Grand Designs at Graven Hill starts tonight on Channel 4

[Sue B]

The new school I have talked about previously had 2 very large water tanks up in the loft area.  We had a a very strict water testing system in place which included checking their temperature.  In the summer, they were virtually bathwater temperature - this was also our drinking water (they were sealed).  The solution - we bypassed them with a much smaller tank.  The water was pumped round the school anyway so within 30 minutes of any power failure, we would have no water for anything so had to shut the school.

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, AliG said:

The build had me looking up hempcrete. It seems to be used more for ecological than efficiency considerations, although U-values seem decent at the thickness used. The guy said that he didn’t want to live in a house surrounded by chemicals. Then you could clearly see the PIR insulation in the roof, never mind the now well known issues with their wood burner.

 

The Triangle - ie McCloud's firt HAB development - is built from Hemcrete.

 

Go and find the special for that one.

 

Here he is enthusiing about Hemcrete:

 

[recoveringbuilder]

Hubby and I just looked at each other when we heard the £60k budget! His father was an architect surely he knew it would never do, 

I must admit to googling hempcrete it seemed interesting.

Then at the end they said it had cost between 200-300k that’s a big variant, I think if you started with such a small budget you would have a better idea of how much it had really cost unless the parents were just throwing money at them willy nilly 

[Jeremy Harris]

I think the cost they roughly agreed at the end included £100k for the plot, so they were saying that the build cost was between £100k and £200k.  If I had to guess I'd say they may have been closer to £200k than £100k, but can understand them not wanting to make the cost public, given that they had received financial assistance from their families.

[Ferdinand]

For lack of awareness of lifecycle sustainability I can't better the Extinction Rebelliion type (presumably an epitome for them) interviewed on Sky last weekend.

 

Gentle prodding revealed that she commuted into London from "my house in the Netherlands" on Eurostar, and that what she was going to save them all was Eurostar rather then the previous flying habit, and trying to stop anyone in London going about their business with ER. Presumably there also exists a pied-a-terre in London.

 

Meanwhile, Dutch emissions per person seem to  be nearly double ours (10.3 vs 5.7 tonnes of C02), and the reduction since 1990 in C02 for the Netherlands is actually *up* by nearly 10%. 

 

Yes - Rotterdam etc but it is not *that* significant.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited April 19, 2019 by Ferdinand

[ultramods]

I hope they didn't fly to Portugal for the eco cork insulation jolly.....I mean research.

[Onoff]

If they're making so many mistakes can't someone tell KM or is that it makes good telly? They shouldn't be pedalling daft, wasteful ideas.

[Jeremy Harris]

I've long since given up expecting die hard activists, of any particular flavour, to be logical.  It seems that disinformation and selective eyesight are prerequisites for many of them.  Nothing wrong with this, as long as we take the time to understand where they are coming from and why they hold the views they do.

 

What does annoy me is those who ignore hard evidence, or worse still, choose to try and ignore the well-proven laws of physics.  For some strange reason the first law of thermodynamics/the law of conservation of energy often seems to attract more crackpot views than pretty much any other.  YouTube is an interesting hunting ground for spotting nutters who seem intent on trying to prove that the first law is wrong.

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, Onoff said:

If they're making so many mistakes can't someone tell KM or is that it makes good telly? They shouldn't be pedalling daft, wasteful ideas.

 

I'm not sure they are mistakes (with the exception of the Legionella risk from the internal rainwater storage tanks, which really does worry me a lot), more choices that don't seem to align very well with their tight budget and ecological aims.

 

Some choices seem OK, like the timber frame and hempcrete, some just seemed a bit odd, like the large (and expensive) thermal store and the inefficient (and expensive) heat recovery system.

 

I'm guessing that they had professional guidance when choosing systems to incorporate in their home, just because I gained the impression from watching the programme that neither of them knew a great deal about building when they started work, yet at that point they had already chosen big and expensive systems for the house, despite being on an extremely tight budget.  This leads me to question how sound the professional advice they received was. 

[ProDave]

Apart  from anything else, choosing to store over 4 tons of water in the loft, forced them to install a steel frame to take that weight.  If the tanks were on the ground floor, or outside for the RW harvesting, that is a big expense saved.

[ToughButterCup]

5 hours ago, ProDave said:

Apart  from anything else, choosing to store over 4 tons of water in the loft,[...]

