The Natural House?

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 temporarily stopped roving) but judging by Hattie Hartman's Footprint piece, I am puzzled by what point it's trying to make. The conclusion I am drawn to make is that this is a right-wing house, sitting in a small estate (OK Innovation Park) of left-wing houses. It is also a vocal house, making a statement about its political credentials. "I'm different and I don't care who knows it. Something 'bout me is not the same."

Enter Grant Shapps, our Housing Minister, who was on hand to open the house. Note it's red tape he is cutting, not blue ribbon!

Very symbolic. His quote is also illuminating. Shapps said ‘delivering zero carbon was beginning to look quite alien and not synonymous with traditional looking homes. . . Natural House demonstrates that British design will still have a place on our streets and does not need to be replaced by Scandinavian-style, ‘eco-bling’ properties that wear their green credentials for all to see’.

Now hold on Grant. One thing at a time. Firstly, is this really what anyone would call "British Design." I'm really not sure. Although it's four square, faintly Georgian, it's also nothing like anything I have seen anywhere in the world. If you were to show me a picture of this house without knowing where or what it is, and had asked me to guess where it was, I think I would go for Germany, probably because the windows look German (in fact they are Austrian, quite close). I'm not even sure what a modern British house design looks like.

By implication, Shapps seems to be implying that the other houses on the BRE Innovation Park look Scandinavian, but once again I'm not sure that really holds water. One or two maybe - indeed one of them is Scandinavian IIRC. But mostly they look.....left-wing methinks. Or modern. I guess Scandinavia is pretty left wing. Certainly has very high public spending levels. Not to mention suicide levels - how existential can you get? There is a point to be teased out here, but I'm not sure it's Britain v Scandinavia.

Then there's the eco-bling comment. One of the things that the Natural House eschews is eco-bling, which is the derogatory term used for solar panels in particular, but also for all the various accoutrements which the government currently gives us subsidies for (i.e. heat pumps, biomass boilers, CHP plants, i.e. small scale renewables generally). Although the Natural House is not a PassivHaus, it's making much the same points — i.e. you don't need eco-bling, you just need to build it properly. No whether this is a left v right, modern v traditional battle, I have no idea, but it's a point to which I pretty much subscribe. Maybe that makes me right-wing?

The manifesto for the Natural House includes using not only "natural" materials but ones that can be sourced in the UK and ones that can be purchased off the shelf. Which shelf, it doesn't say? Harrods anyone? Eagle-eyed readers will already have spotted that the windows came from Austria (despite Howarth Timber now making them in Lincolnshire), but it also uses Thermoplan clay blocks for the walls (Germany), Pavaroof (Switzerland), Aereco ventilation (France), lots of timber (anywhere but the UK). At least the foundations (Bullivants) and the roof cover (Sandtoft) are British, plus much of the chintzy fit out.

And how is it heated? Hattie doesn't tell us. Nor does any of the other literature I can lay my hands on. It's certainly no post-heated MVHR system because it doesn't have an MVHR system - it relies on Aereco's passive stack system instead. Certainly won't be a heat pump. can't be a gas boiler? Can it? My guess is that it's some infernal biomass boiler, hidden away in the servants quarters. I bet you it's made nearer to Scandinavia than the UK! (But I won't mention eco-****).

So we are getting close to the knitty gritty of what this house is all about here. It shares a fabric-first approach with the PassivHaus — incidentally there is as yet no PassivHaus on the BRE Innovation Park — but it sets itself out as being diametrically opposed to the PassivHaus airtight/MVHR approach. Because? Well, it's not altogether clear. I guess because it's "unnatural". But they have in fact — according to the score sheet — built an amazingly airtight house with a score of just 1q50, which only narrowly fails the PassivHaus standard (0.6q50). That's an awfully tight score for a house with no MVHR and it will be interesting to see how it performs, especially if there is to be wood-burning appliances as well. My guess is it will struggle - or else there are vent holes which will be used to let extra air in which simply got closed off for the pressure test. Something doesn't add up here.

