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This house, in Crossway, Kent, is one of the first zero-carbon homes in the UK. It was designed by architect Richard Hawkes. Photograph: PR

If your sole experience of “green homes” is TV’s Grand Designs, chances are your idea of an eco-home looks like the one in Kent above.

But reality is a world away from the super-insulated and vaulted Crossway above, much as we love new build eco-homes.

Most of the energy-efficient and energy-generating homes of the future will look more like this Nottingham house, or this London end-of-terrace:

Want to turn your own house greener but don’t want to shell out for a complete refurb? Speak with our advisers on 0800 118 5722 and arrange your FREE Home energy survey and start reducing your energy usage and start saving on your bills today.

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Energy companies have been told by their regulator, Ofgem, that they must calculate their customers’ direct debit payments more accurately.

The regulator has responded to widespread complaints that energy firms have been setting direct debit bills too high.

Cash surpluses built up by customers eventually offset subsequent bills.

But consumer organisations have accused energy firms of using excessive direct debit income as an interest-free loan.

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“Ofgem reviewed the direct debit arrangements of the six major suppliers after customers complained about significant increases in amounts they were being asked to pay”, the regulator said.

“The new condition in suppliers’ licences would mean they must ensure payment levels are clearly and accurately explained and based on the best available information.

“Suppliers will also need to be able to justify why they are holding onto credit surpluses built up by a customer,” the regulator added.

Better explanation

The curbs on excessive direct debit bills will come into force this winter.

They will affect the bills of the 40% of energy users who pay their bills this way.

In March this year, Ofgem published an initial report on its investigation into the direct debit complaints it had been receiving.

These first emerged last autumn.

Peter Luff, MP for Mid Worcestershire, accused firms of raising direct debit payments even when their customers’ accounts were in credit.

The consumers’ association Which? subsequently accused energy firms of milking their direct debit customer base.

But Ofgem concluded that there was no evidence that gas and electricity firms had been systematically setting their direct debit charges too high.

Instead, the regulator said that firms should make better efforts to explain their billing calculations to customers.

A spokeswoman said this was still its view and there had been no change in its policy.

But after a consultation exercise it wanted to change formally the licences of the energy firms so that if there were any problems in the future it could take swift action.

“We will be watching the situation very closely,” said the spokeswoman.

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Our green makeover is in its final stages – and the last few steps are a hard slog through refurb fatigue.

Tom’s maisonette makeover is almost finished. Photograph: Tom Lipinski.

With the structure of our eco-loft extension finally complete, we have thrown ourselves into insulation overdrive. We want to do away with central heating – in the loft to start with, but eventually in the house as well – so we’ve taken an almost Scandinavian approach to the entire “separation from the elements” concept.

We insulated over, under and between the timber structure. We squeezed silicone in between the cuts and joints. We added vapour barriers and thermo-reflective breather membranes on both inside and outside of the insulation and then we taped up all the joints for good measure. The bits we couldn’t get to directly received a generous dose of tightly packed Rockwool or expanding foam. In the end we consumed over 12m³ of Kingspan and nearly 30 rolls of Rockwool – most of it ended up in the loft.

At the end of this process we ended up with an object looking more like a spaceship than a conventional loft conversion. But,desperate circumstances – the issues of climate change and running out of natural resources – require equally desperate measures.
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Dye-doped DNA nanofibers can be tuned to emit different colors of light.

By adding fluorescent dyes to DNA and then spinning the DNA strands into nanofibers, researchers at the University of Connecticut have made a new material that emits bright white light. The material absorbs energy from ultraviolet light and gives off different colors of light–from blue to orange to white–depending on the proportions of dye it contains.

DNA light: Coating an ultraviolet LED with DNA nanofibers containing dyes creates a bulb that emits bright white light.

The researchers, led by chemistry professor Gregory Sotzing, create white-light-emitting devices by coating ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with the material. They are even able to fine-tune the white color tone to make it warm or cold, as they report in a paper published online in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

The new material could be used to make a novel type of organic light bulb. The light emitters should also be longer-lasting because DNA is a very strong polymer, Sotzing says. “It’s well beyond other polymers [in strength],” he notes, adding that it lasts 50 times longer than acrylic.

The color-tunable DNA material relies on an energy-transfer mechanism between two different fluorescent dyes. The key is to keep the dye molecules separated at a distance of 2 to 10 nanometers from each other. When UV light is shined on the material, one dye absorbs the energy and produces blue light. If the other dye molecule is at the right distance, it will absorb part of that blue-light energy and emit orange light.
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