedly, (very) limited understanding, mortgage lenders, at least up until recently, haven't readily understood the value of green technology in terms of mortgage repayment affordability and on resale values as a means to protect their investments.
I have been enjoyed, so thank you for delivering.
Fantastic story, great people and a job well done! Hopefully the right people hear it! - Imogen, you are doing so great while the rest is downunder! So looking forward to your piece on V2X!
Great video and well done to everyone involved! I hope you do get to spread the word and this becomes a more and more normal way of building!
I'd love to see some detail on the housing build and later, perhaps feedback on what it's like living there?!
It would be good to see the details on what is involved in building these passivhouses. That would spread the message even further because people can then copy it where they can.
I'd imagine there's lots of info available if you search online or look on TH-cam.
I fully endorse the comments on EPC ratings. I am looking at how we might improve the energy efficiency of let properties we have. The properties are old and some are listed and all except one have oil fired central heating. No gas here. The exception has electric central heating.
However the EPC rating of the electrically powered property is poorer than the oil fired property. My understanding is that this is because when EPC ratings were introduced 40% of electrical energy was derived from coal whereas today only about 1% annually comes from coal.
I understand the EPC system is under review but no idea what the time frame is 10:27 10:27
I'd love a Passivhaus I've had it with Victorian terraces! Very impressive project well done.
Sadly 3-bed terrace would cost about £~200K to "upgrade" to Passive Haus / EnerPHit standard. The sooner Regs require Passive Haus the fewer that will have to be (unaffordably) upgraded later.
The fuel poverty point is a really good one and this is a really important issue. Totally agree. I would quietly say that the cost of building homes is not, however, the actual barrier to building more homes generally/housing costs irl. I know people say it is but that really isn't true. ...that said I am (and I think we should all be) very supportive of the project in the video and projects like it.
Completely inspiring group of people. Working for the good of others rather than profiteering.
Couple of things: no mention of car charging and there seemed to be lots of steps everywhere, were there slopes too for prams and wheelchairs?
Other than those two points which I hope someone will quash, seems a great idea and more parish councils ought to look into this sort of thing instead of granting permission for boxes with not even a solar panel in sight.
This was my thought about car charging. I could see this design might work in a large town or city where you are discouraging people having cars, but in a village it seems a bit odd. Or maybe they are targeting poorer people so if you can't afford heating then your can't afford a car. So maybe the lease agreement states you can't have a car.
I'm also amazed that they don't have solar, seems a crazy to have not added it when they built them considering the aim of the project was low energy costs.
@@gavjlewisyeah, I nearly mentioned that and thought maybe they were so sealed they don't need much heat but they must use electricity of course
This is admirable and I love that's it's community based. However I still think the best housing project to have featured on the Fully Charged/ Everything Electric Show is the one in Wales, Sero homes was that the company? Can't remember and I'm nodding off now. 👍
I think I can see chargers in the overhead shots, not exactly clear though. Where there are steps there are ramps or it's approachable from the other side (I was under the impression that ramps or equivalent were a legal requirement now...) No sign of solar... maybe that was a cost saving 🤷♂
@@mastweiler22 It's mentioned in another post that there are a couple of Podpoint public charging posts in the general parking area at the front of the the development.
But as pointed out if you need this social housing because you can't afford to pay for heating then you probably aren't affording an electric car.
@@gavjlewis Can't afford EV now, but I think short sited not to have charging installed for when "everyone has one" ... but maybe infrastructure is in place and will just need rolling-out in the future.
10/10 Would live there.
Charles is a very impressive person.
This is great, we need more of this sort of thing!
This is brilliant, and so necessary. Hopefully, this example will spawn many others.
Cost per unit to build? The bigger problem is people having no home that they can afford to buy.
Reason I ask. My local council wanted to build affordable homes. Aim to price them at about 150,000.
But then during the planning phases, so much red tape and mandates etc. The need to add solar and battery storage, the need to add heat pumps, then EV chargers and drives etc.
The list kept getting longer, so much so all the add ons drove the price well above 200 to 250,000 per unit.
Which then means they are no longer affordable to buy.
Getiing on the housing ladder is far more important than heating. Simply because people need a place to stay in the first place. With out which. Running cost is irrelevant.
