Kits and Mortar

Whilst I was away on holiday in the US last week, I had plenty of time to do some reading, and I took the opportunity to work my way through half a dozen recent issues of the New Scientist, as well as read some American house building magazines. I came across some interesting stuff, one of which was an article by Richard Lovett entitled Carbon Lockdown (3 May, page 32 (behind a paywall)), which posited that a good way to reduce CO2 in our atmosphere would be to grow lots of trees for burial, thus sequestering the carbon underground.

Atmospheric scientist Ning Zeng is convinced that if we buried enough trees - where ‘enough’ equals ‘half the trees that grow each year’ - in such a manner that it doesn’t decay, we could offset all our fossil fuel emissions. Other schemes involve burying ‘biochar’, which sounds a lot like charcoal, or hydrothermally carbonised biomatter.

Another tactic is to reinvigorate the wold’s marshes and bogs, which naturally sequester CO2 in plant matter that’s turned into peat. This is already being done in places, not just for carbon sequestration but also as a way to protect and extend endangered habitats.

But here’s a thought or two. Firstly, it’s not an either/or situation - we can probably embark on all sorts of carbon sequestration projects. No one method is going to save the world on its own. Secondly, instead of burying wood, why not just use more of it in building and furniture making?

Wood retains its CO2 content so long as it’s not rotting, which means that wood used in a house is as good as wood buried in an anoxic environment, so why not use more of it? Our forefathers grew wood as a crop, projecting their needs a couple of hundred years into the future and planting trees accordingly. Many forests are now similarly managed, and if we treat wood as valuable crop, instead of as a sacred cow, we can use a lot more of it than we currently do.

I’ve noticed that some environmentalists feel that chopping down trees is the biggest sin we can commit, but we need to draw a very clear line between sustainable and well managed wood resources where trees are planted to replace those cut down, and pristine forests that are being raped and pillaged by ruthless loggers and desperate farmers. We need more crop trees, and we need to go all-out to protect our endangered forest habitats, but we can’t turn our back on all wood and treat every tree as if it’s sacred.

The way I see it, more wooden furniture, more wood used in house-building, and more innovative uses of wood, such as turning it into insulation, could both reinvigorate our forest-based economy and help us sequester carbon. A side effect would also be to provide us with a higher-quality and longer-lasting furniture, for example, or a warmer feel to our car interior finishes - nicer, more enjoyable day-to-day environments.

Burying wood seems like a waste when we can do so much more with it.

Filed under : environment, materials

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I had an email from Peter MacLellan the other day, telling me about a “360 degree immersive image” of the interior of Black Sheep House that he put together for the builders, Miles of Harris Construction. He says it “shows all the exposed timberwork before it was plastered. Amazing joinery - it’s a pity it was largely covered up.”

And so it does! Well worth a look, particularly at the roof, which is a little bit more complex than your average. Beautiful work.

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In the closing hours of Grand Designs Live, I finally got a chance to get up close and personal to The House That Kevin Built. It was a lot of fun to get in there and have a look round, especially as I was one of the last allowed in, so I got the place to myself for a while, hence the huge number of photos.

Here you can see right up and under the cladding.

And the rain screen from the lower, unrendered parts of the ModCell storey.

(more…)

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Throughout Grand Designs Live, Kevin McCloud and a team of builders, celebrities, and TV crew built a house in the Grand Village, with ModCell’s straw bales panels and vertical thatch on the ground floor, and the Facit building system used for the first floor and roof. Although I missed the very first stages of building, I kept as much of an eye on the house as possible.

The original brief was pretty simple:

To design and build a sustainable house, using traditional materials and techniques alongside cutting-edge 21st century technology which underpins [Kevin's] green principles.

When I arrived, on the morning of Day 4, the bottom storey, built by ModCell, was already complete and work had started on Facit’s half. The straw bales panels were all in place, but had not all been lime rendered. The glazing and window/door frames were also absent, but you could already get a sense of how the house was doing to look.

One panel was clad in vertical thatch. I heard that this was the first time that vertical thatch had ever been used in the UK, and whilst it looks kinda cool I have my doubts about it. Firstly, the individual stalks of thatch come out really easy, and are very tempting to pull at for the fidgety-fingered. This leads me to believe that the thatch would thin out very quickly, and the more thatch is pulled out, the less tightly packed the remaining straw or reed is, and the easier that comes out… Secondly, it would be a haven for small insects and spiders, which is fine on the outside, but less keen on that internally.

The other side of the house, showing rendered ModCell panels and one left open for later glazing.

The second storey, supplied by Facit goes up really quickly.