 

I missed that.... Come to think of it 4 tonnes of water has a significant thermal mass dunnit? (I'm off - no apology - too tired)

[Ed Davies]

9 hours ago, ProDave said:

The electric car thing is interesting. SWMMBO saw an advert for a "self charging hybrid car" .  "Oh that's a good idea, saves all that messing about plugging it in to charge it"  I had to go through a process of questioning her well how do you think it charges then if you don't plug it in, before the penny dropped.

 

 

[Ferdinand]

20 hours ago, ProDave said:

 

 

All the wood I burn is free, but I suspect free firewood is not so abundant in Oxfordshire.

 

Wonder If Oxfordshire is the sort of place to ban wood stoves when the pollution numbers hit the media?

 

I did notice that Kevin McCloud mentioned Thermal Mass himself as one of the properties of Hemcrete (Hempcrete). I suspect that the different bastardised spelling has to do with Trademarks but I am linguistically scarred by the P in Hampster Dance (which I will not post), so cannot insert one in Hemcrete.

 

In practice it looks to be reminiscent of the ‘set shredded wheat’ in Durisol. Is it? I have a Durisol block in my conservatory, but have never seen Hem_crete.

 

I think there is a lot to be said for doing as much as possible yourself, even in these technical times.

 

Having run a few numbers, I make Cork Bark insulation roughly 4x as expensive as Celotex per amount of insulative function provided. That is just based on u-value per ££.

 

I do think that KM could be asking a few more pointed questions eg “How will you keep that water tank safe from Legionnaires’ disease?”.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited April 20, 2019 by Ferdinand

[newhome]

I don’t understand why people are building detached houses with only 2 bedrooms? That house apparently had a master bedroom and one ‘for the boys’. They may be ok sharing now but inevitably they will want their own rooms within a few years. 3 bed homes are presumably more marketable too. 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, newhome said:

I don’t understand why people are building detached houses with only 2 bedrooms? That house apparently had a master bedroom and one ‘for the boys’. They may be ok sharing now but inevitably they will want their own rooms within a few years. 3 bed homes are presumably more marketable too. 

 

 

Council tax, perhaps? 

 

We've built a similar sized 2 bedroom house, but primarily because we don't intend to sell it, and if we did the chances are that it would best suit another retired couple anyway.  For us, 2 bedrooms is plenty, and the chances are the spare room will only be used very infrequently.  A third bedroom would never get used at all, I'm sure.

[ToughButterCup]

6 minutes ago, newhome said:

I don’t understand why people are building detached houses with only 2 bedrooms?... 

 

I do. We are. Keeps the kids away ; grand children are welcome to stay. 

[scottishjohn]

size of plots +cost  for 3rd bedroom and reduction in living space

no one in their right mind would build 2 bed purely out of choice if money and space available ,if only on for  resale value 

would be better to put 2 plots together and build a big pair of semis 

Edited April 20, 2019 by scottishjohn

[ToughButterCup]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

...

I have  a Durisol block in my conservatory... 

... 

So that's where it is. I knew I was one short. Mystery solved 

[newhome]

To qualify, I meant young families building 2 bed homes, not the retirement sector. I would be happy with a 2 bed home too but seems an awful lot of effort for younger couples to put into building a home that you may outgrow in a handful of years. One of the couples last week (no kids yet) were putting 3 beds in and said that they saw it as a house they could stay in indefinitely if they wanted to. 

[eandg]

19 minutes ago, newhome said:

To qualify, I meant young families building 2 bed homes, not the retirement sector. I would be happy with a 2 bed home too but seems an awful lot of effort for younger couples to put into building a home that you may outgrow in a handful of years. One of the couples last week (no kids yet) were putting 3 beds in and said that they saw it as a house they could stay in indefinitely if they wanted to. 

 

 

Thought that too. Crazy given they had the space (it's a three storey detached house so they must have). I'd actually say any self-built family homes should have four (or three with flexible space to use as a fourth) to allow for grandparents/cousins/pals to stay over. Pity the boys as young adults stuck at home in their 20s due to crazy Oxford house prices and having to share a bedroom. 

 

I also didn't get why a barrister and lawyer couldn't just borrow a few quid (or go to work and use their salaries for far more efficient labour) to fit out the house. It took about 6 months for the final fixes and finishings while the wife and kids stayed with family. And they still spent nearly 200 grand on the build, to be left with a scabby looking kitchen. 

Edited April 20, 2019 by eandg

[newhome]

24 minutes ago, eandg said:

 

I also didn't get why a barrister and lawyer couldn't just borrow a few quid (or go to work and use their salaries for far more efficient labour) to fit out the house. 

