It’s said the future has already arrived, it just isn’t evenly distributed – offsite manufacturer ilke Homes is addressing that imbalance.
Ike Home has delivered nine modular offsite manufactured homes in the UK, and all have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of ‘A’. In achieving an “A” rating they’ve joined the very few, as only 1% of new builds are ‘A’ rated, and only 0.16% of total housing stock has this top classification.
ilke Homes says offsite manufactured homes create less waste and are more ‘thermally efficient’ because many of the components come pre-assembled or are cut and manufactured using robots. Having already trialled zero carbon homes for five councils and housing associations, the Yorkshire-based company is now rolling out a mainstream offsite manufactured zero carbon home to help investors go green.
The development was commissioned by property developers Positive Homes.
“Government is rightly pushing construction to drag itself into the 21st century and we need to replicate the successes seen with solar, wind and EVs where industry came together, drove down costs and drove up skills,” Dave Sheridan, ilke Homes’ executive chairman, commented.
“We’ve spent years investing in our factory and this mainstream offsite manufactured zero-carbon home is a great example of how the private sector can respond to politicians’ net zero pledges. There’s a huge opportunity here to tackle fuel poverty while helping investors meet their green targets. But we need our supply chain and our partners to work with us. Driving down the cost depends on scale and equally, we need to act now.”
He said that building offsite manufactured zero-carbon homes now will pay off very quickly, ‘because very soon councils, housing associations and homeowners will face carbon taxes and stare down the barrel of huge retrofit costs which can all be avoided’.
“Low-carbon technologies are improving all the time but while some firms claim we don’t have enough of the right skills to build zero carbon homes en masse now, we believe that these are the very vested interests that have held back construction over the decades,” he added.
Laura Bujanauskiene, a resident of an ilke ZERO home in Greenwich, said: “My family and I love living in this home and I firmly believe that everyone else would. Although it’s not cheap to build these homes, I would certainly recommend making the move to zero-carbon living. Our bills are kept low and we can sleep well knowing our home habits are making minimum contributions to emissions. These are the homes of the future.”
Mark Farmer, the UK government’s champion for modern housebuilding, insisted that the government continues to be highly supportive of modern methods of construction (MMC). He said that, as efforts ramp up to meet the UK’s net-zero carbon targets by 2050, it’s going to ‘be vitally important’ that the house building industry delivers more energy-efficient housing to avoid costly retrofitting programmes later down the line.
“Achieving this will require a greater focus on high quality factory-based production,” he said.
Nigel Banks, director of special projects at ilke Homes (offsite manufactured homes), concluded: “New building regulations mean that of the million or so homes that will be delivered between now and 2025, the majority will require retrofitting later down the line. Therefore, it’s crucial for the UK to be building homes to zero-carbon standards today.”
He added: “Not only will this help reduce housing’s large carbon footprint, but it will also avoid the need for costly retrofitting programmes later down the line.”
See: ilkehomes.co.uk
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