The Unst clever tech zero carbon home

Gaberlunzie however is forever grateful that when visiting the Unst talcum quarry, cowardice dictated car parking on the top and walking down into the quarry. Exploration completed, it took only 45 minutes to actually get the car back on the road. Talcum slips happily over a baby's bottom, and equally happily over a car's tyres. Accordingly you need wood and ordinary wedged stone to get  a grip. Secure in the African desert knowledge that on sand, let your tyres down for grip, Gaberlunzie escaped the talcum quarry remembering that one terrain is not like another!

From Wiltshire to Unst? Google, has difficulties in getting from Wiltshire to even the Scilly Isles and keeps presenting a map of the USA for the concept!  And Gaberlunzie keeps wondering what it is that draws the southerners north, when so many of the northerners would be happy to have a break in the Scillies. Ach, but home is quite another thing. This doesn't sound your usual 'lets-do-what-we-always-wanted-to-do' sort of retreat.

The three-bedroom home designed by the Reas, near the shoreline of a secluded bay, has become a test bed for living "off-grid": generating all their power from renewable sources, growing most of their food at home, and running a car without a petrol station. 

Their home - built for just over £210,000 from an off-the-shelf timber framed house - has become famous. Scottish executive in Edinburgh is using it as a benchmark for new sustainable house-building rules; officials in the prime minister's office watch its progress and Chinese officials are studying its innovative technologies for its own new 5,000-home eco-town in Guangzhou, in southern China.

Last year, the Reas learned that their website - zerocarbonhouse.com - was the fourth most popular site worldwide on Google. Michael Rea is often up at 5am answering emails from PhD students, green activists and even Canadian senators. Would the Scillies have drawn that response one wonders? No, not tough enough, not sufficient challenge and perhaps no sponsorship.  Zero Carbon house. Courtesy:http;// www.zerocarbonhouse.com

The Reas believe their home is the first of its kind. "If we can do this here, anyone can do it anywhere," said Dorothy (64), a former headteacher. "It's just an ordinary house. It could be in Edinburgh; it could be in Chigwell."

Located in Edinburgh, Gaberlunzie ponders the problem of PV tiles on listed buildings, to say nothing of negotiating with the tenant block over  floors heated by drawing warmth from the air and a wind generator in the communal garden! The imagination boggles.

"It's definitely significant," said Duncan Price, a director of one of the world's largest green energy consultancies, ESD, and an advisor to the Reas.  "What's very special is they're trying to address the carbon impact of their whole lifestyle. It's a microcosm of how the world would be in a carbon-constrained future."

God help Edinburgh, Glasgow and the other major old build cities in Scotland! Perhaps we should all plan to head for viable remote islands, but research the funding and who would be impressed by where first of all. Gaberlunzie personally has always hankered after the Summer Isles.

The Unst house is one of several pioneering off-grid projects in remote areas of Scotland, where the islanders on Eigg in the inner Hebrides and those living on Scoraig  near Ullapool in north-west Scotland, have developed their own  green power sources.

Around 80 people living on Scoraig, only accessible by boat or with a five-mile trek overland, power their homes and businesses chiefly using small hand-made wind turbines designed by local resident Hugh Piggott, a guru of self-sufficient off-grid living. Solar panels and diesel generators supplement the turbines.

In February, the islanders of Eigg, south of Skye, switched on the UK's first independent "green grid". It provides power to all the 45 homes and 20 businesses by combining electricity from wind turbines, solar panels and two small hydro-electric dams into a single supply. For the first time, islanders can run fridges, electric kettles, satellite TVs and computers without using unreliable oil-powered generators.

Forced by their isolation to become self-sufficient, many observers believe these communities prove that micro-generation and home energy schemes are viable UK-wide. Nick Rosen, author of How to Live Off-Grid, a handbook on off-grid communities, said: "It doesn't mean we should all live like Scoraig but we should be fostering communities like it all over the place. It increases the self-reliance of our society overall, in the event of sudden energy price hikes, the Russians cut off the gas or strikes in the oil industry."

