Starting from scratch...

[Greenbeast]

yeah i'm planning on plenty of glass on the south side

i like the idea of thick floors and cob internal walls
What are you thinking about for your floor material?

[daftlad]

Ground floor:- Rammed earth with tiles (insulation underneath)
1st floor:- Cob over riven laths with tiles (I have seen this in France lots)
laters

EDIT
There is an earthship in Brighton (which is not so far from you). They do tours on Sunday morning which are very good.
Just type "earthship brighton" into google.

[dhaslam]

yeah i'm planning on plenty of glass on the south side

Don't forget that if you have a large area of south facing glass  it will need to be shaded in summer.   I notice the Brighton earthship has little or no shading.     By shading from midsummer sun there can be  window area  to, just about,  heat the building in winter.   

Stone of tile floors will absorb heat from a stove to make underfloor heating redundant in that room. I have all travertine tiles.   Overnight loss of temperature is only one or two degrees so it the morning  the sitting room will be still warm from the stove being lit  on the previous evening.

[Greenbeast]

dalftad, good stuff, i'll incorporate those ideas

dhaslam - i've planned an american-style outside covered porch area/deck off the back of the house, so i could install retractable/removable screens off from the roof line downwards

[billi]

wonder whether its worth fitting UFH through out or just in the bathroom (and/or bedrooms?)

Sounds a waste to me not to lay the UFH pipes into the foundation/floors let it be concrete  or rammed earth  or just stonefill  ontop of the insulation

Some heating systems  like heatpumps and solar thermal  work better with low temperature heating ...

I somehow have the feeling ,that i will not want to make firewood  or buy it for the next decades

Billi

[Greenbeast]

so you're saying lay UFH throughout.

it does make sense because it will be difficult to retrofit, and it'd be zoned anyway

[billi]

Yes

But    there are so many Heating/cooling ideas that can be integrated into a new built house  , and these ideas should be married with the house design ! to achieve a balanced climate with less needed "artificial" or active heating

I am not saying just lay underfloor heating pipes  and thats it , and then get a heat pump

My to the house attached  poly tunnel (volume about) 50 m3  heats up  even in sunny  winter Days  to 60°  ( sure does nothing  on dark days )

It already does a lot  for our small house , but  we have no buffer or a solid floor/wall  in the timber cabin  where to transfer that free heat 

There are so many ideas how to harvest heat cheaply  as well as how to store it in the house without work/or buying  fuel = luxury

Billi

[kristen]

"Isn't this where a log or pellet batch boiler comes in"

Standing-losses are depressing though.  So long as the Store is in the CH'd area its not a problem during the Winter, and if the Solar far exceeds the requirements in Summer then "wasting" heat on Standing loses may be acceptable.

"i wonder whether its worth fitting UFH through out or just in the bathroom "

Resale value better, I guess, if UFH throughout - even if never / rarely needed in practice. Narrows your market if you can only sell to an eco-warrior  

If your heating requirement is supremely low then ducted air heating may be better - slightly larger than a MHRV

"i like the idea of thick floors and cob internal walls"

Our floors are concrete.  No creaking boards, almost no sound transmission around the house. Bliss. (Not very Eco though ... and not easy to retro-run cables and pipes)

"Don't forget that if you have a large area of south facing glass  it will need to be shaded in summer."

Will a decent overhang roof do that?  Sun at high elevation in Summer hits overhang, low elevation in Winter shins on the glass.

I saw some house-makeover program o=r other recently.  Hubby had a glass business.  The upstairs bathroom had a remote control that cause the glass to turn opaque.  That would keep the sun out!

[Greenbeast]

Our floors are concrete.  No creaking boards, almost no sound transmission around the house. Bliss. (Not very Eco though ... and not easy to retro-run cables and pipes)

Yeah i don't like the eco credentials of concrete

but it does bring me to another point, what do people do for wiring pipework with rammed earth/cob walls?
And the misses has just told me she wants to be able hang things on the walls, is that possible, i suspected not, but could be wrong?

"Don't forget that if you have a large area of south facing glass  it will need to be shaded in summer."

Will a decent overhang roof do that?  Sun at high elevation in Summer hits overhang, low elevation in Winter shins on the glass.

Ah, i didn't think about the fact that the sun would be up in the sky  
So my covered deck area would actually be blocking out the sun anyway, not good for passive solar gain

I saw some house-makeover program o=r other recently.  Hubby had a glass business.  The upstairs bathroom had a remote control that cause the glass to turn opaque.  That would keep the sun out!

yeah i think i saw that, quite cool and very handy, i wonder how expensive?

[kristen]

"i wonder how expensive?"

I did a Google.  Found DIY forum where they had discussed the exact same episode.  Someone said £200 per pane. Someone else said that was too expensive. Surely something wrong there as I didn't think it was expensive!

I'm fed up with the curtains / blinds in the loo being closed - all the women-folk seem to things that folk outside can see into a first floor window from 50 yards away. I've even sent them outside and told them to specifically look at me int he bathroom (which of course people walking their dog don;t actually bother to do anyway ...

... anyway, long story short, I'd pay a few hundred quid not to have curtains drawn almost permanently.  Probably save a fortune on people putting the light on every time they go into the loo ...

Link: http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=187148&sid=6961efdca12ad2fd1cb11f782443aedf

[EccentricAnomaly]

Our floors are concrete.  ... (Not very Eco though ...

It's worth keeping things in proportion.  I worked out the other day the amount of concrete which would have the same CO₂ emissions as a year's energy use for the average house: it came to 50 m³.  That's very very rough, though, probably really somewhere in the range 5 to 500 m³.  If using a few cubes gives you significant energy saving then the CO₂ payback is probably only a few years.

[daftlad]

I always think it is best to look at doing a job with as little concrete etc and more eco materials then analyse it to see if it will perform as well as if the less eco material was used.
Too often people say something is eco because it uses a little less energy than the norm but actually it could have been done with a lot less energy.
I seem to have managed to move this thread onto one of my pet subjects..... sorry.
laters

[Greenbeast]

thats ok daftlad, one of my pet hates with Grand Designs is when they're building an eco-home and you see them pouring tonnes and tonnes of concrete in as a base!

I think i would rather avoid concrete

[tony.]

cob walls i have seen on tv wired in micc/pyro cables with apvc oversheath

surface run on cob and then rendered/plastered over.

they will last longer than the house

tony

[kristen]

I've got pyro (buried in concrete / plaster).  Gawd knows why they felt the need to over specify to that extent ... sparky says "If this place burnt down the wiring would still be standing".  Anyways, costs a fortune whenever we want to change / adjust anything Not to mention that its all imperial and the first thing we have to have is  a set of expensive imperial-to-metric glands and so on.