Carlile is a highly successful property investor, who has built a business creating property wealth for himself and his clients, with a proven investment strategy, backed by a talented team, keeping ahead in a property game that can change quickly and dramatically.

“I realised that if my dad had managed to buy one other property when he originally bought the family house, his pension provision would have been a lot different,” said Carlile.

His own investment journey started aged 19, with his first house costing £27,500.

Carlile was on the road, but not without a few bumps along the way. Barnsley in South Yorkshire is his home turf and the strategy of his youth was to buy run-down houses; refurbish while living in them, then selling on and trading up to bigger properties. Eventually he bought some land and built his own house, gathering up all his equity in it.

The rest is property investment history with Platinum Portfolio Builder purchasing buy-to-let properties significantly below market value. The business grew off the back of Platinum Property Partners, one of the fastest-growing franchises in UK history.

Carlile co-authored a book with business partner Steve Bolton called ‘The Seven Biggest Mistakes Made by Property Investors and How to Avoid them.’ Carlile admits there are a lot more than just the seven, for the property investment world, despite delivering riches to many, is littered with casualties, brought down by greed and ignorance.

Investors forget to protect the downside and ensure more than one exit strategy. They buy with a view to sell, but what if they cannot? Is there a rental option? Carlile says an effective strategy starts with your reasons for doing it. Some sense an opportunity and quit their job, forgetting at that stage they need cashflow, not just the hope of capital growth.

The mistakes made are obvious. The biggest ones often are. Not buying at the right price is one, even if some get lucky.

“We buy between 10 and 20 properties a month, all at around 25 percent below true market value,” said Carlile. Platinum Portfolio Builder bought around £10.3 million of property in the last 14 months for just under £7.6 million, and is expanding further during these excellent buying times.

Carlile is critical of the media’s appetite for sensationalist headlines, with constant references to ‘the property market’ misleading. “There are thousands of property markets in the UK. Generalisations can be useful and convenient, but can also be way off track.”

Companies touting their property wares, promising instant riches, have sullied the investment landscape over the years and the old adage that ‘if it’s too good to be true, then it probably is’ still holds firm.

“Unfortunately there are a few rogues in our business, giving the industry a bad name. There is plenty of room to make good profits in property, operating, as we do, with absolute honesty, transparency and integrity.”

Whilst property investment is not a get rich quick business, it can be a ‘get very rich steadily’ business, says Carlile, providing it is a medium to long-term play, while buying at big discounts locks in equity gain instantly.

A common mistake is not maximising the leverage potential of property. The maths is simple. Buy £100,000 of property with £100,000 of cash and five per cent growth a year is £5,000.

Use that £100,000 to borrow at 75 percent loan to value and buy £400,000 of properties and you get, if done correctly, a greater diversification of portfolio, more rental income and, at five percent growth, £20,000 a year.

“Property is the best place to utilise leverage. I cannot think of another business where the banks will lend you 70 to 85 percent of the capital cost.”

Carlile may have built up an enviable personal portfolio as well as a great business using his knowledge and expertise to help others make money and secure a pension, but he has made his share of mistakes.

“Some people see successful people and assume they just woke up one day successful. It doesn’t happen. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices and sometimes lost that important balance in life. My biggest mistake until recently was trying to focus on too many things. I now have a single-minded focus on PPB,” said Carlile.

“We continue to learn and invest in personal professional development. The market changes so quickly and what worked yesterday does not necessarily work today.”

Just as there are investors who jump in blind, there are wary investors paralysed by analysis, waiting for ‘the perfect time to invest.’

“It doesn’t exist. The only bad time to invest is ‘later.’ Providing you have the right investment strategy, I believe now is a great time to buy. Prices will not fall much further, with the lack of mortgage finance holding back any significant rises for the next two to three years.”

PPB gives clients a guarantee on the level of equity within their portfolio, rather than, as many do, just committing to a certain number of properties, without giving comfort of performance.

The company has a wealth of skill sets across sourcing properties, negotiating discounts, refurbishing, maintaining, letting and managing, making it an entirely passive investment opportunity.

