Eco Homes: Moving House to go Green (25-Oct-07)
From Lauraibm
Contents |
MI Summary
Full story: Eco Homes: Moving House to go Green (25-Oct-07)
Text of Article
Leaving leafy suburbia for traffic-laden inner London is how one family reduced their carbon footprint. Jenny Knight explains
The Martino family has moved from the wide open spaces of Wimbledon to a house only yards away from one of London's busiest roads - to reduce their carbon footprint.
Their surprising method of going green means that daughter Aimee, nine, will miss her regular rides at Wimbledon Village Stables, and son Luciano, seven, can no longer pop out with his mother Lise to romp on the 1,140 acres of Wimbledon Common.
Instead they will have to do battle with the Talgarth Road, the busy stretch of the A4 just before the Hammersmith flyover that roars with traffic day and night. Their new home in Barons Court is just two streets from here.
But the move means they are doing their environmental bit by giving up the daily school run - and, because Vittorio Martino, who works at Canary Wharf, will now be able to get to work easily by Underground rather car, Lise Martino reckons that the move will mean they will reduce their car use by at least 20 hours a week.
Both children go to St James Independent School in Olympia, near Barons Court, chosen for them partly because spiritual and emotional development is valued as much as academic advances. Now the children have a 10-minute walk instead of up to an hour-and-a-half in the car each way.
"Moving to Barons Court has been a bit of a culture shock. It is very urban compared with Wimbledon where we had lovely walks - it was nearly as good as being in the countryside," says Lise.
"There is more traffic here, but the school run was a nightmare and I think it's really important to examine our carbon footprint and do what we can to to reduce it."
They had sold their five-bedroom house in Kenilworth Road, Wimbledon by early autumn and moved into rented accommodation while eco features were added to their new home, a five-bedroom Edwardian terraced house in Gunterstone Road, W14
"We've installed solar panels for heating and hot water and are rewiring and replumbing, overhauling the whole structure to make everything energy efficient," says Lise.
"There will be double glazing to reduce heat loss, and we are using special glass that lets light through without letting heat in or out, so we shall be cool in summer and warm in winter.
"There will also be a new water tank which is clad with a special liquid that takes energy from the solar panels and heats up the water in the tank. Our new electrical system will use only low-voltage lights, which means we shan't be able to have dimmers.
"Builders are installing underfloor heating, using hot pipes that we hope will eventually run off the solar panels. The expense will be enormous, but we are investing in products that will last and will save us money through reduced energy costs in the long run."
Unfortunately, to get enough sun for their solar panels to operate at peak efficiency, a tree will have to be removed from the back garden, but they plan to plant new ones.
Lise adds: "My husband intends to buy a hybrid car. He's not as enthusiastic about energy saving as I am, but I hope he will use the train more frequently now because his journey to work is much faster than it was from Wimbledon. He's very much a businessman, while I'm a happy-clappy, tree-hugging type.
"Vittorio also travels a lot on business and his parents live just outside Rome.Visiting them uses a lot of energy, so he tries to see them by extending a business trip rather than making a special journey. I spend two months of the summer in Italy with the children, but if we fly we use budget airlines where every seat is filled rather than scheduled flights that can be half empty and so waste more fuel."
Despite her husband's slight resistance to the green life, the rest of the family are more compliant. The children know better than to moan about how long food shopping takes because their mother is examining the fruit and veg to ensure it has been grown locally rather than flown in from Africa.
Aimee and Luciano are trained always to turn the television off rather than leaving it on standby, to turn the tap off when cleaning their teeth and only to flush on solids.
"If it's yellow let it mellow. If it's brown flush it down," Lise recites merrily.
"But it's tricky when my mother-in-law visits. She's a high powered, elegant woman and she's really not a person you can ask to not flush the loo.
"We love our new house but we will miss the Windmill museum on Wimbledon Common and the long walks we used to have. There are compensations, though. I have much more time in the evening to spend with the children and we do painting and things like that rather than sitting in the car pumping out fumes."
Justine Davies, of Chesterton estate agency in Wimbledon, says: "The Martinos are going in the opposite direction to most of our clients, who move out to Wimbledon from central London because it is so beautiful. They think the longer journey to work is worth it for an improved lifestyle, good schools and all the trees and grassland, but I'm noticing that more buyers are talking about their carbon footprint.
People now want to walk the children to school and while location is their first requirement, being carbon friendly is creeping higher up the list of requirements.
- Source: Telegraph.co.uk
Text of Article
- Source: [ ]
Text of Article
- Source: [ ]
For an overview on the topic(s), see also
- [[]]
