Rabbits on the roof in Britain's greenest house
Stephen Goodwin on the new home that even recycles its own water
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Your support makes all the difference.A house so green that rabbits will live off its turf roof has been given the go-ahead for Kentish Town, north London, despite the opposition of the local planning authority.
Peter Cuming can now start work on a pounds 250,000 housing development that will feed power from solar panels into the national grid and recycle water from baths and washing machines. Two sections of roof will be insulated with soil a metre deep growing meadow grasses and herbs. A tree is also likely.
Rabbits came into the scheme when council officials suggested to Mr Cuming that neighbours might be disturbed by roof-top mowing. "I said `Well, maybe I should have some rabbits' and since then I have been rather hoist by my own petard," Mr Cuming, an urban planner, said.
Permission for the house and three flats was secured when John Gummer, Secretary of State for the Environment, rejected Camden council's objection. It was not averse to the solar panels or even the rabbits but objected to the size of the development in a compact area and the loss of daylight for neighbouring properties.
But Mr Gummer and Mr Cuming, a former building and planning inspector, said homes in a nearby council development were closer together. "They have gone for medieval spacing; neighbours can shake hands from their windows."
He calculates that the panels will produce the equivalent ofabout half the electricity used by the four homes. It will not be used directly but sold to the national grid. Solar water-heating will further reduce energy demand and in the basement there will be a communal recycling bank and bicycle store.
"What we are attempting to show is that even in really urban areas you can do the same sort of thing that up to now has only been done in places like the Welsh hills," Mr Cuming said.
He had expected more co-operation from the council, which has publicly advocated use of solar power and turf roofs. The site, in Talacre Road, is a derelict air-raid shelter and former lift factory. Construction is to begin in the New Year and be completed by March 1998.
Mr Cuming is already being showered with advice about the rabbits, including a warning about them being plucked by kestrels marauding from Hampstead Heath. The grass area will be fenced like any other roof garden and the rabbits will be able to burrow beneath the turf. "I will be living in one of the homes and looking after them," the developer said.
As for numbers and the rabbit's renowned reproductive abilities, Mr Cuming is planning for just two of the creatures. "And they will probably be both male - a couple of limp-wristed rabbits might be best."
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