“Property is the best pension vehicle ever. Introduce some leverage, smart tax planning and nothing comes close to property, especially with a housing shortage that is getting worse. Investment needs to be medium to long-term to iron out inevitable peaks and troughs.”

Carlile, with many UK and overseas investors having not yet capitalised on the UK residential market, is looking for new clients and is keen to work with introducers and IFAs, offering them good commissions.

While many remain obsessed with London, Carlile ploughs a profitable South Yorkshire furrow, where he has been investing since 1993, mining property gold into platinum and ensuring copper-bottomed pensions for his investment clients.

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I wrote a letter to The Daily TeIegraph, wondering if the paper’s campaign partners the National Trust appreciated the irony. Several years ago the National Trust built new homes on the historic Cliveden estate and the 2nd Duke of Buckingham was even posher than Robert, Earl of Grantham.

The Telegraph did not publish my letter, as heaven forbid, that might constitute an opposing rational view on the draft National Planning Policy Framework furore.

Actually they probably did not publish it because I went on to say: “After the success of your magnificent MPs Expenses revelations, you have another media award sewn up - the ‘hysterical one-eyed pandering to readership’ award.”

Stand by for ‘Thousands could die if the Government’s planning reforms go ahead’. It’s about the only hysterical headline The Telegraph has not run. Yet.

I could have spared the sub-editors a lot of work, for the one and only true headline surrounding the debate is ‘Not In My Back Yard.’ And let’s face it we’re all guilty on that score.

Meanwhile I’ve been having a bit of a Twitter spat with the National Trust. To be fair the conservation charity politely replies from time to time. But it did not respond when I asked them how it could publish a video on its website which said that the central tenet of the Coalition’s NPPF was ‘a presumption in favour of development.’

Obviously to sustain their one-eyed prejudices it was not practical to sustain the word sustainable. So hey just leave it out and broadcast utter fiction.

I was told by other tweeters - presumably those secure in their country homes oblivious to the fact that the young of the village cannot hope to own a property in this life or the next – to lay off the sacred National Trust. Sorry, I’m not throwing in the tea towel just yet.

The Trust boasts more than 100,000 signatures on its petition. Well 100,000 people can be wrong when they are told that the field where they walked the dog this morning will tomorrow be encased in concrete. I’m exaggerating, but they started it.

A leader in the Telegraph said government ministers were using “alarmist language to defend the policy shift.”

Yet the paper’s environment editor Geoffrey Lean wrote: “the proposals threaten to open the door to a virtually unregulated proliferation of concrete.” Now that’s alarmist.

Another piece by the same writer is illustrated with a picture of Lathkill Dale in the Peak District, with the caption “Now you see it…”

Blimey, putting houses in a beautiful, steep, limestone valley with rare orchids on a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a National Nature Reserve would be the greatest feat of building since Stonehenge. Not even the combined firepower of Tony Pidgley and Steve Morgan would get that one through planning.

With brutal irony the Telegraph, illustrating another raft of anti-development letters, used a 1930s watercolour by my great-uncle Eric Ravilious entitled: ‘New Bungalow.’

But the last word goes to Peter Iden from Devon, whose Telegraph letter somehow got through.

‘Sir – a developer is someone who wants to build a house in the country. A conservationist is someone who owns one.’

Rupert Bates is editorial director of www.whathouse.co.uk and Show House magazine (www.showhouse.co.uk

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The journey was instructive and not simply because it is not every day I commute to work by helicopter. Every other day at the moment - there’s a recession on you know.

Anyway we covered a big swathe of Southern England and what was most striking from on high were the vast carpets and patchwork quilts of green acres.

The flight was in the week that the likes of the Council to Protect Rural England, the National Trust and the world’s most miserable comedian Griff Rhys Jones all laid into the Coalition’s draft National Planning Policy Framework with breathtaking ignorance in a deliberate campaign to whip up public fear and anger.

