Sky House Sussex Eco luxury bed & breakfast in Lewes, Sussex

Skyhouse is closing in January 2017. We've met so many wonderful people. Heartfelt thanks for coming to stay. Wishing you the best. The Skyhouse Team.

Green Living Blog

‘Which Way Is Green?’ charts our eco housebuild and offers advice & inspiration for green living

The next instalments of our blog ‘Which Way is Green?’ will offer tips on green living as experienced by the hosts and guests at Skyhouse Eco Chic B&B. In the meantime, please check out our favourite guides to green living:
The Guardian ethical and green living
The Ecologist advice on green living
Be A Shade Greener which features a review of Skyhouse Eco Chic B&B

We first started our green living blog back in October 2013 to chart the decisions, dilemmas and dramas we faced during our eco house build. Construction of Skyhouse began in May 2014 and was completed in November that year. We are thrilled to now be welcoming guests from all over world to our clean and green Zero Carbon guest accommodation at Skyhouse Eco Chic B&B.

Pour it on! The slab goes down

On Friday we poured the main part of the slab using three concrete lorries operating a relay system between Lewes and Hailsham where Peter Woods and his team from Woods Concrete Pumps have their plant. From first thing in the morning, the site was buzzing with activity and the heavy clunk-clunk-whirr of machinery. Each lorry […]
Laying the foundations strip by strip

April 1st and it’s just over a month now until our timber framed eco house is delivered from Baufritz in Germany so it’s been wonderful watching the foundations going down. These photos show you what Joe, Sam and Graham have accomplished in ten days as they work tirelessly to prepare the site for the second […]
Lutron gives green light for energy savings plus the wow factor

To mark Earth Hour on Sat 29th March 2014 when millions of people across the world will switch off lights for an hour at 8.30pm local time in a massive show of concern for the environment, we wanted to tell our followers that Sky House Sussex will be using an innovative lighting control system, Lutron, to save […]
Shaping up nicely: preparing for foundations

We now have a fantastic impression of the size and shape of the house from the shuttering which Joe and team have constructed. This ‘wooden box’ around the footprint will house the foundations. Because the house will be earth-sheltered and sunk down so far below the original ground level, Joe’s challenge is to make a […]
Creating a unique guest experience: interior design and lighting

This week we’ve been selecting the interior design and it’s been a huge thrill to dream up visions of how everything will look. We’re just at the beginning of this creative odyssey and already we’re enjoying imagining which aspects of this ‘Grand Designs’ luxury guest house our visitors will love the most. On our shopping list […]
Spring has sprung and we’re feeling artistic

We have felt the creative juices flowing this week and we put it down to the lovely spring weather we’re enjoying. After a short lull on site, as we sweated profusely to finalise the technical drawings with Baufritz, the building action has started up again. During Operation Escarpment, Joe, Amy and the groundwork team created […]
Living life versus being green: a doggy-shaped dilemma

We love our poochy pals but we’re building a virtually air tight house. Why should that matter, you might say? Because it begs a question: should a new-build house dictate the way you live or support your lifestyle? This little stumbling block cropped up whilst we visited Baufritz’s factory in Germany for our week of sampling. We’re […]
February and the tempo is frenetic

Did you know that over three million people watch Grand Designs, 100,000 subscribe to websites announcing available plots of land, and a similar number buy self-build magazines?* Or that by contrast, just 12,000 self-build homes are completed in the UK each year – or 7.6 per cent of new housing supply?** Reading these figures, we’re well […]
See, feel, touch your energy consumption

Do your energy bills have you waking up in a cold sweat? Do you ever wish you could see which appliances chew up the most energy and how to reduce wasteful consumption? At Sky House Sussex, we want to promote greener living. So we’ve been discussing installing energy monitors throughout the building – and this […]
Solar-power GoPro creates groundworks in a flash

Do you think it’s desirable, or even possible, to be green and hi-tech on an everyday basis? As the name of our blog implies, the aim of our project is to find greener ways to live and build. Through our build choices, we hope to show readers and visitors to Sky House Sussex that ‘green’ […]
Digging the earth sheltered house, man

These photos will hopefully give you a clear picture of exactly what we mean by ‘earth-sheltered house’. This is one of many exciting design features of Sky House Sussex: the lower (or ground) floor of the new house will be built two metres down into the hillside. As visitors arrive at the entrance to the […]
Thanks neighbours for being cool

Christmas Eve 2013 and it’s all quiet on the site for the start of the holiday season. We wanted to express our gratitude to our neighbours for their patience during this project. It was fun creating the sign with a neighbour’s daughter and her friend who enthusiastically jumped into the paints! From the start of […]

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