The Accoya wood doors and windows, from Westgate Joinery, go in. Accoya is basically softwood that has been treated with acetic anhydride at temperature and under pressure to give it the properties of hardwood. This means that it can be sustainably sourced, and the treatment makes it incredibly durable. I had a chat with a chap who was a real Accoya fan, and he told me that the manufacturer’s guarantee is 30 years, with the importer adding another 10 onto that - that’s showing a fair amount of confidence! This build was the first time he’d seen Accoya in the flesh, as it were, and he was getting really quite excited about it.

I have to say, the idea of a sustainable hardwood substitute really is quite exciting because it would reduce the need to cut down slow-growing hardwoods or use environmentally unkind treatments for softwoods, all of which is much better for the planet. Even the by-product of the hardening process is recyclable - it’s acetic acid, or as we usually call it, vinegar. Not that you’d want to put this vinegar on your chips…

The build progresses, and the roof goes on.

The holes at the top are for piping in insulation.

Work goes on inside, hidden away from nosey bloggers, sadly.

The Facit panels for the apex of the roof are so light that they could actually be carried by one person.

Kevin McCloud setting up for recording.

Kevin indulges in a bit of pole dancing.

Kevin does his piece to camera. I wasn’t close enough to be able to hear what he was saying, but I asked Finlay White from Modcell about the panel that he’s standing in front of, as I really couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be. Apparently, it’s a silica aerogel window which soaks up solar heat during the day and releases it during the night. According to the Channel 4 site, this particular panel was of Cabot Nanogel.

More photos in the next post!

Filed under : Grand Designs, exhibitions and events, glazing, materials

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Right at the end of Grand Designs Live, as the exhibition was shutting up shop, I finally got the chance to have a look around the House That Kevin Built (big post to come about that soon!). Whilst I was snapping photos, I got to talk to Finley White from ModCell, whose company put up the bottom half of the house.

The ModCell bits are the ground floor panels you can see either rendered or, on the left-hand wall, glazed to show the straw off. Glazing the panels is not normal practice, but it was nice to be able to see the straw inside in this instance. Essentially, these are wooden frames (sustainably sourced, of course) that have been filled with straw bales and then rendered with a lime render, making them super-insulating and vermin-proof. All this is done in a ‘flying factory’ near to the build site using local materials to reduce the amount of transportation required.

The panels can then be assembled very quickly and easily on-site and as they are already rendered, the structure can be made water-tight very easily. Finlay also explained to me that builders generally dislike having straw bales kicking about as they have to be kept bone dry throughout the build, have a tendency to shed straw which then gets everywhere, and are a bit of a pain in the neck. ModCell, on the other hand, deals with all the straw away from the build, keeping the site tidy. As all the rendering is done in the ‘factory’, you’re also less at the mercy of the weather - joy to any British self-builder’s ears.

I was really impressed with the idea, and it’s a real shame that I didn’t get to talk to ModCell earlier in the week as I would have loved to have done some video with them. They have lots more information on their website, including a load of photos from the Grand Designs build.

Filed under : Grand Designs, exhibitions and events, materials

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If you’re looking for a quick build that’s a little different, why not live in a shipping container? Already waterproof, and able to be sited almost anywhere that’s flat - only the corners rest on the ground so you don’t need to lay lots of concrete - you can whip up a container house in no time. I had a look round an empty 20ft container on the Lendon Containers stand, and they are surprisingly large with a lot more headroom than I expected. A bit long and thin, perhaps, but join a few together and there’d be more than enough space. And they can easily be stacked - containers on ships are often piled up to 14 high - so there’s no problem if you want a two storey house.

Price-wise, they’re not all that expensive. The nice chap from Lendon said they went for £4k for a 20ft (if my memory serves) although you can probably get them on eBay cheaper if you want to fit and install them yourself. I’m not sure how much a whole build would cost, if you were to make an entire house out of them, but I suspect it’s much more affordable than bricks and mortar.

Indeed, GDL had three containers decked out as a bedroom, lounge and full bedsit, and stacked three high just to show you how easy it is. Sort of like giant, habitable lego. The beat-up exteriors look great in an urban setting, but if you’re out in the countryside do you really want a heap of rust in your garden? Well, that’s easily fixed - containers lend themselves well to being clad in whatever material you want, and you can even put a living roof on them to soften the angular look even further.

The bedroom container was bigger than our bedroom is here, and although it was a bit longer and narrower, they got more furniture in than we can, so a container wins in the “vs our flat” challenge. Standard width and height is 8ft by 8ft 6 ins, and length can be 10 ft, 20 ft or 40 ft. One day I’ll have to work out what our flat’s square footage is, so I can do a proper comparison.

