Hockerton Housing Project is excited to announce it has released its own housing standard fit for the future world of zero carbon houses. It is called the Hockerton House Performance Standard and outlines the requirements that houses will need to be built to in order to achieve a sustainable low impact world. Unlike the Passivhaus standards these are free to use and go far beyond what Passivhaus can achieve. They are there to inspire!

Minister for Housing Nick Raynsford visiting Hockerton Housing Project

Since the visit of the Minister for Housing Nick Raynsford at our opening we have been pushing the boundaries of construction. Our latest development of nine houses is taking shape with the walls going up in Howgate Close, Eakring with a predicted SAP score of 142! Jerry Harrall is delivery the project and writing Howgate Close, blog.

Howgate close foundations

The UK is facing a crisis in housing which requires a dramatic change in how houses are designed and built to achieve the carbon reductions necessary to meet our climate change targets. With this in mind we are proposing standards of construction to inspire people to construct very high-performance houses factoring in embodied energy and within sustainable communities. The lifestyle of the people living in houses affects emissions of carbon significantly so cannot be ignored. A well-engineered house and designed community space will help inspire them to reduce their carbon emissions. Inspiration can lead to action given the right environment.

The imbedded House Performance Standards are performance based to allow individual designers and builders to create their own solutions. This should encourage creativity and enable future solutions to be incorporated in the finished houses.

These performance standards have been inspired by Dr Robert Vale, Professor Brenda Vale, Mr Nick Martin and the practical experience of the members of Hockerton Housing Project since 1993. They have drawn on General Information Report 53 produced for the Department of Environment Transport and the Regions by the Building Research Energy Conservation Support Unit. More recently the Leti “Net Zero Operational Carbon” targets have pushed us!

The Hockerton House Performance Standards

There are five subsidiary standards:

1. Hockerton-Zero,
2. Hockerton-Heat,
3. Hockerton-Embodied
4. Hockerton-Water,
5. Hockerton-Community

Combining these five standards will create houses fit for the future.

If you are a lecturer or student and want to design your own tour find out more here.

This week Kevin McCloud returned to the Hedgehog Project in Brighton on Grand Designs and showed how that housing co-operative has moved on from being an innovative self-build to building roots in the community – reflecting our experience here at Hockerton Housing Project.

We are hoping that the planners at Newark and Sherwood will have been watching, as a plan for a new self-build partnership in Hockerton is now under consideration.  The plan is to demolish a redundant industrial building and replace it with five two-storey homes (up to 3 bedrooms) and two one-storey, one bed homes.

Hockerton Housing Project is supportive of the plans for a number of reasons:

1. The energy efficient design will deliver 80% less carbon and 60% lower running cost than homes built to today’s minimum standards.
2. Each dwelling will have a share in Hockerton’s community-owned wind turbine to ‘offset’ the carbon content of remaining energy use.
3. Rainwater harvesting and water efficient appliances will limit demand for mains water, and a reedbed will be used to avoid nasty odours from sewage.
4. Affordable housing allows people with a wider range of skills and expertise to live in rural areas.
5. The co-operative nature of the development, both in its build and its maintenance, means pride will be taken in the quality of the work on buildings and landscaping.
6. The more people resident in the village, the better for local businesses such as the farm shop, the pub,  restaurant and ice-cream parlour.

Self-build partnerships are rare, but offer many benefits, so let’s hope the planning officials see the merit of putting brownfield land to better use as a site for new affordable homes in Hockerton, further strengthening the village’s reputation as a hub of innovative and affordable energy efficient homes.

If you are interested in understanding how we developed our self-build at Hockerton Housing Project, and how the co-operative works in practice, make a new year’s resolution to come on one of our Sustainable Living Tours – the next one is 19 January 2013.

On Tuesday 16th May, Francesca (age 11 and resident of HHP) appeared on BBC2’s new early morning children’s programme, Level Up, explaining how the homes at HHP collect, use and treat water. This was compared with two other children and how they collect and use water, particularly in relation to toilets.

On Thursday 18th May, one of the other Project children, Naomi Tilley (age 10) will appear on the same programme with her Dad, using a tandem to get to school.