FROM the outside, Greendale Cottage looks like your average picture-perfect countryside home.

Solar panels on the roof suggest the occupants maybe somewhat energy efficient, but they give merely a hint of the true energy saving power of the newly built three-bedroom house.

On a wintery day, deep into Weardale, a well heated home is essential, and Greendale Cottage is as much a warm rural sanctuary as any other home in the dale.

Except in this house there is no heating system, no radiators and most enviably no large fuel bills.

It is the first in the County to make use of some of the most modern technology in energy conservation.

The home is effectively an ‘air tight box’ or a ‘house with a tea cosy on it’ as owners Phil and Joy Newbold describe.

From the spacious living room to the modern country kitchen, into the bedrooms and even the attic, the temperature is a comfortable 20 degrees throughout. There are no cold chills drifting from one room to the next and no variation going up or down the stairs.

Greendale Cottage uses Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MHVR), a whole house ventilation system that gently and silently sucks damp air from the kitchen and bathrooms and pushes clean fresh air into the other rooms.

The impressive part is that the outgoing air is used to warm the incoming air, some 94 per cent of the heat is retained within the building.

For MHVR to be successful the house needs to be as air tight as possible to protect heat escaping, which means insulation is needed in the floor, walls and roof as well as lots of special air-tightness tape internally and weather-tightness tape externally.

The successful project has set the bar for new housing developments and is the first Band A Passive House in the North East, passive buildings meet a high standard of energy efficiency, reducing their ecological footprint.

Husband and wife, Phil and Joy, decided to sell their family home in 2008 when they started looking for a building plot to base their low-energy house in County Durham.

They found the 345sqm plot, formally the walled garden of an adjacent property, in a small hamlet in West Blackdene, near St John’s Chapel, Upper Weardale, in 2011 and work started on site in March 2012.

The £70,000 plot came with what they thought was detailed planning consent, but it turned out it expired in 2009 and another application made by the vendor was refused because of changes in council policies.

Phil’s dream of bringing the latest modern technology in energy conservation to County Durham was proving to be difficult.

“Planning insisted on retaining the L-shaped floor plan of the original planning consent with random stone walls, natural slate roof and sliding sash windows.” He said.

“We moved to a small rented cottage next to the plot in April 2012, we had one sunny week in May but then it started raining and it never stopped and 2012 turned out to be the wettest summer for 100 years.”

Phil and Joy decided to move into the house on February 1, 2013, before it was finished and now as the house nears completion they are starting to appreciate what all of their hard work has achieved.

It is no surprise then, that in November last year, Phil and Joy’s creation won Best New Home at the 2014 National LABC Building Excellence Awards after scooping the regional award.

A panel of industry experts judged a list of the highest quality projects from around the UK to reward the best in technical innovation, sustainability and design.

“We were invited to the awards ceremony in London and we thought we would go along, but we thought we had no chance after seeing the other regional winners.” Joy said.

“When they called our name I couldn’t believe it, we were both in shock.”

“We are really enjoying living in the house, we wouldn’t have chosen to come this far up the dale but we love the village, the social life is great.”

Phil added: “We are both amazed and honoured to win this prestigious award, one day all new homes will be built like this.”