Build Store

www.buildstore.co.uk

The Self Build Guide
www.the-self-build-guide.co.uk

The Self Build Portal
www.selfbuildportal.org.uk

National Custom Self Build Association
www.nacsba.org.uk

Association for Environment Conscious Building
The AECB are a network of individuals and companies with the aim of promoting environmentally sustainable building.
www.aecb.net

National Self Building and Renovating Centre
Based in Swindon, the NSBRC is the UK’s only permanent venue for advice and support on all aspects of self-building.
www.nsbrc.co.uk

Future Simple Passive
futuresimplepassive.blogspot.co.uk

The main points to think about with insulation are performance, toxicity and life span.  Some insulation types degrade over time and their performance levels drop.  As they age they can also release gases that are not good for human health. We ask ourselves a simple question when specifying insulation, ‘Would we eat our dinner off it’! If you’d be happy to use the material the insulation is made from as crockery, then it’s probably fine.  Materials such as mineral wool, glass fibre, wood fibre, polystyrene and ceramics are all simple products whose raw materials would be fine for a plate! Using these inside your home, with their low off-gassing characteristics will help maintain a good internal air quality.

A further advantage of using natural insulations such as wood fibre; recycled newspaper or wood cellulose is that they absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere as they grow, which is then locked away in the building for hundreds of years. This helps offset some of the CO₂ emissions associated with construction and uses waste products to create an energy conserving material.

We always try to use triple-glazed windows for new-builds or large scale refurbishments where we’re trying to improve the thermal efficiency of the building.

Increasingly we’re understanding the crucial role draughts play in the heat loss levels of a building, so almost as important as the performance of the window itself is how it is fitted. There are lots of modern tapes, membranes and foams that allow for a long lasting water and air-tight window fitting.

Double-glazed or low performance windows not only lose more heat through additional fabric loses, but with lower glass surface temperatures cause the internal air adjacent to the window to cool quickly creating significant air movements or drafts.  A building with air movement needs to be 2°C warmer than one with still air to feel the same temperature.  Good windows should last for 50-100 years.

Our strategy is to make the heating requirement of a building so low that heating technologies and fuel choice become far less critical.  We have designed houses which are so well insulated making the energy demand so low that the use of more expensive low carbon technologies are not necessary.  Hot water and space heating can be provided by hot water tanks heated up over night on a green, off-peak tariff; carbon free with no boiler installation costs.

For existing buildings where super insulation is not viable and that retain a fairly high heating demand, wood pellet boilers are a good low-carbon solution.

Central to low energy buildings is Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery (MVHR).  MVHR is a system that extracts warm, moist stale air from kitchens, utility rooms and bathrooms and puts it through a heat exchanger which pre-heats fresh outside air that’s pushing into bedrooms and living areas. It reduces heat loss through ventilation, increasing ventilation rates with fresh filtered air.

We have designed buildings where MVHR has reduced the heating demand by half.   Always choose a good quality product and make sure it’s properly designed and installed. The actual units do make a noise so mount them in a suitable place away from bedrooms or main living spaces.

Cement production accounts for 5% of all CO₂ produced by humans, the second highest single source.  To help mitigate this specify low cement content concrete. 60% Granulated Ground Blast-furnace Slag (GGBS) uses a waste product from the steel industry to replace large percentages of the cement used in concrete.  It’s slower to set but equally as strong when it has, and no more expensive. Work with your builder or structural engineer to specify more sustainable concrete wherever possible.

Crucial to low energy building is understanding and optimising how a building is going to perform before it’s built. This is something we try and do with all our projects using computer software to model the building on its site. We can then tailor its size, orientation, shape, insulation, type and arrangement of windows to understand and then reduce energy demands. It allows testing of over-heating, daylight levels and can even estimate running costs right from the start of the process. It is perhaps one of the most fundamental tools for a low energy design.

Crucial to low energy building is understanding and optimising how a building is going to perform before it’s built. This is something we try and do with all our projects using computer software to model the building on its site. We can then tailor its size, orientation, shape, insulation, type and arrangement of windows to understand and then reduce energy demands. It allows testing of over-heating, daylight levels and can even estimate running costs right from the start of the process. It is perhaps one of the most fundamental tools for a low energy design.

The water we use in our homes uses a lot of energy to clean, filtrate and distribute it. Reducing water consumption is crucial in terms of saving money and the resource itself.  Using rainwater harvesting for toilet flushing, washing machines and outdoor use significantly reduces mains water use and can pay for itself over a ten to fifteen year period. As a side benefit you can use it to water your garden during hose-pipe bans.

Low-flush toilets, low-flow taps and efficient shower-heads also dramatically reduce water use.  Water flow from a shower can vary from between 6 litres to 30 litres a minute so using a good quality low-flow shower head maintains a luxurious experience whilst reducing water consumption and water heating costs.