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front of house

6 Southdown Avenue
Brighton BN1 6EG

The previous owners of this house had initially planned to have a passive solar house built, but couldn't find an affordable building plot in the city. Instead they bought a lovely Victorian house near Preston Park, with great access to the city. However, the house was far from their green ideals. This is how their idea of the eco-refurbishment of a Victorian house was born.

It took five months of planning as the house is in a conservation area and eight months of hard work by various local tradesmen to transform the house from a typical Brighton Victorian house into a bright, warm and environmentally friendly home. The house possesses many features to improve its energy efficiency, including internal insulation of the outside walls with radiant in-wall heating, high performance glazing and a large solar thermal array. It is predicted that the CO2 emission have been cut by 70%.

Their house features on the Old Homes SuperHomes website.

 

Further information

Peter and Sigrid’s own website which tells the story of this refurbishment

Old Home Superhome website which features Southdown Avenue

Case study on ‘Eco-refurbishment of Victorian house’ on receipt of an award for ‘Private sector commitment to carbon reduction’ from South East Sustainable Business Partnership, SEEDA, GOSE and the Environment Centre

Case study with more detail

Features

+ internal insulation
+ condensing boiler
+ solar thermal
+ high performance glazing
+ radiant wall heating
+ energy controls
+ solar thermal
+ wood stove
+ low energy cooking