writing our home into existence

When I was at Grand Designs Live, I was taken with the GLASSeco work surfaces installed in the Log House.

I was really impressed by the depth and luminosity of the material, specially when it was lit from underneath. Having finally had a chance to look into it a bit more, I’m even more impressed with its green credentials.

GLASSeco surfaces are made of 95% recycled materials, including local waste glass, which would otherwise have gone to landfill and which they source themselves from the hospitality trade. The glass is sorted by colour, cleaned, smashed into chips, and set in a solvent-free resin which is poured into a bespoke mould. They can include all sorts of other recycled materials in with the glass chips too, including crushed oyster, clam and other seashells, or aluminium filings.

GLASSeco is available in a number of colours - I particularly like the ones with big chunks of green glass in them - and matt or polished finish. It can be made into work tops, tiles, floors, steps, or stones; can be used inside or outside, or even in a wet room or shower; and can even be made into tables.

This video from GLASSeco explains more about the manufacturing process, and also explains about their factory’s green credentials:

Prices for a GLASSeco work surface start at £270 per linear meter, but each one is bespoke and unique.

This definitely goes on the list of things I’d rather like in my house!

One of the big problems with indoors cats is that they frequently prefer to be outdoors cats and keeping them in when they want to be out can be, well, a bit tricky. As anyone who has attempted to keep a cat in can attest, they are very good at slipping unnoticed between legs, jumping out through windows you didn’t think they could reach, or squeezing through gaps you could have sworn were too small.

When my parents got Castor and Pollux, they attempted to kitten-proof the garden so that they couldn’t roam. That worked well whilst they were little, but eventually they figured out how to get around the strategically positioned chicken wire. No matter how hard my dad tried to find and plug the holes, they would find a way through.

Cassie, in particular, has a love of roofs and will leap from roof to roof, all the way down the road.

All three cats, Cassie, Polly and Fflwff, also have a fascination bordering on the obsessive with the front door. Given the opportunity, they will make a run for it, hiding out under the car or disappearing off into next-door’s garden before you can blink. Indeed, I think they believe the front door to be the gateway to Shangri La, so keen are they to get through it.

If my parents had a porch, however, they could use it a bit like an airlock, closing the inner door before opening the outer. That would prevent the usual cat location and head count ritual prior to each leaving of the house, and would make accepting deliveries and guests a much simpler process.

(If my parents sound a bit obsessive themselves, I can forgive them. They’ve had so many cats die in car accidents they are very protective, although they are easing up a bit now that they’ve realised that not only do they live in a much safer neighbourhood now, but also that the kittens can out manoeuvre them nine times out of ten.)

If you’re really serious about keeping your cat inside, though, a utility or mud room can fulfil the same function for the back door, allowing you to ensure that kitty never gets anywhere near slipping past you. I like the idea of a mud room - a place to take off muddy shoes, hang up wet coats and dry umbrellas. Kev’s very keen on the outdoors, so one day, a mud room is going to be essential.

But what about windows and patio doors? In the US, they use screens to keep out flying insects, but they can also keep in recalcitrant moggies intent on experiencing the great outdoors. I’m not overly keen on the look of screens, however. They do rather ruin the view, so if we move over there I’ll have to find some recessed screens that I can hide away in the wall when they are not being used.

It may sound a bit over the top, but if we are going to be serious about having happy and healthy indoors cats, then we need to plan for these everyday realities. And it’s far easier to include a porch, mud room and screens in the original design than it is to add them later when you realise how useful they’d be.

Whenever I travel, I always try to make sure there’s time to pop into a newsagent before I get on the plane, train or coach. For some reason, travel interchange newsagents normally carry a good selection of self-build magazines, so I can usually pick up some light reading for the journey. Last week, Kevin and I went to Prague for a conference - a great opportunity to read August’s issue of Homebuilding & Renovating.

Together we leafed through, point out things we liked and things we found hideous to each other. Eventually, we reached page 42 and the beautiful Border Oak house that Stephen and Elizabeth Roberts built in Pembridge, Herefordshire, which is “well known for its heavily timbered mediaeval ‘black and white’ houses”.

I think you’ll agree that it’s a beautiful house, quintessentially English, and full of character.

