What Are Sustainable Housing Developments?

05 January

Sustainable homes have become increasingly popular over the years, both to talk about and to be built. There’s interest all around, from the builders creating these forward-thinking properties to new-home searchers seeking out forever homes. But what are the benefits, and the bells and whistles that come with sustainable housing developments?

As sustainable house builders with a full range of homes, we wanted to provide a guide to help you determine what these kinds of homes involve, how they’re built and what really defines them as “sustainable”. Simply read and follow this guide to get educated on the modern house world.

What are sustainable homes?

Sustainable homes are all about reducing your carbon footprint; considering properties equipped with cleverly designed features, infrastructure and technology installed into a home. These property types are built with specific needs in mind, such as conserving heat and enabling homeowners to reap the benefits of greener surroundings, as well as so much more.

Often when people see the term “sustainable home”, it’s assumed property owners live remotely, in a dark, cold property away from the rest of the world. That’s simply not the case, and it shouldn’t be assumed that going back to basics is the only way a property can positively contribute to the environment. This couldn’t be further from the truth!

Instead, sustainable homes are those that:

Incorporate renewable energy sources as well as natural site features, such as natural lighting and ventilation.
Plan to recycle more materials and reuse building materials.
Guarantee less waste through land use, and the time spent building a contemporary home.
Use surplus materials when building and heating a home to reduce waste.
Lower the likelihood of environmental costs and impacts.
Reduce maintenance requirements and overall costs for improved user satisfaction.
Reuse and refurbish older materials, like wood for flooring, etc.
Working on existing buildings and repurposing them to create new-on-the-market homes.

Sustainable homes in the UK: The new surge

You’ve likely seen an influx of sustainable homes in the UK, which is what led you to read our article, so you can find out exactly what sustainable housing developments entail.

Sustainability has already improved for new build homes, and is set to improve even more, with further modern construction methods being considered during the building process. This is exactly what we’re moving towards for our developments. We aim to provide brilliant, sustainable homes that are still affordable, to ensure your dream property is helping you live happily, but also sustainably. This can be said for our zero-carbon homes, so If you’re looking to live in Chesterfield, our future development will interest you greatly.

But what’s changed during construction to achieve this for our homes and other contemporary homes in the UK?

Reduced properties with gas boilers

Gas boilers were once a key highlight for potential homeowners looking for houses. However, with greener heating options being better than ever before, sustainable housing developments will usually come equipped with alternative options to heat the home. Plus, gas boilers are being slowly phased out, since they consume a large amount of energy that’s damaging to the environment.

Improved economic construction

Sustainable housing developments are designed to save homeowners money from the get-go, to enjoy for a lifetime. Homes like ours are built with the customer’s life journey in mind, to avoid important renovations and extensions being built in the future. With economic construction, you’ll also benefit from reduced costs regarding water, maintenance and energy use.

Further access to green spaces

Sustainable homes are built with biodiversity in mind, to improve people’s mental and physical well-being, more so than ever before. To achieve this through housing development, we at Strata - and the rest of the UK - have started building homes that provide access to further green spaces.

This is so beneficial for the environment because as well as inciting happiness amongst homeowners, a greater need for nearby nature provides benefits for land overall, by alleviating flood risk, protecting water supplies and much, much more.

Additional security

A sustainable housing development is designed meticulously, the homes are built to last, and with this in mind, additional security is integrated into the floor plan.

For instance:

Security elements are installed to improve peoples’ home life and sense of security.
Houses are designed to prevent and reduce injuries through specialist, built-in safety features.
Many sustainable homes offer adaptable environments for different ages, such as safety features for children and integrated elements for those with limited mobility (such as stair lifts, etc).

More respect for locals

Sustainable house builders like us consider local people and their environment more than ever before to create homes that aren’t negatively impacting others in the process. This considers everyone directly employed in the construction process, such as our Strata home builders and everyone in between, to the local community in the area of construction. Although this is often dismissed, this should be the basis of sustainability efforts from home developers.

Avoiding pollution

Something we’re very conscious of ourselves is how polluting the construction industry can be, from things like vehicle emissions that carry building supplies, as well as increased waste materials and much more.

Many sustainable housebuilders like us want to combat pollution by combatting these problems. This can be done by upcycling waste materials, reducing construction materials to avoid waste entirely and presenting new factors that avoid pollutant release into the water. Because although these problems are widely known in the housing world, many don’t acknowledge them when building their own developments.

What is sustainable housing?