Mud Brick

Mud brick buildings with high thermal inertia are ideal for locations with high diurnal temperature variation. They keep interiors warm during the cold night having been warmed up by the sun during the day. They can create high levels of employment or be constructed by the occupier. Mud is a natural and ubiquitous material. Using it is most unlikely to have any adverse environmental effects.

The mud brick mosque illustrated is thought
to be the largest mud brick building in the world.

Recent Developments

The Brighton Earthship

Earthship Brighton is the first project of the Low Carbon Trust, a not-for-profit UK co-operative company formed in 2001 to highlight the connection between buildings, the carbon emissions they produce and climate change through innovative construction projects and communications work.

Earthship Brighton, the first in England, is a beautiful structure made from recycled car tyres and sustainably sourced timber with adobe walls. It has a large glazed area which is south facing to maximise passive solar gain and solar water heating panels on the roof to provide hot water. The electricity comes from photo-voltaics and a wind turbine and all the water is harvested from the rain. With the grey water being treated with planters and a reed-bed system for the black water, plus composting toilets, they will be able to recycle all their human waste on site. The Earthship gives a glimpse of a luxury low carbon future - how a zero waste and zero energy society might look.

Inside the building there is a meeting room which can seat around 40 people theatre-style plus kitchen facilities and a relaxing atrium area. There is also an outside space that will increase seating capacity for events to 100. The Low Carbon Trust gives regular tours of the Earthship and also offers training in low and zero carbon design and provides consultancy to community groups, companies and individuals all around the UK to seed and develop their own projects.

 
The Pines Calyx

Hydrogen House.  Mike Strizki has not paid an electric, oil or gas bill—nor has not spent anything on fuel of his car —in nearly two years. Instead, the 51-year-old civil engineer makes all the fuel he needs using a system he built in the capacious garage of his home, which employs photovoltaic (PV) panels to turn sunlight into electricity that is harnessed in turn to extract hydrogen from tap water. Research into a concept house was also undertaken by Sheffield, UK based ITM power to investigate hydrogen for heating and cooking - as shown in the house on the left.

RuralZED Home. The homes use ZEDfactory's well proven technique of reducing energy demand using state of the art energy efficient construction - allowing the total annual energy demand to be generated on site using well proven renewable energy sources. The Arup engineered zero heating specification homes use a mixture of winter sunlight and passive heat recovery ventilation needing only a tiny amount of wood pellet in winter to take off the chill and provide domestic hot water, and have evacuated tube solar hot water panels almost eliminating summer biomass consumption. The total annual biomass consumed is well within the quota available per UK resident without using agricultural land. Fit and forget solar electric panels on the south facing roof slopes provide enough electricity to meet total annual electric demand, with some homes having the possibility to generate a little surplus using roof mounted turbines as part of a future upgrade path on exposed sites. The same suite of building integrated renewable energy technologies can be used to upgrade existing buildings, showing how decentralised energy supplies can be achieved without expensive large scale infrastructure investments, that will never be funded in a recession. For more details see - http://www.ruralzed.com/files/ce36c889-/RZ%20a4%20brochure.pdf