Basildon residents are about to celebrate the completion of their first carbon neutral homes. Swan Housing has spent almost £4 million building the houses which will be offered exclusively to residents who are on the council’s house waiting list.
The sixteen houses and twelve flats have been built on the site of a former hostel and should be finished in three months time. When they are completed it will double the number of carbon neutral homes in England. A zero carbon home means that they will all return to the National Grid as much power as they use each and every year.
Paul Hebdon, from Swan Housing, said “Swan is really proud of what this development is going to bring to Basildon when it is completed. It’s an important step forward for us and we hope it will be a flagship development which other people can look at. We have taken this step because we all need to be aware of carbon emissions and we must do all we can to reduce them.”
Each of the new properties will be protected with cheap landlord insurance and have walls that are at least one-foot thick to keep the heat in and all windows are triple glazed. They will also have smaller radiators that are powered by a single community boiler, which will heat all of the homes. They will be fuelled by glycerol and the rooms in each of the homes also have regulators which will move the heat around if one room is significantly hotter than the others.
Basildon Council claim to be at the forefront of thinking about the future and the environment. There are currently other carbon zero homes in Chelmsford and Slough and the Coalition Government have set a target of making sure that all new properties built are carbon zero by 2016.