SUSTAINABILITY - the Camp Mojo project

Sustainable homes today must allow for a design and build flexibility that allows most architectural styles to be recreated in a simple way, using only materials and products that are renewable or if not, from zero loss resource managed schemes. This is the Holy Grail, the capacity to build a ‘modern’ home that is sustainable and simple to build using locally sourced materials that give a solid, secure home costing not much more than a cleverly composed container home. It can be done. 1 and 2 storey homes for around £600-700 pounds per square metre. 4 people requiring no specialist trade skills, taking 8 weeks to build – homes that last a life-time.

People generally like a house to feel strong, robust and safe, so a super insulated transparent poly-bubble may be interesting but would probably never become the housing 'norm'. People like to touch and tap their way around a potential new home and feel solid wood, stone, metal and glass, giving the feeling of stability, longevity, security, quality, peace, tranquillity and comfort - my home is my temple!

I guess in the end, home buyers in the UK for example, prefer a home that looks like it has been built from bricks and mortar or steel and concrete, rather than something looking like a prefabricated, static van on a mobile park. The key to this particular 'holy grail' is to build a home from natural materials, that has high insulation and high thermal mass, that uses a combination of passive solar gain and earth-sheltered features, that requires low energy to keep warm in winter and cool in summer, and that breathes naturally to maintain good quality of air. In addition, it should be easily hand-built on site.

My mission, 21dC - the target core temperature of a sustainable home. Have you ever sat at a computer in a room that is 19dC - you'll soon have cold hands and a runny nose if you don't wrap up. Do you remember how difficult it becomes trying to sleep when the temperature rises above 25dC? It is amazing how small the temperature range is for comfortable human habitation. A home in Sicily with no central heating is too hot for a month in summer, perfect for 9, and chilly to live in for the 2 winter months. Yet a stone refuge with a wood burner in the mountains in winter, can be such a cosy place to be, as can a tent in a barn, sheltered from the wind and rain. Temperature and ambience, whatever the weather is critical - you have to take pleasure from returning home from the ravages of a stormy day. Close the door, cup of tea, heaven, I'm home... the fundamentals of every home.

SUSTAINABLE LIVING

What is sustainable? Living in a cosy, wood and stone hut in the forest with a fire and an extra jumper during the winter for a carbon neutral life? Living the life of a reindeer herder across the tundra, in a yurt - simple life living from renewable food and energy sources around them? Or, living in a modern contemporary home achieving code level 5 - full of petrochemical based products, materials with high embodied energy and intensively processed finishing's that have been shipped around the world? What is better? A house that breathes naturally or one that requires electronic technology to control heat recovery and conditioning systems? Sustainable life in the rainforest or eco-manufactured homes in an industrialised world?

It seems appropriate to regulate the building of homes by developers so that 3rd-party buyers know the quality and standard of homes being bought.

However, if you have land with permission to self-build your own home then it also seems reasonable that fewer regulations need apply. If you wish to build an inner core winter space surrounded by conservatory space for fair weather living, using toxin free natural materials, then should people not have the option to do so?

Freedom to try things and innovate is the key to real progress in low-cost sustainable homes.

Earth-sheltered, low impact homes for example, get extremely close to comfortable, low-cost carbon neutral living. There needs to be a delicate integration of technology and natural materials to achieve truly sustainable homes.

SUSTAINABLE ECONOMICS

In a modern world, we pretty much have just 2 main choices as to how we work, rest and play;

- to live in a high cost economy where everyone has to work loads to produce loads in order to sell loads just to cover living costs that cost loads, or

- to live in a low cost economy where people need to work a little to cover low living costs and have loads more time free to work on their own businesses and personal, professional projects.

With legislation, we have to be careful not to force people to buy products and stimulate a high-cost economy, just to build a house, and give them the freedom instead to make intelligent use of the natural materials around them - there is nothing as powerful as sustainable living when it comes to boosting local and regional economies - the perfect way to distribute wealth.

UK home building is possibly driven strongly by the latest trends, materials and products even if they are part of the unsustainable manufacturing output of the global economy. In rural Italy by contrast, people are still familiar with the concept of the incredible, expanding/shrinking home. As winter closes in, life revolves around kitchen and lounge, the 2 rooms kept cosy by a wood burner with much less use of other rooms. As Spring moves into summer the house 'expands' and all of the rooms are used again. Very traditional, very low tech... but very sustainable.

UK has low land availability, high land prices, high build costs but costs that can be recouped by high market prices. My property background and experience in Italy is quite the opposite - many cheap plots and traditional homes to be restored. Away from the Riviera and main cities, you can buy a small village house with 100m2 of living space and 1 metre thick walls for 20K euros. Spend another 15K tidying it up with new bathroom, kitchen, windows and a wood burner, and you'll have a very sustainable comfortable home. If the restored home now has a value of 50K, you have absolutely no chance making money if you build a new home with all the latest products at a cost of €1000/m2. No one from the local community will spend 50K more for a home that in practical terms isn't any warmer or cheaper to run and maintain. So if you build something new, it has to function as well as the traditional thick-walled buildings at a similar price.

In winter with a wood burner running 24/7, fuelled by wood from the local woods, a traditional country home in Italy fitted with good doors and windows that eliminate draughts, can easily be kept warm once the walls and furniture are up to temperature so to speak. The home is warm and cosy... just as it remains cool and comfy in the hot summers. This is still quite typical in the rural communities across many parts of Europe. So, once again, in this kind of a market if you build, it has to make extensive use of local, raw materials and be constructed in a simple but effective way to keep costs down yet maintain exceptional low-energy characteristics. Simple, effective and sustainable, cheap.

High-technology homes often means 'expensive and complicated', with unknown risks of performance and material degradation over time. Hi-tech can in many ways kind of miss the point and encourage regulation that forces people away from natural, locally sourced materials. When a house is built in a cold region with few woodlands, then it makes sense to insulate more whereas in a warmer environment with a short winter and an abundance of wood, it might make sense to insulate less with more thermal mass to reduce build costs without losing comfort. Legislation needs to allow people to make well-informed decisions rather than being forced down a particular path. Regulations need to enforce things like clean-air, product and material safety, renewables and encourage best practice across the board. In the end a person happily living in a cool house with a jumper on using little heating is more sustainable than someone living in a hot house dressed in shorts using lots of gas heating for example. A bit like comparing an owner of a 4 litre car used one weekend a year with the owner of a Fiat 500 who drives 30,000 miles a year – who is more sustainable? Who is burning most resources and polluting most?

Food for thought. The German economy is renowned for being a 'successful' industrialised economy, which it is, but in reality it is very good at burning energy to process resources that are bought then end up in the bin! Manufacturing industries are good at creating markets for products that replace the natural materials around us that we could so easily continue to use. If all nations followed an industrialised economic model, we'd soon overproduce, lose sales and burn all our resources. In a sustainable, low-cost economy, life has to move more towards services, agriculture, practical trades, artisans and more free-time. That doesn't mean going backwards, or stopping progress... it doesn't even mean we have to change that much. It's about more choice and a better quality of life in a sustainable, environmentally responsible world. Affordable, sustainable homes - the key to a low cost economy, and key to the strengthening of the individual, the family and the community.

By the way, I've spent much of my life developing new generation technologies around the world, so I am not a technophobe nor someone who wants to live in a cave. I also love motorbikes so want continued research into alternative energy sources so that we can continue to do the things we like in a cleaner, sustainable way. I'm someone who wants to build smart in order to live smart - comfortable living through inspirational, affordable and sustainable homes in a low-cost economy. Nothing better than the thoughtful integration of old with new, to enjoy the best of all our worlds....