Couple who will be able to light up a room.A couple who met on the same university course are pooling the lessons they learned to build a "smart" eco-home. Martin Campbell-Wonders met his wife Xanthe while studying on the BEng Communications and Electronic Engineering course at Northumbria University Northumbria University is a modern university located in Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England. Schools Northumbria offers approximately 500 study programmes through nine Schools:
Sharing an interest in all things technical and green, the couple embarked on building their own "smart" and eco-friendly house and hope to be in by Christmas. The house, in Otterburn, Northumberland Otterburn is a small village in Northumberland, 31 miles (50 km)northwest of Newcastle Upon Tyne on the banks of the River Rede, near the confluence of the Otter Burn, from which the village derives its name. It is part of the district of Tynedale in the county of Northumberland. , is heated by a ground source heat pump heat pump: see air conditioning. heat pump Device for transferring heat from a substance or space at one temperature to another at a higher temperature. and solar panels. A rain water storage tank supplies water to the toilets. They hope to add a small wind turbine to supply some of the electricity. Sensors in the house can automatically light a room when a person enters and can be programmed to recognise an individual when they walk in a room and play their favourite song. Their dog, Harley, will even have its own doorbell hardwired into the automated system to announce when it wants to come in. Some of the technology used in the house has been installed in a test lab at Northumbria University and is also being taught on a number of courses in the School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences where Martin is a senior research associate. The new house has five bedrooms, two bathrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen, a dining room and a cloakroom cloak·room n. 1. A room where coats and other articles may be left temporarily, as in a theater or school. Also called coatroom. 2. A private lounge adjacent to a legislative chamber. as well as a detached garage and a third of an acre garden. The couple bought the house as a timber frame kit from Finland, started work last June and are now in the final stages. Martin said: "It had always been a dream of mine to build my own eco-friendly house. "When I met Xanthe she had the same dream and studying on the course made us realise the technical possibilities. "With the escalating costs of property we found the only way we could afford what we wanted was to build the house ourselves. "We spend about four hours every night and 12 hours a day at the weekend but now the end is in sight, it's definitely been worth it." |
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