Visit to Green Street

29 October 2011: The WB Ecohouses group were invited to view the show house in the Green Street development in the Meadows - by architects Marsh Grochowski, and developers Blueprint. See more detail at:
http://www.ourgreenstreet.co.uk/downloads/Scheme%20Summary.pdf

John Long, for Blueprint was showing us around, and we had about a dozen members from WB Ecohouses. This was a brave venture to build in an area that has been 'postcoded', i.e. has lower house prices than south of the river, but the quality of the houses has been sufficient to generate a huge amount of interest. The architect, Julian, lives nearby in a self-built house, and Blueprint have a policy of sustainable development. There are 38 houses, and it's a reasonable risk that there are 38 families willing to move to energy efficient houses like these, so Blueprint went ahead with the scheme.

The houses are almost Passivhaus standard, with a high attention to thermal insulation, thermal break detailing, MVHR, on site power generation, high quality windows and other features. Added to which they have wonderful qualities of daylighting and space. They have a good urban density (being compact town houses to 3 stories) with roof gardens and on site car storage.

The houses of the second phase have an excellent view of the Victoria Gardens park on the Embankment. There was such high demand for these that they were sold by sealed bid, demonstrating that there are more than 38 families who recognise quality!

These houses of the first phase have high performance windows with external window blinds, operable from within. Each window has a small anemometer so that they blinds can retract in high wind conditions.  The houses all have PV panels on the roofs, although only a token amount per house. We were distressed to see that subsequent fitting of satellite dishes and TV aerials appear to have misunderstood the risks of shading to the PV panels (many of which seemed to be partially shaded.)
  It is nice that John seems to know all the buyers of the properties. He has also got some shared promotion with the Riverbank restaurant, to get help with leafletting and hospitality.