You see, if you go really airtight, you more or less have to install MVHR. I know some people disagree (Bill Dunster?), but the consensus of opinion is that if you construct something resembling an aircraft cabin, then you need to have a fan to change the air. Maybe someone, somewhere on some distant university campus will spend years testing ventilation systems and airtightness levels to get a conclusive answer to all this, but at the moment it's an unknown and MVHR is much the simplest way of dealing with this unresolved issue.

So why make a stand against using MVHR? Is it because it's eco-****? Is it because it's not natural? Is it because it doesn't breathe? (Give us a break, please!) Is it because it's left wing? Or Scandinavian? Is it because we like chimneys? But if we like chimneys, why bother to build to such low air tightness levels? And why does this blog keep ending with a series or questions?

Conservatories and Part L

I am still trying to get my head around the next version of Part L (the energy efficiency regs) which comes into effect in England & Wales in October this year. One of the things that looks to me to be contentious is the status of conservatories and porches.

In the last version of Part L (2006), the guidance was clear enough. It stated that if you built a conservatory outside the heated envelope, you could effectively ignore it, as far as energy efficiency measures went, as long as the thermal separation between dwelling and conservatory was constructed to a standard comparable to the rest of the external envelope of the dwelling.

This time around it’s changed. The guidance for new dwellings states this: Where conservatories and porches are installed at the same time as the construction of a new dwelling, the guidance in this document applies. The sense of this doesn’t exactly leap out at you, but you have to presume that what it is hinting at is that the whole building, including conservatories and porches, has to be treated as if it was within the thermal envelope, and that the SAP calculations have to include the conservatory (and the porch - no mention of porches in 2006). There is just one additional sentence here: For conservatories and porches added as extensions to a dwelling, see guidance in Approved Document L1B.

For those of you getting confused by these designations, Part L is split into four sections. L1A deals with new dwellings, L1B with extensions and alterations to existing dwellings, whilst L2A and L2B cover non-domestics with a simliar distinction between new and old.

So what is this guidance in L1B?

It suggests that most conservatories added as extensions will still be exempt from Part L compliance.
The exemption (from having to comply with Part L) applies only for conservatories or porches:
␣␣ which are at ground level;
␣␣ where the floor area is less than 30 m2;
␣␣ where the existing walls, doors and windows in the part of the dwelling which separates the conservatory are retained or, if removed, replaced by walls, windows and doors which meet the energy efficiency requirements; and
␣␣ where the heating system of the dwelling is not extended into the conservatory or porch.

I think that will cover 99% of conservatories and porches. So it looks as though Part L is choosing to make a distinction between how conservatories are treated in new builds as opposed to as extensions to existing homes. A new build conservatory will have to use glazing that meets WER rating of C or better, or have a U value of no more than 1.6. That means expensive double glazing at the very least, and essentially a very different beast to the basic single-glazed box you can pick up at Wickes for a few hundred quid.

So - presuming I have got this right - the question is why the difference? Surely what will happen is that people won’t build conservatories into new builds, but will wait for the house to be finalled and then go out and get what they want later. Which will result in much poorer building standards.

There is also a wider question here about who should decide where the boundaries of the thermal envelope should be. If you want an unheated room - be it conservatory, sunspace. workshop, larder or whatever you choose - why shouldn’t you be able to build one? Shouldn’t the client or their designer be able to choose just which parts of the home should be heated, and which shouldn’t?

36 hours in Switzerland

Last week I went to Switzerland on a big shiny Airbus as a guest of Just Swiss. I went with two esteemed architects, Meredith Bowles and Roger Zogolovitch (pictured here in the snow, Roger on the left) and we were shown round a site of ultra low energy apartments called Silence, a window factory, two houses under construction and a very state-of-the-art factory timber frame housebuilder called Schoeb. All very interesting stuff, and the Swiss we met were incredibly enthusiastic and, well, just plain nice. It snowed heavily and it all looked like a winter fairy land. Great trip, great way to spend 36 hours in January.

