House 2.0

HS2: bonkers?

2012-01-10T18:23:00.000Z

I've just been listening to Transport Minister Justine Greening announcing the go-ahead for HS2, the high speed line to connect London with Brum, Manchester and Leeds. She's sounded so upbeat, so full of promise. But every time I hear about this project, my own heart sinks. There have been hundreds of thousands of words expended on this subject already, mostly by people with a far better grasp on

The God Species

2012-01-09T11:56:00.000Z

Mark Lynas has a not-so-new book out, the God Species, and I've been taking post-Xmas read. Lynas is now identified as one of the leaders of the new wave of techno-greens who have turned their backs on traditional environmental thinking and embraced science and technology as the way forward. Bring on more nukes, lots of them please, and don't get hung up about GM foods or, for that matter,

How accurate are QSs?

2011-12-15T13:29:00.000Z

Mark, I have a number of editions of your book and am now on the brink of my first self build. We have planning permission and detailed designs, and have had a couple of builders tender for the work, which was a condition from the bank in order that they would fund the project. However the costs are more expensive than I planned (surprise surprise I hear you say), and when I costed some of the

Are empty homes really a scandal?

2011-12-09T10:54:00.003Z

This week we've been treated to a new housing campaign, launched on Channel 4. The problem — no, let's get this in perspective — the scandal of empty homes. George Clarke has been bestriding our screens examining what has been going down. From the bits I've seen, he has mostly been laying into the now discredited Pathfinder Policy of the last government, which sought to rip up old terraced

Does Passiv mean Massive?

2011-11-14T12:54:00.000Z

Ken Neal makes some interesting points on my last but one post. • I do prefer to design passive houses rather than a PassivHaus, which are really active houses with all the kit and controls required. I do use and agree with all the standards, especially the airtightness but prefer to use passive stack ventilation. The additional heating load is about 1kW on a reasonably sized house which can be

Half FIT

2011-11-01T22:28:00.004Z

One morning two weeks ago, I was awoken by some banging coming from a neighbour's roof. Draw back curtains and, lo and behold, across the street, some guys are up on the roof, seating some PV panels. Now this is a street running North-South, which means the panels are facing due east, so the amount of power they will create will be well down on their designed output. To me, this was a sure fire

On 2011 UK Passivhaus Conference

2011-10-27T10:49:00.001+01:00

Monday and Tuesday this week saw me at the 2nd UK Passivhaus Conference at the Barbican Centre in London. There were around 250 attendees consisting of a fair smattering of old AECB-heads, a fair few BRE types, a sprinkling of academics and a good gaggle of "people who had come to learn." Consequently, the conversations ranged from the basic "This is what a Passivhaus is" through to the arcana

Brownfields, no gardens

2011-10-03T09:57:00.001+01:00

Last Wednesday evening (actually Sep 21, the day before I locked horns with the National Trust), I attended a talk put on by Cambridge Architectural Research and presented by David Birkbeck, who runs Design for Homes, and, incidentally, someone I have known for many years, having once written for Building Homes which David once edited. David is also a selfbuilder and I have written about his

The National Trust plays its hand

2011-09-29T10:53:00.000+01:00

Following on from last week's blogger's briefing, The National Trust has now published its promised Planning for People manifesto which sets out an alternative vision for NPPF. I wish I had had this to hand before attending their meeting because they all knew what was in it and I was shooting in the dark. First of all it's short. Even shorter than the NPPF (which if nothing else is winning

Is NPPF really a "developer's charter?"

2011-09-26T11:01:00.010+01:00

On Thursday, I was invited to a blogger's briefing the offices of the National Trust in London, from where they are masterminding the campaign against the government's planning reforms. I'd never been to a blogger's briefing before and I was curious enough to take the bait. "It's Day 57 of our campaign and we've only failed to get on the front page of a national daily twice" announced Andrew

The Portuguese Approach to Planning

2011-09-09T10:58:00.004+01:00

I've just returned from a week in Portugal, staying with friends in a piece of the Western Algarve which has seen a lot of haphazard development over the past twenty years. It's pertinent to our ongoing debate about NPPF because the Algarve is a good example of what the National Trust/CPRE fear might happen to England if the new planning regime comes into force. It's not that there is no

Cash for Sprawl

2011-08-16T07:56:00.004+01:00

I last wrote about the Green Belt on June 2nd, before the Draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) had been published. I identified it then as a very Tory problem because the Tories in the government want it loosened, whilst the Tories in the shire counties want it maintained - strengthened even. The NPPF appeared at the end of July, and most of the mainstream press coverage since then

Confusion over roofing underlays

2011-08-10T10:26:00.004+01:00

Back in the 1980s when I was working as a general builder, if we had a re-roofing job we always used a product called Zylex, a bitumen roofing felt produced by Ruberoid. It was heavy, came in 16m rolls and above all it was cheap. I can remember the first time I ever saw Tyvek which was said to be the future. Tyvek was that magic thing, a vapour permeable underlay (VPU), which would allow roofs to

Unintended consequences No 12: PV for water heating

2011-08-08T11:32:00.013+01:00

One of the more bizarre aspects of the Feed-in-Tariff is that electricity producing photovoltaics are being used to power immersion heaters for hot water tanks. The "correct" technology for this task is the solar thermal panel, as these are much more efficient in converting sunlight into hot water. They are cheaper to install and they do it directly - or more directly than PV will ever do. •

How do you assess a product like Oxyvent?

