Grand Designs: polystyrene house

Oct 21, 2005 40 Replies

A letter in this week's Architects Journal comments that the Stirling Prize for Architecture being given to a building that came in late and ten times over budget is not the best way to encourage people to use architects. But those who know the Forsyte Saga will recall that 100+ years ago architects were of the view that budgets shouldn't get in the way of design.

Why should she leave anything to her family? Her money is for her to spend. Not the kids.

Besides that, the old house was much nicer..

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember bruce snipped-for-privacy@my-deja.com saying something like:

The architect was an utter knob in filling the round tower walls in one go. I was watching that and waiting for a section to burst.

Don't be silly, something like that where concrete is concerned has to be in one fell swoop.

It was probably due to a misplaced section or a weak section, after all the rest turned out ok.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

Houses are not make over on GD. They are mainly new houses, or completely gutted and extended renovations.

He is usually right. And at over 400K when it was costed at 200K that was doom and gloom for an unremarkable house.

The insulation was compromised all over because of bursts. It was filled in a lot with cement.

The insulation value is not that great in those blocks either. Some lay insulation on the exteriopr and render over that to get to a point of no heating system.

They has the royal seal of approval, which must narrow down the list of possibles quite considerably.

Rick

I was wondering about that, they did not seem to be adding much additional insulation.

Rick

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U-value with render and plaster

250mm 0.30 313mm 0.19 375mm 0.14 438mm 0.11 The first of these will give a wall thickness about the same as that using conventional construction with a slightly better U-value.

No the manufacturers specifically state a maximum of 3m in one day

Exactly. Many people think for the same width you get high insulation values. You don't. You have to go to 438mm for superinsulation values and air-tightness, which is well worth it. Another problem is that after paying for all this thermal mass concrete, you can't easily access it to contribute to the interior temperature control, as insulation partially isolates it. The concrete is purely structural.

I like it, and using bags of concrete and a few cement mixers you can build you own house very easily, cheaply and fast too. As long as it is not curved

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "The3rd Earl Of Derby" saying something like:

Bollocks.

Cost: WALLFORM 438c.£78.00 / sq.m Concrete is c.£5.50 / sq.m

£78 per squ metre for hollow foam blocks is taking the piss big style.

Continuous pour often with creeping slip formers is a tried and tested means of constructing tall concrete structures such as chimneys, silos etc. The secret is to ensure the engineering design of the formers or shuttering is up to scratch. When things (concrete) burst out it immediately says the design expertise wasn't up to scratch. I wonder what else wasn't up to scratch in the design work for the job?

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "John" saying something like:

Yes, in the proper world of big-time concrete construction. Certainly not the way he was doing it.

What surprised me was that *I* knew of loading problems with that polystyrene system (and I'm not a builder) and so do many other people, yet the architect didn't. Yet this was the bloke who'd 'used it on other buildings'. I've heard of several examples of people who'd been too keen to press on and burst the bottoms out of their walls.

A (Qualified MICE) Civil Engineer once remarked to me with some disdain that Engineers designed things to stand up whereas Architects designed things to look pretty

To get a 0.11 U-value with a brick/block cavity wall you need 175mm of polyurethane board. This wouldn't be cheap either.

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