The lounge container is probably smaller than our lounge, but then, ours has a kitchen in it too. Put two containers together and whip out the middle wall and you’d be laughing, though. Containers can be well insulated - although there’s a trade off as the thicker the insulation the more space you lose inside - and can have windows, doors, shelving and air-conditioning fitted, so they’re easy enough to turn into a useful space.

And if you want a speedy guest bedsit, or you want to live on-site whilst you’re building your house, there’s just enough room in a 20ft container to do that.

I was thinking the other night… ok, fantasising, if I’m honest… that what I’d do would be to have a container on-site to securely store all the materials that come early, to keep them dry and safe from acquisitive hands, and then once the build was done, move it to the back garden, clad it in cedar or something else that looks nice, bung a living roof on top, and bingo - instant garden shed!

Filed under : Grand Designs, exhibitions and events, materials

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Even though Grand Designs Live finished on Sunday, I still have enough photos and thoughts for about another ten blog posts. One of the companies that I was very keen to talk to before the show ended was Carpenter Oak, who were demonstrating on the Traditional Build Techniques stand. If you’re a Grand Designs fan, you may have heard of Carpenter Oak (or their sister company, Carpenter Oak & Woodland) as they designed and built the timber frame for the beautiful Argyll house. The two companies used to be one, but diverged so that Carpenter Oak could specialise in new builds and Carpenter Oak & Woodland could focus on restoration work.

I absolutely love green oak framed buildings, with all the oak exposed and wonderful big double height spaces. Although I say that this blog is about finding out what sort of a house Kevin and I want to build, I will admit to a prior bias towards green oak. It’s beautiful, environmentally friendly, warm and full of personality - a much needed antidote to the soulless places I’ve lived for much of my life. So I was delighted to get the opportunity to talk to Glen, below on his shaving horse, about oak framed houses.

In the first part, we discuss types of builds, spiders. how environmentally friendly green oak is, sustainability, where the oak comes from.

And in part two, Glen tells me about the frame they had on the stand, how much it costs and what its fate will be:

If I had the opportunity to build a green oak house tomorrow, I’d jump at it. For the moment, though, I can only dream.

Filed under : Grand Designs, exhibitions and events, materials

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It’s been really interesting watching Kevin McCloud build his house from straw bales, vertical thatch and, for the upper floor and roof, the Facit building system. I was lucky enough to bump into Andrew Goodeve and Bruce Bell from Facit at the Grand Village, so of course, we had a chat:

Filed under : Grand Designs, exhibitions and events, materials

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Cob is a very eco-friendly and cheap building material, as I found out on Wednesday when I spoke to cob building expert, Kate Edwards. As with straw bales, I was surprised to find out that cob buildings are very long lasting and can be more than one storey tall - indeed, there is an example of a ten storey building that is over a thousands years old!

One of the nice things about cob is that for most people, they can source the material locally, from their own foundations. I chatted to Kate about that, and about the process of building cob buildings:

And then Kate gave me a demonstration, showing me how to insert windows into a cob building, and discussing the merits of the cob pizza oven:

I took a lot of photos, which I’ll post up here later, but in the meantime, here’s my Grand Designs Live photo set.

Filed under : Grand Designs, exhibitions and events, materials

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Stand B130 in the Grand Build section of Grand Designs Live is possibly my favourite part of the entire exhibition. It features companies that build with straw bales, cob, and timber frame makers. I spent quite a bit of time on the stand yesterday, talking to about building out of straw and cob.

Amazonails is a company that offers designs, advice, consultancy and training in the use of straw bales in construction and Sophie walked me through some of the concepts involved. We spoke firstly about how straw bales are a structural building material, which surprised me no end. You can build entirely out of straw bales without needing a wooden frame to hold the building up.

We then talked about how you render the bales, with line on the outside and clay on the inside.

This is an example of the clay render:
And the lime render:
With a lovely example of pargetting, or sculpting in lime plaster:
And finally, how do you build a straw bale wall? It’s actually very simple.

Here are the stakes that hold the bale in place:And essential equipment for tidying up the bales, which apparently get a bit ‘hairy’ when freshly laid, and for sculpting rounded corners:

For me, straw bale building is an exciting idea. It’s very cheap, very easy, incredibly green, and you can do a lot of it yourself. Amazonails do training courses, so you can learn how straw bale building works before embarking on your own project.

Filed under : Grand Designs, exhibitions and events, materials

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