Talks on how to build a 'good' house??

[TheMitchells]

Peter W said in another post;

UK building regs are appalling - full stop ! They are a minimum standard and don't encourage anything. Add to that the well known reports that volume house builders are cutting corners even with the minimum standards then it's not surprising the masses don't understand. 

Take this as an argument -

"Yes Mr Smith, our Balmoral new build has lots of energy saving features with uValues 10% better than most modern houses , annual bills 15% lower than the average property..."

So Joe Public (aka Mr Smith) thinks that's fab.! 

But it's not what it "could" be ..! Average energy bill for a 4 bed, let's say £1800 pa. This new house is only £1530. What if you said to Mr Smith that for £2k more insulation you could have 40% lower ..? Payback of 3-4 years ..??

You are then talking in numbers people understand, yet the masses sometimes don't get that anyway. The Green Deal is a classic example of this - saving energy just isn't exciting !

 

On a similar note, I have been thinking for a long time that the majority of the general public have not a clue about energy efficiencies in homes while they probably could tell you lots about their car's efficiencies and choose accordingly.  Having been researching how to build for about 4 years now, including lots on Ebuild, several books front to back, courses and the podcasts from houseplanninghelp, I sometimes feel I could lecture on the subject, particularly on the benefits of building well (Fabric First).  In an earlier life, I used to go round to WI groups and give talks about another subject and it occurred to me that I may be able to help spread the word in the same way.  After all, younger folk will probably use the internet but those of a similar age and older, are less likely to find out this way so I have been looking to create a talk which I will take to local WI's and other groups who may be interested. I found it thrilling to learn abut these things and I enjoy sharing that knowledge as it can save people money and make their lives that much better to live in a 'good' home.

I was thinking of concentrating on what can be done to homes to create a better living environment; airtight to avoid draughts, insulation to keep heating bills low, and the benefits of MVHR's for health and comfort as well as efficiencies in heating bills. Nothing too in depth but just an overview of what we should be expecting from our developers.  I want to get as many people as possible asking about airtightness and insulation levels.  if enough ask, then eventually they will start realising it matters.  And if we push for thermal images of homes, then they cannot hide! 

Any thoughts?  what would you include?

[Ferdinand]

For simplicity I would use the numbers from the EPC figure (questionable though they be).

Then I would talk about cost of insulation.

Then I would do a sum involving 5 and 10 years of bills, possibly illustrating the difference with holidays in Australia.

Ferdinand

 

[Declan52]

A complete overhaul of the building control system has to be a start. How many houses in a development are actually inspected, 2%6%10%, who knows. How about checking them all and having teeth to punish the serial offenders. Then you can lower the target regs for u values and be in the knowledge that if they aren't met then the developer gets penalized heavily. 

Once you start to lower the regs then you are into the realms of improving airtightness which in turn makes mhrv more of an option. But it all starts with building control regs and how they are enforced and this comes from government which jump to the tune of the major developers.

[PeterW]

But the developers don't care !!

Current place had no soakaways on one side of the house - NHBC Warranty but interestingly NHBC building control too. 

Found the problem when building the extension on the opposite side of the house. Ended up with an engineers report, and the builder (David Wilson) was invited to site, and then invited to comment. They did neither ....

NHBC paid up to the tune of £7k for new soakaways and pipe work along with a brand new Tarmac driveway. 

Surveyor reckoned it would alter their premium (which is how builders pay for NHBC) by no more than £1-200. Compare that to the cost of doing it properly, then multiply it by the 350 houses on the estate ! Savings are huge for cutting corners ..!

I think some sort of lectures (podcasts..??) would be great ! Cover the basics and make people think..! I offer a "free" snagging service to friends who buy new houses as it's amazing what the volume box builders try and get away with ..!

 

[Roger440]

2 hours ago, Declan52 said:

A complete overhaul of the building control system has to be a start. How many houses in a development are actually inspected, 2%6%10%, who knows. How about checking them all and having teeth to punish the serial offenders. Then you can lower the target regs for u values and be in the knowledge that if they aren't met then the developer gets penalized heavily. 

Once you start to lower the regs then you are into the realms of improving airtightness which in turn makes mhrv more of an option. But it all starts with building control regs and how they are enforced and this comes from government which jump to the tune of the major developers.

