The Code for Sustainable Homes

ABOVE: Monique and Laurence Steijger’s super-insulated new eco-friendly timber frame house cost less than £200,000 to build and requires no central heating. Read more about this project.

The Code for Sustainable Homes is actually a rewrite of an earlier document called EcoHomes, which has been around for several years. Both EcoHomes and the CSH have been prepared by the Building Research Establishment (the BRE), our premier construction research organisation. What these documents set out to do is to assess just how ecofriendly a particular house or development actually is. Every aspect of the project is assessed and given a score, and these various scores are then added together and this gives rise to a rating. Energy efficiency naturally features highly, but so does water use, use of materials, waste management, ecological footprint and various other matters.

What makes the CSH different is that a timetable is included with it which suggests that each and every new home built in England shall meet certain standards by specific dates. The CSH identifies six levels. Level 1 really isn’t difficult to match — it’s only slightly in advance of current Building Regulations. But Level 6, the top level, is altogether different. It really represents a fully fledged eco home (or at least what the BRE thinks an eco home ought to be), complete with zero carbon emissions and an incredibly tight water-use regime. And Level 6 is set to become the base standard by 2016 — just eight short years away.

There is nothing like having a target to aim for. No sooner had the industry identified Code Level 6 as the ultimate in green housing, than they all wanted to build an example to prove they could do it. The first one went on show in June last year at the BRE’s own exhibition, Onsite '07.

But all appears to be not quite right. The CSH is in reality a bit of a hotchpotch: it’s actually so complex that it seems to have been designed to create yet another layer of bureaucracy and another raft of spurious professionals, to be known as Code Assessors. Without a qualified Code Assessor, it’s virtually impossible to tell what your CSH rating is.

There is also a good deal of confusion about what the various targets demand. Nowhere is this more apparent than the zero-carbon target for energy use. What exactly does zero carbon mean? Everyone understands roughly what it is all about: the house has to produce enough green energy during the course of a year to offset any non-green power used. But where does this green power have to be produced? Does it have to be on the roof, or in the garden, or could it be shared with other houses in a community power plant? How about owning shares in an offshore wind farm? Who would administer such a scheme and what provisions would be put in place to prevent householders upping sticks and switching to another (cheaper) power supplier? And if you think the zerocarbon energy rules are badly thought out, wait till you delve into the water-efficiency requirements, which turn out to be so restrictive that even with both rainwater harvesting and grey-water recycling fitted, it still may not be possible to qualify for Code Level 6.

The bigger question is whether it is right to use the CSH as a blueprint for the future of housebuilding. I think the idea of having a roadmap showing everyone how the Building Regulations should develop is excellent — a bold and helpful initiative. But I can’t help feeling that the route being suggested is the wrong one. Despite its name, an awful lot of the Code has little to do with sustainability and many of the bits that do are impractical and expensive. Fortunately, there is still time for substantial revision. The targets need to be less ambitious, and therefore less restrictive — plus they also need to be easier to understand.

So please — a little less nanny and a bit more sense.

Further Reading:

• The Path to Zero Carbon Homes
• Saving Energy in Your Self Build Home
• The Code For Sustainable Homes: How to Get the Points

Read more of self-build expert Mark Brinkley's views in his blog