UK students design first solar powered mass market house

The HOUSE – 'Home Optimising the Use of Solar Energy' – is the work of the University of Nottingham's School of the Built Environment. The full-scale zero carbon starter home requires almost no form of active heating – an industry first for the UK. It complies with Level 6 of the UK’s Code For Sustainable Homes, thereby meeting Government regulations that all new builds must be carbon neutral by 2016.

Designed in an L-shape, the HOUSE lends itself to mass market production in terraces, rows or stacked as apartments.

"Using a prefabricated design, our truly sustainable home will show how a small ‘starter’ home could be produced with the ability to sit side by side as part of a semi-detached house or terrace," said Dr Mark Gillott, co-director of the Institute of Sustainable Energy Technology.

The students have worked in partnership with global construction company Saint-Gobain, whcih has supplied the materials and expertise to build the house.

Mike Chaldecott, chair of the Saint-Gobain Habitat Group and managing director of British Gypsum, said: “The Government has pledged an extra £1.5 billion to build an additional 20,000 affordable homes over the next two years and we see concepts such as the Nottingham HOUSE playing a key role in the delivery of sustainable communities.”

The Nottingham HOUSE will be on show at London’s Ecobuild exhibition in March next year and will go onto compete in the first Solar Decathlon Europe competition in Madrid in June next year.