Apparently the concrete is already being mixed by the Beelzebub builders. The countryside will be buried under development before you can say Not In My Back Yard.

The NPPF said, even if you read between the lines or backwards, nothing of the sort, whatever the depth of paranoia, or pathetic attempts to justify self-appointed roles as trade unions for those comfortable in their rural idylls, determined not to let hoi polloi in to live and work.

It is the cynical hijacking of a planning debate that is critical to the economic, social and environmental future of this country. Yes the NPPF is that important.

Of course there are issues within the draft that need addressing, for it is far from perfect and comment is invited and welcomed. But the one-eyed responses of some of its critics is shamelessly irresponsible.

By all means be cynical of political motives, voice concerns and ask if there is sufficient protection within the document for the green belt. But all opposition credibility is lost when facts and policy statements are ignored in blatant attempts to raise the ire of a gullible public, convincing them that bulldozers are being mobilized as part of a sinister government plot to overrun our green and pleasant land in the dead of night.

Planning is adversarial enough as it is, but why on earth can we not get sensible people round the table in robust, ordered, constructive debate, rather than self-appointed guardians of the countryside, no doubt chasing new members, making ridiculous and highly damaging claims?

Such groups casually throw out defamatory remarks labelling housebuilders pillagers, or worse. It gets them headlines, more signatures on hysterical, inaccurate petitions and sells more tea towels.

But it does nothing for what they claim they are safeguarding – the future prosperity of the British countryside, balancing growth with conservation and shaping our rural communities.

CPRE president is Bill Bryson, one of my favourite author’s, who, unlike Rhys Jones, I find very funny. Well Bill, Mr Weston and I invite you on a helicopter tour so you can see how nasty, greedy developers have pillaged the British countryside – if concrete is green that is. If you are not pleasantly surprised by the view from on high Bill, I will eat your books.

Rupert Bates is editorial director of whathouse.co.uk

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He is the only player they recognise. “Jonny and Zara make a lovely couple,” coos one duchess, refusing to believe it is actually the big bloke with the broken nose married to the Queen’s granddaughter.

Before Wilkinson left for the biggest rugby show on earth, the England outside-half doffed his beanie to grass roots rugby, from the minis upwards; how he first caught the oval bug and the modest obsessive was born.

“I’ve been naturally drawn to the sport since I was four,” said Wilkinson.

By the age of seven he could be found practising his goal kicking at Farnham rugby club in Surrey until it was too dark to see the posts.

Wilkinson admits he was obsessed from an early age with what he wanted to do in life and even wrote his ambitions down, convinced that would help him achieve them.

Diary of Jonny aged seven and three-quarters: “ Drop the goal to win the World Cup for England.” He probably traced drawings from Gray’s Anatomy so he knew the names of all the injuries he was destined to suffer.

Yes Wilkinson would love to win the World Cup again in New Zealand, but he also hopes the tournament inspires a new generation of seven-year-olds to kick rugby balls in the twilight.

“Even as a child I loved the team ethic rugby promoted and required. It is a special kind of spirit inherent in a contact sport,” said Wilkinson.

“When kids join a rugby club they start a journey – in sport and in life. Individual accolades are great and you are very proud of them. But even as a small child, there was nothing better than being part of a team experiencing the highs and lows.”

It would take a particular seven-year-old to share Wilkinson’s drive and introspection, but it was clearly a healthy introspection, for his greatest strength as one of English rugby’s all-time greats and heading into his fourth World Cup is his ability to operate in a bubble and yet bathe in the team ethic.

“You set your own goals, but you help others achieve theirs.”

Wilkinson is both easy and difficult to talk to. He is always ready to chat. Not in a brash, ‘look at me’ way, but simply because natural affability, coupled with self-analysis, means he is desperate to answer the question.

However such is his intensity the response becomes almost a dream sequence. Ask a question, go for a couple of pints at a Surrey pub and come back to find him still deep in a soliloquy, not always easy to unravel.

