How do you build an energy efficient home? Read the Zero Carbon Hub’s guide to find out.

The Zero Carbon Hub’s Builders Book – An illustrated guide to building energy efficient homes continues to provide useful construction site posters to highlight ensure best practice and the construction details for new homes. The bulk of the book is made up of site posters that highlight areas of the build in a normal construction sequence. The site posters can be printed out A4 or A3 size in colour and used as site guidance for site management and trades. They should be used as toolbox talks for trades and at site inductions. The site posters can also be used as design documents and included in specification documentation.

In addition to the Builders Book, the Hub has produced a list of completed energy efficient home profiles which include:

• Rowner Apartment Block C – three storey blocks of apartments designed to achieve <39 kWh/m2/yr
• Town Street – a site consisting of thirty-six houses and four flats all to a Passivhaus fabric specification.
• Bicester Eco-Town - North West Bicester is the UK’s first Eco-town, designed to meet the original Eco-town Planning Policy Statement (PPS) requirements, which includes delivering “true zero carbon” homes. To be “true zero carbon” means taking into account emissions related to both regulated energy (space heating, hot water, lighting and ventilation) and unregulated energy use (such as appliances and cooking).
• The Solar Home – this unique home was designed with an energy target of 46 Kwh/m²/yr and has achieved 44.1 Kwh/m²/yr
• Tattenhoe Park – mixed developed with properties achieving energy usage rates of 39 Kwh/m2/yr (Flats and Apartments) and 46 Kwh/m2/yr (Detached/Semi-Detached)
• Chobham Manor – a new development on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park which will deliver 850 new homes.

Further site guides will soon be published by the Zero Carbon Hub, with their Thermal Bridging guide anticipated in February 2016.