The Roberts said that they saw an article in H&R about a Border Oak house and immediately wanted one. They ordered a three bedroom cottage, with “brick and block ground floor, an oak framed first floor and reclaimed clay roof tiles which give the building an authentic aged appearance.” It’s one-and-a-half storeys high, with dormer windows, which give sloping ceilings in the bedrooms.

H&R says:

Laying underfloor heating throughout the building avoided the need for awkward radiators, which Elizabeth and Stephen felt would spoil the authenticity of the interiors, and also greatly pleased the couple’s pet tortoise, Darwin, who adores the warm floors.

I can imagine that underfloor heating, which I definitely want, will please our FutureMoggies too!

The ground floor has flagstones and the first floor has oak floorboards. They have a brick inglenook fireplace in the lounge, with an oak lintel, woodburning stove, and flagstone hearth. The kitchen is gorgeous, with oiled hardword work surfaces and all modern appliances hidden from view.

I have to say that Kevin and I both love this style of house - it’s so warm, friendly and inviting. If we end up building in a British village, then I will definitely look at this as an option. I expressed concern to Kev that if we move to the US, this wouldn’t exactly fit the local vernacular, to which he replied that the nice thing about the US is that you can ignore the local vernacular and do whatever the hell you like!

And if you want a bit of oak-frame porn, you can do no better than visiting the Border Oak website - click on ‘portfolio’ and knock yourself out. There are some beautiful houses there to really get the juices flowing.

Ah, one day.

I’m very keen on the idea of building a oak-framed house, preferably one with lots of big windows and the posts and beams exposed. Oak is beautiful, sustainable, and strong, but the question I’ve been struggling with is, what do we use to fill in the gaps between the oak posts and beams?

Cob is, of course, an option, but if we end up with a plot that doesn’t have the right sort of subsoil, or not enough subsoil, to work into cob then we’d have to bring some in, which would leave a big hole somewhere. Cob is also very labour-intensive, and cob walls end up very thick - 450 - 600 mm thick, according to the Devon Earthbuilding FAQ. I really don’t want the walls of my house to drown out the oak frame and I worry that perhaps cob might do that (but I’d welcome any cob experts who want to weigh in on that point). It also takes quite while to dry out, which slows the build down.

Straw bales are another good, eco-friendly option, but they suffer from the same wall thickness issue as cob. Straw bale walls tend to be about 450 - 500 mm thick, which is similar to cob and again, seems to my novice eye to be a bit thick.

In July’s Self Build & Design, I discovered what might be the answer - hemp and lime (HL). Unlike cob and straw, HL isn’t a load-bearing material, but if we’re using a timber frame, then we don’t need the infill to be load bearing. Hemp and lime is a good insulator, requiring no additional insulation and no cavity, and it’s environmentally friendly - sequestering away over 110 kg of CO2 per m3 of wall covered. It also allows for much thinner walls of just 300 mm, and can be clad in anything from render to timber to masonry. Like cob, HL gives you lots of thermal mass, i.e. it warms up in the sunshine and releases that heat when the house cools, a sort of passive solar heating.

In terms of construction, whilst you can go the complicated way and spray the stuff on, you can more easily build HL walls by using shuttering, i.e. put up sheets of plywood and pour the mixture into the gap. According to Self Build & Design, it’s not the cheapest material at about £68/m2, but then you do save money because you don’t need to buy additional insulation.

Like many ‘alternative’ building materials, there are issues getting planning and building control officers to accept it, as many of them are not up to date with unusual building materials. But Hemcrete, produced by Tradical, have been through all the tests and can produce the relevant certificates.

Obviously I still have a lot to learn about building materials, but I’m really rather attracted to HL. If you have opinions on cob, straw and HL, do leave a comment!

Andrea Lightwood and her family started what could have been a dream barn conversion earlier in this year. Getting planning permission for barn conversions is, by all accounts, rather tricky, but the Lightwoods managed, and they broke ground on Feb 20th. Things seemed to be going fairly well until winds were forecast on March 10th, and at 3am on March 12th, a gust of wind blew down the barn despite it having been supported with scaffolding to protect it from the heavy weather. Just one gable was left standing.

