Compost toilets to ground source heat pumps, double glazing to straw bale insulation: you voted from 10 superb eco homes

The Pavilion. Photograph: /E2 Architecture

Over the last two weeks we've had the great pleasure of running profiles of 10 eco homes around the country. 

Some have displayed high-end style and elegance, notable for their technological wizardry and innovative energy solutions. Some have sprung from community inspiration, or have provided bold new templates for home ownership. Others have been light-on-the-earth dwellings that use recyclable materials, and take a lo-fi approach to home life. But the common theme for one and all has been that we want to live in them. All of them.

We chose our list of 10 with the help of a fantastic panel of experts who helped us come up with a list that reflected so many different facets of the move to sustainability. Thanks, once again, to the Green Building Council, Hattie Hartman, sustainability editor at the Architect's Journal,HAB housing, The Green Press, Green Sky Thinking, Superhomes, theCentre for Alternative Technology, BREEAM, and The Built Environment Centre for Northern Ireland.

Voting opened on Tuesday last week, and you voted in your thousands. We had a wonderful week fielding tweets and emails and your general enthusiasm and in an amazingly even spread of votes – no house got less than 5 per cent.

But enough chatter! Incredibly, despite thousands of votes, there were two tied runners-up for your favourite eco home. One was Lammas in north Pembrokeshire – the eco-village that is a shining example of low-impact dwelling, completely self-sufficient and deeply connected to the land in which it is situated. 

The Lammas project ecovillage at Tir y Gafel, in North Pembrokeshire, Wales. Photograph: Lammas

The other runner-up, with precisely the same number of votes, was Lilac co-housing project in Leeds – it has re-drawn all the rules and come up with a radical new model in the form of a mutual home ownership scheme and a new way of owning a stake in the housing market.

Lilac co-housing project in Bramley, Leeds. Photograph: Andy Lord

But the winner of the popular vote for your favourite eco home is … The Pavilion Eco House! With an earth sheltered lower floor, a biodiverse green roof, rainwater harvesting and ground source heat pumps, this is one of the first private houses to achieve level five on the government's code for sustainable homes.

Architect Sam Cooper, who built the house in south-east London for his parents, hoped that the Pavilion would prove that sustainable could be sexy. He seems to have been proved correct.

Which houses do you think we should have included? And what do you think makes the perfect eco home?

Interested in finding out more about how you can live better? Take a look at this month's Live Better Challenge here.

> via The Guardian