Gusto Homes is to construct two eco-estates – Collingham Park and Collingham Brook – bringing around 100 new properties to market, both of which feature ‘green’ technologies.
Thought to be the largest housing development in the UK to be heated using geothermal energy, Collingham Park is a residential development with 60 retirement apartments and bungalows. Using geothermal energy from 32 boreholes reaching 120 metres underground, the technology will cut resident’s energy bills by around 75%.
The adjacent site, Collingham Brook offers 45 properties including three- and four-bedroom passive solar homes. The houses at Collingham Brook, which are triple glazed and super insulated, generate the majority of their energy from rooftop solar panels, which provide electricity for heating and hot water.
Gusto Homes has previously used their passive solar homes designs at its Woodlands Edge development in Lincolnshire, where 29 eco-homes have been built around private woodland near Lincoln.
Chief Executive of Gusto Homes, Steff Wright said: “Over twenty years, Gusto Homes has been at the forefront of eco-home construction, but this is one of our most ambitious green projects to date, with an entire community benefiting from geothermal energy.
“The technology we’re using to create this estate is game-changing, and it has the potential to transform the way homes are built in the future as we try to cut our emissions, reduce our impact on climate change and cut the energy costs for our homebuyers.”
Gusto Homes has used geothermal heat pumps in custom and self-build projects for several years, but never across an entire housing development on this scale.
The geothermal boreholes at Collingham Park are being drilled by Nicholls Boreholes. Drilling Manager for the company, Tim Holland, said: “While this is the largest scale project we’ve worked on, geothermal technology is surprisingly straight forward, reliable and efficient. Essentially, pipes carry very cold water deep underground, where the natural heat of the earth raises the water’s temperature. The water loops back up to the surface where a heat pump extracts the heat energy using a process that’s similar to that of a household refrigerator. For every kilowatt that it takes to power the heat pump, it produces up to four kilowatts of energy which means it can cut your heating bills to just 25% of the rate you’d normally pay. It’s great that Gusto Homes is using one of the most efficient renewable energy sources available in this country; they’ve committed to a good and efficient system which will provide green energy for many years to come.”
