What sort of house would you really like as your future home? One with minimal heating bills, airtight and with controlled ventilation? Made of responsibly sourced sustainable materials? With good day lighting, sound insulation and rainwater harvesting? Adjustable to changing living patterns?

The challenge currently facing the building industry is how to turn that dream into reality. In a normal house built to today’s building regulations, the average area of air leakage is about a square metre. By 2016, leakage allowed will be reduced to the size of a business card. Government regulations say that by that year (certainly by 2020) every newly built home should have a net zero carbon footprint – that means almost no energy bills at all.

No wonder that the recent eco-build fair at Earls Court Exhibition Centre was packed out with thousands of people in the building and design industry searching for effective and practical new eco-concepts, developments, products and materials. They ranged from straw-bale building blocks, to wallpaper that emits light, to water-saving taps turned on by waving a hand, to porous paving made of shredded recycled aircraft tyres.

But which ideas are really cost-effective? Which really work? And what might an eco-house built with the latest ideas actually look like?

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