Brilliant video, brilliant initiative, this should be the model all over the country
Truly inspirational.
Inspiring 🙏
Thank you.
I noticed the slightly longer roof on the south side of the house too. Smart little changes.
I love this.
Would have been nice to hear from residents, however.
Missed the perfect placement for "professional progression" in the conclusion alliteration. Great vid, great project!
Thrilled about this. What an achievement!
Thanks for this. Here in Canada we have the same or maybe even a more serious problem given our colder climate. As an Oil & Gas producer we have got a break on some energy pricing but still far too many pay way too much for the inefficient energy they consume.
It gives me hope that someday the bureaucracy and red tape will get out of the way and let serious folks get on with it.
Beautiful ❤
Beautiful!
Great video.
Love it. Please come help us in the states!
This is what I've been saying for the longest time and have wondered why everyone in the world isn't doing this. If everyone had passive houses, the transition to renewable energy is much easier because you don't need to figure out a way to supply people with a whole lot of energy that they're going to throw away anyway. Efficiency is the name of the game.
How many units were built in this development, and at what total cost? And how are they purchased or rented? Would be very helpful to have some actual numbers, and interviews with the building contractors.
I live in a Passive Haus, and I am funding the building of small groups of passive houses. We reckon about 5% more on building cost (so not including cost of land). Winter fuel is 90% less than Regs. Not a huge saving (Regs 3-bed £~1,000 winter heating, £100 Passive Haus) but so much more comfortable year round and other benefits too.
Excellent work
What are the homes made from?
The comment on EPC ratings is spot on, EPC is not fit for purpose in the 21st century and needs to be overhauled.
Again people are not looking at the bigger picture on this development. Waxing lyrically on shared spaces and parking away from the house and forgetting completely about home EV charging. This creates another situation where being on low income is more expensive because you cannot charge your EV at home overnight on low cost electricity. They really put on the blinders on this project.
There are EV chargers available for the residents to use
@@EverythingElectricShow is that on their residential power bill or is it billed separately at public charging rates?
Exactly. In inner cities with no parking close to home and high flat occupation EV buyers are going back to ICE cars because they can't afford the public charging rates. Even if this little oasis does have home charging rates...
Many tall buildings in NYC have all aluminium frames for the windows 🪟 and you can feel the cold from outside straight through them.
Heat will of course transfer in the summer.
All requires more energy for heating and cooling.
Very inspirational. When people who care do the job of the government.
Thank you for highlighting this project but I think it would benefit from a deeper dive. What about making a podcast on this for your other channel? You could explore the technicalities that you could only touch on here
If one can’t park near one’s house have parking bays been installed with chargers points for electric cars, or has that been overlooked ?
Look at 7:07 ... clearly see charging points.
I wonder how much more expensive these homes cost to build over more conventionally built houses? A great video and a great idea. Let us hope passive homes become the norm across the industry.
I used to test homes with a blower door and thermal imager. It is amazing how bad new construction is in the USA. Air sealing and thorough insulation would be so much better if the workers actually cared about what they are doing. Instead, the mantra of "not my house" and getting on to the next project seems to be what guides them.
I live in a Passive Haus, and I am funding the building of small groups of passive houses. We reckon on ~5% more on building cost (not including land). 90% reduction on winter fuel (compared to "regs"). Much more comfortable - nice even temperature; mechanical ventilation has additional benefit for respiratory problems (Wife and I have not had a winter cough / cold since we moved in 7 years ago).
Excellent topic which needs far more attention and could I suggest needs more information about what building techniques were used and if this approach could be scaled up to be used right across the country? What about building cost and energy efficiency comparisons do they have heating systems and what have they used for this? So many questions can only mean one thing that you’re already working on a follow up video? 😬
I actually ran for election years on on the platform of Community Land Trusts in combination with Limited Equity Cooperatives. Unfortunately I was out spent 16-to-1 to someone who took donations from big developer and real estate special interest. I broke 40% of the vote just by knocking on doors and talking about CLTs and LECs; people saw the potential.
That's too freakin cool!
Nice video, any way you can go over the ways you cut heat and energy consumption? I just heard air tight and high insulation.
