To address the price issue: when the first phase of the Wintles was complete some residents sold their houses for about 100k more than they had bought them. About a year between the purchase and the sale. They made a huge profit and we were told by estate agents that we had seriously undervalued our houses. This raises the question of price. If you build a development that becomes desirable you will attract people who see that they can make a quick profit by buying and then quickly selling their house. What do you do about this?

To address the light fitting and oven point you made: people had a total choice of the light and appliances they wanted. Up until recently there haven’t been eco options that were attractive enough to lure these customers especially in the kitchen, oven area. This is an area of industry that needs developing so that eco-houses can be more energy efficient and beautiful. Many of the people who bought our houses did so because they liked the look of them and the eco considerations came second.

Re.Greenpas comment on trees. The first thing we did whilst waiting for planning permission to come through was plant 2,000 trees. The residents of the Wintles and Bishops Castle can now walk through and enjoy what is now an established forest. The labyrinth orchard of 200 trees gives an abundance of fruit which the residents love harvesting.

As for the future of the Wintles we hope it will be bought by a developer who is sensitive to our ethos and who intends to complete it promptly and to the same standard.

We are now using what we have learnt working on the Wintles to create the best example of a sustainable village that we can conceive of, in Scotland and will keep you posted.

Hope to bump into you in the High Street soon,
All the best,
Carole

The vast majority of us look at “the bottom line” in these cost situations; and the books are rigged at the moment in favor of quick profits for builders and banks. Period.

I went through this myself, when I financed and built my off-grid earth sheltered commercial greenhouse. The construction costs were about 4x standard greenhouse business costs, and the bank looked at me like I was nuts.

I had hours of explaining “see, the heating costs for the next 20 years are actually included in these construction costs; likewise, energy bills for electricity are 90% upfront; no monthly bills (which often greenhouses to bankruptcy) will ever exist.” etc. Plus; don’t have to replace plastic covers every 4 years (glass)- etc.

When I finally had the bank willing to look at; and SEE the bottom line for my business at year 20 – they WERE able to understand, but boy it was a lot of work.

We need “Sustainable Accounting”. Next chore for you Rob!

Re: the Wintles development; to my American eyes these photos don’t look that attractive; I want more trees. Which, incidentally, can cut energy costs in the houses, all year long.

But- sure, a great effort. What’s the next one going to look like?

In my opinion, there is no intrinsic reason why ecological building should be more expensive than conventional building.

In passive solar design you spend more on the building envelope in order to spend less on heating/cooling/a-c systems. Even using entirely conventional materials and building techniques, you shouldn’t have higher overall capital costs.

Natural building (using eco materials like wood, straw, earth), on the other hand, tends to be labour-intensive, which means it’s expensive if you use skilled labour, but cheap if you treat it as fun work instead of tedious work, and people pitch in and help. That’s the way we’re doing our house, anyway, and it seems to work. We built our cabin (where we’re living while we build our main house) for €5000 in materials and zero in labour!

But eco-housing, even if no more expensive to build, is still more expensive to buy. The fact that ecological houses are better places to live means that they command a premium in the housing market, which I suspect is the principal reason for the high cost of houses at The Wintles.

That, of course, is a political issue, not a design issue. In general, the excessive cost of housing in most countries comes down to lack of legal access to land and building permission, which makes shelter an artificially limited good.