A PIONEERING “world first” house in Lewes built from concrete and using experimental technology was compared to a “nuclear bunker” on Channel 4’s Grand Designs.

Presenter Kevin McCloud also compared the four-bedroom family home to a “car park” and an “electricity substation” on the latest episode of the programme, which follows intrepid people trying to design and build their dream homes.

Featuring exposed concrete walls inside and out, the house was created over 18 months by deep sea diver Adrian Corrigall and his wife Megan, who have three children, after they had nurtured the idea as a “long-term dream”.

Stark

The episode, on Wednesday, set out to discover whether “a building made from such a cold, stark material can provide a fitting environment for Adrian, Megan and their three young children”.

The couple spent nearly £1 million on the land and the building. Unexpected costs during the build forced Adrian to work as a deep sea diver to bring in money with Megan managing the project on her own, which she described as “an absolute nightmare”.

They say on their website: “We dared to be different, chose to confront and challenge the system. We have overcome obstacles with imagination and focus.”

They added: “We were unafraid to fail as experimentation - and its inevitable setbacks – was crucial for our progress.”

The couple made the “unorthodox” decision to use concrete because of Adrian’s “love of it born from years of riding skateparks on BMX and skateboards” when he was a semi-professional skateboarder in Aberdeen.

They used a new high-performance fibre-reinforced concrete mix, which meant they could remove the reinforcing bar from the building – a move they say “took a complete rethink to accepted engineering orthodoxy”.

To achieve thermal efficiency and solve the common building problem of heat loss, they worked with the University of Zurich to create computer modelling of each place where they used a thermally efficient concrete called Insularis, which produced a completely unbroken thermal envelope.

Unorthodox

Insulation built into the walls meant the couple could leave the internal and external walls exposed and they avoided using any timber in the construction of the house by using an innovative lightweight system of panels called PERI Duo.

In the process of building the house, Adrian and Megan said they discovered that “concrete is a far more advanced material”.

“Concrete will always be a divisive material,” they added. “Visually or environmentally, no other material invokes such polarised debate but it is undergoing something of a renaissance as this much-maligned material is re-evaluated for the 21st century. We had to work hard to achieve both understanding and acceptance from what is a typically traditional construction industry. Quite literally, this was a world first.”