Air Tight means that all exhaust air goes through heat exchanger in the mechanical ventilation (which recovers 95+% of the heat).
I live in a Passive Haus, the insulation means that it drops 1C in freezing mid-winter if I go away for the weekend and turn everything off, slow to overheat in Summer
Another element is that inside glass surface of windows not more than 4C colder than room - so that cold air does not “fall”. Even if air tight that falling cold air would create the feeling of a draught. Thus triple-glazed windows (also great for sound insulation)
@@ecok interesting, I will have to look into this. Thanks
Check 5 principles of passive house
While certainly nice, this assumes building a new, highly efficient home will result in lower total emissions over its lifecycle compared to continuously retrofitting and maintaining an older, less efficient building. Since there simply is not enough unused land in the UK, the only option is removing existing structure or we stop growing food and use the farmland.
Only 6% of the land area of the UK has any kind of development on it, that is a house, road, factory etc.
But yes a lot of the existing housing can't be made energy efficient within a sensible budget.
Fantastic to see this happen, but did I miss the bit where the got the cost of building a passive house down to affordable housing levels?
I retrofitted our 1920s semi to near Passivhaus standards, and the gas bill (family of 4) is now £250 per year (£100 of that is the standing charge).
Affordability is three parts
Purchase price , fuel costs, maintenance
Passive house has always solved the latter two it’s exciting to see it’s all the first one too
Can we have some videos on retrofit as well please?
Sadly "unaffordably" expensive. £~200K for a 3-bed terrace. Sooner we new-build to Passive Haus fewer that will have to be upgraded later.
@@ecok Ouch 200 K is over my budget. Not good as most of our estate needs to be insulated.
I built an energy efficient home 30 odd years ago after studying passive thermal design for 20 years or so. The trick is to design it from the ground up taking as much advantage of environmental factors as possible. It takes time and careful attention to detail in the design, but the results are well worth the effort.
I lost my house through divorce.
I'll do better in my next life.
That is crazy that the EPC is barely a B on a passive house, I do them every day, and I we are beholden to the program for the results of the EPC.
The FullSAP score when they are built will be more accurate. Annoying this data is scrubbed for an RdSAP assessment down the road
@@Oppledom SAPs are getting replaced soon, with something a lot more complex as you may array know, but I can't see it working at the moment, looking at it, it looks to be far too much information needed,. It's a struggle to get the information needed from the we builder now,..let's see what happens next, it's like my job is changing all the time, I don't have the time or the manpower to go full thermal dynamics route.
Really interesting project & great initiative. Shame that there wasn’t a bit more detail on the house feature such as the amount of pv, battery storage, heating type etc.
If the parking is off to the side, what provision is there for (non-ripoff) EV charging for residents?
There are EV chargers available for the residents to use
8:30 this is what the industry needs to address the amount of not fit for purpose layers of materials used and the amount of trades needed - anyone should be able to build a passive home without any special knowledge as the better designed sips (that are fire/water resistant, insulating, structurally capable, and have the interior and exterior finish and colour on already) are the only product available. wood batons and plasterboard that needs painted has to GO. and designers need to look down and see how much space they occupy and reduse floorspace accordingly so homes arent excessively big.
That community led housing grant from Homes England has run out. We have a clt currently stuck because of funding
Visited passive energy show houses back in 1981 in Milton Keynes. They had all the technology then but successive governments have refused to implement legislation to enforce those higher energy efficiency standards.
great, bypassing companies like Story Homes who seem not to be interested in affordable housing or low energy buildings, not a solar pannel on any of their catalogued homes.
You should make a video about hempcrete as a building material. It is carbon negative and a very insulating material with a lot of other interesting properties.
I’m sick of government saying “I would love to help but it’s not my department”. This village run initiative should be the standard for all council (or state-funded here in Australia) homes.
Lune "Walk"... Nicely built with an apt name - transport relegated to the outskirts of the development and not a single disabled access ramp in sight. Help, but not for the most vulnerable.
The site does have ramps and car parking is off to the side of the development.
Nice. But they will jack prices when most people are buying less 😞
Cheers
did you even read what it said? it's a CLT, not a private landlord, they are literally non profit.
