We are reducing our environmental impacts by measuring our schemes against the Building Research Establishment's EcoHomes rating scheme, and increasingly the Government's Code for Sustainable Homes (the Code).
Benefits
EcoHomes and the Code offer our customers the benefits of reduced costs through superior energy and water efficiency, and reduced maintenance, as well as comfortable, healthy, and flexible internal living space. They therefore help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which in turn safeguards the environment.
EcoHomes
EcoHomes is an authoritative rating for new home developments. It sets out a series of best practice criteria, against which the environmental aspects of building new developments can be assessed.
Each development is rated on the basis of Pass, through to Good, Very Good and Excellent. One to four sunflowers depict these.
EcoHomes considers the broad environmental concerns of climate change, resource use and impact on wildlife, and balances these against the need for a high quality of life, and a safe and healthy internal environment. The issues assessed are grouped into seven categories including: energy; transport; water; ecology and land use; pollution; health and well being, and materials.
Code for Sustainable Homes
The Code for Sustainable Homes provides a comprehensive measure of the sustainability of individual new homes and developments. The Code ensures that new homes deliver measurable improvements in key areas such as carbon dioxide emissions and water use.
The Code covers nine categories including: energy and CO2 emissions; water; materials; surface water run-off; waste; pollution; health and well being; management and ecology. The Code ensures that new homes are designed and built in advance of current building regulations.
Energy and water efficiency
The biggest source of carbon emissions for most people is likely to be the energy you use in your home, of which the single largest use is for heating. We therefore install energy efficient appliances. The gas condensing boilers in our new homes are 10/15% more efficient than traditional gas boilers and allied to high levels of insulation, our new homes are more comfortable and cost considerably less to run.
For further information on sustainability visit the sustainability sectionof our corporate website.