grand designs last night

[IMM]

Or is it!

[IMM]

Experimental? This sort of construction has been done in the USA for decades.

[John Laird]

Can't keep up with these lifestyle programmes, there's so many of them, all variations on a theme. Does anything ever go wrong, does anyone fail to be saved by housing market upturns on dodgy investments and cost overruns, is there life after cream paint and laminate floors ?

I only watch "Get a New Life" and dream of a new wife. Damn, that woman presenter is gorgeous.

[Sam Nelson]

Oh, I dunno. I got the impression that the `utility room' was a leanto afterthought---was I wrong? The massive oak pillars seemed to fit in OK downstairs, but I'd guess they'd be a serious impediment to arranging the smaller bedrooms.

I suspect `modern half-timbered' would have given even more of an executive showhome result.

It was like Mr McCloud said, though: they needed way, way more light-pipes than they used, and I got the impression they'd changed their mind about which was the main bedroom out of sheer lack of light? We didn't get to see the original master bedroom in the finished house.

I still want to see what's happened to that `pop-star' house in Surrey from a series or two back...

[Steve Firth]

You have to be kidding. What sort of dimwit puts the kitchen on the first floor and the eating area on the ground floor, makes the rear of the house gloomy beyond belief and furnishes it with tat? It was fairly obvious from the visit to the completed house that it simply wasn't working as a design. They admitted as much when they mentioned that the bloke was taking overthe front of the house as somewhere to do DIY and work.

Undergound houses - good idea, that one - shit.

[Steve Firth]

The plot could well have been one that put other people off. One in a village in Surrey I lived in went for pittance because it had a large tree in the wrong place and the tree had a TPO. Mysteriously the tree vanished overnight and once it had gone the value of the plot jumped in value.

More likely that the 130k build doesn't include the land. Similarly I don't believe that the 250k build for the underground house included the land.

[Huge]

"Shit" is putting it a bit strong, but it certainly wasn't perfect by any means.

I used to be a big fan of underground houses, until we rented the Martello Tower in Aldeburgh for a holiday, which although not undergound might as well be - it has tiny, inconveniently located windows and 20ft thick walls. I hated it.

[Christian McArdle]

She claimed it did. It is this claim I don't believe. Plots in pretty villages with enough space for a detached house and garden cost more than tuppence.

Christian.

[John :)]

agreed, they needed three more tubes to each of the back rooms upstairs, they then needed to extend the downstairs back another few feet and pipe another ten suntubes down to them (they can only be vertical see).

even they, note they had moved their own bedroom forward to a front facing room on the lower floor..?

i agree, they were not happy with the result.

still, nice fr> John :) wrote:

[Martin Angove]

Just in case anyone's still insterested, I found the magazine in question (Homebuilding and Renovating, April 2003, p12) The biggest problem I had with the cost breakdown was the figure of just £55k for the land. According to the article (and not mentioned in the programme AFAIR) what had happened was that Border Oak (the company owned by the lady's dad etc.) had bought a large plot in the village and applied to build two large houses. The planners objected, saying that four smaller houses would be more acceptable. The compromise of one small house (the featured one) and two larger ones was eventually reached. Thus I suspect that £55k was a little on the "low" side for that rather large plot.

The rest of it seems to stack up reasonably well:

Archaeology, site clearance etc. £ 4,000 Architect's Certificate £ 500 Main house package £55,000 Kitchen and utility £ 8,000 Bathrooms £ 1,500 Plumbing and underfloor heating £ 6,100 Electrics £ 3,520 Copper guttering £ 600 Decoration £ 1,100 Miscellaneous £ 4,700

Total £85,020

Apparently the house is 130sqm so this equates to £654/sqm. This may reflect the large amount of DIY and DIBR (By Relatives) put into the build, but possibly also reflects the use of SIPS.

Hwyl!

M.

[Martin Angove]

Not AUIU. It wasn't the SIPS themselves which were "experimental" as such (though any technology used for the first time by a particular group of people may be regarded as experimental for them) but the marrying of the aisle-frame green oak construction for which Border Oak has become famous with SIPS to reduce costs and build time. As far as I know, no-one else is offering this precise combination of technologies.

Hwyl!

M.

[PoP]

What does "AUIU" stand for?

I know "AIUI" stands for "As I Understand It".

PoP

[IMM]

All the SIPs were doing was cladding, or filling in gaps, in a timber frame. SIPs and timber frame have co-existed in the USA/Canada for decades. It is just new here. There are US books on how to do it. It is amazing that people here totally discard any experience from other countries. We are virtually alone in fitting expensive cavity walls (two walls together). The amount of people that have told me that they would never build single skins walls runs into 100s. All the experience of the rest of the world goes over their heads.

Most of Seattle is timber framed homes, with a higher rainfall than Manchester. Their homes last a long time, and don't rot or fall down.

[Owain]

"Martin Angove" wrote | ... Border Oak (the company owned by the lady's dad etc.)

Ah well, there's having mates in the trade and then there's having the owner of Border Oak as one's papa ...

All right for some!

Owain