There’s been Buddha and quantum physics along the way. But now the 32-year-old, complete with Mediterranean tan from Toulon, appears as relaxed and contented as he’s ever been – not to mention super-fit, taking the honours in the England squad 40-metre shuttle runs prior to departure for New Zealand.

Wilkinson admits fame has at times been claustrophobic. “It is easy under the glare to get results driven and lose sight of life in between. To think that unless you win and meet expectations, what you have done is pointless and wasted. Very few people can stare media attention in the eye without blinking. Society is led by it.”

Wilkinson says the key to dealing with intense scrutiny is “taking time out and re-assessing where you are” so you are “thriving under pressure, not just surviving it.”

“As a person and a rugby player always prepare the best and give of your best.”

All Black Dan Carter, the number 10 under the fiercest spotlight in New Zealand, also began his rugby journey as a child, running home from school to kick through the posts his father made him for his eighth birthday.

“Guys like Dan Carter deserve to be held in the highest regard. Every game he plays with pride, heart and professionalism,” said Wilkinson.

“Win or lose, despite people’s reactions, does not change the fact you have given everything you’ve got.”

The results on the rugby field, fortunately, were not as important to Wilkinson the child, as Wilkinson the professional.

“But even at the highest level the enjoyment does not come down simply to winning and losing, but in the satisfaction as a team working together and progressing. Pleasure is derived from constant challenges in a group environment.”

“It does not matter how long you play for, you always find out something more about yourself and what you are able to achieve.”
You sense the next few weeks may be another obsessive journey, but this time Wilkinson will smell the roses along the way.


This interview first appeared on www.everythingrugby.com

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England 22 New Zealand 33
By Rupert Bates

This was one of the great games of rugby at any level. The fact that this final was played out by teenagers at the end of a ferocious tournament made the intensity and skill levels on display even more remarkable.

New Zealand won their fourth successive Junior World Championship – they’ve won them all – but they did not deserve to win this one. It was Lucky Blacks not Baby Blacks in Padova, Italy tonight as an inspired England, by far the more adventurous and purposeful, were thwarted by crucial errors and lack of composure at key moments – not to mention being on the wrong end of a couple of refereeing decisions.

Meanwhile New Zealand, wise beyond their years, had the game management, led by outside-half Gareth Anscombe, and showed they have the defensive qualities as well as the offensive flair and opportunism to win big games. New Zealand at junior level, unlike their senior counterparts, do not choke in World finals.

It was a big night for New Zealand captain Luke Whitelock as he lifted the trophy. The number eight is the latest in the Canterbury Whitelock dynasty and was winning his second Junior World Championship.

England were immense to a man from the moment they belted out the National Anthem with lung-busting pride. The front-row did their grunt work superbly and showed great skills in open space. Sussex can be proud of its second row of Charlie Matthews, not long out of Hurstpierpoint College where he was head boy and partnered in the engine room by Joe Launchbury, a product of Christ’s Hospital, Horsham, while England’s back-row were tireless. Behind the pack England were a joy to watch, but lacking precision at times, with wheels that frightened New Zealand and that has never been said at this level.

“It was a tough battle. We thought we could take them tonight. The strength of our squad has been to dig deep and fight for each other. New Zealand have got a bit of everything and are dangerous all over the park,” said England’s outstanding captain Alex Gray.

England made a really positive start; clearly not intimidated by the scary statistic that New Zealand have never lost a game in the history of this championship.

George Ford, at just 18 the youngest player in the tournament, played a clever kicking game getting in behind New Zealand, playing in opposition territory.

England showed plenty of pace and invention outwide and it was the speed of Wasps flier Christian Wade, taking a clever inside pass from Owen Farrell, that produced England’s first try, although there was a suspicion Wade might have just brushed the touchline on the way in.

Gray was leading the huge forward effort, epitomized by tight-head Henry Thomas. The giant Sale prop, a product of Millfield, made a terrific try-saving tackle on wing Mitchell Scott on 22 minutes.

But New Zealand’s other wing Charles Piutau opened New Zealand’s try account in the 26th minute. New Zealand, spotting wing Andy Short down injured, spun it wide and a great run by Canterbury hooker CodieTaylor put Piutau away.

