London's first hydroelectric turbine was installed at Morden Hall Park on Wednesday – following some heavy lifting by eight workers and a crane mounted on the back of a flatbed lorry.

The National Trust estate have had the turbine, decked out in the organisation's familiar green, fitted upstream of their 18th-century east mill waterwheel on the River Wandle.

Once operational, the 8.5KW turbine will generate enough power for 18 average-sized houses in the UK, and will be used to run the stable yard visitor centre and Snuff Mill on the estate.

The turbine has been installed as part of Morden's £2.6m Livinggreen sustainability programme begun in 2009, with the hydroelectric element costing £350,000.

The turbine has an Archimedes screw design with a "low head", which works well for watercourses with low drops, like Morden's 1.2m difference between water levels. Hydropower has previously been confined to the heady drops of Scotland and Wales, but the screw design should enable rivers in the south of England to generate electricity. The Queen has recently taken advantage of it, having an Archimedes screw installed on her Windsor Castle estate.

Preparatory work on the site – including building in passes for the river's fish and eel population to make their way upstream – began in mid-April, with the hefty 2.5-tonne turbine expected to be in operation for at least 60 years.

The Livinggreen project has helped launch nine initiatives in five European countries – Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and England – renovating heritage buildings to demonstrate sustainability practices.

The focus at Morden has been the visitor centre, repurposed from its former use as a store for tractors and garden tools to create a green technology centre funded by Livinggreen and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The result is a building that hosts a range of green technology, including three different types of solar panels – PV, PV-thermal and solar slates – six types of insulation, an air source heat pump and heritage-sensitive double glazing, plus a wash basin in the cistern of a toilet, allowing water used to wash hands to then flush the toilet. The stable yard is now the country's most energyefficient historic building, winning both the design and innovation category in this year's Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors awards and a Green Apple Award.

Caroline Pankhurst, Livinggreen project co-ordinator, said that Morden Hall Park presented an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the green technology. She said: "We've been lucky, as the stableyard isn't actually a listed building, although a lot of the buildings around are listed, like the Snuff Mill, so we've had to do it sensitively because it's so close to that. Planning teams have been really supportive locally, and the Environment Agency are very supportive of the turbine project."

Combining the turbine and the solar panels, Morden's renewable output will total 65,000 kWh annually. The estate expects to use the majority of the electricity, but will be selling back about 20% of the generation to National Grid.

The stable yard renovation and turbine also form part of a broader greening-up of the National Trust. The organisation is aiming to cut its fossil fuel use and increase its renewable energy use to 50% by 2020. It currently has 140 renewable energy systems in place across its estates, with Gibson Mill, a former textile mill in West Yorkshire, running entirely self-sufficiently off its own wood fuel, solar and hydroelectric power set-up.

"We're all monitored every month on how much energy we're using and what we're going to improve," said Pankhurst, adding that the stable yard is working well as a demonstration centre, attracting over 20,000 visitors since it opened in November 2011.

"It might be that people just get a biomass boiler or they might just get a couple of solar panels – they don't have to get everything that we've got. Things like the air course heat pump, people just don't know that they exist, so it gives them ideas."

So far, the turbine has been received well. One visitor, Richard Stout said: "It's a good idea – alright, it costs a few bob to put in, but it saves energy," while another visitor Rita Aggett said: "I think it's a marvellous idea if it's put in discreetly." "