'I don't pay energy bills - my house makes ME money'

A man who was inspired by the faults in his aunt and uncle's house has built a spectacular eco home which makes him hundreds of pounds in profit a year. Colin Usher, 71, from West Kirby, wanted to be an architect from the age of 11. He would sketch drawings and pick out faults in other designs.

The dad told the ECHO how he was inspired by the “upside down” house his aunt and uncle had built when he was just a child and would visit for holidays. Colin said: “I love being an architect, it was something I always wanted to do since the age of 11.

“I think I got into it because my aunt and uncle built a new house for themselves, a holiday home, a very unusual house for the time. It was built so it was upside down, it had spectacular views and they built the living/dining and kitchen space on the first floor and had this vast number of small bedrooms on the ground floor.

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“It was fantastic, but it also had faults. As an 11-year-old I would go there for holidays and I started to think this could be done better. Thinking that at 11 years old. Why is it like this? And then I started doing sketches and things. I think that is what took me down the path of being an architect.”

His interest then developed into his education and we went on to study architecture in Aberdeen. He said: “It just suits me, I’m dyslexic, I have other neurodiversity things about me but architecture is just absolutely it as far as I'm concerned. The problem solving, organising, the low level science, I just love it.”

Colin qualified as an architect in the 1970s and dedicated his career to creating environmentally-friendly homes. He said: “I’ve built lots of stuff, but somewhere in 2010 I thought I'll never get the chance to build what I really want to build, which is a house with zero energy bills, unless I build my own.

“At the time, we lived about 250 yards away from where this site [Colin and his wife, Jenny’s, now home] is, which was a drafty old beautiful house, built around 1907. My wife saw that this site was up for sale so we bought it and built the house. From the moment I started it I gave it everything I could to optimise it being low energy.”

He added: “[When we started] there was a little semi-derelict house which was riddled with rot. We took it down and put this in its place. About 10 years ago we won an award for this house, because it was a house that cost us £15 a year on energy bills. We lived in it for a few years and then I started to try and optimise everything and I drove the bills down and now we actually make a profit from the house. This year it'll mean I will make £400 profit on the energy bills.

“In the 10 years that we have lived here, we have saved around £40,000 in that time on energy, which is incredible. All because we don't have any energy bills.”

Colin had started the design work on their house 13 years ago, before they had even bought the site, then they moved in 11 years ago. “Almost to the day,” he says.

The house is a beautiful home with a huge south facing window that lets in the gorgeous sunlight and views. Colin says the view “changes all the time, you can see right up to the war memorial.”

However, 10 years after the move, when Colin retired he decided to take on another huge challenge. He told the ECHO: “I took my pension and bought a site just down the road that Jenny and I had always had our eye on. We thought we might build our house on it at one stage and instead I built two apartments and a house there, to almost the same standard.

“Those three units we rent and that is our pension fund. We bought the site just before covid and couldn’t start work because of covid, which held things up a lot. One of our tenants moved in and has spent about £10 a month on energy and that’s on cooking, that’s everything, it’s incredible.”

Colin added: “People ask me what they can do to make their house work as well as ours and the answer is there is no one thing. The reason these work so well is because I've done everything.”

Despite having four eco properties, the build hasn’t stopped for Colin. He said: “I’m building a new house for a couple in Heswall. I’m still building, I suppose eventually I might run out of energy. But for now I have tenants living there dealing with my pension, designs on the drawing board and I’m building a home in Heswall.”