Auckland outside-half Gareth Anscombe was Dan Carter-esque with the boot and just before the break a driving maul from a lineout created a try for prop Ben Tameifuna, giving New Zealand a 20-10 half-time lead.

Anscombe stretched the advantage and then Ford missed a penalty in front of the post. But England then produced a magnificent try, started by a sumptuous offload from the tournament’s heaviest man Mako Vunipola and after a lovely floated pass by Owen Farrell, finished by fellow prop Thomas, showing pace and a nose for the whitewash that should mean instant dismissal from the front-row club. Ford converted from the touchline.

England were now on fire, playing terrific rugby, rocking the supposedly invincible Baby Blacks. Ford made a little step and offload to Matt Kvesic, but somehow New Zealand scurm-half TJ Perenara got an arm under the ball as the Worcester flanker, a warhorse throughout, tried to ground it.

No problem. England simply came back again for more and a beautiful kick by Elliot Daly was skilfully kicked on and touched down by Wade for the RGS High Wycombe alumnus to score his second of the game and seventh of the tournament, only for another Anscombe penalty to put New Zealand 26-22 ahead on the hour.

England were relentless, but mistakes were thwarting their ambition. On 71 minutes Ford, such a rich talent but hot and cold as a kicker, missed another penalty.

New Zealand had all the luck and five minutes from time Beauden Barrett, the Taranaki full-back, who has played for the New Zealand Sevens side, clearly handed off Ford before he gathered the ball for the crucial score and the unerring boot of Anscombe did the rest.

England

Ben Ransom (Saracens); Andy Short (Worcester), Elliot Daly (Wasps), Owen Farrell (Saracens), Christian Wade (Wasps); George Ford (Leicester), Chris Cook (Bath); Mako Vunipola (Saracens), Mike Haywood (Northampton), Henry Thomas (Sale), Joe Launchbury (Wasps), Charlie Matthews (Harlequins), Sam Jones (Wasps), Matt Kvesic (Worcester), Alex Gray (Newcastle – capt)

Replacements:

Rob Buchanan (Harlequins)

Will Collier (Harlequins)

Sam Twomey (Harlequins)

Matt Everard (Leicester)

Dan Robson (Gloucester)

Ryan Mills (Gloucester)

Marland Yarde (London Irish)

New Zealand

Beauden Barrett (Taranaki); Mitchell Scott (Tasman), Francis Saili (Auckland), Lima Sopoaga (Wellington), Charles Piutau (Auckland); Gareth Anscombe (Auckland), TJ Perenara (Wellington); Solomona Sakalia (Wellington), Codie Taylor (Canterbury), Ben Tameifuna (Hawke’s Bay), Steven Luatua (Auckland), Brodie Retallick (Hawke’s Bay), Brad Shields (Wellington), Sam Cane (Bay of Plenty), Luke Whitelock (Canterbury -capt).

Replacements:

Sefo Setefano (Waikato)

Michael Kainga (Wellington)

Dominic Bird (Canterbury)

Carl Axtens (Bay of Plenty)

Brad Weber (Otago)

Rhys Llewellyn (Canterbury)

Waisake Naholo ((Taranaki)

Referee: Jaco Peyper (South Africa)

5-0 Wade try

7-0 Ford con

7-3 Anscombe pen

7-8 Piutau try

7-10 Anscombe con

7-13 Anscombe pen

10-13 Ford pen

10-18 Tameifuna try

10-20 Anscombe con

(HT)

10-23 Anscombe pen

15-23 Thomas try

17-23 Ford con

22-23 Wade try

22-26 Anscombe pen

22-31 Barrett try

22-33 Anscombe con

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Captain Andrew Strauss has called on the highly rated Tobias Bates to join his England side when they face Sri Lanka in their all-important Test match at The Rose Bowl on 16th June.

The England captain sees Bates as a vital part in his side’s chances of victory in the match, which could prove the decider as the third and final match of the nPower series.

