CONSERVATION AND URBAN ECOLOGY

Conservation and Urban Ecology have received £107,150 to convert the old Forester's Lodge in Queen's Wood N10 into an energy-efficient home complete with solar, water and wind energy systems and a renewable energy park.

It may seem like a step back in time, a house on the edge of  ancient woodland cut off from electricity and water supplies. But this is deepest north London and the capital's first eco-house is being designed as a showpiece for the latest technology in environmentally friendly urban living. 

It's the brainchild of a group of Londoners drawn from a mix of professions - academics, architects, lawyers, teachers, ecologists and botanists - who want to promote low energy, sustainable lifestyles. In 1997, the group set up a registered charity, Conservation and Urban Ecology or Cue, to develop an eco-house and environment centre which will eventually produce all its energy from renewable sources.

They found the perfect location in the 100-year-old woodkeeper's lodge in Queens Wood, near Muswell Hill.  The lodge, which had been derelict for seven years, was completely boarded up and had been squatted by drug addicts. "It was dark, damp and filthy," says Cue administrator Wanjiku Kamau. "The first night we slept there we had to move the bed four times to avoid the leaks in the roof, but you could still see that it was a beautiful house."

Haringey council was glad to get the property off its hands and leased it to Cue for a peppercorn rent.  Wanjiku, who has taken time off from her PhD in community medicine at University College London to act as joint caretaker with her husband Murray Shelmerdine, said converting a Victorian property suited the charity's aim perfectly. "Other eco-houses have been built from scratch but here we are able to show how people can introduce affordable and modern alternative technologies to an existing home." 

A team of architects from the University of North London is designing new plumbing, insulation, heating and lighting systems to an ecofriendly brief. Already working on projects in Europe, members of the Low Energy Architecture Research Unit were delighted to get involved in a project closer to home. "This is about being more in control of your lifestyle and not having to rely on big suppliers motivated by financial gain," says Wanjiku. "It's an experiment we hope to develop as more upto-date technology becomes available." The fact that the house is situated on the edge of ancient woodland gives the group a further challenge: To show how modern life can coexist with a very fragile ecological system. Cue is setting up a library and an Internet database of green suppliers and alternative technologies and hopes that, armed with more information, customers will start demanding safer products from manufacturers. 

Once the centre is up and running, a team of expert consultants will be on hand to conduct household energy audits and advise on reducing energy use. A training centre with links to universities will also be set up and the house will serve as an education centre for schoolchildren. Cue will give a Nineties twist to the original Victorian tea house at the lodge by reopening it as an organic cafe and is already running a series of evening talks on the genetic engineering of food.  Part of the back garden not devoted to beekeeping and organic produce will be transformed into a renewable energy park, demonstrating the latest in solar, wind and wave power and possibly including a solar-powered fountain. The capital work is being funded from a fund of £120,000 made up of grants from the Lottery and the Civic Trust and individual donations. 

Several months into the project, a steady stream of volunteers is busy cleaning, painting and repairing the lodge. It's not easy work. The wood panelling on the front verandah has been rebuilt with English oak from a managed woodland which, says Wanjiku, was extremely difficult to find. Now the volunteers have uncovered a hardwood floor in the main room. Since no eco-friendly wood sealers exist, this will have to be painstakingly waxed by hand. The interior walls are being decorated with a cloudy blue organic paint made from cheese curd and earth pigments, apparently a modern formulation of a traditional mixture. 

Although the plan is to create enough energy from solar power to make the house self-sufficient, Cue members would also like to see better terms introduced for trading energy with the national grid. "We would love to export to the grid when we have more energy than we need," says Wanjiku. "It is more convenient and better for the environment than storing it in batteries, but at the moment the grid buys electricity from renewable energy producers for 2p and we would have to buy it back for 8p." The house will use photo-voltaic panels to convert light energy into electricity. At the moment, so few of these panels are made that the cost is prohibitively expensive but those at Cue hope that consumer demand will bring prices down.

The architects are now working out how to built a self-sustaining water system so that the house could be cut off from water supplies. It would include the filtration of rainwater for drinking, "grey water" recycling for under-floor heating and lavatories, and a reed bed system to treat waste water.

For people not quite ready for such a drastic overhaul but who would like to make small changes to their home, the house will show different forms of insulation and energy efficient kitchen and other appliances. Says Murray Shelmerdine: "Eco-logical houses tend to be very dull and grey but we hope this will be a really attractive and comfortable place to live." What the people at Cue would really like now is funding for a new bell in the lodge clocktower in time for the millennium - the original used to be rung by the woodkeeper when the woods closed at night.