I said it before on Ebuild and i'll say it again. All this talk of how rubbish our regs are is, rather irrelevant. The issue is as Declan52 says, Enforcement.

Talk of improving regs is utterly pointless until the enforcement issue is resolved/sorted out. In fact doing so without sorting it out is likely to make self building even harder as, lets face it, self builders generally have to comply. So more complication etc. Not every self builder wants the super high standards alot here achieve. But if they achieve current regs, they are likely light years ahead of the mass home builders.

Sadly, enforcement by councils, and they way a lot of council types behave, ie, find a reason that you cant do it, pretty much rules that out as a viable way forward.

When building my garage, i went to private BCO so i could have some common sense applied to my build, which involved being near trees! The previous (10 years ago) effort that i never built the council were insisting on 3 meter trench foundations, which of course would have cut through all the tree roots, never mind the practical difficulties! Rank stupidity, and thats being polite.

[Jeremy Harris]

You're right, enforcement is non-existent.  Building control bodies that question anything on big developments don't get the next contract from that developer, so they don't make waves.  LABC rarely do work for big developers, as I understand it.  Even my BCO told me that he thought around 60% of new builds failed to comply with the regs, but there wasn't anything they could do about it, as they had no powers to enforce regs on any development where building control had been contracted to another provider.

[TheMitchells]

But didn't I read somewhere that one builder had been taken to court and found guilty as they advertised the homes as Passivhaus and they weren't. They were prosecuted under the new Consumer Rights Act 2015.  As the Money Saving Expert says,

And if it's not, then we aught to start taking the builders to court.  I think this legislation will start to make a difference.  Here's the case I was talking about.  It's not a huge fine but its a start. 

 

From the Bournemouth Daily Echo - 24th January 2016.

A BOURNEMOUTH property developing company which made false advertising claims has been ordered to pay more than £15,000 in fines and costs. 

Lomand Homes, based in Glenferness Avenue, pleaded guilty to five offences under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations at Bournemouth Magistrates Court this week.

Dorset County Council’s trading standards service investigated allegations that the company had falsely claimed that properties at Pennsylvania Heights, Portland, were built to “certified Passivhaus standards”.

These industry standards show that buildings are constructed in a way that reduces the need to heat or cool them. However, after failing to reach this standard, Lomand Homes continued to advertise the properties as if they had.

District Judge Stephen Nicholls said that the company had been “negligent in the way it handled the advertising”.

Lomand Homes was fined £3,400, ordered to pay prosecution costs of £12,000 and a victim surcharge of £120.

Richard Herringshaw, principal trading standards officer, said: “Once it became clear to the company that the properties were struggling to meet the standard they had two options, either invest in achieving the claimed standard or amend the claims. It seems that they chose neither.”

The council’s cabinet member for economy and growth, Cllr Colin Jamieson, added: “Buying a house is the largest purchasing decision most consumers will make.

“It is vital that all of those involved in marketing properties ensure that the claims they make are true and that buyers can rely on them. Allowing decision to be made carefully, based on real evidence. This gives confidence in property sales businesses in this area.

“Our trading standards team works with businesses to help ensure fair trading but enforcement action including prosecution is appropriate in some cases.”

[Jeremy Harris]

The problem is that it's easy to show that a house isn't a PassivHaus, as it won't have a certificate from the PHI, but it's extremely challenging to prove that an ordinary new house doesn't comply with Part L1A of the building regs.  Some builders have been caught out, when very persistent new owners have spent a lot of money getting intrusive surveys and thermal imaging done to show the absence of insulation, poor detailing around doors and windows etc, but there have only been a handful of cases, out of thousands of sub-standard homes across the country.

The majority of new home owners won't have a clue that their houses have missing insulation etc, they'll just pay the energy bills and not for a moment wonder why their supposedly low energy home is costing so much to heat.  You can't really blame them, as there's nothing on the energy performance certificate they get that really tells them in plain English what the heating cost should be.

It's only when you get companies really taking the mickey, like leaving out all the insulation (and it has happened!) that owners start to notice that something might not be right, but even then they face an uphill struggle to prove their case, as there is no enforcement body and it's up to each owner to pursue the builders through the courts.  That's and expensive and time consuming activity, and I doubt there are many owners with the commitment and deep enough pockets to try it.

