Hello from Dorset

[Adrian Walker]

Joined BuildHub last September and thought it was about time that I introduced myself. Had a small farm in Hampshire (near Stockbridge) that I sold a 5+ years ago, but kept 2 acres to build a house on.  Pre-planning showed that some affordable houses would have to be part of the planning permission deal. Since then I have discovered the Passive House concept and the plan now is to build a number of Smart, ECO and affordable houses. By affordable I mean less than 80% of market rate, so about £300K.  I have some very innovate building and funding ideas that I will share as the development progresses, including having identical Passive Houses built using 3 different building methods - ICF, SIP & Timber Frame.  At a  visit to a Passive House in Andover last November I met member Dreadnaught and I'm helping him with his project. This is a very early design (animated gif), but it gives a flavour of what I'm trying to be achieved on the site.

 

Edited June 28, 2018 by Adrian Walker

[Declan52]

Welcome.

Are you not shooting yourself in the foot going for 3 different build methods. Surely if you pick a preferred method and get a price from a company to do shell/complete build of the 3 houses your bargaining power is much better.

Nice gif never seen that before

 

Edited June 28, 2018 by Declan52

[newhome]

Thanks for the introduction. Looks like a very interesting project, and the layout and design will appeal to many buyers I think. How many houses are you building? What is the rationale for using the different building methods? Will that complicate the construction and risk impacting the delivery? I assume it will mean more suppliers to deal with, with no leverage to negotiate a better price deal through having multiple houses to use as the bargaining point? Not knocking it, but interested in the thought process. 

[newhome]

Just now, Declan52 said:

Welcome.

Are you not shooting yourself in the foot going for 3 different build methods. Surely if you pick a preferred method and get a price from a company to do shell/complete build of the 3 houses your bargaining power is much better.

 

 

Lol, we posted at the same time! 

[Declan52]

Just now, newhome said:

 

Lol, we posted at the same time! 

Think I was about 3 secs quicker!!!

[newhome]

7 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

Think I was about 3 secs quicker!!!

 

Ok you win! 

[Adrian Walker]

25 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

Welcome.

Are you not shooting yourself in the foot going for 3 different build methods. Surely if you pick a preferred method and get a price from a company to do shell/complete build of the 3 houses your bargaining power is much better.

Nice gif never seen that before

 

 

Thank you - both.  The rationale for using 3 building systems is to find out which is the best system to design with, build with and most importantly how comfortable the houses are to live in.  It's an experiment, the houses and occupants are monitored 24/7 to gather data and provide answers. To get a good price from suppliers you ask them if their system is the best!

[newhome]

6 minutes ago, Adrian Walker said:

 It's an experiment, the houses and occupants are monitored 24/7 to gather data and provide answers. 

 

Is that part of the deal when someone purchases one of these houses? Is it enforceable or are you hoping for voluntary participation as a result of the appeal of the passive feature? 

[lizzie]

Welcome to the mad house!

 

Bournville Trust in Birmingham were light years ahead on this. I worked with them nearly 30 years ago and they were building houses in experimental way then. They were stuffed full of monotoring equipment too.  They were leaders in alternative energy research for residential use, I dont think the term passive house was in use here then but they were essentially building the first passive houses here and for social tenants too. I saw huge windows installed inward opening tilt and turn and triple glazed  - unheard of in Uk in those days. The quaker legacy of the Cadbury family founded the Trust.

Edited June 28, 2018 by lizzie

[Adrian Walker]

1 hour ago, newhome said:

 

Is that part of the deal when someone purchases one of these houses? Is it enforceable or are you hoping for voluntary participation as a result of the appeal of the passive feature? 

 

Actually, the owners aren't volunteers, they actively want to provide the data.  

[Adrian Walker]

1 hour ago, lizzie said:

Welcome to the mad house!

 

Bournville Trust in Birmingham were light years ahead on this. I worked with them nearly 30 years ago and they were building houses in experimental way then. They were stuffed full of monotoring equipment too.  They were leaders in alternative energy research for residential use, I dont think the term passive house was in use here then but they were essentially building the first passive houses here and for social tenants too. I saw huge windows installed inward opening tilt and turn and triple glazed  - unheard of in Uk in those days. The quaker legacy of the Cadbury family founded the Trust.

 

That's really interesting and I would love to know more, on here or PM? 

[lizzie]

8 hours ago, Adrian Walker said:

hat's really interesting and I would love to know more, on here or PM?

Sadly I can only tell you what I remember which is light on technical detail. I dont beleive they made any findings public it was for their own housing stock.

 

There is a development of 14 passive houses under way a few miles from me. They are social housing... waterloo housing development Wooton  Wawen Warwks.

[Adrian Walker]

39 minutes ago, lizzie said:

Sadly I can only tell you what I remember which is light on technical detail. I dont beleive they made any findings public it was for their own housing stock.

 

There is a development of 14 passive houses under way a few miles from me. They are social housing... waterloo housing development Wooton  Wawen Warwks.