Meredith and Roger were looking at potential partnering arrangements with Schoeb and had a couple of rather more detailed discussions than me. I got a more personal tour, showing how this business had grown from a joinery workshop in Walter Schoeb's garage to become Switzerland's most successful factory house builder, completing around 60 units a year. That's still small by German standards, but compares in scale with UK housebuilders like Oakwrights. Their semi-automated production lines were humming away with Hundeggers and Weinmanns beavering away — I have seen a few of these operations now — with just two or three people overseeing the construction of walls, floors and roof panels. Schoeb are interested in building in the UK and have set up an office in London. They will also be at EcoBuild as part of the Just Swiss stand, so if you want to find out more, check them out there. My impression was that their system is very robust, very well thought out, but may prove to be rather too expensive for the typical UK client. Only those wanting quality — or perhaps a Passive House solution out of a box — need apply. Interestingly, the cost of shipping from Switzerland to the UK only adds around 5% to the factory gate prices: the heaviest component is the timber which has to be imported into the UK in any event.

Some random points of interest. The Swiss have their own energy saving performance standard called Minergie. It comes in various format. Standard Minergie, Minergie P (roughly equivalent to PassivHaus), Minergie P Eco (with other sustainability features like water saving) and Minergie P Eco Plus (with added renewables). Obviously, this system is never going to be of interest to anyone other than the Swiss; it's all rather like the Code for Sustainable Homes in this respect. Yet another reminder as to how good it would be to have a supra-national standard that everyone could understand.

Switzerland seems to be in love with heat pumps. But then their electricity is relatively low carbon, with a mix of nuclear and hydro, including some pumped storage schemes — they do seem to have rather more hills than we do here in East Anglia.

The low energy apartments, called Silence, featured something I hadn't seen before. Phase change glass. GlassX is the name. Apparently, the architect of the apartment scheme, Dietrich Schwarz, happens to be the CEO of GlassX, and therefore has the wherewithal to specify his product because he is the architect. Does this strike you as a little bit unusual? Or maybe that’s usual in Switzerland.

And on the visit to window manufacturer, Scheiwiller, I saw my first bit of quadruple glazing. Here's my picture. No drooling over the 0.2 U value glass please. The Swiss really seem to be having a love affair with huge patio doors and in the Scheiwiller workshop, there was a beast that was 5m long and 2.3m high, triple glazed and weighing in at 400kg when glazed. It is so big that it will have to be re-glazed on site because it won't be possible to lift in into place with the glass in. I'm not sure such enormous glazing units are really such a good idea. The MD of Scheiwiller told me that triple glazing first appeared in his workshop in around 2004 and it has grown steadily since then. Now around half of all his work is triple glazed, and he sort of expects it all to go to triple before long. Hence the appearance of quadruple glazing.

Schoeb the housebuilders rather confirmed this trend too. Generally, their basic spec involves double glazing and no ventilation at all (they open the windows instead when things get stuffy). But the green spec almost always involves triple glazing and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. It seems that triple glazing is almost a marker for a mechanical ventilation — where you have one, you have the other.

On Scaling Everest

I last wrote about Everest double glazing in June 07, and I was just a tad disparaging. The piece got some interesting feedback including one comment from someone who sounded suspiciously like an Everest salesman.

Last night in the gym I found an interesting article in Monday’s Telegraph, profiling Simon Jarman who is the MD of Everest. OK, I know I shouldn’t have been reading papers in the gym, I should have been listening to something bracing on my iPod, but age sometimes withers the urge for self-improvement and it’s just about then that one finds oneself reaching out for the Telegraph.

Just why would one find such a piece interesting? Well, sometime soon we have to clean up the mess that is our existing housing stock and Everest is a firm that is well versed in the black arts of home improvement. Could they become a force for the good, instead of covering the streetscapes of Britain with ugly plastic windows? Simon Jarman doesn’t exactly suggest they will but he is certainly moving the business away from its roots. Here are some of the points I picked out.

• Average age of customer is 55. 80% don’t have a mortgage. They are rich. (Cynics would say they have to be to be able to afford the prices.)

• There are over 3,000 double glazing companies in the UK. Anglian is No 1. Everest is No2, and yet Everest only has a 2.5% market share.

• The backbone of the Everest business is its 1,000 strong sales force, all of whom work as franchisees. The route to market is up to the individual, but they don’t do cold calling over the phone.

• Installation is subbed out. The only things which Everest do is a) make the stuff (at two plants in Kent and Wales) and operate an after-sales team (to sort out the cock-ups?).

• Everest started in 1965. In 1999, Brian Kennedy brought the business off Caradon. Since then he has sold stakes to both management and private equity. Last year sales were £165m, and profit £15m.

