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Teletubby homes have 'living roof'
Futuristic "Teletubby" homes being built in Wellingborough will be transported to London to become a state-of-the-art sustainable community.
The eco-houses with shrub-covered roofs allowing wildlife to live on them are reminiscent of the house in the popular children's television programme.
Futureform, which is part of Tingdene Homes on the Finedon Road industrial estate, is in charge of producing the homes.
They will include a range of unorthodox features – including a 'living roof', curved like an incoming wave and planted with a tough, low-growing shrub called sedum.
The overall effect will be to help the futuristic buildings blend with their natural surroundings, and to provide a habitat for wildlife on the houses themselves.
Solar panels will provide green power for the people living in the houses and a biomass boiler will provide renewable energy for heating.
The 24 homes will eventually be situated in the London borough of Hillingdon, where they will make up a new eco-development called Birchway.
Birchway project manager Rebecca Clark said Futureform had been chosen to construct the units because of the company's 40 years' experience in making modular buildings. The firm is also one of the most advanced in the field, with a building system that can be used in large designs of up to 10 floors.
She said: "It is an exciting and innovative development, both in its design and its construction method and will be a flagship social housing scheme.
"Manufacturing the units off-site at Wellingborough will decrease the overall construction period and reduce material wastage so the carbon footprint will consequently be much less than a traditional build programme."
The development will reach one of the highest levels of sustainable development – level five of the Code For Sustainable Homes. The first modules are due for completion this spring.
Birchway is to be a social housing development and its tenants will be people on the housing register.
They will all be encouraged to sign up to a green charter, which will see them commit to trying to run their homes in a green way with minimum impact on the environment.
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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