@@MrNeeds Commie nonsense! 🤫😉
I wish I could modify my house to be fuel positive, or even mostly self sufficient. Unfortunately, as a mid-row terraced house (a small 2 bedroom house) there is not that much roofing area to work with makes being able rely on the solar I could generate unlikely as well as an expensive thing to get installed.
Flexible solar out of a window?
Please, pretty please stop playing music whilst people are talking.
It would have been interesting to touch on the price of building these as passive houses. The book "Energy Smart Housing Innovation" by Holger Gross (2010) has a table estimating that the Lindås Passive House Project (2001) was cost-neutral. I suspect that the passive house label has attracted a cachet.
It is absolute insanity that the Passiv Haus standard isn't mandatory for all new build homes. It should also be standard for offices and other similar buildings.
How can I learn more about the details of this project? Who actually owns the homes? Did the Gov funding cover the whole cost? Etc
I've put the CLT's website in the description box, I'm sure they'd be happy to talk you through the project.
Where there’s a will there’s a way as demonstrated - sadly those with vested interests in the wrong places have the say in what should or shouldn’t happen and thus those in the greatest need to not spend so much end up paying the most…
This sort of thing should be MUCH further along considering the push toward correcting climate problems.
Nice houses. The film could do with more numbers, my own concern being build cost. The UK is not that cold, so hitting PH standard should not be that difficult. You shouldn't need particularly thick walls for the required insulation and airtightness is just really build quality, simplifying the house shape (these houses are simple boxes) to minimize difficult spots, and getting all the trades onboard. However, it will still be more expensive than a regular build and lets not kid ourselves that build cost doesn't matter. The main "housing crisis" in the UK is affordability, not fuel poverty. fwiw, I live in Japan and getting a PH level house here means using a boutique high quality builder who will charge 50% more than a regular builder who will get you near PH with external insulation or spray foam. In that situation, PH becomes overspec because the marginal energy saving (a couple of hundred) is not justified by the large bump (tens of thousands) in build cost. Build cost matters more in the UK than Japan thanks to the UKs high interest rates.
No mention of build costs, you're looking at 25k ontop of normal building costs. AND 66k total over 30 years ownership. Rent will need to be an extra £185 a month on these *affordable* homes to cover the cost of system maintenance and materials. The embodied carbon is much greater aswell.
The University of Manchester built a massive shed a couple of years ago & inside it they built a couple of houses so they could research how efficient they were in adverse weather conditions. (They can create very hot or very cold conditions artificially)
I thought I’d have a look at what materials & systems they were trialling.
To my surprise they’ve nothing there that betters the house I built in 2008.
The UK needs to stop talking & just build energy efficient houses.
Everywhere else in Europe has done it, the UK just needs to catch up.
A shame they don’t have driveways. How do you charge your electric car??
Parking is around the edge and they have chargers available for the residents.
Cambridge decided that all its social housing would be Passivehouse in 2021. Some have been built and more are coming. Exeter has been doing this for a decade, and demonstrating that passivehouse builds can cost no more than conventional ones. They even have a passivehouse leisure centre now. Brussels set this as the requirement for all buildings in 2017. Scotland requires it (well, equivalent) from Jan 2025. We need the building regs to say this in the rest of the UK, but the current proposed revision is nowhere near, and we will keep getting mediocre houses until we set adequate standards.
I've been converting my house to the passivehouse retrofit standard, mostly DIY. This demonstrates that you don't have to spend 100 grand (which very few people have) on a deep retrofit. th-cam.com/video/OVcvk9Wnyw4/w-d-xo.html
Not quite as good a purpose-built passivehouse, but pretty bloody good by British standards.
it can be done, so let's see more of it. We'll done guys.
What I want to know is how much did these houses end up costing to buy or rent? They talk about affordable housing without ever mentioning the prices.
To be fair building regs in 2024 require a good level of insulation e.g. walls 0.18 vs passive house 0.15. Yes to get an EPC A you really have to have solar as that gives you the extra 10 points you need to move from B up to A.
Can you imagine a builder like Persimmon trying to build passive houses? They'd leave a gaping hole in the tiny matchstick house walls and sign it off as done.
On a more serious note, why is EES not fighting for legislation change? You've got the platform to help make it happen.