• Everest have moved into selling solar panels and are also considering getting into call-out services like plumbing and locksmithery (is there such a word?). And maybe home insurance products like boiler breakdown. Just like the AA.

• Ted Moult shot himself after appearing in an Everest TV advert.

On triple glazing

The highlight of last week’s AECB conference in Oxford was Wolfgang Feist, Mr PassivHaus, who held forth over a 60 minute lecture and four 90 minute seminars on all aspects of the PassivHaus standard. He is a remarkable performer: for one thing, he really knows his stuff and he is able to explain in great detail just why the standard, which he is largely responsible for, is designed the way it is.

The idea is not to construct zero carbon housing, or any stupid notion like that. What PassivHaus aims to do is to provide maximum thermal comfort in a house at minimal energy cost. This thermal comfort thing is important — I hadn’t really appreciated just how important before.

For instance, comfort underlies the PassivHaus take on triple glazing. I have been a voice arguing that triple glazing is “overkill” in the UK climate and that the energy used in making these units would probably never be repaid by the energy saved over their lifetime. However, the main reason for using triple glazing is not to save energy but to provide more comfort, as the internal temperatures remain more even.

Feist produced a table showing what the temperature differences were close to different forms of glazing when the internal temperature is designed to maintain at around 21°C and the external temperature drops to —5°C.
• next to a single glazed window, the adjacent temperature is around 1°C
• next to a double glazed window (2000 vintage), the adjacent temperature is around 11°C
• next to an all bells-n-whistles low-e double glazed window, the adjacent temperature is 16°C
• next to a triple glazed window, with a centre pane U value of just 0.65, the temperature is 18°C.

Feist maintained that in England, the milder temperatures meant that you wouldn’t have to use triple glazing to reach PassivHaus standard, but that it would be silly not to. What he did say was that he thought insulated window frames were more important than triple glazing. Interestingly, when the first PassivHaus’s were being built, there was no such thing as an insulated window frame and they had to adapt existing ones by sticking insulation on the outside. But by 1996, small joinery firms were responding to the idea and insulated frames became commercially available. Now they are available in plastic and aluminium frames, as well as timber.

Feist also discussed where to put the low-e coatings in triple glazing. Apparently, triple glazing will benefit from two coatings, but if the coatings are placed either side of the centre pane, and the pane isn’t toughened, there is a high risk that the panel will crack, due to thermal shock. Now they tend to provide low-e coatings to the inner surfaces of the two outer panes. In passing, it’s worth noting that the inside pane in a triple glazed unit doesn’t need to be glass – however, every transparent material used to date is more expensive than glass, so glass it remains, even though this makes the units very heavy.

Pilkington energiKare

I came across one new product at BRE’s Onsite 09 event, which was a new type of energy saving glass being marketed by Pilkington. It’s made in Japan, by Nippon Glass, owners of Pilks, and it consists of a two panes of glass separated by a vacuum gap of just 0.2mm. In this country, it’s being aimed fairly and squarely at the listed building/Georgian sash window market, because you get a very good U value from it (Centre Pane value 1.4) yet you can’t tell it’s not single glazing.

Well actually, you can, if you look closely. You can’t see that it’s two panes of glass, but the 0.2 gap has tiny black spacers located within it which you can see if you look close up – they appear to be a series of black dots. If the vacuum fails, the spacers fall out, so you have a visible clue that the unit is no longer working. But of course the units won’t fail. Will they?

The units are made up before the vacuum is applied. Each unit comes with a little grommet through which you can suck out all the air. There is a minimum unit size of 0.4m2, so a sash window will have to be done in one and glazing bars applied afterwards. But that’s not a big problem.

It looks as though they have got a product which can provide good energy efficiency and yet satisfy the English Heritage/Conservation Officer lobby. At around £300/m2, it will cost, but if done as a package of overall window refurbishment or replacement, it’s not that prohibitive. Just a shame they’ve given it a horrible name: Pilkington energiKare. I’m really getting to hate inTerCaps, aRen’T yOu?

