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
