Explore a low-carbon house at Grand Designs Live

Explore low-cost solutions for reducing the carbon footprint of your home

By Victoria Purcell | 1 April 2022

Green energy is never far from the agenda when it comes to home heating, but the rising cost of living is likely to make installing new energy-efficient systems a daunting prospect when budgets are limited.

A walk-through installation at Green Living Live – a new show focussing on eco-homes taking place alongside Grand Designs Live 2022 – aims to show that reducing the carbon footprint of your home doesn’t have to cost the earth.

The low-carbon house, sponsored by EDF, is a single-storey modular home that visitors to the show can step into and explore for themselves. Designed by ModPods, which creates affordable modular housing solutions, it will showcase innovative energy systems that mean zero energy bills, with any overflow of energy sold to the national grid. The future-proofed homes will also be electric-car ready.

Grand Designs Live 2022 will debut the low-carbon house for low-income families

ModPods (also pictured top) designs and delivers affordable modular housing solutions

The low-carbon house, created to provide housing for low-income families and supplied to councils and housing associations, will be single occupation, but can be expanded with additional modules to become a ‘town house’ for a family.

Low-carbon energy systems fitted into the home include photovoltaic solar panels and battery storage by Solarwatt (enabling householders to generate and store solar power), a smart hot-water system that only heats the water you need by Mixergy, and waste-water heat-recovery system by Showersave (which simply transfers the heat from your waste water when showering to the water heading into your boiler and shower mixer).

Experts from each of these energy-efficient suppliers will be on hand at Grand Designs Live 2022, which runs from 30 April to 8 May 2022 at London’s ExCeL, to offer free advice on how to retrofit your home with low-carbon heating solutions.

kevin mccloud looking and touching lighting at his green heroes at grand designs live

Kevin’s Green Heroes at Grand Designs Live showcases the latest eco products

Green Living Live, sponsored by myenergi, will also showcase eco-friendly products such as sustainable building materials, insulation, energy-efficient and renewable heating systems, furnishings and electric car-charging equipment. A live theatre stage and advice hub will be devoted to issues surrounding sustainability.

You’ll also find Kevin’s Green Heroes, showcasing Kevin McCloud’s pick of the latest eco products, as well as the new Green Grads platform, where recent UK graduates engaging with issues like sustainability, climate change, circular production and biophilia share their ideas for a cleaner, greener future.