BBC Look East Live visit to Lingwood GreenGauge Homes

As a shortlist of 15 new Eco-towns is announced by Housing Minister Caroline Flint, BBC Look East’s Mike Liggins visits the new residents of the completed GreenGauge Homes scheme at Lingwood, Norfolk.

The scheme of 15 timber framed GreenGauge Homes is the first to be completed by a partnership between Architects Barefoot & Gilles, Flagship Housing Group and Oxbury & Co, and constructed by Youngs Homes.

Mike shows how the scheme, which is being monitored by the University of East Anglia and funded by Carbon Connections, is made of four groups of houses, each using a combination of different technologies for energy saving and generation.

He interviews Martin Aust, Business Growth Director at Flagship Housing Group about the benefits of affordable eco-homes, and meets Sian, one of the residents who is looking forward to lower bills.

About GreenGauge Homes:

GreenGauge is a cost-effective approach to building sustainable, affordable housing that can improve on government guidance on energy efficiency and still be built within the Housing Corporation’s Standard Grant Funding Structure.

Affordable housing needs to be reproduceable, to prioritise low running costs, and promote practical, sustainable energy use to tenants. So rather than reinvent the wheel, the GreenGauge Partnership has developed a system of tried and tested energy saving and generation technologies to suit a variety of locations and layouts.

The University of East Anglia is monitoring the thermal performance of the technologies in use at Lingwood, which include sun space and heat recovery, ground source heat pumps, solar collectors and PVs and a ‘control’ group of superinsulated gas centrally heated houses. Each home has a user interface to illustrate the energy savings.

The GreenGauge Partners are Flagship Housing Group, Barefoot & Gilles, Broadland District Council, Lingwood Parish Council, Oxbury & Company, University of East Anglia, Victory Housing Trust and Youngs Homes.

 

This item originally appeared on BBC Look East on 3 April 2008 at 6.30pm on BBC1. A link to the item is reproduced here by kind permission of the BBC.