 

Thank you, I'll have a look (https://www.warwickshirerha.org.uk/developing-new-homes/the-development-pipeline/exciting-new-passivhaus-project/) .  A lot of social housing developers are seeing at last the benefits from using the Passive House concept.  I did track down this on about the Bournville Trust https://ourbirmingham.wordpress.com/solar-pioneers-of-bournville-2/

Edited June 29, 2018 by Adrian Walker

[lizzie]

Great article. I remember a lot of the Rowheath stuff in the 80’s. I had come back from some years living in East Africa and being on the periphery of projects to harness sun and wind power to generate electricity for villages. Literally mud huts, no passive houses there LOL

[Adrian Walker]

13 hours ago, newhome said:

Thanks for the introduction. Looks like a very interesting project, and the layout and design will appeal to many buyers I think. How many houses are you building? What is the rationale for using the different building methods? Will that complicate the construction and risk impacting the delivery? I assume it will mean more suppliers to deal with, with no leverage to negotiate a better price deal through having multiple houses to use as the bargaining point? Not knocking it, but interested in the thought process. 

 

The current plan is to build more than 3 houses - all the same design.

The physical construction of the 3 building systems will show the balance of on vs. off site construction and the speed. All will use the same insulated foundation slab. 

[Temp]

Welcome to the forum. Thought a heads up on VAT might be in order...

 

If building three houses you won't be able to use the self build VAT reclaim scheme for all of them because it's only available to people building their own house to live in themselves. The houses will still qualify for zero rating but you would have to use a VAT registered builder and get him to by all the materials. You couldn't use subcontractors and buy materials yourself unless you have another mean of reclaiming the VAT on the materials.

 

 

 

 

[Adrian Walker]

3 minutes ago, Temp said:

Welcome to the forum. Thought a heads up on VAT might be in order...

 

If building three houses you won't be able to use the self build VAT reclaim scheme for all of them because it's only available to people building their own house to live in themselves. The houses will still qualify for zero rating but you would have to use a VAT registered builder and get him to by all the materials. You couldn't use subcontractors and buy materials yourself unless you have another mean of reclaiming the VAT on the materials.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the welcome, you're a lovely bunch (collective word needed) of people

 

Correct. I'm not going to build all of the houses myself, many will be self- builders for this and CLI (housing tax) reasons.  I will be doing the infrastructure and possible a golden brick.

[Ferdinand]

On 28/06/2018 at 22:24, Adrian Walker said:

 

Thank you - both.  The rationale for using 3 building systems is to find out which is the best system to design with, build with and most importantly how comfortable the houses are to live in.  It's an experiment, the houses and occupants are monitored 24/7 to gather data and provide answers. To get a good price from suppliers you ask them if their system is the best!

 

Is this not repeating previous work?

 

eg Lime House And Larch House in Ebbow Vale.

 

And welcome.

 

 

[Adrian Walker]

1 minute ago, Ferdinand said:

 

Is this not repeating previous work?

 

eg Lime House And Larch House in Ebbow Vale.

 

And welcome.

 

 

 

Do you mean this - https://dcfw.org/larch-house/

[Ferdinand]

15 minutes ago, Adrian Walker said:

 

Do you mean this - https://dcfw.org/larch-house/

 

Yes .. 2 passive houses built using different techniques. Their project summaries are interesting especially for identifying holes they left and opportunities for future research. And limitations of the approach because people live differently.

 

One of my interests is how this stuff can be applied viably to rental.

 

I applaud your initiative but I was wondering whether there were other ways of adding greater research value.

 

Are you in bed with eg any universities for monitoring, and possible funding?

 

One area that would genuinely interest me would be to build 2 identical and certify one, so that we get a real number for the Passive House tickbox overhead.

Edited June 30, 2018 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

Welcome.  My concern is that it's probably going to be quite hard to separate out the significant impact of different building techniques from any measured data set.  My experience has been that the actual building method impact, for any intrinsically low energy house, is probably negligible in terms of any measurements, as there are just too many external variables that completely swamp any slight differences, so I have grave doubts that you'll get meaningful conclusions with regard to performance.

 

There's decades of prior art on low energy construction, and whilst I'd be the first to say that not every conceivable method has been built and tested, the majority have, and the collected data gained over 30 to 40 years or more is very extensive, and certainly of a high enough standard to enable a build method to be selected for any given location, site and ground conditions.

 

There are a few pretty simple rules with regard to design, and these are generally very well documented, such as minimising surface area to volume, build using a high decrement delay factor, shade east, south and west windows (ideally variably), etc, etc.

[SteamyTea]

3 hours ago, JSHarris said:

it's probably going to be quite hard to separate out the significant impact of different building techniques from any measured data set.

Yes, it is quite hard to do in the lab and other carefully set up experiments.

There are a few statistical techniques one can employ to tease out the differences, but if the initial premise, or the initial starting conditions are not correct, then the data produces rubbish results.