[ProDave]

I fully agree that building regs need to be improved and enforced, but how?

The Code for sustainable homes tried that but it failed and missed the target. I have a relative who is a builder and he built a house to CFSH level 5. He said it was just a ridiculous paperwork exercise having to record when the workers had a lunch break and where they went for lunch. I am not sure if he was joking when he said he had to record how many times they flushed the site toilet.  There was more emphasis on providing a bike rack to park a pushbike than ensuring the insulation was fitted properly.

[Jeremy Harris]

CfSH was a joke.  It wasn't really focussed on energy conservation, but ended up being taken over by a whole raft of requirements that were of no benefit whatsoever in a large number of cases.  Take our area, as an example.  We would have got CfSH points for bicycle storage.  Great idea, except the hill beside our house is about 1 in 5 and even though I cycle regularly there's no way I can tackle it on a bike.  It was very largely a box-ticking exercise, too, as to get a given level you have to gain a certain number of points, and compliance with, or exceeding, the requirements of Part L1A wasn't a major part of the points total.

As a starting point, I'd like to see a return to 100% inspections, with no way that the developer can buy off the inspectors, as they can at the moment.  That was one partially good thing about CfSH, in that it did demand 100% inspection to reach the higher levels, so someone in government must have known, or suspected, that developers and big housing estate builders were cheating (mind you that seems to have been common knowledge for some time, this is worth a read if you not already read it: http://www.aecb.net/publications/we-must-change-our-disgraceful-approach-to-build-quality-or-wave-goodbye-to-energy-savings/ ).

[DeeJunFan]

Privatisation has to be a factor, in NI there is only 1 BC option and that's the local council. It's still not great (underfunded and over stretched) but at least the big guys can't hold them to ransom for the next contract.

There are pros and cons to "Big Government" but you have to think that statutory regulations should be inspected and enforced by the people who come up with them.  

My Building Control cost me £1600 and I can't see how that amount of time is being spent on me and a single house.

I can't understand how a development of say 500 houses can equate to only say 5 being inspected and so many corners cut?  Surely the cost of BC should reflect the effort.  So if you pay BC to inspect 500 houses, that's what should happen.

Things are/were even worse in the south of Ireland were there are very good building regulations but no inspections of any kind, state or private.  They now have a scheme of design/build certifiers who charge ungodly sums of money to have your build covered by their professional indemnity insurance.  They have now allowed one off self builds an exemption to this certification as they are generally better standard.  But the practice was a simply way to force dodgy buildings and the responsibility for them away from the government.  Google Priory Hall if you want and example of the things they wanted rid of! 

[SteamyTea]

Rather that think about our current standards and how badly they are inspected and enforced, would we not be better off thinking about ways to create good housing that also meets the current standards as a by-product?  Now there is a challenge.

I am sure it is not hard to exceed many of the standards at no extra cost.  So why don't we start by making a list of what would make a difference?

As Jeremy has shown, it is possible to build down to a price without sacrificing quality, even allowing for the mistakes/change of mind/nice to haves (I still think a tap that boils water is a bit silly ).

I have stated several times in the past that a house is a pretty simple structure, both structurally and thermally, I still fail to understand why people think that it is really complicated.  It is just an airtight, insulated box with ventilation introduced at the design stage, not as an after thought.

 

Challenge 1.

I don't bother to read the building regs very often, but when I have, there has never been anything that seems difficult in them.  As and example, I seem to remember that when hanging joists they have to be 150mm or half way though the wall build up (can't really remember), but why are we sticking timber though a wall in the first place?  What is the reason for not using hangers for every joist to reduce the thermal bridging to virtually zero? 

 

Challenge 2.

A similar things with MVHR, people seem to try and get away with the smallest system they can, may be easier and simpler to just oversize i.e. larger ducts, bigger heat exchanger/fan unit.  Shopping around will often find a suitable unit for a similar price.  I also think that a simple self calibrating controller could be made, we know the rules, we know how to measure airflow and control fans/flaps, so a simple feedback system is all that is needed. 

 

Challenge 3.

Doors and Windows also seem to be an issue with people.  It is a simple calculation to work out if double or triple glazing will make much of an impact, just do the calculations.  But probably the most important point is the fitting.  This is where detail is important and needs thinking about before the wall is built, not after.  And why are the windows on my 1987 house not electrically operated, they were on my car.  It cannot be hard to design this into a house. 