Strauss said: “There’s nothing better than playing for England in front of your home crowd. They give you so much energy it’s like having a twelfth man on the field.”

Support your fellow countrymen at The Rose Bowl between 16th and 20th June 2011.

The Rose Bowl, Botley Road, West End, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 3XH
T: 023 8047 2002 F:023 8047 2122 E: enquiries@rosebowlplc.com

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Rupert Bates

Quite simply one of the greatest games ever and that from the confines of a Sussex pub, not the rugby theatre of the Millennium Stadium.

It had absolutely everything. Thank god I did have a pint or two to hand, for taking gulps of ale reminded me I needed to breathe. The collisions were monstrous; the commitment extraordinary.

It could lazily be summed up as a game of two halves, but this was a game and a half – and then some.

Now when you have beaten by one of the most astonishing comebacks in the history of sport and it happened in the final of the European Cup, you are going to look gutted and shell-shocked come the final whistle.

But watching the Northampton players at the end was one of the most brutally compelling, evocative sights I have ever seen on a sporting field. It was beyond desolation. It was savage in its portrayal of emptiness and incomprehension.

Those pictures of the Saints players should be shown over and over again in England football dressing rooms. This is what it truly means to lose when you have given every fibre of your being for the jersey and as for Ben Foden’s monumental effort in defeat, the England full-back should be allowed to kick as many Cardiff cabs as he damn well likes.

Northampton, sensational in the first half opening up a 22-6 lead, did not fall apart. They did not give it away, or assume the Heineken Cup was on its way to Franklin’s Gardens. No, they were beaten by the most sensational 40 minutes in Irish rugby history and utter exhaustion.

The joke was about what went in Leinster’s half-time tea. One assumed a grandee like Brian O’Driscoll or Jamie Heaslip had stoked the fury. But then we heard from O’Driscoll that the rousing orator was a boy who looks like a reject from a Dublin boy band, who makes it to the semi-finals of X Factor.

Take a bow Ireland outside-half Jonathan Sexton, 25, who ended the game with 28 points, including two tries. You may as well throw him the Lions no 10 jersey for the first Test in Australia. As the X Factor judges would say: ‘You owned that stage Jonny.’ This Sexton did not just dig the Saints’ grave; he built a cathedral on it.

“There were some inspirational words from Jonathan at half-time which picked us up. He was a man possessed. He said this game would be remembered if we came back and we will remember this for a long time,” said O’Driscoll.

The Leinster forwards were too busy speed-eating spinach at half-time to say anything. Sean O’Brien, the Leinster flanker, was a beast in the second-half, with Heaslip not far behind, while hooker Richardt Strauss did anything but waltz as he, front-row cohort Cian Healy, and the rest of the pack tore up trees and through tackles, whilst having the wit and composure to offload subtly or run intelligent support lines with pace and power.

The biggest significance of this display: The World Cup. Ireland were an embarrassment in France four years ago. The New Zealand tournament may still be four months away, but with days like these to draw on, coupled with the way Ireland beat up England at the end of the Six Nations, who knows what they might achieve.

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Forget the cosmos, the arrow of time and epic landscapes that dominated the BBC series Wonders of the Universe.

Park your theories on thermodynamics, the waxing of the moon and the orbit of the sun and listen to what Professor Brian Cox said on planet earth at a particular instant in time and several trillion years before the end of the age of starlight.

Ecobuild at the ExCeL exhibition centre in East London is a slightly more prosaic location than Patagonian glaciers in South America.

“The products on show at Ecobuild are the middle way between the tree huggers and the climate change deniers,” said Cox, everybody’s favourite particle physicist.

Cox, the stellar professor and TV presenter, was at Ecobuild to open the Practical Installer area on behalf of Pumb Center, a supplier of construction products and materials.

The link between the rock star scientist - he played keyboards for D:Ream in the 1990s - and central heating, plumbing and drainage equipment was not obvious, until Cox spoke.

