Now here's a turn up for the books. It would seem that children are to learn about the pitfalls of shoddy building work and cowboy builders.

The only people likely to invest in zero carbon homes are those that believe that they will get similar creature comforts to a normal house but with more environmentally friendly credentials. In order to achieve this, extra money would have to be spent, not less.

It would seem that a solution has been made to this economic issue; the mud house. In fact it blows away the other zero carbon opposition as it only costs 300 quid. Whether you would want to live in it though is a different matter altogether. BuildersBox's opinion is that it would be better to spend your money planting a whole forest and carbon offset than live like a medieval peasant.