Below: "Dry stone walling using stone excavated from the site"
Courtesy:http://www.zerocarbonhouse.com

The Reas are not naive about the severity of Shetland's weather or the scale of the challenge [or even the delight of the island, its clean air and the sea around] They erected the timber frame for their new home during a gale in November 2006; the strongest gusts threw heavy roof sections through the air, smashing one to the ground.

Shetland, the Reas note wryly, has the strongest and most reliable winds of any inhabited part of the world, closely followed by the Falkland islands. But then they have striking views over a south-facing bay across to the low-slung, mottled green islands of Uyea, Fetlar and Yell. In midsummer, the temperature can hit 30C and the sun never sets."I could foresee the time when energy would be very, very expensive," Michael Rea  (62) said. "But at first what we were doing was viewed as the black arts, but we weren't cranks. We were ordinary people."

Although they describe their home as normal, it will use advanced low-carbon technologies, many of which are being fitted this summer. With help from Dundee University and Duchy College in Cornwall, they are building a greenhouse which uses hydroponics where their vegetables, fruit and herbs will be grown in a liquid with specially controlled lighting to create artificial "seasons". The University of Delaware is refitting a Toyota Yaris car with an electric engine.

Dogged and single-minded, Michael Rea has cajoled builders, banks and even the window firm Velux into sponsoring the project. [The Scottish are not the best at cajoling, as Microsoft and Cisco keep reminding us at each Digital Scotland event .] The companies they are using are big name firms such as Scotframe, Dimplex, Britmet Tileform, Wavin Plastics, (not to mention smaller contributors) and so enthusiastic are they, that they're backing the Reas with sponsorship deals which are allowing the couple to stay within their £250,000 budget. Scotframe for example provided a team of labourers, others cover freight.

The deals meant they could avoid applying for the many public grants available for this kind of project. But local government still managed to affect their plans, slowing them down so much they took four and a half years to complete. Eventually, the house will be lit by very low energy LED lights. The greenhouse will use electricity from its own wind turbine and the chief source of heating will be a heat pump which draws warmth from the air into an under-floor system.

Once up and running they hope the greenhouse will create employment on an island which has lost half of its population in the last five years thanks to the "draw down" of Britain's northernmost early warning system at RAF Saxa Vord. Their house is 'just' a standard house, but a serious project in renewable design and energy efficiency. They have already provided work for four local builders, including 21 year old Danny Witt. It's his first job as construction foreman and he's clearly loving it. "There's nothing complicated. Any building firm could put a house like this up. You just have to drill a few more holes for all the technology," he said. "But it's definitely the way to go."

The Reas intend the house to generate an income for them too. They will hire their knowledge and experience out as consultants and invite students to come and examine the principles they are working with. They will also demonstrate the energy efficiency of their design by taking constant energy readings and make them available on their website.

Hermaness Nature Reserve. Unst. Image © Patrick Dieudonné. Courtesy:http://www.islandcampers.co.uk
"We want a warm, friendly house that will keep us in our old age, but we also want to promote it because we think it needs promoting. If we're talking about being carbon friendly, rather than telling people just to change their light bulbs, wouldn't it be better to design carbon friendly homes that serious builders and developers could put up for sale. It could be as straight forward as putting catalytic converters into every new car.

"And it's no good saying to people up here in Shetland, we have this wonderful, environmentally friendly house down in Cornwall. It's the people with climate issues who need fuel efficient homes. And we're finding a way of getting around the Shetland climate!

"We are making a stand. We are making a statement, because global warming does worry us. And if it's something you feel passionate about, then the only way to demonstrate that it's achievable and workable is to do it. Next we would like to see houses like this spring up all over Shetland; and see the local community growing their own food, all year round."

"I have been waiting 24 years for this house to be built," said Dorothy. "But it's just a standard house, an honest house, nothing fancy. It's a serious project in renewable design and energy efficiency, an experiment in joined-up technology, but it's also a house we intend to grow old in."

Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/19/greenbuilding.windpower
http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/features/Living/20carbon free on Unst.htm
Web: http://computescotland.com/624.php
 http;//www.zerocarbonhouse.com