Everyone is building sustainable housing now, but can they do it affordably?
A key challenge of the introduction of and any housing standards, both in grant funded housing or in the open market, must be for them to be implemented in a cost effective way in order to ensure their success in volume.
Any process of introducing change (like the Code for Sustainable Homes, for example) needs to incorporate a means of managing cost to a realistic level.
Here’s what it cost to build the Lingwood scheme:
The construction cost of the fifteen GreenGauge Homes at Lingwood was £1.618m excluding fees and VAT. This was the amount tendered by the winning contractor, Youngs Homes, in Q42006 and includes all renewable technologies and Rain Water Harvesting.
Of the £1.618m construction cost, £540,000 was a Housing Corporation Grant, £147,000 a grant from Broadland District Council and a further £16,216.91 was provided by the Low Carbon Buildings Programme.
In addition, Carbon Connections funded the Monitoring programme to the tune of £56,000.
Comparison with a similar scheme of the period
Lets compare the Build Cost of Lingwood against a Conventional Ecohomes Very Good scheme of the same period. “Very Good” was the requirement for grant funding of affordable housing assessed in 2006, so it constitutes the required level at the time.
The scheme of 15 homes at Lingwood cost £108k a unit (Total Scheme Cost including fees, post planning). A scheme of the same period in the village of Bawdeswell, of 8 houses and with no renewables (which received Ecohomes Very Good) had a Total Scheme Cost of approximately £850k equating to £106k a unit. Both schemes were built by the same contractor.
In actual cost terms for the client the difference in the cost to build Lingwood was just £2,000 a unit.
So how can this be possible – surely the renewable technologies cost more than this? Well yes, they did, but it was possible to manage the cost of introducing them. Here are five ways to avoid your project cost spiraling out of control
1. Don’t invent anything
As soon as you start inventing new components, whatever they are, you have to incorporate the costs of the development, and of bespoke components, into your build. Why bother? The climate change agenda was already far enough advanced in 2006/7 for us to choose with relative success a range of tried an tested technologies. The more tested the technology is, the less likely it is to go wrong or involve you in additional expenditure to make it work.
The homes at Lingwood are built using a standard Space4 timber frame, with additional insulation applied. We could have developed a new construction system, but several were already on the market with a good reputation and perfectly adequate for our needs.
2. Don’t Change things that don’t Need Changing
Just because you’re doing something new you don’t have to do everything new. Our affordable housing is developed along a standard housetype which, like the technologies we used, was tried and tested, built on years of experience designing for RSLs. A standard housetype reduces the cost of frame production, and yes, offsite manufacture keeps preliminary costs down too.
The layout for Lingwood is also very simple and straightforward. Broadland District Council’s planning officer initially thought it was too urban an arrangement, but was supportive when it was explained how all the houses needed to be South-facing. As it turns out the site has a very strong sense of community, and a balance of outward and inward facing houses has helped encourage this.
Even the windows at Lingwood are simple Jeldwen windows. They serve the purpose required by this project.
3. Avoid indulging in fripperies
Building sustainable housing can easily become an exercise in outdoing one’s competitors. The temptation is to make the housing look different, introduce unique components, make the building particularly photogenic to win competitions. So easily a small exercise can become someone’s pet project.
But pet projects cost money, and whilst there may be benefit in PR, is this the intention? If you have a longer term objective, think to the longer term.
4. Consider Everything Carefully
Thinking of using a particular element in your scheme? Ask yourself, Do you need it? What for? If you do, how can you make the best use of it?
At Lingwood there was an opportunity to generate wind energy, and micro generation was very popular in 2006/7. But how would we do this? A single turbine is more efficient than four singles, but it would be difficult to share energy (without storage) between four individual households. We were also convinced that PVs would generate more energy for the householders for the same capital cost. Lower running costs were an important objective of the project. When a study demonstrated that the site was not suitable for wind energy generation, it was a simple step to choose PVs instead.
5. Remember your Objectives
Affordable housing needs to be affordable. The client RSL wants to be able to manage the housing easily. The contractor wants to be able to build it simply and cost effectively, and we all want to repeat a successful project with another.
Keeping sight of these objectives helps us make the decisions which lead to a successful outcome. Its not rocket science.