This would be a set-back for anyone. It would mean either rebuilding with the original materials or rethinking the entire conversion and starting again with a new build. But the UK’s planning policies don’t work like that. Because the structure was damaged, the planning permission for the conversion was automatically revoked. In one gust of wind, Andrea Lightwood’s entire build was destroyed, not just the old barn’s walls. She says:

Just as I originally thought our planning has now disintergrated along with the mortar that was holding the bricks in place.

After a meeting with Building control officers and Building inspectors, Building control returned to their offices and we awaited the decision …….can we continue’building’ under the original planning application? Of course not…the reason? we had not supported the barn using the most appropriate best methods. !!!!!!!!!!!!

We had sought advice and tried, I resent garage dwelling and spending un necessary money the barn was my dream, why would we not have protected it properly?

Despite the fact that the weather across the UK has been unusually violent this year, and despite the fact that the Lightwoods had put scaffolding up to brace the structure, the planning officers decided to revoke permission, just like that.

On May 21st, Andrea submitted new plans, but on July 2nd, planning permission was refused:

Due to various local planning polices the application has been refused as it is classed as a ‘new dwelling in the country side’ and is therefore harm full to the environment.

Erm, so let’s get this straight now, shall we? There was a building on this site that had stood for quite a while. The majority of that building blew down, thus returning the site immediately to something akin to ‘green field’ status which means that rebuilding the barn would actually be building a new structure which means it contravenes the green field policy?

That is insanity. If it was ok for there to be a barn there, and it was ok for that barn to be converted into a house, then what possible reason could there be for not continuing with that build? It entirely defies logic and reason.

Matt Sims of the Wrexham Leader has covered Andrea’s plea to councillors to let her rebuild:

The council’s planning policy forbids the building of any new dwellings in the countryside and officers recommended Mrs Lightwood’s application be refused.

At a meeting this week, however, councillors agreed to pay a visit to the site of the proposed development to assess what kind of impact it would have on the surrounding area following an appeal by Mrs Lightwood.

[...]

Planning control manager Bob Dewey said that because it contradicted council policy, officers had no choice but to refuse.

“The applicants made a very passionate plea on behalf of the proposal,” he said.

“It is something that was approved as a conversion, has now substantially gone and clearly would be in breach of our policy. With regret, our recommendation has to be to refuse.”

Planning chief Lawrence Isted said: “It’s a fundamental policy of principle and it wouldn’t be a small matter to put it to one side.”

“No choice”? Absurd. If there was a building there before which was approved for conversion into a dwelling, what is the harm in allowing that build to go ahead? Materially, what has changed? Not the environment. Not the quality of the land - it hasn’t suddenly returned to pasture. Not access to the land. Not the distance of the plot from the nearest village. All that has changed is that some bricks that were vertical are now horizontal.

There’s no doubt that planning policy at a national and a local level are out of step, but this is taking local planning pedantry to a new level of absurdity. I can only hope that sense prevails and that Andrea gets to build her house.

One of the reasons that I love cats so much is that they are, like me, very finicky - particularly regarding what they eat and drink. How many cat owners have put down a perfectly clean bowl of water, only to watch their cat turn their nose up and go and drink from the toilet or the bird bath? Mmm!! Tastes like sparrow!

Fflwff always preferred drinking from the bathroom sink, so I’d often turn the tap on for her whilst I was doing something else, turning if off when she was done. She’s a bit old now to be jumping up to the sink, but if she had her druthers that’s where she’d drink. Trouble is, it’s a bit tedious to keep getting up to turn taps on and off.

Now, thanks to the ingeniousness of Sixerdoodle Electronics, you can now make your own kittie-controlled tap, so that your moggie can have a drink as and when s/he wants without bothering you, and without wasting water. (Covered also by Make and Engadget.)

The system uses an infrared sensor to detect when the cat is near, and a 1/4 inch tube to deliver the water to the thirsty kittie. You can also set it up to detect when a human is near, so that the kittie tap doesn’t turn on when the human puts their hands in the sink.

You need to have a few plumbing and electronics skills, but if you’re including such a system in your self-build, you can always design it in from the beginning and get your tradesmen to do the work. You can order a complete kit for just $90 (about £45 at today’s exchange rate), or download the schematics and pull together the bits yourself.