 

Challenge 4.

Why not have MVHR built into the lower part of a door, I am sure there is enough room and it is easy to make them a little thicker and it would stop all that faffing about in the loft. 

 

Challenge 5.

Heating and hot water systems seem to be a very popular area for confusion, why?  All you need to do is heat some air, either directly or indirectly.  This is not hard.  To me, under floor heating is the best system, and the pipework seems a lot simpler, just a few loops back to a couple of manifolds with valves on them. George Wingrave, Carl Hentschel, Jerome K Jerome, to mention nothing about the dog Montmorency, may have got lost in Hampton Court Maze, and most plumbers seem to get lost with others pipework, so it is just a case of keeping it simple (and unpressurised if you want to DIY it).  Design a simple system. 

 

Challenge 6

Wiring, again this is pretty simple.  Radial systems with a large consumer unit.  OK it uses a bit more wire and RCBO's, but is really simple to understand, kind of thing that we learn at Primary School in the 1960's (along with binary and matrix mathematics for some reason, I can still remember the classes).  We have very clear and simple rules to follow with electrical work, I fail to see why people make it harder than it is.  Rather than fret over whether a 32amp breaker can run your kitchen, spend the extra few quid and put in another circuit.  Same with lighting, people really do go over the top with this, often spend thousands and not get what they expected.  Half the time you should not need lighting on.  Design a simple system, forget about 'mood lighting' your mood will change, as will your eyesight. 

 

Answers by 10PM tonight.

 

Edited June 15, 2016 by SteamyTea

[DeeJunFan]

15 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Rather that think about our current standards and how badly they are inspected and enforced, would we not be better off thinking about ways to create good housing that also meets the current standards as a by-product?  Now there is a challenge.

I am sure it is not hard to exceed many of the standards at no extra cost.  So why don't we start by making a list of what would make a difference?

As Jeremy has shown, it is possible to build down to a price without sacrificing quality, even allowing for the mistakes/change of mind/nice to haves (I still think a tap that boils water is a bit silly ).

I have stated several times in the past that a house is a pretty simple structure, both structurally and thermally, I still fail to understand why people think that it is really complicated.  It is just an airtight, insulated box with ventilation introduced at the design stage, not as an after thought.

 

Challenge 1.

I don't bother to read the building regs very often, but when I have, there has never been anything that seems difficult in them.  As and example, I seem to remember that when hanging joists they have to be 150mm or half way though the wall build up (can't really remember), but why are we sticking timber though a wall in the first place?  What is the reason for not using hangers for every joist to reduce the thermal bridging to virtually zero? 

I think this one is just a mindset change.  Moving away from the "this is the way we have always done it."  But BC have a role.  Just make hangers the only allowed way of doing it.  

Challenge 2.

A similar things with MVHR, people seem to try and get away with the smallest system they can, may be easier and simpler to just oversize i.e. larger ducts, bigger heat exchanger/fan unit.  Shopping around will often find a suitable unit for a similar price.  I also think that a simple self calibrating controller could be made, we know the rules, we know how to measure airflow and control fans/flaps, so a simple feedback system is all that is needed. 

How many people buying/building houses even know what MVHR is? 

Challenge 3.

Doors and Windows also seem to be an issue with people.  It is a simple calculation to work out if double or triple glazing will make much of an impact, just do the calculations.  But probably the most important point is the fitting.  This is where detail is important and needs thinking about before the wall is built, not after.  And why are the windows on my 1987 house not electrically operated, they were on my car.  It cannot be hard to design this into a house. 

You can get electrically controlled windows but the parts on them are naff.  I would prefer (given multiple allergies)  to never need to open the things

Challenge 4.

Why not have MVHR built into the lower part of a door, I am sure there is enough room and it is easy to make them a little thicker and it would stop all that faffing about in the loft. 

There are units that build into walls but they don't cover all areas of the house well enough.  

Challenge 5.