Why sash windows work

Alan Burgess of Masterframe has taken the trouble to prove what many of us had long suspected. That sash windows work as superb ventilators. The trick is to open them a little at both the top and the bottom and this sets up a circulation of air that will clear the room of stale air, bad smells or excess heat in summer. Alan, together with his technical director Ray Rabbett, have run a series of simulations on software used by the ventilation trade which shows just how effective the traditional sash design is compared to other common window formats, such as top hung casements or tilt and turn. The results of their work will be published shortly.

For Burgess, it’s of more than academic interest. He is, and always has been, passionate about sash windows, and his company makes nothing else. He’s long felt that the powers-that-be have been conspiring against the sash design and pushing us all gently towards a more modern, European style, using energy efficiency arguments to jolly us along. Burgess feels that his contemporary re-working of the traditional sash designs are the equal of casements and tilt and turns in this respect, but now he has some proof that they are actually superior in terms of ventilation. And in a critical passage in Part F, the ventilation regulations, there is a reference that says that, when replacing windows, rapid ventilation should not be made worse. Up until now, no one has challenged the assumption that this simply means that the openings should be of similar size. But it transpires that a single opening casement is far less effective at rapid ventilation than a combination of top and bottom openings.

In common with many people, Burgess has long decried the ripping out of Victorian sashes and their replacement by top hung casements. Up till now, the objections have only ever been aesthetic. If this research is taken on board — and Part F is up for consultation very shortly — then it means that in future existing sashes will either have to be repaired or replaced on a like-for-like basis.

Whither the Windowman?

Yesterday I drove down to Cranleigh in Surrey to the home of Charles Brooking, the man who is famous for collecting historic windows. Our meeting had come about through a casual enquiry I had made to him about the origin of French windows and, more specifically, whether it’s correct to say French windows or French doors. According to Charles, it’s very definitely French windows: French doors is utterly non-U. The habit of fitting them arrived in Britain in the early 19th century and it does appear to have originated in France, where timber joinery practices were some way in advance of ours.

Anyway, one thing led to another and yesterday morning I found myself entering the strange world of Charles Brooking and his enormous collection of joinery dating from the 1500s through to the 1960s. We immediately found out that we had much in common. Both of us were born in 1953, both of were sent to minor public schools and neither of us had done much that resembled a normal day’s work since. Whilst standing in one of the many sheds in his garden, leaning against some timber sash window he had salvaged from God knows where, he seemed very keen to talk me through some of the byways of his life and carreer, and how it has always come back to his fascination with architectural details. Charles claimed that this started for him as early as his 3rd birthday.

It placed him really as a man out of his time. He seems to sit uneasily in a world of congestion charging, security cameras and internet banking. He talked wistfully of the fun and freedom of the 60s and 70s and said he didn’t regret not having any children because he thought they faced a grim future. Oh dear, maybe this recession business really is getting to people.

The point about Charles Brooking is that he isn’t just some eccentric collector with a case of OCD: he ferrets out stuff with a purpose and is assembling a body of work, which is quite unique in the world. His work has come to the attention of many over the years, including such luminaries as Prince Charles, and he has for many years been employed by the University of Greenwich as a lecturer. His opinions are regularly sought out and a visit to his collection is a must for any aspiring conservation officer.

But he has a problem. Collecting remains his passion, cataloguing his curse. The Brooking Collection in its entirety now includes over 300,000 pieces — he has over 30,000 sash pulley mechanisms alone. His phone is hot with new contacts ringing him up about country houses about to be demolished, and he feels that it’s important that someone (i.e. Charles himself) is around to sort the wheat from the chaff. But without some back-up and the hope that at least some of his collection can move to a permanent home where it could be curated and displayed, it may all end up lost in a series of sheds dotted around the countryside of Surrey and Kent.

You see, to a large extent, the Brooking Collection
is currently going backwards in terms of visibility, if not in size. The University Of Greenwich offered to display some of his collection in 1986, but then sold the site used for this in 2002, since when its gone back to being warehoused. There are moves afoot by the University of Greenwich to set up a new permanent home for the collection, but it’s painstakingly slow and Charles fears that the whole process is losing momentum.

