Building a new home - What energy saving features to include?

Jonesya

Solar panels are actually quite cheap but you pay a lot for the retro-fit installation, but if building new you've got to cover the roof, so rather than spending on concrete tiles I'd have as much of my roof as possible covered with roof integrated solar in the place of tiles. You can buy solar panels specifically designed for roof integration which can be dearer - or you can get items like below, which let you use conventional panels integrated into the roof instead of the tiling.

http://www.windandsun.co.uk/products/PV-Mounting-Structures/GSE-Integration-Roof-Integrated

If you cover as much of your roof as possible with those, and get a bigger G59 solar inverter to get over the 3.68kW limit for G83 - you can use the excess power around the house, put an E7 immersion heater in a water cylinder to heat your hot water during the summer.

In years to come if you get an EV, there's even chargers being sold now that will regulate the charging to absorb any excess solar generation.

Owain_Moneysaver

Smiley_Dan wrote: »

Look into the "fabric first" approach to building, most well known in the Passivhaus standard.

And the fact that it's well known will help the house appeal to future buyers and hopefully get a premium resale price to (at least partly) reflect your capital costs.

As Robin9 says, purchasers won't consider a higher capital cost unless there's a quantifiable benefit. And self-build houses tend to be higher spec anyway, so potential buyers may start expecting such accreditation at the premium end of the market.

ProDave

This is just what I am doing, building a house to near passive house standard though not certified as such.

Insulation.
Air tightness
Triple glazing
MVHR (mechanical ventilation with heat recovery)
Solar PV
Air source heat pump
Under floor heating.

The energy predictions for my house are the maximim space heating demand when it is +20 inside and -10 outside, is just a little over 2KW, and that will be provided by my ASHP using about 700W of electricity. It should be lower than that as incidental heating will reduce that heat demand.

My house will have an EPC rating of A when complete.

Rodders53

matelodave wrote: »

Check out the costs & benefits of rainwater harvesting because it wont have done you much good this year with the prolonged period of no rain.

Only been here two years but our rainwater harvesting ran out more last year than this summer... which was only once for a few days (maybe a week)?
There have been spells of heavy rain in between the 'drought'.

Mind we don't use a lot of water anyway, and only 2-3 cu m from the harvester per month. Toilets, washing car/caravan and some container plant watering.

I don't think ours was well designed, nor big enough really. Doubt any water charge saving will ever cover the install and running costs.

Raxiel

Unless you go for something like undersink heaters powered by PV energy, try and plan hot water pipe routes to be as short as possible, with room around the pipe for (to continue the mantra elsewhere in this thread) insulation.