2011-08-04T20:18:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting press release that just landed on my desk. It's for a new plumbing product called Oxyvent. It's a box that you add onto your radiator or underfloor heating system that helps it run better, and it promises huge savings in fuel burned. According to the PR lady, Paul Worswick, director of Oxyvent, is "very keen that Oxyvent isn't seen as some magic box of tricks as the

Cantor on Air Source Heat Pumps

2011-08-02T08:54:00.001+01:00

John Cantor has a deserved reputation as a knowledgeable and independent commentator on all things heat pump. And here he has distilled much of what he knows on the vexed issue of air-source heat pumps. Anyone thinking of installing such a beast would do well to read through John's thoughts beforehand. He looks at why so many people end up being disappointed by their heat pumps, and what they

The Salford Low Energy Homes

2011-07-28T18:15:00.001+01:00

I found this piece fascinating. In the late 1970s, Salford Council hit upon the idea of building some low energy houses. They weren't the only ones. We did things like that in the 1970s. They were duly monitored for a couple of years, broadly found to work just fine, and then quietly forgotten about for the next 30 years. Then a couple of years ago, Salford University cobbled together some money

The Selfbuild Nugget

2011-07-26T08:26:00.001+01:00

From tiny acorns.... There it is, buried on line 13 of Clause 28 of the newly published National Planning Policy Framework, the phrase that we hope will turn the tide of the UK housebuilding scene. To paraphrase for those of you too lazy to download. Clause 28 deals with Housing Requirements. It asks that individual local authorities undertake assessments of what their housing requirements are

The Selfbuild Revolution

2011-07-25T10:29:00.001+01:00

It's been months in the making but the NASBA selfbuild action plan is now a reality and its here. It seems to be enjoying the support of housing minister Grant Shapps and there is every hope that at least some of the proposals will see the light of day. I was responsible for the Regulation and Red Tape bits (broadly pages 14 - 17) but I couldn't have done it without the input from the committee

Polysolar

2011-07-11T07:30:00.001+01:00

Cambridge is known throughout Europe as Start-Up Alley. All these whacky, sometimes nerdy boys coming through with their PHDs in things mere mortals can barely comprehend are encouraged to commercialise their research and to form companies with Greek-sounding names to market their work. Mostly this sort of thing goes on in the quiet of a science park, of which there are a number dotted around the

The Natural House?

2011-07-06T16:03:00.003+01:00

Good to see that The Natural House is open. At last. As far as I recall, it was meant to be up and running for BRE's Onsite 09 exhibition, but it had run into a few problems. I think the original builders went bust and it took a while to sort out a replacement crew. On time, on budget, it isn't. But is it on message? I haven't seen it in its finished state (your roving reporter having

On Welsh Slate

2011-07-01T15:58:00.000+01:00

Alan Smith, MD of Welsh Slate, had invited me to take a look around the famous Penrhyn slate quarry. I got there at last on Tuesday and was immediately bowled over by the place. The scale — it's enormous. The location — it's dramatic, perched up on a mountainside at the edge of Snowdonia. The history — it's all pervasive and a little disquieting. Penrhyn has been operating for hundreds of years

The Green Belt - a very Tory problem

2011-06-02T15:11:00.000+01:00

I have been dipping into a draft of the forthcoming National Planning Policy Framework (the NPPF) which is taxiing for take-off sometime in the not-too-distant-future (OK - I actually have no idea when). The NPPF sets out to streamline and simplify all the various national planning guidances (the PPGs and PPSs) into one document. This first draft will get re-written and then go out to

Housebuilder's Bible - 9th edition - missing table

2011-05-12T07:59:00.000+01:00

The 9th edition has now been on the shelves (well on Amazon's shelf at least) for just over a month and is selling well. And signs are that it's getting read as well because two eagle-eyed readers have spotted the fact that in Chapter 8 (Plumbing & Heating) I refer in the text to a table that isn't there. I can only apologise: it somehow got lost in the changeover between editions. The reason is

Harnessing the energy of the DIY army

2011-05-03T07:14:00.000+01:00

In recent weeks, I've given over some time to helping out Nasba (that's the National Selfbuild Association) by engaging with the government in a consultation exercise to see if we can somehow push selfbuild up the planners' agenda, and to make life easier for amateur builders. Whilst major housebuilders have long been represented in the corridors of power by professional lobbyists, the selfbuild