‘We try to live our lives in a reuse world as much as we can’
As well as running Beauty Kitchen, a cosmetics business with sustainability at its core, Jo Chidley, and her husband Stuart have built a home that reflects their environmental ethos.
They built their ecohome in the North Lanarkshire village of Overtown in the Clyde Valley in 2010. Chidley says: “I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to sustainability. I have long been a fangirl of William Mcdonough and Michael Braungart who wrote Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. I became fascinated with how you could create something that would use no energy, or only renewable energy.”
The couple set out to create something as close to a “passive house” – a highly energy efficient building – as they possibly could.
Their ambition wasn’t without its problems. Chidley says: “We live on farmland in North Lanarkshire Council [area] and we would have had to use slate tiles on our roof. We challenged that as we wanted a material that looked like slate but was made out of old tyres to be sustainable. The council had never heard of this before, but agreed to it.”
Other features include ground source and air source heat pumps, and a new thermal flow boiler that works on Scottish Power’s overnight economy schedule. Chidley says: “We try to live our lives in a ‘reuse world’ as much as we can – we put in a second hand kitchen from a house in Belgravia in London.”
The house also reflects Chidley’s love of “The Glasgow Four” – Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his contemporaries. “Our staircase is a recreation of one that Mackintosh did with his wife. It’s made of pine, but painted black to look more Mackintosh.”
She adds: “Before this house I had moved 33 times in my life, but we will never move again if we don’t have to.”