Posted by DeeJunFan, 11 February 2015 · 865 views
Since my first entry not much has happened apart from a lot of thinking.Legal work is still on-going RE the additional portion of land. Hopefully complete in the next week or so.So far the decisions areStrip foundations. Thermal block above the sub floor to deal with thermal bridge.200mm of PIR with UFH pipes on topthinking 65-75mm of Sand & cement screed with fibers.Thinking 165mm cavity as that seems to be the maximum for catnic
Posted by DeeJunFan, 28 July 2014 · 894 views
Hello there,
I have decided to try and put together a blog for my pending build. The others on here have helped me a great deal so hopefully mine can be of assistance to someone in the future, but most selfishly of all I hope this can help me get my thoughts and plans settled.The site on which I am building is (was) a relatively small site to the rear of my family home in Mayobridge, Northern Ireland. The process began around 10 years ago wh
This article is interesting enough to read in full, but we’ve not got the time….so here’s a copy of it’s own summary (unedited and in its original format)
How do workers, their material, equipment and workplace relate to construction accidents?
· Problems arising from workers or the work team, especially worker actions or behaviour
and worker capabilities, were judged to have contributed to over two thirds (70%) of the
accidents. This points to inadequate supervision, education and
We were awarded Full Planning Permission in October 2015. The point of this blog entry is to describe the process of obtaining that permission in some detail. Bits of the process were painful. I describe the lessons I think I learned.
We were awarded Outline Planning Permission some time ago. (October 2014). And that was the moment I bumbled into (the now sadly defunct) ebuild.co.uk. That was a key event.
We live in what is a variously described as a ‘…charming hamlet…’ or ‘… a beautif
We met under a hundred pinpricks of light, and two snarling lions rampant. It seemed to me that we were going to need the shield against which they were leaning. The beasts looked angry, angry at the nervous jollity, the back-slapping, the power dresses and forced open-neck shirt paired with mohair suit. When one Councillor cracked a joke the lions retained their severity. And so they should, because this committee is a money factory. Fortunes are made and lost here. Dreams come true, dreams ar
Let me take you with me on my first steps on the road to cynicism in the building sector.
For some reason (sewage smells?) many people appear to delay attention to the soft and smelly until it’s either too late or until they’ve backed themselves into the smallest room in the house; and then, trousers round their ankles, they allow someone to lock the door from the outside.
Evidence? Use the search terms refusal and percolation on our LPA website. ‘Refused pending percolation test resul
Originally published on the closed forum, on 14th March 2016
Having made the decision to relocate to Orkney, we set about finding a site that matched our expectations and desires. We saw some truly outstanding sites but eventually settled on a parcel of land extending to just over an acre, which had planning for the erection of a new dwelling house. The practicality of the location, the far reaching views and feeling of local community were all key factors that we considered in deciding on
One of my preconditions it to provide an accurate survey of site levels across my site. The last time that I did anything like this was just under 40 years ago as a young Lt. in the Royal Engineers when I was surveying for a road, but that was using a decent theodolite to do cut and full calcs. Nowadays you typically lasers and GPS, but I didn't want to pay a fortune for something that I could do myself, so I reverted to a variant of a technique that the Romans used and that is to use a water le
We've had our second planning application in the system since mid December. Our first application was in May and the main reason for the delay between these was negotiating with Highways over the new vehicle access and parking to our existing farmhouse. (The existing access and parking falls within the new-build plot.) This delay was due to a combination of us being new to this and not understanding the rules to this bureaucratic game, and the highways engineer being just totally disorganised.
We've sort of covered this topic buried in various earlier threads, but since I need to use this info for my heating calcs, I thought useful to cover this in a short summary post.
Characterising the components of heat transfer across a solid / air surface really does come down to basic physics and we just need to crank the numbers into the two main factors at play in this:
Radiation. Any surface is radiating heat but is also simultaneously absorbing similar radiation from everything in
I am writing these posts for two main reasons. The first is for my benefit, in that I find that if I have got to the point where I can explain my thinking to others, then I've got to grips with the problem myself. The second is that I might just help others going down this same path, by documenting my thought processes.
