Kitchens & Bathrooms: Green Design Ideas

ABOVE: The Profile™5 toilet suite from SanLamere UK has a flush of 4.5/3L and integrates a hand basin, recycling the water for use in flushing, saving up to 70% in bathroom water usage

Rainwater Harvesting

A popular option with self-builders, rainwater harvesting aims to collect rainwater off the roof and reuse it for flushing toilets and for washing machines. Installation involves burying a large container in the garden (or in a basement) and pumping filtered water up into the house. Systems cost from around £2,000 upwards, but promise a reasonable payback by reducing water bills.

How it works: This diagram (ABOVE) shows the Klargester Envireau rainwater harvesting system. It collects rainwater from the roof (brown), filters out leaves and debris and stores it in an underground holding tank. Water is then drawn off via a silent running pump (green), passing through a series of filters for use in a variety of non-potable applications. When stored water is not available, the system automatically switches to mains water, ensuring a constant supply (blue).

Greywater Recycling

Alternatively, look at greywater recycling, which diverts water from showers, baths and basins into a small holding tank which is used to flush toilets and also to water the garden. It is about half the price of rainwater harvesting tanks, as it requires much less storage — the tank is usually located within the bathroom area.

ABOVE: Ezy-Filter from Kingspan Environmental connects a dedicated downpipe on an outside wall, cleaning used water for use in the garden, flushing toilets or washing clothes, £199.99

Low-Water Appliances and Toilets

Look for aerated shower heads, which greatly reduce the water flow without compromising shower quality. Also check the amount of water used to flush the toilets: up to 30% of water used in the home goes straight down the toilet. The most efficient toilets on the market now use as little as 4L per flush.

Short Dead Legs

When laying out the interior of the house, try and ensure that the bathrooms are clustered together, rather than being at opposite ends of the house. And try and get the hot water storage tanks located nearby as well. This reduces overall installation costs as it saves on plumbing materials, but it also saves on energy because less hot water is lost in ‘dead legs’ — the shorter the length of hot water runs, the better.

The Rest of the House

Bedrooms: We still tend to measure houses by the number of bedrooms they have, even though we tend to be using them less and less as bedrooms. From a designer’s point of view, adaptability is a keyword here. So, rather than creating a space which will only take a bed in one spot, and have all the lighting and sockets arranged to reflect this, most people now try to work with the idea that a ‘bedroom’ could just as well be used as a home office, a study or a games room.

Following on from this, you need to decide whether to go for fitted furniture – which limits your flexibility – or to go with a more relaxed approach. You can compromise and build alcoves between bedrooms without going to the trouble of fitting them out with wardrobe spaces. One of the positive side effects of this is that it improves the sound reduction between rooms.

Mud Rooms: Many designs relegate the utility area to little more than a laundry room with a back-door access to the garden, but for many people, particularly country dwellers, a large ‘mud room’ would be far more useful. Somewhere warm and light to take off wellies and wet coats, to air clothes, for dogs to sleep in. They are not called mud rooms for nothing; during the six winter months every year, just going out into the garden is a seriously mucky business and the interface between inside and outside needs thought.

Living Rooms: The distinction between living spaces is something else that is blurring. Again flexibility is a keyword here: it makes little sense to designate a room as a ‘dining room’ if every meal is eaten in the kitchen. There are one or two fixed points, such as a focal fireplace and/or a TV/video area, but apart from these, try and keep the choices open. One way of helping this is to arrange lighting so that it’s evenly spaced around the rooms, rather than having hanging lights.

Further reading:

• Kitchens
• Bathrooms