A perfect storm

An awesome story of disaster with a very cool resolution. In 1983, Michael Rea and his wife bought a run-down building in the far north of England in the Shetland Islands. Then, in 1992, a hurricane with winds recorded at 212 Miles Per Hour demolished the house. Micheal and his wife decided to rebuild and their story is fascinating. From Vector One Media:

The Zero Carbon House
Zero Carbon House is a project to deliver a low energy house. It is located on the Shetland Islands in northern UK. The project has been gaining much attention and much support. Plans have been developed to include solar and wind generation and a unique horticultural area as well. Vector1Media asked Michael Rea, the owner of the property to share his story about Zero Carbon House. The following is his personal account and description of the project.

The project began as a demonstration for a zero carbon footprint house located on the most northerly island in Great Britain at Uyeasound, Unst, Shetland. The construction site has great historic interest as it was a trading station used by the Hanseatic Merchants from Bremen, Germany who established a booth on the site during the 14-15 th century.

Behind the booth was the Merchants house which was demolished in the late 1950s to make way for the new house which stands on the original site. The location was used in the 19th-and early 20th century as a hotel and local folk law has it that Robert Louis Stevenson stayed there while his father built Mucckle Flugga lighthouse.

In 1983 my wife and I purchased the booth which was in a very sad state and had existed as part of the 19th century start up premises for the trading company that is still trading on Unst, Alexander Sandison and Co. The premises were used as a shop and it was also the island bakery. The upstairs part of the premises was a sail loft where they made and repaired those products and a well at the back of the house is Shetland's deepest well, and provided the water for the bakery.

We found all of the old day books and account books which we loaned to the archives in Lerwick. This gives an insight into the social and commercial life of the island. Although the truck system had been outlawed, the accounts still showed that it was still operational at the later part of the 19th century.

In 1992 a hurricane with recorded wind speeds of 215 mph caused so much damage that we had to demolish the property. We used a local company to do this work and I had a telephone call from their head man who said 'Michael, we have chucked your hoose in the Loch'.

We spent a number of years deciding on what we wanted to put onto the site and traveled to Canada and Scandinavia to look at timber-frame houses. We eventually decided to purchase a timber frame house from Scotframe Timber Engineering in Scotland. From there, we took an off the shelf house kit from their designs, re configured it and added a sun room and what was going to be the garage incorporated this into the house structure to provide an office and an additional utility room.

I then met Dr. Jeff Kenna in 2000 who is the CEO of Energy For Sustainable Development and Jeff asked me to consider using our house as a demonstration project. Jeff and I and his company also worked on community energy schemes to show that communities can own wind farms and bring substantial funds into their own communities from selling energy to themselves using a structure called an ESCO. Coupled with carbon credits this can bring huge benefits to remote and urban communities.

The house enjoys a zero-carbon footprint. The cool thing about it is that it is not buried into the ground somewhere, it looks and works like a normal house. it was also constructed from COTS -- Commercial Off The Shelf materials -- no exotic space-age unobtanium, just stuff you get from the big-box builders store. The crucial element is the engineering and the design. A lot of thought went into the design and the infrastructure. The house has its own website with a lot more information: the Zero Carbon House Project For all my ranting against the Global Warming sub-prime science, I am very much concerned with the environment. Projects like these are exactly what needs to happen, not the cap and trade bullshit, not the restrictions on trade or manufacturing. And yes, four generations of Robert Louis Stevenson's family was in the curious business of Lighthouse Building. The story was wonderfully told by Bella Bathurst in her book: The Lighthouse Stevensons. Your local library should be able to get a copy.