Heating and hot water systems seem to be a very popular area for confusion, why?  All you need to do is heat some air, either directly or indirectly.  This is not hard.  To me, under floor heating is the best system, and the pipework seems a lot simpler, just a few loops back to a couple of manifolds with valves on them. George Wingrave, Carl Hentschel, Jerome K Jerome, to mention nothing about the dog Montmorency, may have got lost in Hampton Court Maze, and most plumbers seem to get lost with others pipework, so it is just a case of keeping it simple (and unpressurised if you want to DIY it).  Design a simple system. 

I'll admit to being as confused as Mike Tyson at a MESNA convention about plumbing

Challenge 6

Wiring, again this is pretty simple.  Radial systems with a large consumer unit.  OK it uses a bit more wire and RCBO's, but is really simple to understand, kind of thing that we learn at Primary School in the 1960's (along with binary and matrix mathematics for some reason, I can still remember the classes).  We have very clear and simple rules to follow with electrical work, I fail to see why people make it harder than it is.  Rather than fret over whether a 32amp breaker can run your kitchen, spend the extra few quid and put in another circuit.  Same with lighting, people really do go over the top with this, often spend thousands and not get what they expected.  Half the time you should not need lighting on.  Design a simple system, forget about 'mood lighting' your mood will change, as will your eyesight. 

Haven't though about this much.  Just assume a professional will know whats what.  (Thats a mistake though i'm sure)

Answers by 10PM tonight.

 

 

[ProDave]

Attention to detail is the one that gets me. That really costs nothing apart from time.

My neighbour is having built what he hopes will be a low energy home. He has cut some corners like only having 2g glass in his rationel windows, and not having mvhr so trickle vents and extractor fans.

But while I have been working in there wiring it, I have felt it was never as warm as it should have been. It didn't take long to realise (pre plasterboard going on) that a draught was coming in all around the windows. The windows had been fitted direct into the timber frame with no visible means of actually sealing them to the frame.

In the end I felt compelled to mention this to the client as I didn't want to see his house being built with a "plasterboard tent" with cold air behind the plasterboard. I don't know if that got back to the builder and he actually did anything to seal the windows.

[Declan52]

Ah Dave but that's the way the builder has always done it and not this new fangled way.

[Roger440]

12 hours ago, ProDave said:

Attention to detail is the one that gets me. That really costs nothing apart from time.

 

But time IS money. Doing things properly takes time. Which is why nothing is done properly!

[SteamyTea]

Good design does not have to take any more time.  I think the trouble is that people look for complicated and 'artistic' solutions to simple problems.

Ken Tyrrell, of Formula 1 fame, once said, "an engineer is only someone that can make something for 10p what any damn fool can make for a pound".

[daiking]

9 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Good design does not have to take any more time.  I think the trouble is that people look for complicated and 'artistic' solutions to simple problems.

Ken Tyrrell, of Formula 1 fame, once said, "an engineer is only someone that can make something for 10p what any damn fool can make for a pound".

Which is why I am such a poor engineer

[Ferdinand]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Good design does not have to take any more time.  I think the trouble is that people look for complicated and 'artistic' solutions to simple problems.

Ken Tyrrell, of Formula 1 fame, once said, "an engineer is only someone that can make something for 10p what any damn fool can make for a pound".

I think good design *does* have to take more time, because there is a research and interative process to go through.

Perhaps "adequate" design does not; but there are very few people who hit the gold first time, every time.

Ferdinand

[DeeJunFan]

Good design is great when all have equal access to it.  There are a very small percentage of home builder/buyers who are even aware of the issues apart from "How much does it cost to heat?" or "Oh it's a bit drafty" 

If there is ever to be an increase in the overall quality of housing stock it will have to be driven by Government.  

Firstly Government depts need to understand the issues (which I think they do), they need to invest political capital in decision to prioritise better housing above corporate profits (which they don't), and they need to ensure the design work for approved details etc is done at a national level and enforced properly.  For example a window cill cannot sit on the internal wall.  Bang there should be no cills crossing the cavity easy to inspect and if they started enforcing a bit would be easily adopted. (I'm block building hence the polarised example)

There will always be people who strive for more and better designs, they are the people we don't need to worry about.  The minimum requirements need to be improved.

 

[SteamyTea]

I tend to agree that it has to be government policy that drives change, or what is the point of a government.

