Our Criteria
GreenMoves offers three different advertising options – Advertising your Eco Property, Inclusion in the Featured Green Developments section, and Advertising Spaces on the website – each of which have their own criteria.
Advertisements for Eco Property
Each property advertiser is requested to complete a questionnaire often followed by further questions from us, to assist us in determining their eligibility for appearing on GreenMoves.
There is a number of standards that we use to assess eligibility, details will be shown within the property advertisement if a property has been assessed using these standards. The standards are:
- BRE Eco Homes
- Code for Sustainable Homes
- SAP Ratings
- Home Energy Ratings/Energy Performance Certificates
- Other Criteria
The systems use a rigorous set of calculations and criteria to assess each property. The owner/developer has to pay a registered assessor to have the assessments carried out. The systems are well recognised by the construction/housebuilding sector and should be seen as a very useful guide to prospective green home buyers.
BRE Eco Homes
EcoHomes, offered by the Building Research Establishment (BRE), is a straightforward, flexible and independently verified environmental assessment method which looks at the issues below in New Homes:
- Energy
- Transport
- Water
- Ecology and land use
- Pollution
- Health and well being
- Materials
Environmental performance is expressed on a scale of Pass to Excellent. Properties must have achieved a rating or “Very Good” or “Excellent” to be included on GreenMoves.com. Properties which reach “Excellent” standards will be highlighted with the highly rated symbol. For further information see the BRE Website.
Code for Sustainable Homes
From April 2007 the Code for Sustainable Homes will replace Ecohomes as the environmental assessment method for new homes in England. There are new mandatory minimum levels of performance that have been introduced across 6 key issues:
- Energy efficiency/CO2
- Water efficiency
- Surface water management
- Site Waste Management
- Household Waste Management
- Use of Materials
The Code has a scoring system of six levels. One star is the entry level for a sustainable home (above the minimum requirements of the 2006 Building Regulations) and six stars reflects “exemplar development” in sustainability terms. Code Level 3 is approximately equal to the Ecohomes Very Good score.
Properties must attain Code Level 3 or above to be advertised on GreenMoves.
Properties meeting Code 4 and above will be highlighted with highly rated symbol.
For further information please visit the BRE website.
SAP Ratings (Standard Assessment Procedure)
The SAP system for energy rating of dwellings is a calculation of a building’s energy efficiency. This system has recently been revised, and there are two variants, depending when the house was built.
The original system ran from 2000 to April 2006, and under this version SAP ratings were scored on a scale from 1 to 120, where 120 is the highest.
In order to be advertised on GreenMoves, we require a rating of 110 or higher under the original system.
Properties reaching 115 or higher will be highlighted with highly rated symbol.
From April 2006, however, the assessment process has been revised, and the new procedure is known as SAP 2005; this offers ratings of between 1 and 100. Properties assessed under this scheme require a score of 90 or above to be eligible for advertising on GreenMoves.
Properties reaching 92 or above will be highlighted with highly rated symbol.
For more information on SAP please visit the BRE Website
Home Energy Ratings/Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs)
These ratings which focus on energy efficiency and environmental impact of buildings come into force from June 2007 in response to EU directives on improving energy efficiency in all buildings, especially existing buildings. They will be carried out by trained inspectors who will apply a system that rates a property from A to G in terms of energy efficiency, with A being the best.
Only properties falling into the A category will be eligible for advertising on GreenMoves.
For more information on EPCs click here to see an example.
Other Criteria
Alternatively, with older properties, and in certain circumstances we may permit advertising in cases where it can be shown that an effort has been made to make the property more environmentally-friendly, such as:
- Higher than normal levels of insulation.
- Natural materials used in the building, e.g., timber framed, wool insulation, straw bale walls, organic paints.
- Solar thermal hot water heating systems on the roof.
- Photovoltaic panels on the roof for generating electricity.
- Wood fired central heating systems.
- Rainwater harvesting for flushing the WC.
- Greywater collection (from sinks and bath) for watering the garden.
- Composting toilet.
- Large amounts of glazing to allow lots of daylight.
- Heat recovery systems for space heating.
- Passive solar orientation - where the house benefits from a southerly orientation, gaining free light and heat, this is normally allied to larger amounts of glazing facing south and smaller amounts to the north elevations.
Any features like the above will be listed in each advert.
Featured Green Developments
To be featured in this section developers must have demonstrated a clear commitment to addressing climate change and sustainable living by attaining a BRE Eco Homes Very Good or Excellent standard or equivalent with at least one of their developments. This service is offered with the intention of showcasing the very best green developments in the UK and beyond.
Please contact us by email at fgd@greenmoves.com or by calling 0845 0944663 for an informal chat about whether your development meets our inclusion criteria.
Advertising spaces on the Website
We will accept advertising in the advertising boxes on our website from companies which are sympathetic to the aims and ethos of GreenMoves. Please contact advertising@greenmoves.com for further information.