“There seems to be two camps. One that thinks the Earth should be protected at all costs and at the other end of the spectrum are those who think that it is okay to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere if it enables progress to be made,” said Cox.

“But I think the scientific and sensible perspective and also the one represented at Ecobuild is that the emergence of renewable technologies enables us to take the middle ground - not go back to living like cave men but also not to march through progress and energies at all costs and ignore the planet completely.”

Cox began with a light bit of banker bashing, saying that science and engineering were doing their best to support and stimulate economic growth in the absence of much help from the banking sector.

“6.4 per cent of GDP comes from physics based industries and construction is defined as physics based. Finance is less than five per cent of GDP.”

Positioning sustainable construction as the ‘middle ground’ at first seemed like a PR attempt to give relevance to his celebrity appearance at Ecobuild, but for a stargazer Cox is remarkably down to earth and fathomable.

“I was thinking what can I say in the context of Ecobuild and my background as a physicist and then it occurred to me that sustainable building products can and should represent the consensus - the interface between the two opposing views on climate change.”

“Making existing houses and new buildings as eco-friendly as possible is key and the necessary construction technologies are being developed. The government must back these technologies. They make sense economically as well as helping the planet.”

The industry should make more of Cox’s comments. He is already an idol among physicists and astrologers - not to mention those who remember the hit single adopted by New Labour ‘Things can only get better’ and a growing portion of the country’s female population. Particle physics just got sexy.

Can Cox become the poster boy of the construction sector and give the industry a sprinkle of stardust? It is rare to find such a high-profile personality who can rationalise the opposing views on climate change. Cox finds it ” very strange” that there can be any debate about the damage greenhouse gases are doing. But also embraces a civilisation that has learnt how to build and progress. There may be life on Mars, but it is not wearing hard hats and drinking mugs of tea - yet.

Cox uses the words ‘vast!’ and ‘unimaginable!’ more often than most, but when your work on the Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland is the biggest science experiment ever, exploring what happened a billionth of a second before the universe began, you live in a world of exclamation marks.

The science is there; the will among suppliers is there, the regulation, if still chaotic, is there. But until the public, philosophically as well as financially, engages with the imperative of eco construction, there will be no mainstream buying market.

As Cox didn’t’ say, it’s not rocket science.

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This article originally appeared in The Field. www.thefield.co.uk

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You know you are heading to meet an eco-architect when the directions include instructions on how to get there by bicycle.

Sorry ZEDfactory. I am all for reducing my carbon footprint, but cycling down the M23 is not sustainable for my health, although parking my petrol-guzzling wagon in front of an electric car charger point was not very sustainable either.

Bill Dunster’s offices are located on the Surrey site of BedZed, the mixed-use sustainable community he designed, developed by the Peabody Trust.

Armed with my book of stereotypes I was expecting to find Dunster the eco-warrior in a potting shed with a mug of nettle soup.

I was expecting a fight too. I am neither a warmist nor a denier when it comes to climate change; more a doubting Thomas, sceptical until I see Poseidon emerging from the floodwaters of London with a mighty roar and the Gherkin impaled on his trident.

But Dunster disarms you – thankfully not in a nuclear way. While the integrity of his projects reveal a man clearly passionate about the environment and a bold and innovative architect/scientist mixing his low carbon technologies, the fact that he had just stepped off – or rather hobbled off nursing a bad back – a plane from China, suggested he realises the hunt for global business solutions means commercial pragmatism sometimes had to trump eco-efficiency.

Dunster uses bald facts not the four horsemen of the apocalypse to get his point across. “The world’s population is rising fast: fact. We do not have the fuel to run the world based on the numbers, nor the resources to build and sustain the necessary infrastructure.”

In other words simple supply and demand economics for nature’s resources - be they clean or dirty. And as we have to find and fund fresh wells of sustenance to draw on, they may as well be clean, rather than fossil fuels.

Dunster is clutching at straws – literally – for a solution and to open up a whole new sustainable supply chain.

His housing system StramitZED - on display at Ecobuild - combines biomass, straw-based energy generation, with low energy manufacturing processes and a biofuel based distribution strategy.

