Eco-home makes a cool £625,000 profit

What's good for the planet can also be good for the wallet. A family who built their own eco-friendly house have sold it three years after its completion for a $625,000 profit.

The house incorporated the Victorian foundations of a crumbled viaduct into the design, thus halving the foundations that needed building. They installed solar panels, state-of-the-art insulation and underfloor heating.

Local craftsmen and materials were used cutting down the carbon footprint of the building. Sweet chestnut wood from five miles away was used to clad the exterior. Lamb's wool insulation is used in the floor and roof voids, which used a fraction of the energy to produce than man-made fibres.

The house won the Norwich and Peterborough Building Society eco-house of the year award.