To my mind, it seems ironic that, with all the interest displayed in this country towards conservation projects and with huge organisations around like the National Trust and English Heritage, there isn’t more help for Charles Brooking. We spend inordinate amounts of money on maintaining historic properties, but we actually have very limited resources for teaching people the history of our buildings and how and why they came to be built. Pulling these threads together systematically is a huge task and here is someone who has completed a large tranche of this work off his own batt. For which service, the conservation bodies largely ignore him.

Howarth Triple-Glazed Windows

I did eventually get to Ecobuild, Wednesday afternoon, and having arrived with very low expectations after last years’ event, I must admit to really enjoying my visit. Go in the afternoon – it’s a lot quieter – that’s my tip.

I went to see a debate about decarbonising the existing stock with John Gummer and Michael Meacher, which was mildy interesting. I had good talks with a number of people, only some of whom I already knew.

But perhaps the most interesting conversation I had was right at the end when I stumbled across the Howarth Windows stand and fell into conversation with Keith Topliss. I noticed that Howarth had a triple glazed timber window on display which I hadn’t seen before from a UK manufacturer and asked how much they were charging for it. It’s not out yet, about to be launched in April and pricing hasn’t been set yet.

I then asked him about the Supply Air window which I knew there were making but saw no evidence of on the stand. That apparently is still undergoing testing in the UK, but is going very well in Ireland. Again, Howarth hope to launch the Supply Air window later this year in Britain.

Keith then proceeded to tell me about how the window market had completely changed since the NHBC brought factory-glazing into their warranty cover in 1998. Bit by bit, the old practice of site glazing has died away, especially in the new build sector, and with it the problems that once befell double-glazed sealed units, namely misting up and condensation. Keith said: ”90% of the problems we have with glazing units stem from the 10% of our market that still uses on-site glaziers. Misting up on factory glazing is now so rare that it’s virtually a thing of the past.”

He told me some horror stories of just how badly site glazing can be done. The glass units need to have plastic packers set correctly around them, a practice known as toeing and heeling, and whilst this is routinely done in factories, many glaziers simply don’t know about it and this eventually leads to the units moving in the frames and causing the seals to break down.

Howarth only make timber windows, they have never got involved in PVC. But their range is now expanding to take on the likes of Rationel and Protec by providing timber windows with an aluminium capping and with it a 25-year guarantee. They look set to raise the bar for UK volume joinery manufacturers.

Adrian, you mean like this?

In my opinion, it would look better if you rotated it through 90 degree - most of the text you'd want to read is vertical in the current version.

Window costs

I have been compiling a survey on window buying and have managed for the first time to produce the essential cost information as a graphic. I hope to be using this technique a whole lot more in the future. I'd be interested to know if it's both legible and comprehensible.

Why I don't think Code Level 6 is such a great idea

A thought provoking piece over on Fairsnipe questioning whether the Code for Sustainable Homes goes far enough. Martin’s opinion seems to be based around the fact that Barratt have recently been awarded a contract to develop 200 top Level 6 homes at Hanham Hall in Bristol. “Even failed newspaper baron Eddie Shah is reportedly building low cost homes that meet level 5,” he writes.

His implication being that if an amateur can get to Level 5 at low cost, and a box-basher-outer like Barratt can do Level 6, then the bar has been set too low.

I see a similar reaction to the Code as we did to Egan’s Rethinking Construction - we didn’t need it, we couldn’t do it - it will cost too much and then suddenly with a great coat of whitewash everyone was Egan compliant.

I see where he’s coming from but I think he’s completely wrong on this one. Why? What’s wrong with the Code for Sustainable Homes and, in particular, Code Level 6, the zero carbon house.

1. It demands the use of micro renewables to offset the energy being used. I believe that our future energy needs are going to met by a green grid-based solution. The same logic that brought about the creation of the national grid in the 1930s applies today just as it did then: localized power production is an inefficient use of resources. Micro renewables are expensive and often unsuited to small sites, yet Code Level 6 insists that they are fitted to all new homes after 2016. Far better to build and professionally manage large grid-based renewable power stations.