It's three months since I wrote the Part I of these three Thermal Design posts, and I concluded this by saying that I intended to adopt Jeremy Harris's UFH For A Low Temperatu
I was really unhappy with my discussion of this on my last blog entry, so I want to get a better quantitative understanding of how this would impact my house design, so I decided to write a simple 1-D explicit form finite mesh simulation which could be used to explore various wall and roof profiles. I initially intended to do this as a spreadsheet so that others could have a play with their own designs but without needing to get into code and programs, but stability issues means that the mesh si
The latest turn in our planning journey has occurred. As part of pre-planning we send an early draft of our submission tried to consult with LPA Highways department and got this reply:
We will have two drives and access onto the road from our plot which is being divided onto two: the existing drive which will serve the new house at the bottom of our garden, and a new drive will be added in the reduced plot left with the old house. We initially planned to have turning provi
I discussed my overall static thermal design of my house in Part I. In this second post, I wanted to discuss the dynamic characteristics of its design – that is how the house will respond over time as external temperatures vary, but I've decided to break this into two parts leaving how I propose to control the internal temperature to a later post. Again, this content is a self-developed analysis, because I have yet to find any decent design guides to build upon – the Internet either seems to
Janet and I want an energy efficient house, but what does that mean in practice? The whole concept is still largely rejected by the UK building industry. In our initial research, we either found books like the House Builders Bible which are good but superficial introductions on the concepts but without serious detail or at the other extreme academic papers on micro details. There is precious little in between, and to be honest we have found far more gems of knowledge in this site. All my experie
We've live in a 300 year-old farmhouse with lots of beams, wobbly walls and character -- and the odd draught. It's a large family house and, after 30 years living it, we feel that it is now time for a change. We aren't interested in a Grand Design; we want a modest design that is a good balance of function, of being practical and cost-effectiveness. Given this, our main drivers in selecting our design were:
Comfort and space. We want a smaller, cosy house with minimal running costs, low m
As I discuss in my first post, we have a large garden that is side-on to our road, and it is large enough for us to divide off a strip at the far end from our farmhouse to act as the plot for our new build, whilst leaving an acceptable plot for the farmhouse. However it is just large enough to do this, and neither plot is going to be generous. We therefore need to balance where we position the new boundary so as to give the new house a sufficient plot, whilst leaving the existing house with a
Having seen and debated Calvinmiddle's 120 square metre 2 bedroom bungalow, I was musing on how large a dwelling actually needs to be in floor area - intending no particular critique of Calvin's decisions here.In these days of £1500 per square meter build costs and soaring energy prices, should we take Occam's Razor to all those (possibly) extra bits we are adding to our self-builds? Rather than learning creating larger rooms and learning to do that one extra building trade ourselves, to save bu
I've just run across the concept of the "Solar Loft", as proposed for a new 'Eco' development at Bickleigh Village in Plymouth, by Bill Dunster's ZEDProjects operation and Social Investment Company Cornerstone.This is a space outside the superinsulated perimeter on the top storey of a house, with insulation in the floor, and polysolar panels for the roof. These are less efficient than traditional solar panels, but also let a proportion of the light through, and have been suggested elsewhere as a
Thirty years ago my company wanted to relocate my group to Milton Keynes. I was working in the West End, and Jan and I were living in Croydon at the time. We had just started our family, so the opportunity for a paid relocation out of a terraced house in suburbia into a larger family home in the country was just too good to miss. We ended up buying a somewhat run-down farmhouse in a village between Milton Keynes and Northampton. Jan said: “Think of the potential!”; to which I replied “Think of t
I think that the pleasure of living in a house is at least as important as its design and performance. The ability to get that right in advance from mere conversations with a client seems to me to me to be the core skill of a good architect.This ebuild blog is a conversation around this theme, named for a famous quote from Ludwig (really) Mies van der Rohe.My conversation starters will be details of buildings, but also details of how things are built, that I find interesting or attractive. My ho