 

I get that people want to do it themselves. My hubby gave up working for a couple of years because he wanted to work on the house (I was still working to fund it though lol). The barrister did seem clueless about estimating though; both time and cost estimates. And the flying to Portugal to look at cork being harvested alongside using the word sustainable a lot ?. A bit like Emma Thompson jetting over 5000 miles to take part in a climate change demo! ?

 

[PeterW]

1 minute ago, newhome said:

And the flying to Portugal to look at cork being harvested alongside using the word sustainable a lot

 

I wonder sometimes if GD pays for the trips so viewers get to see a bit more excitement than a 1960s International tractor with a flat tyre mixing hemcrete...

[billt]

42 minutes ago, eandg said:

I also didn't get why a barrister and lawyer couldn't just borrow a few quid (or go to work and use their salaries for far more efficient labour) to fit out the house. It took about 6 months for the final fixes and finishings while the wife and kids stayed with family. And they still spent nearly 200 grand on the build, to be left with a scabby looking kitchen. 

 

To be fair, he claimed to be a human rights lawyer and presumably not very well paid by legal standards, and she seemed to be a full time parent.

 

Maybe some people aren't entirely focused on climbing a corporate ladder and maximising their wealth; they might actually want to enjoy life and do something more interesting than lawyering. It's their house, why shouldn't they design it to fit what they want, not to maximise resale value. After all, that's what most people seem to claim as the main reason for building themselves.

 

After seeing it after reading a lot of these posts, it was a lot better than I expected it to be. The wall finishes were good, I liked the exterior. I couldn't see much evidence for lots of air leaks. It was quite obvious that the interior wasn't anything like finished, so it looked poor in places.

 

Yes, the thermal store was insane; we've got a very similar Akva 2,500l store with 3 coils, but it's designed to accept 10 hour burns from a log boiler. With the pathetic energy sources they seem to have it's doubtful if it will get more than tepid without the gas boiler going most of the time.

 

The balcony also looked a bit dodgy, the timber looked inadequate and the rail was unsafe, although that could just be temporary.

 

He also claimed to be doing a PHD and teaching at some time during the build. Overall I was quite impressed.

[newhome]

46 minutes ago, billt said:

It's their house, why shouldn't they design it to fit what they want, not to maximise resale value. After all, that's what most people seem to claim as the main reason for building themselves.

 

I just think they’ve been shortsighted in not considering all of the family, ie the boys when they are a bit older. Bet he didn’t grow up sharing a bedroom. I mentioned the house needing to be marketable simply for when the inevitable question of whether to move to give the boys their own rooms is raised. If the design had properly accommodated the whole family there would be no need for them to move. 

 

I didn’t think the house looked in any way finished either so most of the finishing touches are yet to come. The balcony rail looked like scaffolding so presumably temporary. Doubt it would get through building control like that anyway. 

 

 

 

[eandg]

3 hours ago, billt said:

 

To be fair, he claimed to be a human rights lawyer and presumably not very well paid by legal standards, and she seemed to be a full time parent.

 

Maybe some people aren't entirely focused on climbing a corporate ladder and maximising their wealth; they might actually want to enjoy life and do something more interesting than lawyering. It's their house, why shouldn't they design it to fit what they want, not to maximise resale value. After all, that's what most people seem to claim as the main reason for building themselves.

 

After seeing it after reading a lot of these posts, it was a lot better than I expected it to be. The wall finishes were good, I liked the exterior. I couldn't see much evidence for lots of air leaks. It was quite obvious that the interior wasn't anything like finished, so it looked poor in places.

 

Yes, the thermal store was insane; we've got a very similar Akva 2,500l store with 3 coils, but it's designed to accept 10 hour burns from a log boiler. With the pathetic energy sources they seem to have it's doubtful if it will get more than tepid without the gas boiler going most of the time.

 

The balcony also looked a bit dodgy, the timber looked inadequate and the rail was unsafe, although that could just be temporary.

 

He also claimed to be doing a PHD and teaching at some time during the build. Overall I was quite impressed.

That's fair enough but in his shoes I would have done some work and/or borrowed a bit of cash to let someone else share the load and to see my family. They may have a house they want but they have more or less sacrificed a year of family life to get it - and I'm not sure the end product (or the financial saving, if any) merits that. For the additional 6 months rent and housing costs they were out he could have employed at least a labourer earlier in the process to get the build moving. And he did clearly recognise he needed support (employing a joiner early in who he then fell out with). For me watching from afar it seemed that he let his pig headedness get in the way of delivering a family home.