"Grand Designs" Tomorrow at 9 - Channel 4

[Panda_Badger]

What a waste.

Grand design, more like grand freekin expensive hole in the ground. What plonkers. When are we going to see some real homes like the excellent straw bail insulated woodman's cottage?

Bah humbug.

The Panda.

[martin]

here's a breath of fresh air and sanity........this one cost £4,000!

from here - http://www.envisioneer.net/main.htm - the stove is utterly brilliant too!
This I would be proud to live in - the Grand Designs job I'd be deeply ashamed of........(and wouldn't be able to sleep nights)

[dhaslam]

Isn't that going a bit too much the other way.   This postcard was sent by my grandmother to her mother in 1904. It isn't her own house.

www.pbase.com/image/93243567

[martin]

in a word........"NO" - it's ringing all my bells
It is genuinely eco-friendly, he's used clutter all concrete, used bags of recycled materials, and I'd suggest that it's probably a damn sight better insulated than the average modern "home" - best of all, the financial outlay has been absolutely minimal, freeing him from the treadmill everyone else is placed on the moment they accept further education these days - something tells me government will do all it can to prevent such "untoward freedom" in buildings......enough to give the average government control-freak apoplexy!
And although it more than fulfills the much-trumpeted "zero-carbon homes" brief, I can see builds like this being resisted tooth and nail countrywide.............which is precisely why we're heading full-tilt for the buffers!

[Eleanor]

Bob, is that your house?! 

(Pls ignore ref to the word peasant, I am not saying that!) 

[KenB]

List,

Sorry to go over previously posted stuff, but I think some of these so called eco-builders have totally lost the plot. Only Ben Law's wooden house built in a clearing in the woods from locally felled trees, straw bales and lime plaster can claim to be a truly ecologically sound development.

I recently did a materials review and embodied energy audit on my basic 1905 brick built semi. I wanted to get some idea of how much more embodied energy there is likely to be in a modern house than a traditionally built one.

A modern house should be considerably more energy efficient to heat, so the pay back time for heating fuel saved over embodied energy should be shorter.

90% of this house was built using the following 1905 materials shopping list:

25,000 bricks
1000  250mm x 500mm roofing slates
25 tonnes building sand
5 tonnes cement
2.75 m3 plaster
1m3 concrete (only used in kitchen floor - footings are just spreader courses of bricks)
50 x floor joists 65mm x 150mm x 4.8m
115 Floor boards  145mm x 15mm x 4800mm  (80 sq m)
52 ceiling joists/rafters  51mm x 102mm x 4.8m
2 purlins  76mm x 102mm x 4.8m
50 roofing battens 25x38mm x 4.8m
Ceiling lathes  85 sq m
5 sash windows 1000mm x 1500mm
7 internal doorframes and doors
2 exterior doors and frames

If they had had Kingspan or Celotex insulation in 1905, then this house with poor overall insualtion, could have been made substantially to current building regulations, solely by incorporating insulation in the loft space, wall cavities and under floor.

Minimal use of concrete, solely for the kitchen floor,  basic materials in limited range of standard sizes and locally sourced materials and trades made this a low embedded energy property in its day.

Substituting approximately half of the 25,000 bricks for modern lightweight blocks, or better still, plaster boards over a timber frame, would further reduce the embodied energy and make use of recycled/waste material i.e. gypsum and fly ash from power station waste streams.

To consider that the house was built originally without a drop of diesel consumed, nor electric power tools (made in China),  with horse drawn transportation and levers, blocks and tackles, ingenuity and manpower.  There is not a single item in the original build that could not have been lifted into position by two builders - the roof purlins being the notable case.

If you consider that modern houses cannot be built without diesel cement mixers, diesel lift trucks and cranes, diesel generators, diesel delivery of materials - often from some considerable distance and a small army of building contractors commuting 30 miles a day by transit van- it's not surprising that there is a large quantity of petroleum energy embodied in to every new build.

[Shay]

Straw bales...I just can’t make the leap of faith required. I was in CAT a few years ago and the straw bale theatre is indeed a beautiful structure, however there was one straw bale building up near the eco-cabins which hadn’t faired too well.
Maybe im wrong but the climate of the UK is not suitable especially Ireland with the driving ,almost horizontal rain we get sometimes.
Now hemp/lime I would prefer (although labour intensive). I got a price for the house I built a couple of years ago which was about 20% more expensive than a conventional build. But of course I couldn’t get a bank that would mortgage it at the time, never mind house insurance....

[KenB]

Grand Designs - about to be repeated now  -  8pm Saturday on Channel 4.

Sure beats Ant & Dec.     Even with £300K of groundwork and concrete - now that's better entertainment value.


Ken