Are Compact Houses The Future?

Did you know the UK housing stock is some of the draughtiest and poorest insulated homes in Europe?

As we recently surpassed the UK Overshoot day, the date where human demand for eath's natural resources exceeds what the planet can generate within a year, makes it clear that there is an urgent need for high performing homes that are much kinder to the environment. Fortunately, compact living is kicking up a storm globally and making new waves to promote both sustainability and off-grid living, reducing our carbon footprint.

Compact Housing Explained

A compact house, also known as a tiny house, micro home, or smart home, is an architectural and social movement that advocates for downsizing living spaces, simplifying, and essentially living with less. Unlike a traditional home, a compact home typically utilises Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) as it arrives fully pre-fabricated to the highest standard with fully integrated kitchens, luxury bathrooms, ultra-modern fixtures and fittings and smart design for optimal storage solutions. The key to this concept is to create a home with everything you need for everyday living but in a more compact manner by utilising every inch of the ground.

Differences between Compact Homes and a Standard Brick Homes?

Compact Homes are built with energy-efficiency in mind with a huge focus on natural or recycled materials compared to classic bricks and mortar. Due to this, they typically use 40-50% less energy per year and the carbon emissions are a fraction of that from creating a brick home. This sustainable practices allow most compact homes to run off solar or wind, and in some areas, a mixture of both.

Brick homes are generally drafty and require more heating than an average sized compact home. This means a person who lives in a brick home is more than likely going to spend up to 50% more on annual bills than a person in a high performing prefabricated compact home.

Standard brick home sizes are growing with many building very few 2 bedroom homes and many building up to 4-5 bedroom homes. In the UK, the size of families are in decline so it appears that we are building too many larger homes, creating much more of a carbon footprint, for a nation of people who don’t need the additional space.

How does a compact home up to 50% less energy?

It's smaller sizing significantly reduces the amount of energy required to heat the space along with less lighting and fewer sockets leading to reduced energy consumption. Another key factor is the combination of sustainable materials and unique building methods to create a highly energy efficient homes. To confirm this, we decided to check the performance of our compact homes by completing an airtightness test (before it was 100% finished). The results were a huge success with us reaching near Passivhaus standards before we'd even finished the interior wall boarding.

With such high levels of airtightness, we use an MVHR, a Mechanical Ventilation, Heat Recovery Unit, that helps to regulate the temperature of the home and reduces any potential condensation build up and requires almost no energy - as little as 1w per hour to run! Last, and certainly not least, we kit out our homes with a smart solar power system, allowing the homeowner to drastically reduce the need to import energy from the grid. Any excess energy can charge up the batteries, and even an electric car if a user has one. All of this translates into an ultra high-performing home by simply changing the core materials, build practice and size of a regular home.

What are the downsides to living in a compact home?

If it wasn’t obvious, it’s going to be the reduction in space. Living in a compact space means owning fewer things and being on top of the household cleaning as a single cup, a pair of shoes and dirty shirt will make the home feel like mess! With most of our customers, they add additional living space to their homes by adding additional outbuildings for storage including the use of decking for extra outdoor living spaces. Furthermore, there are many models to suit everyone with some XL models for families or for those who have regular guests. Just because it’s a little bigger doesn’t mean that you’ll be undoing all your hardwork for the environment, it simply means you’ll have a larger home that requires a little more energy to run which can be off set with solar or wind power.

Are Compact Homes The Future?

We believe as the costs of typical brick homes increase with rising energy prices, the generation of today are less inclined to seek a place in the 'rat race' with a vision much more aligned with reconnecting to nature, taking care of the environment and spending more time debt free. A compact home is a simple answer to the solution with a primary goal to create Compact Home Communities with up 20 homes per site on the outskirts of large towns and cities. Electric car shares would be on hand, homegrown vegetables on site and completely off-grid homes reducing emissions and the monetary burden as a Compact Home's average cost is £80,000-£100,000 compared to the UK average home at £292,000.

Furthermore, they are a light touch to the land meaning no concrete bases which are replaced with ground pads emitting damage to the land which is perfect for those looking to rent land as to buying.

To conclude, off-grid living is in urgent supply and with the poorly insulated homes that exist, trying to fix them would cost too much time and money to correct. By moving a large proportion of the next generation into Compact Housing that is 100% off-grid will both save the homeowner money while increasing their health and at the same time protecting our planet.