One problem about becoming too prescriptive about detail, is that it can limit choice and stifle development.  I would not have a problem if someone built an off grid house that runs solely on PV and it had a high energy usage, though I think the money could be better invested in other ways.  For general building, I think our regulations are pretty good (not so different from the rest of the EU, but maybe not enforced enough, but that is a different issue), DHW can now easily be the biggest load on a place, and the designs for that are different from a wall, door, window etc.

So maybe an overall standard of energy usage, and as much as I hate the kWh.m².year^-1 method of measuring, it is good enough for mass housing.  This would allow novel materials and technologies to still play a part.  But energy usage is only part of the problem, there is still structural and longevity standards.  So somehow they would have to be factored in.

I also think that governments should specify compulsory technologies i.e. MVHR, PV, non combustion heating.  This may seem counter intuitive and expensive, but if we build 200,000 new houses a year, the technologies and knowledge base needed to implement them, will very quickly fall into place.  It may mean that housing estates are designed better to take advantage of technologies too i.e. roofs with a combination of East, South and West facing major areas, large wind turbines to the North, sensible spacing and location of ASHP (which may reduce cramming in housing on estates).

 

Personally I cannot see any of that happening.

[DeeJunFan]

3 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Personally I cannot see any of that happening.

+1,000,000,000,000,000

[Ferdinand]

54 minutes ago, DeeJunFan said:

Good design is great when all have equal access to it.  There are a very small percentage of home builder/buyers who are even aware of the issues apart from "How much does it goes to heat?" or "Oh its a bit drafty" 

If there is ever to be an increase in the overall quality of housing stock it will have to be driven by Government.  

Firstly Government depts need to understand the issues (which i think they do), they need to invest political capital in decision to prioritise better housing above corporate profits (which they dont), and they need to ensure the design work for approved details etc is done at a national level and enforced properly.  For example and window cill cannot sit on the internal wall.  Bang there should be no cills crossing the cavity easy to inspect and if they started enforcing a bit would be easily adopted. (i'm block building hence the polarised example)

There will always be people who strive for more and better designs, they are the people we dont need to worry about.  The minimum requirements need to be improved.

 

The problem with strict Govt or LA imposition is that eventually people who don't know "good design" or who have hobby horses or axes to grind get control of the process and *everything* gets poisoned - centralised structures are not resilient to centralised cockups or centralised corruption.

You could consider after the war - there was a lot of high quality design around which turned into crud when it became quantity driven programmes. Consider say the difference between the excellent-for-the-time Alton Estate (Roehampton) in the early-mid 1950s (which looked back to earlier 'cottage estates' as well as Le Corbusier), and the Towerblocks of Hackney or low rise Blackbird Leys from 20 years later. Many of those tower blocks had to be demolished before they were paid for.

Up here I have heard accounts from the 1970s of non-coal heating being rejected because a) There were miner-types on the Planning Committee and b) Because so many people received free-coal (compare with subsidised solar panels).

My view is that only people with a political hatred for big government should be allowed to operate it. Everyone else gets power-drunk and turns into Stalinists (especially the Green Party who already have an inner-Stalinist where everyone else has an inner-child).

There are things that can be done to mitigate, but it is very difficult.

Ferdinand

 

Edited June 16, 2016 by Ferdinand

[DeeJunFan]

1 minute ago, Ferdinand said:

The problem with strict Govt or LA imposition is that eventually people who don't know "good design" or who have hobby horses or axes to grind get control of the process and *everything* gets poisoned - centralised structures are not resilient to centralised cockups or centralised corruption.

You could consider after the war - there was a lot of high quality design around which turned into crud when it became quantity driven programmes. Consider say the difference between the excellent-for-the-time Alton Estate (Roehampton) in the early-mid 1950s (which looked back to earlier 'cottage estates' as well as Le Corbusier), and the Towerblocks of Hackney or low rise Blackbird Leys from 20 years later. Many of those tower blocks had to be demolished before they were paid for.

Up here I have heard accounts from the 1970s of non-coal heating being rejected because a) There were miner-types on the Planning Committee and b) Because so many people received free-coal (compare with subsidised solar panels).

My view is that only people with a political hatred for big government should be allowed to operate it. Everyone else gets power-drunk and turns into Stalinists (especially teh green Party who already have an inner-Stalinist where everyone else has an inner-child).

Ferdinand

 

As Billy Connolly once said the desire to be a politician should prevent you from ever being one!