2. The low-energy side of the Code for Sustainable Homes is based pretty much on the PassivHaus standard. Whilst this is the acknowledged gold standard in the field, it’s not without its critics and no one has yet completed a Passive House in the UK, yet alone lived in one for a few years to find out whether it’s as good as its cracked up to be. Its fans claim that it costs only 5-10% more to build to this standard but I am not convinced about this: in theory, the list of differences may only be marginally more but to build a Passive House with air changes at under 1 q50 (as opposed to the current UK standard of 10 q50) takes a lot of attention to detail. Not “Bodge it up, bush, bush” which is how we build most houses in Britain.

3. Even if we overcame this hurdle, it’s still not clear to me that the PassivHaus standard translates to the UK climate, or our customs. For instance, what is the point of fitting triple glazing inside technically impressive insulated frames (U value 0.8 or under) when over half of us like to sleep in rooms with the window open all year round? I don’t think anyone has thought this through.

4. There is a whole ton of stuff in the Code for Sustainable Homes that has nothing to do with low energy housebuilding. The water restrictions are technically very challenging and will require rainwater harvesting systems to be installed on all new properties. This may be a noble aim in the low rainfall regions of the UK, but what if you are building in the Lake District where they have more water than they know what to do with? Lifetime Homes? Good stuff. Considerate Constructor scheme? Right on. But the crisis facing us is climate change, so what are all these other noble initiatives doing in here, muddying the water?

In summary, I find myself in a strange position. I think the idea of having a road map showing us how we should be building in the future is a great idea and I applaud the DCLG for being bold enough to bring on such a plan – it should have happened years ago. But I just feel that the Code for Sustainable Homes is the wrong plan. It’s all very well it being technically challenging to get to Code Level 6 — it is, despite what Martin seems to think — but the goal has to be rational and workable as well. Getting to the top levels of the Code, as it stands, involves substantial costs for very little benefit: that’s not clever, it’s a waste of precious resources. For every pound spent stretching a house from Code Level 3 to Level 6, you could save twenty times more energy addressing the energy gaps in the existing stock.

Afterthought: I don’t wish to snipe at Barratt for taking on this Code Level 6 project in Bristol. I think it should be built, occupied and monitored for three or four years to see how it works. That would take us to….about 2014. That would be the time to make a final decision about the roadmap.

Lifetime Homes: the 16 steps

Lifetime Homes, as a concept, has been around since 1991. The idea is to make housing usable by people of all abilities and in all phases of life, including childhood. It’s not just about the disabled!

It was developed by a group of housing experts, drawn together by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. A few of the ideas were incorporated into Part M of the England & Wales Building Regulations in 1999, but the Lifetime Homes concept as a whole is still only widely used by Housing Associations. The Code for Sustainable Homes awards eco points for building to Lifetime Homes standard and, as it stands, the standard will have to be incorporated into all new homes by 2016. You won’t be able to score the 90% rating required to meet Level 6 of the Code without it.

There are 16 design features which combined make up the Lifetime Homes standard:

• Car parking space should be easily capable of enlargement to attain a width of 3300mm

• The distance from the car parking space to the home should be kept to a minimum and should be level or gently sloping

• The approach to all entrances should be level or gently sloping

• All entrances should be illuminated

• Communal stairs should provide easy access and where levels are reached by lift, the lift should be fully wheelchair accessible

• Doorways and hallways have to be at least 750mm wide, or at least 900mm wide when the approach is head-on

• Dining and living areas should have space for turning a wheelchair and there should be adequate circulation space for wheelchair users

• The living space should be at the level of the entrance

• If homes of two or more storeys, there should be space at entrance level which should be used as a convenient bed space

• The design of the property should incorporate a provision for a future stair lift and a suitably identified space for a through-the-floor lift from the ground to the first floor

• The design of the property should provide for a reasonable route for a potential hoist from a main bedroom to the bathroom

• There should be a WC situated at the entrance level of the property and a drainage provision enabling a shower to be fitted in the future

• Walls in the bathrooms and toilets should be capable of taking adaptations such as handrails

• The bathroom should be designed to incorporate ease of access to essential amenities such as the bath, basin and WC

• Living room windows should begin 800mm from the floor or lower and be easy to open

• Switches, sockets, ventilation and service controls should be situated between 450mm and 1200mm from the floor

Comment
Most of these features can be incorporated into most house designs fairly easily and with minimal additional cost. The ones that are likely to cause problems for designers are:

• The requirement for larger bathrooms, especially the future proofing of the downstairs loo as a potential wet room. In small houses, this is a considerable space eater

• Future-proofing a lift shaft: again this is tricky in small houses

• Wide parking spaces

Ideally, from a Lifetime Homes point of view, we would all be living in generous bungalows. However, this runs completely counter to the prevailing mood in planning which demands that we squeeze as much as possible living space into the available footprint. Indeed, another part of the Code for Sustainable Homes awards points for using the basement and/or the loftspace. It’s not difficult to build a four-storey house that conforms to Lifetime Homes standard, but arguably it goes against the spirit of what Lifetime Homes is all about, which is making the whole house accessible to the physically impaired. Box ticking 1 Common sense 0.

On Everest Double Glazing

There was an interesting thread over on the selfbuild list last week about someone getting Everest in for a quotation for new glazing.

Had Everest round to quote on windows for our upcoming project. I 
thought they would be expensive, but was in for a shock when he came up 
with £45k for 12 windows, 3 double doors, 2 standard doors and a front 
door with side light! The quote is for UPVC with a lifetime guarantee 
for double glazing, U-value 1.2 and light oak finish. The front door 
is hardwood, all the windows look very good quality and it includes 
fitting. 2 garage doors added another £8600 to the price.

I pointed out that was 1/3 of our budget for the whole house build and 
he seamed to forget all about the sales pitch! I also showed him the 
prices in the self build bible for a similar number of doors and 
windows for £7k, again he was stuck for words.

Before I pushed him out the door he had knocked off 28% for bulk order, 
10% for ordering straight away and after a phonecall to the boss 
another 20% if they can use the house for advertising purposes. 
Knocking off the front and garage doors that we didn’t like much anyway 
left a best price of £20k for 12 windows and 5 doors (inc fitting). I 
was budgeting to get all of them (including oak front door and garage 
doors) for £15k max. Am I in the wrong ball park?

Must say my heart always goes into my mouth when I read that someone is using my book for pricing purposes, especially when there is a huge discrepancy between quoted prices and what I’ve suggested that the going rate actually is. I needn’t have worried. Two replies came back thus:

Your instinct is right. Everest is a very expensive way to go and not really
suited to a new build. As an example, we got 15 assorted (softwood) windows,
with glazing (all double, toughened, Pilkington K and Argo-filled) from
Travis Perkins for £2000. Had to fit the glass into the frames ourselves
which added a few hundred pounds. OK, that was a cheap 'n cheerful answer
(which suits me well enough) but a VERY far cry from - what did you say? -
£45,000!!!


and

'get three quotes for anything significant, and six for windows ... 
unless you know what a good price is !

'we paid roughly £10k for six French windows, one very large 
window, one corner window, another window, and two small windows ... 
a few years ago ... toughened & silvered, double glazed, with 
internal glazing bars, fitted ...


Joinery is one of the more complex parts of a build to quote for but what I have been trying to do over the past few years is to reduce the price down to a square metre rate. It’s not perfect because some elements, particularly the smaller pieces, are much more expensive on a metre basis than larger ones. But given that most houses consist of a mix of small windows, large windows and largeish doors, it tends to work out
 reasonably well over a whole house. What people don’t do, of course, which would be very helpful, is to state how much joinery they are buying in square metres. Instead you get long lists — effectively unmeasured joinery schedules — which you can merely hazard a guess at. As a very rough guide, you can guess that the area of joinery is going to be around 20% of your internal floor area, so if you don’t have a joinery schedule to hand, this is a good place to start.

The costs of joinery are also very variable depending partly on the quality but also on how they are finished and fitted. Is the glazing being purchased separately? Is fitting included in the cost? What I found on my last trawl through joinery costs is that prices varied from as little as £80/m2 for unglazed, unpainted softwood frames through to as much as £400/m2 for pre-finished upmarket glazing from the likes of Rationel and Velfac. A basic uPVC system, of the kind that Everest turn out, should be costing no more than £150- £200/m2. My guess is that the house in question has around 40m2 of joinery (not atypical on a selfbuild these days) and that the Everest rep was pitching initially at over £1,000/m2 and ended up down at around £400-£500/m2 mark, still way more than the prices of far better alternatives.