Prince Charles’s prototype eco-home may not live up to carbon targets

Plans by Prince Charles to build an eco-home for the future, and aiming to affect government housing policy, have come into problems regarding the building’s ability to comply with new green regulations.

The prince’s plans were to construct an eco-home that could be used as a prototype, built from natural materials including stone and timber with no man-made insulating membranes or plastics.

The eco-home is to be built at the Building Research Establishment in Watford, next to such other advanced modernist eco-homes as PRP’s Sigma Home and Sheppard Robson’s Lighthouse.

However critics have stated that due to the fact that the home will not contain any synthetic materials they think it will not be airtight enough to be categorized as a zero-carbon house. New government policy states that after 2016 all homes must be zero-carbon.

Building Design magazine publicised the prince’s plans and Will Hurst of the magazine spoke of the fact that the Prince will realise the problems that modern homes will have in reaching the highest levels of the carbon code. Nonetheless the prince’s house is said to be rated at level three or four, yet level six is the level at which carbon is rated at zero.