Want to build a new house in my back garden

[IMM]

He was a demented old fool.

[IMM]

Nonsense! Where do you get that figure? Wet finger in the air. You have no experince of these matters.

Facing a house south with larger windows on the south side and less on the north (passive solar), calculating the roof overhangs to give shading (keeps the house cool), calculating the roof pitch for maximum solar gain (max insolation) is all design only. This costs nothing in materials or labour. The calulations can be done yourself.

The only extra above a normal house is the extra insulation, but this can be negated by using a timber frame or SIP panels. The UFH has to be larger to run at alow temp and will cost a few hundred quid. Many new buillds have UFH as stadard. The roof as a solar panel is offset by not installing tiles and is cheaper to do as a new build. The thermal store is offset by the fact you already need one for the UFH anyway, it just needs to be bigger.

"Sue Roaf's Ecohouse in Oxford is one of the most high profile low energy houses in the country. Sue has had a one-woman crusade to get ecohouse design on the agenda. In

1994 she put her money where her mouth is and took on a huge mortgage to design and build what is still one of only a handful of net zero energy houses in the UK"

She was out build a "low" energy house that cost no more to build than others. She succeeded. It has a heating system of 3 rads and high thermal mass with a PV roof too. It is about 5-6 years old now and if she did it today I'm sure she would do it differently. She does mention what would improve the house.

The economics DO add up. She built a low energy house to the local vernacular (built to last 500 years) and spent no more than building an energy sucking house. Deveci in Scotland has done the same. There must be over 1000 very low energy homes now in the UK.

Just because Wimpy is not building them doesn't mean they are not cost effective. They are.

See ECO-House A Design Guide by Sue Roaf.

[IMM]

Which has nothing to do with land availability which is the crux of the problem in the UK. Sort that out and many of the ills of society disappear.

[Andy Hall]

Could it be that people don't *want* them I wonder?

.andy

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[IMM]

What a stupid thing to say. Could it be that no one has heard of them? If there are two similar priced and sized houses and one has no hearting bills, which one do you think people will go for? Now think hard about this and I hope you don't have brain ache in the process.

[Andy Hall]

Single item "fixes" to perceived problems are generally too simplistic to work because they fail to take account of all of the issues and the effects of other factors.

The Keynesian and Monetarist models of the economy are classic examples of that. Other factors overtake them na dafter a while corrections have to be made.

Focussing purely on one issue simply doesn't work in the real world, especially when it's an academic one anyway.

.andy

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[Andy Hall]

Not what the evidence shows. No sign of dementia right up until his death at aged 100.

.andy

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[Andy Hall]

Not really.

The problem is that the marketing and designs have been really poor. The impression of most people is that eco-houses are futuristic designs using unfamiliar materials and pushed by the beards and sandals brigade.

One can argue on the merits and demerits of that impression, but it's the case.

For most people, their home is the largest purchase that they will make and also represents, rightly or wrongly, something in which they tie up and hopefully grow a significant part of their capital. With the poor performance of the financial sector, pension schemes and the like, property is seen as a long term safe bet.

In view of this, most people tend to be quite risk-averse when selecting a property to buy. Even in a seller's market, buyers walk away from property that has been underpinned, even though it is probably better than it has ever been because the insurers are conservative.

I think that if you were to survey people in the street, you would find that most look for the conventional, traditional and "safe" bet.

Technical features don't win the argument. If they did, there would be no need to legislate around energy saving. I'm not saying that energy saving is a bad thing, but requiring legislation to create change implies that the market is not in broad support for whatever reason. This could be lack of knowledge, apathy, cost or a number of other factors.

There's no need to think a great deal on this one. This point was discussed a few weeks ago.

Most participants thought that the use of energy issue and its cost was not a major factor in choice of property to buy.

They are far more interested in location, proximity or not to other properties and facilities, whether the kitchen and bathroom are decent; potential for growth.

Another explanation is that the construction companies aren't making eco-houses because they believe that people won't want them for whatever reason. Again that may be for right or wrong, but the effect is the same.

Even at the relatively low numbers of houses being built, a very small proportion dramatically exceed the requirements of the Building Regulations and very very few could be described as highly eco in nature.

That's the way it is. Gradually things will change. It will become more interesting to build eco houses when energy really does become expensive. Without that, there is no economic driver.

The alternatives, to make things change more quickly are education to encourage people to see the merits (slow and not very effective without economic driver) and legislation (usually not popular).

