WITHIN two days of arriving on the building site, this eco-house can be snapped in place.
An innovative design means all the hard work – putting it together and fitting it out – can be done behind closed doors in a factory in Mansfield.
It is then lifted on to the back of a lorry, transported to the site and placed on pile foundations and quickly "zipped together" using the unique SpineLock joining system.
Derick Wilson and Melody Stokes, executives at Spinelock UK, are building 18 of the houses at the site of a former bowling club, named The Green, in Westfield Lane, Mansfield.
As well as being quick to build, the homes are also cheap to run – with a range of eco-gadgets meaning running costs are as low as £250.
Derick said the innovation came as a response to the struggling housing market.
"When I realised the housing market was in crisis – I put the two together – fast construction and low running cost, to create a house that could be expertly built, quickly and solidly, at prices on a par with conventional build but with the environmental systems in place to create low running costs and emissions."
With 15 years experience working on renewable energy projects, Derick is proud to have finally seen his project come to fruition, with the site set to be launched on June 21-22.
Efficiency is the name of the game for Melody, who is herself weighing up moving to a Mansfield eco-home from her cottage in Coventry, which she has adapted to save 75 per cent of her carbon footprint.
"It's just proper engineering from start to finish.
"Most people come up with design tweaks as an after-thought but we try to pay as much attention to detail as possible from the very beginning.
"We look at all the possibilities of reducing the time it takes to build it, which has the knock on effect of making it cheaper to build," Melody said.
She added that with the government keen on building new and affordable houses, and quickly, the timing couldn't have been better.
"They're so much more than flat-pack houses."
To fit in with the style of the local area, the houses in Mansfield are designed with the traditional wooden panelled design of the neighbourhood.
