The good life

I got a shock turning into Dave Hampton’s street. It’s the first seriously low-carbon home I’ve ever visited and I suppose I pictured either a mud hut next to a waterfall and children wearing four jumpers, or maybe something grander, bristling with wind turbines and ringed with neighbours protesting at ruined views and noughts knocked off their properties.

So it was a bit of a disappointment to see that it looks just like any other house. Energy efficiency doesn’t necessarily show up on the outside. But take the tour and it becomes clear. For example, of the houses you know, how many have a device that calculates how much energy is being used and at what cost? (When I looked, the Buckinghamshire house was burning 260 watts at a cost of 2p an hour.)

Is he for real? For those of you who don’t know, Hampton is affectionately known as “Mr Sustainability”. However, it’s a title he wrestles with.

“I love it, but I know a lot of other Mr Sustainabilities and they are much better people than me. I would get really pissed off if I was them, and heard me being referred to as Mr Sustainability.”

For the record he would rather be dubbed something else. “I have actually consciously decided to go the carbon route, so I guess on my tombstone I would rather be Mr Carbon or Mr Lack of It.”

He’s not joking. His passion at times verges on the unhealthy. But you get the feeling that this is someone who really wants to make the world a better place. Maybe that’s why he scooped an inaugural sustainability leadership award from Building magazine last year.

Sustainability is in his blood. His late father was an architect with a penchant for ecology. His mother still produces only a tiny bag of household waste each week. Hampton has carried on the family tradition — and he wants to bring it to a lot more people.

Green Pride

For those of you who are not so green, Hampton – an FCIOB and the institute’s spokesman on sustainability – is urging you to see the green light. He frames it in terms many may find faintly disturbing: He wants you to celebrate any latent green tendencies you may be suppressing. He wants you to burst, greenly, from the closet.

“If you start ‘coming out’ about having those feelings of greenness, then other [people’s] greenness gets drawn towards you. Then you get the support of that green network.”

Industry is slowing coming out. He believes the last two years have helped make a difference. Companies are now seeing the opportunities to be had, but we still have a lot of work to do, he says.

“I said that 2004 was going to be the year the world woke up to climate change. It might just have been. In 2005, particularly the second half of the year, you were seeing real mainstream construction directors saying: ‘Bloomin’ heck, I did not realise that this was going on and no one told me – so let’s have go at it.’”

Hampton is certainly having a go. Not only has he left his position as director of ABS Consulting and set himself up as a carbon coach, someone who aims to educate householders on how to reduce emissions. He is also on the verge of finishing a long-term project to ensure the family home is energy efficient.

He moved to Marlow in 2001 and began working on the low carbon emission home from day one. He became, as he says, “unhealthily obsessed” with it. It was the toughest project he’s ever had to manage. Apart from getting plumbers and builders to follow exact instructions, he had a consultancy to run and four children to care for. But it was worth it.

The shower water feels wonderful, knowing that half a tonne of carbon did not go into it

Dave Hampton

“When I have a shower – you’re probably not too interested in when I shower — but we’ve got this solar water system. I can’t explain how good it is to have a shower in the summer, where I know that water is 100% solar heated. If I was a poet I would say it feels like soft rain. It just feels wonderful compared to knowing that half a tonne of carbon went into it.”

And the family has started to buy into it.

“It’s not like a normal home, but my second son Daniel likes building the fire. They’re all getting the hang of turning the lights out, and have got more of a feel of why it’s important and why we can’t just be like everyone else around us. Well, we are like everybody else I guess, because we’re still not zero carbon.”

But the results are impressive. The five-bedroomed detached boasts a solar thermal panel that help saves £100 on gas and a tonne or so of carbon dioxide emissions. In addition there is a “Whole House Heat Recovery” system that cleverly maintains the property’s fresh air levels by extracting moisture while retaining the heat. Other features include a log-burning stove, high levels of insulation, low flush-volume toilets, efficient lighting and a condensing gas boiler.

Reducing carbon emissions is now a major talking point across the country. From adverts telling us to discover our carbon footprint to the prime minister launching a review into energy that could pave the way for a new generation of nuclear plants.

Fuel’s gold

Hampton believes, however, that cleaner gas-fired power stations and nuclear are not real alternatives to fossil fuels. “There is no fossil fuel that is sustainable ultimately. So gas may or may not be better than something else, but it’s a bit like saying: ‘Let’s come off LSD and try heroin.’ Same for nuclear.”

He’s looking for a total rethink of our energy needs: ”If we look at what we really need to stay alive at the local level and then look at the supply systems that you need, you might come up with the answer that you don’t need the National Grid.”

He believes that everyone should carbon coach themselves and look at what they can do to cut down on emissions.

“I’m probably getting up myself a little bit, but there’s that quote about trying to live simply, so others can simply live. If everyone did that in fossil fuel terms, then the UK demand could shrink so rapidly that you suddenly turn round and do a V sign and say we don’t need your network. I haven’t reached that point so I don’t want to flick that V sign yet, but I’m almost there.”

Hampton’s been a carbon coach for six months now. It’s a move he believes is a real long shot and potentially a slow earner as people attempt to get their head around the idea. Even without the coaching, he remains busy with consultancy work and conferences. The message he brings is: ignore sustainability and reducing emissions at your peril.

“Sustainability is a big field and to me if you crack the carbon bit of it all the other bits start to fall into place. I see carbon as the key for unlocking the whole jigsaw to sustainability and it’s more urgent. But I do love it.”