.andy

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[NickW]

Some good stuff there. Just one thing though, the walls are the best solar collectors (for space heating) due to the angle of the sun in winter. So you'd have small windows on the south side too but the walls would be built using glass on the outside (or maybe polycarbonate), and a black collector surface behind. The heat that builds up here would (by convection) be collected in another cavity behind the first wall which contains drums of water as a thermal store.

This article on solar closets explains it better than I can:

[IMM]

It was very stupid.

Most people have never heard or seen one. Ab eco hous ecan look much like any other house.

It isn't. The reason why we don't see major developers building them is that like the major car companies, they don't want change. They are making millions by pushing outdated technology which they are familiar with.

There isn't at all.

You should read what was written..

"She was out to build a "low" energy house that cost no more to build than others. She succeeded. It has a heating system of 3 rads and high thermal mass with a PV roof too. It is about 5-6 years old now and if she did it today I'm sure she would do it differently. She does mention what would improve the house."

The house was clad in the local stone and looked pretty well much like all the others around.

"The economics DO add up. She built a low energy house to the local vernacular (built to last 500 years) and spent no more than building an energy sucking house. Deveci in Scotland has done the same. There must be over 1000 very low energy homes now in the UK."

"Just because Wimpy is not building them doesn't mean they are not cost effective. They are."

"See ECO-House A Design Guide by Sue Roaf."

The point is that it does not cost any more to build an eco house than any other, as one poster repeated asserted, who obviously knows nothing of them, not how people perceive matters or how luddite builders view matters.

[IMM]

< snip off topic babble about Keynesianism >

Our towns, villages and cities were laid out was when we never had ridiculous draconian Stalinist planning systems geared to keep the stinking rich very rich. It worked. natural evolution of the town. Attempting to master plan seldom works.

[Mike Mitchell]

A pretty good case for Legionnaires's Disease, if you ask me. Er, how long does the water remain tepid?

MM

[IMM]

A full south facing roof as a solar collector, angled correctly is as good, and the walls are not impeded by glass. The house can then look pretty much how you like it. The roof can be angled to the optimum angle on the south side and at a shallower angle on the north side, which allows cold north winds to blow over the house more easily.

nothing wrong with that, operating by gravity. This restricts the house design. You need an expensive strong structure to hold all that tonnage of water in the loft. That ramps up build prices. So straight away two problems.

Solar air heaters get very hot and scorch marks occur at the top of them which makes them unsightly. Storing the thermal mass (water in large cylinders) at ground level is cheap in structure costs, and using a large full roof solar collector means you have house design freedom. No large glass areas on the walls.

Storing the heat in a thermal store and then pumping it into a "very low temperature" UFH system means you have far more control of the comfort conditions. No far too hot or far too too cold situations. You can also use a conventional boiler to heat the UFH directly (do not store its heat in a large thermal store) when the thermal store is exhausted of heat after a week of cold cloudy conditions.

The problem with passive solar designs is that you live inside the heat generator itself, so it can get a little too hot inside the house at times. With my spec you don't even need to us passive solar as long as superinsulation is used, as the heat is stored and used as you dictate. But using passive solar is a great bonus as should be used. Shades can go some way to preventing unwanted heat entering the house. Although this situation would be very rare as the roof overhangs would take care of unwanted sun in summer. It has been said that all house are solar houses as all have the sun on some part of them. It is a matter of harnessing that sun. This could be via a solar attic in some houses that do not have a south facing elevation.

The spec I have outlined is cost effective and easy to build using materials that are cheap and readily available with ready available skills that can also work with them. It is a matter of getting the "design" right, which is not expensive at all, and can be zero cost.

[IMM]

The drums are sealed and the water does not come into contact with people. Read the web site.

[Andy Hall]

That wasn't my point. Of course it *can*, but that is not the impression that people have.

That may well also be true. The effect is the same.

I have, and the details are not in dispute. It only came about because Sue Roaf is an eco pioneer who went out of her way big time to make it happen.

1000 eco homes in the context of several million built over the last five years is a drop in the bucket.

The builders are only going to build them if they can do so quickly and efficiently with the trades at their disposal and if they think that they will sell.

All of those things have to be in place or it won't happen.

Clearly there is not strong market demand because people either don't know, don't want or are not economically motivated. I don't exclude construction companies being conservative either.

It still comes back to the same three things though - education, economics legislation. At present, the government is clearly focussed on the third of these.

.andy

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[IMM]

Most people have no impressions these homes are out of their experience. If Wimpey stared to build al their homes as eco and they looked much like all others, then the non-existent perceptions will disappear.

The car is ubiquitous, how many people have actually seen an eco house? Energy Park in Milton Keyens has people touring it in their cars to see the wonderful homes, which counters your pie in the sky claims.

