Reading on, we find out that the house is made using an insulated concrete formwork, i.e. they stack up hollow polystyrene blocks like giant lego and pour concrete into them. So that’s polystyrene, which is made from petrochemicals, and concrete, which produces some 5 – 8% of the entire world’s CO2 emissions. Neither material is particularly environmentally responsible or sustainable.

Although the owners have underfloor heating, they don’t use it, relying on an Aga and heated towel rails instead. One of the owners is quoted as saying “We keep it as a steady 75 degrees [24C] and the Velux windows in the [upstairs] kitchen area are left open all year to prevent it getting too warm.”

Agas are not known for their environmental credentials, specially as most of them run on fuels such as oil, and if the house is so hot that the windows need to be kept open to regulate the heat, that’s a big waste of energy.

We are later told “The eco-element of the house extends to the wall finishes – every wall has five coats of beeswax, applied directly onto chemical-free plaster with a sponge.” But I’m not sure how the use of beeswax balances out the use of all that concrete and polystyrene.

I guess there’s two ways to look at this: either the house includes a lot more environmentally sound materials and practices than the article tells us about, or it’s not actually eco-friendly at all. It may be really well insulated, but can’t be our only marker of sustainability. Indeed, as it’s presented, I find it hard to understand why this house is being labelled as eco-friendly.

• Glass dining tables. We have one now, in our rented flat, and it’s a nightmare to keep clean.
• Leather tables. We have one of those too, a little coffee table, and it’s also a nightmare to keep clean.
• Slate place mats or work surfaces. Slate just sucks up grease and water and is, yes you guessed it, a nightmare to keep clean.
• Granite work surfaces. Always look dirty and seem to oddly soak up liquids in the cracks in the crystals. Look nice from a distance, but hideous in day-to-day use.
• Small windows. Lots of light is important, otherwise winter just gets miserable.

So, I’ve created two new categories in order to collect these things together in simple bullet points. That means that when we begin actually planning the house, we can just pull up the Things We’d Like In Our House category, and voilá, a ready made list. And we can give our architect a link to Things That Will Never Appear In Our House and s/he can get a fair idea of our dislikes too.

Do try to contain your excitement, and ready yourself for two posts to come…