StramitZED - a joint venture with straw panel supplier Stramit Technology Group - buys straw from farmers, thus producing another revenue stream for the agricultural sector. The Stramit straw board system, fusing compressed straw’s natural resins, delivers a durable, high-performance Code Level 6 house with low embodied carbon and exceeding Code 6 in photovoltaic electricity generation.

The thermal mass keeps the house cool in summer and warm in winter with terracotta floor tiles and vaulted ceiling bricks, while there is passive ventilation with heat recovery, based on the principles of the ZEDfabric windcowls.

There is also access to Feed In Tariffs and a PV carport canopy for charging electric cars. “The net electricity cost to the homeowner is zero,” said Dunster.

The StramitZED house features the ZEDroof, providing a conservatory style area in the south-facing roof space and generating electricity and hot water.

The panels are produced at Dezhou Solar City in China, between Beijing and Shanghai by Himin – the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world.

“There is simply no investment of this size in Europe. You need volume for economies of scale. Zero carbon is no longer a technology question; it is a cost question,” said Dunster, determined to establish a proven, national supply chain model right through to energy mortgages.

ZEDfactory has an office in Shanghai, with its ZEDpavilion showcasing a holistic approach to urban sustainability.

Dunster has never been a ‘chained to the railings’ green protester. In his spare time he prefers to chop wood, walk the dogs and enjoy a glass of beer in a country pub.

His epiphany came aged about 12, growing up in suburban London. “There was an apple orchard opposite our house where I used to play. One day it was not there, replaced by a truly awful development of ‘executive’ homes. I thought there must be a better way.”

Dunster is wary of sounding like a Zen master coming down from the mountain, but stresses that sustainability is not just about product, but lifestyle, community and a sense of well-being. “It is the package that makes people happy – homes, space, children, culture, fashion, sex.”

So why the feet dragging by the big boots when it comes to reducing carbon footprints? “Too many vested interests. Developers bought too much land at the top of the cycle and so want to hold off from having to implement onerous environmental standards.”

“At least the industry is now legislatively engaged with sustainability, if not yet philosophically engaged and it has not been sold to the public.”

Dunster, pulling no punches, said: “There is no point in district heating. Super-insulated homes do not need space heating. It is the politics of energy, with lobbying from the big power companies.”

It is not all bad news. “The fact that the Code for Sustainable Homes got through the government machinery will transform the industry. It is akin to the passing of the Victorian Public Health Act.”

Dunster is not expecting phone calls from the mainstream volume housebuilders any time soon, “but I would love to sit round the table and talk to them”.

You suspect Dunster will find a more receptive audience down the pub, chatting to local farmers. Pyrolosis of agricultural waste for zero carbon energy production is fascinating and Dunster nothing if not ambitious, talking of “how farmers will save the world.”

Surplus straw, rather than decomposing and belching out greenhouse gases, is used as a fuel in a pyrolosis plant to produce a hydrogen rich bio-methane gas, with the carbon fixed as charcoal.

The gas is then cleaned and sent to the city, where small fuel cells can provide electricity and heat to buildings, which are retrofitted, negating the need for digging up streets for thermal heat or district cooling mains.

I am by now lost in an eco-maze; an extraordinary cross-pollination of ideas and connections. The process can even create liquefied biogas to power planes, while the charcoal produced from the straw goes back into the soil, increasing fertility and agricultural yields to improve food harvests. My only beef is the “predominantly vegetarian diet” needed to live Dunster’s zero carbon, zero waste lifestyle.

There is more. Dunster is working on plans for a zero-carbon solar farm village in North Devon called DuneZed, on the site of an old power station, putting holiday homes and leisure facilities beneath solar canopies.

If I had bottled the embodied energy in Dunster’s ideas, I could have flown home from BedZED on my bike.

www.zedfactory.com

This article first appeared in the February issue of Showhouse magazine

Rupert Bates is editorial director of www.whathouse.co.uk and Showhouse magazine

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