With a big publicity fanfare a zero carbon home was unveiled at the BRE. I wonder how much publicity will be given to it's re-assessment and that it might only be somewhere between levels 4 and 5 of the code? No mean achievement but not level 6!

Where is the news of this re-assessment? I have heard that Kingspan spent close to £1million on this project. If they can't get to CSH Level 6 for that much money, then the whole CSH plan may have to be reassessed.

Posted By: tonyThere is no such creature as a zero carbon house.

Well that all depends on your definition of a zero carbon house. The CfSH does however gives its own very clear definition of a "True zero carbon" home. Which Kingspan may or may not have achieved.

The Kingspan house wasn't completely finished for Offsite 2007, it was basically made to look finished but was held together with blu-tac and sticky tape enough to show people round. It's been closed ever since and there have been swarms of workmen going in and out. I've seen work being done on the the Solar Hot water system, they've added a flue for the biomass boiler (which should come in handy) and they've tried to stop it leaking. I recall a lot of sealant guns lying around when I walked past the other week.

It's due to reopen for visits in the 2nd week of September.

Peter, do you have any details of this reassessment?

So the Kingspan house achieving only code level 4/5 is just speculation then?

I heard a similar price quoted for the Kingspan house and I agree that Code level 6 is not really commercially viable at present, in fact on some sites I'd go so far as to suggest that it's impossible. For example greenfield sites with mature trees and hedgerows are damn hard due to the Ecology section (worth 12%), you need 90% overall so you need to score some credits here. And if you're building in a built up urban area surrounded by high rise buildings then you rule out wind and PV and leave yourself with no way of producing electricity other than biomass CHP, which is unproven at smaller scales. BedZed is good evidence of this, their biomass CHP has been out of action for years.

Hi Olly,
In some ways it would be nice if it was speculation, but have heard the same from two differing sources each with some knowledge of the project. All I can say is there has been no hard evidence forthcoming, infact Kingspan have been remarkably silent on exactly how the level 6 was achieved let alone the post completion assessment, it would be nice to see some SAP calcs and some costings from them.