Simple Header

Project Etopia affordable smart home

Page Description

This 3-bedroom detached home is 108 square metres and costs around 50% less to build than a conventional home.

project-etopia details

Project Etopia’s house is a detached demonstration home unit. It is a 3-bedroom house with 108 square metres of space. The cost comes in at around 50% less than a conventional home price. It’s a smart home for approximately £1,200 per square metre for a smart home, whereas build costs for basic traditional bricks and mortar construction are around £1,500 per square metre.

Project Etopia demonstration home at the BRE Science Park.

Constructing the Project Etopia home

All the exterior wall superstructure can be constructed in an on-site time of 20 hours, with 16 hours for walls and four hours for scaffolding. This is far quicker than the three weeks generally needed to build a traditional home. The Etopia build system is also not weather dependent.

This new smart home features its own solar cladding in conjunction with Great British Voltaic (GBV), solar and tiles, and triple glazing. For heating, it has an air-to-water heat pump with underfloor heating and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR).

It also incorporates E-Smart’s plug-and-play smart home system with Samsung smart appliances. This house was put on a Swedish isolated foundation system with Raft foundation reinforcement and concrete.

Key features of the Project Etopia home

The ground floor was manually assembled from the structural insulated panels (SIPS) wall panels onto Galvanised steel base plate fixed to foundation. Cross laminated timber (CLT) ring beam was installed to take the first floor joists with Half width SIPS infill fitted over the ring beam.

The Etopia build system uses panellised 4Wall system to provide an airtight superstructure, achieving an airtightness twice the standard of Passivhaus. The panelling system can support multiple floors and loads safely and can also withstand hurricane-strength storms and winds. The heaviest panel weighs 97 kilograms and each panel has a structural loading strength of 825 kilonewtons or 80 tons.

Etopia homes can produce more energy than they use. They use renewable energy with battery storage and energy-saving construction to achieve this net zero combination.
Etopia homes offer up to a 39% reduction in carbon dioxide compared with traditional construction.
On average 163 tons of carbon dioxide are saved over 25 years on a single Etopia home, compared to a traditional home.
An Etopia home has an EPC rating average of 105/100(A).