This 1960s Reno Reduces The Energy Consumption in This Eco House by 80 Percent

Preserving the Ansty Plum House

The Ansty Plum House is a 1960s house that had slipped through the 20 Century virtually unnoticed. That was until Coppin Dockray Architecture and Design preserved the beautiful home and reduced its energy consumption by a staggering 80 percent. This rural renovation is radically sited on a steep wooded slope that overlooks a group of 12th Century buildings. The 1960s original home was designed by David Levitt in 1964 for one of Ove Arup's former partners. The 1960s property had fallen into disrepair and was uninhabitable for most of the year. The home was designed at a time when the impact of fossil fuel consumption was not fully realized with the existing house being barely insulated. The challenge for the Coppin Dockray Architecture and Design was to insulate and heat this cabin building without undermining the clarity of the cabin building's form and building materials.

Innovative Renovation Techniques

Much of the work on the renovation was unseen stitching and mending. They took the opportunity to strip out the layers of additions that had accumulated over the years to expose the original form of the cabin building. They installed a new kitchen, bedroom joinery, study, bespoke furniture and floor finishes. The garden of the eco-building was landscaped using only indigenous planting. The eco-building also got new windows, lighting, heating, an air source heat pump and new insulation to bring the eco-building up to 21st Century standards and reduce the carbon emissions by 80 percent.

Simple Ways to Reduce Energy Consumption

It doesn't always take a major home renovation to reduce your homes energy consumption; you can also do this by changing a few small details of your daily routine. For starts, you can shutdown your computer. Computers can be one of the biggest energy users you have in your office. All it takes is to turn your monitor off at night and also to ditch the screensaver. Today's modern computers can be turned on and off at least 40,000 times. So opting to shut down your computer over using a screensaver will not affect your computer's lifespan. So try and remember to power down. Choose the right light in your home design. LED bulbs are the most energy-efficient lighting option available. LED lightbulbs use 75 percent less electricity than the incandescent lightbulbs. The LED also have no mercury, and they last about 25 times longer than traditional incandescent lightbulbs so you'll save money on having to buy new lightbulbs less often.

Managing Vampire Power

Another way to reduce your energy consumption in your home design is to eliminate vampire power aka unplug idle electronics. Devices such as microwaves, televisions, printers and scanners use standby power, even when they are off. Some chargers continue to pull tiny amounts of energy, even when they are plugged in a good way to tell this is if a charger feels warm to the touch. One of the easies ways to reduce your power consumption is to simply turn off the lights when not in use. To avoid paying for vampire power, use a power strip in your house to turn all of the devices off at once. All it takes is flipping the switch on the power strip is as effective as unplugging each socket from the wall, which in turn prevents phantom energy loss.