This puts it roughly on a par with commercially produced cat fountains, such as the Drinkwell Platinum Pet Fountain or the Catit Drinking Fountain, but has the added advantage of never requiring a refill as it’s drawing water from the mains.

Personally, I shall definitely be including a IR sensor controlled cat drinking fountain in my house - I can very easily imagine a wet room or kitchen that includes a spout in the wall and a small bowl at about cat height, a bit like this old Roman drinking fountain:

Thanks Papalars.

I’m sure our FutureKitties would be very happy with such an arrangement.

(Thanks to Peter for the heads-up!)

When I was at Grand Designs Live, one of the products I stumbled upon was Ecoplay, from CME Sanitary Systems. They system is a fairly small and compact processing unit for grey water, e.g. shower and bath water, cleaning out the muck and making it clean enough to use for flushing the toilet. It’s a great idea - reducing the amount of water that we use by up to 30%. From the website:

Greywater from the bath and shower is collected in the Ecoplay cleaning tank where a skimmer removes surface debris such as foam, hairs and soap. Heavier waste particles sink to the bottom and are flushed away to waste. The remaining ‘clean’ greywater is then transferred to a storage tank ready for use in toilet flushing. The storage capacity of the system is 100 litres – sufficient for approximately 20 flushes.

Intelligent operation:

* If the toilets are not flushed within 24 hours after a period of regular use, (e.g. when the house is empty) the system purges any retained water to waste
* This also cleans the system and prevents retained water becoming stale
* The system then draws in a minimal amount of fresh mains water to allow toilet flushing
* A power failure causes all stored water to be drained off immediately

Not only that, but Ecoplay means that you can subtract water used for flushing toilet from your water calculations when your home is being assessed against the Code for Sustainable Homes, allowing you to improve your rating.

The only aspect about Ecoplay that I wasn’t sure about was whether there is an issue with the waste from the Ecoplay system - basically all the bits that it skims and filters out of the waste water before it gets pumped back into the toilet system - and off-grid water processing. I did ask the chap at their stand, but he didn’t seem to quite understand what I was was asking, so I gave up. I guess I just need to learn a lot more about off-grid water processing so I can figure it out for myself.

I love baths. As a kid, I hated them: the old enamel bath sucked the heat out of the water as soon as you got in and our ParkRay fire struggled to provide enough hot water for a bath and the radiator, so in the winter the temperature in the bathroom would be uncomfortably cool. And I am allergic to soap, so baths used to make me itch, until some nice scientist invented shower gel.

Now, I love baths. There is nothing better at the end of a long day than a soak in the bath, with a glass of wine and my husband reading to me. Aaah, bliss. Our bath, however, is so small that you end up sitting in a puddle with your knees around your ears, which is not the most relaxing of positions.

And the water still goes cold.

Enter the BathOMatic Eco, a bath control system that fills the bath itself, prevent overflowing, and keeps water at a consistent temperature. Oh, I want one! But wait… there’s the BathOMatic Eco Ultimate, which adds an automated fragrance and bubblebath dispenser. Or the BathOMatic Eco Whirlpool Ultimate, with all the features above and a spa setting for the most relaxing bath ever! I have seen - and been in - many beautiful baths in my time, but a bath that sets and keeps a constant temperature would be just heaven.

Mind you, heaven doesn’t come cheap. The SelfBuild & Design magazine priced the basic BathOMatic at £6463, inc. VAT. And that doesn’t include the bath, as the website says “bathomatic can be added to any bath, including retro-fit, and by any qualified and competent plumber.”

And, for the geeks amongst us, the BathOMatic can be controlled from “any location via a LAN”, meaning that Kev could control my bath from his computer… which could be a good or a bad thing, depending! And to top it all, the brochure includes a photo of an iPhone interface for the control system, which seems to indicate that I could run my bath whilst I was on my way home.

This definitely goes on my wishlist!

We love sheds here at Kits and Mortar, although until someone invents a levitating shed that we can install outside our 2nd floor flat, we’re going to have to make do with the lovely sheds over at Shedworking. Who, incidentally, emailed me today to remind me that you have until the end of the week to vote in the Shed of the Year Awards. The question on my lips is, will one of the Tardis sheds win? (And are they bigger on the inside…?)