And??????? Does that mean they do not work and they are not cost effective, which is what this is really about. If you want to know why Wimpey is not building eco's by the 100s of thousands then go and ask the these people why they are not? There is no reason whatsoever why they should not be building eco homes. The same for the car makers. Why do they persist in using outdated polluting technology when proven alternatives are around.

The only way to charge these large money making dinosaurs is to legislate. The US government in the early 1970s set emission limits which were not achievable at the time. The US car giants spent billions on fighting the government in courts while foreign VW and Bosch cracked it very easily with not much effort.

The builders have built expensive to build homes in the Uk for the past 70 years. We are virtual alone in using cavity walls. The Germans think we are mad building two expensive walls when one can do. The British building industry is backward. John Prescott has warned them to catch up or he will make them do it. So your view that if it was feasible they would do it doesn't stand up. They never even looked into other more cost effective ways, just going along doing the same old expensive inefficient thing.

It has to be as certain industries are still in the 1930s. No government wants to legislate unnecessarily. If the private sector was delivering they could just sit back. Unfortunately the government has to intervene.

[Andy Hall]

Possibly, but Wimpey are a commercial company with shareholders and would perceive this as a risk that they may not wish to take.

Not very many probably, which is why I made the point that education is a factor in this as well.

The very notion of Milton Keynes and all that goes with it is a big turn off to a lot of people.

No of course not. Something can work and be as cost effective as you like, but people won't buy it if they either don't like it, think it's too big a risk or are unaware of it.

Yes there is. They perceive that people don't want them, or that they are more complicated or cost more or they can't get the people to build them. Whether that is true or not doesn't really matter.

Same point exactly. Electric cars. manufacturers like GM and Toyota launched them in the U.S. and made them available on lease, then had second thoughts and terminated the leases.

In the short term possibly. This is clearly not without political risk or successive governments would have legislated zero energy homes for all new builds.

We know all of that.

By sticking one on the chairman of Wimpey?

I didn't say that it wasn't feasible or that it wasn't desirable - clearly it is on both counts.

That isn't where the issues are.

Because it is what they perceive that the public wants, and what they know how to do.

The present one does it all the time.

There are a combination of factors.

Legislation is a short cut to achieving what the government doesn't know how to do properly. It generally doesn't work or doesn't last if it doesn't follow the natural order of things. Why is the government thinking of legislating (in effect) condensing boilers? Because people want to buy cheap and the construction industry is conservative.

.andy

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[IMM]

I really couldn't a hoot about a developer and its shareholders. If they will not deliver the goods then the government has to force them into the

20th century. Getting them into the 21st century is asking too much.

You said it. "ignorance".

What balls! They don't want change. They are frightened of change.

Hybrids sell well in the USA. Yet hybrids are not state-of-the-art of what can be done.

It has to be to get them to deliver. they virtually have monopolies governments should control them when they fail to deliver.

It is going that way. The new insulation regs are a major hype. the Canadian government is operating their R-2000 over here too, as well as many other countries too.

I hope so.

What tripe. They build to what they "think" they make the most money on. They are doing very well so why should they change. That is theri mentality.

Because it has to keep the country keeping up. I widh they woudl de-legislate on land though.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its worse than that Andy.

The automotive industry has huge plant spread around many major subcontractors dedicated to producing the bits and pieces that comprise a car.

VIRTUALLY NONE OF THESE BITS with the exception of wheels, suspension and brakes, have any applicability in an electric car.

No established manufacturer is going to spend billions on an electric car when it means the complete death of the industry, its workers and the investment in plant that they have made over the years.

Big businesses have their own inertia. In many cases its virtually impossible for a company making e.g. CRT's to re-invest in producing e.g. LCD screens or plasma screens.

At the very best, what we may see in car technology, is some enterprising small manufacturer- brand new - making a halfway decent model that achieves some market penetration, and then is bought up by one of the giants.

There is zero chance that they themselves would be able to produce one.

As far as building go, things do move, but slowly. IMM is an idealistic fantasist, but but by bit the market learns from elsewhere, and gradually adapts to changing conditions. You cannot retrain an industry of ill educated bodges to use different techniques overnight. But in due course people with good ideas that save money and make better products become examples to others, and progress happens.

You can't legislate FOR progress: At best you can legislate to remove some of the obstacles. Progress comes from a very small group of individuals with vision. Not from governments, and not from armchair fantasists.

[Tony Bryer]

They will go for the one with central heating. Seriously. This was reported at a BRE conference: building society 'valuers' are not the most clued up people when it comes to heating and were marking down the value of a house if it didn't have c.h. even though it didn't need it.