Year: 2007

The original plans for the barn had two largish bathrooms one of which contained an airing cupboard that to my mind was a waste of space. Not being a person who knows when to stop meddling, I decided to remove the airing cupboard, add an ante-room to the main bedroom’s en-suite and move one of…

I’ve been promising these for a while, but eventually I’ve got there. I’d added a whole new set of photographs of the barn to the site that I’ll use as my before photo’s. Hopefully, I can use these to demonstrate progress as the conversion goes on. Some of them are similar to other pictures I’ve…

So, as we have started work, we need to think about all those details that I’ve put to one side until we had a builder. Not liking getting too formal about such things, it seems like a good idea to make a list so: Last update [4th November 2007] Ground or Air Source Heat Pump…

So the time has come to stop skirting around the fringes of this project and crack-on down the path that leads from barn to barn conversion (what a difference a word makes). The builder started work yesterday, although I’ve not seen what’s been done, (I’m retaining a aloof distance for the next few days and…

Being about to pour several tonnes of concrete into the floor of our barn I was interested to read about the environmental impact of cement usage. Apparently, world-wide cement production creates twice as many carbon emissions as the world’s airline industry does. For each tonne of cement that is produced 900kg of CO2 is released…

Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein ~ 1977, Oxford University Press, New York. In 1977, whilst in the UK the Sex Pistols where spreading a message of anarchy and being “Pretty Vacant”, in the USA Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein and co. were publishing three books that would enable us to bring order and thoughtful design to…

The term biomass heating refers to the combustion of plant based organic materials for the purpose of heating a volume of air. Biomass fuels fall into two main categories: Woody resources from sustainable sources such as fast growing trees or subsiduary waste products such as sawdust or recycled untreated pallets. Non-woody resources such as animal…

Firstly, I must apologise for the infrequency of my recent posting. I’ve been away in France for a little ‘R and R’ staying in a barn conversion in Normandy (can’t stay away from the bloody things). The place we stay at now has four barns converted for holiday accommodation. We stayed in the first conversion…

A recurring topic that has kept popping into my consciousness over the past few weeks has been that of financial incentives to encourage of adoption of green technology in buildings. Firstly, in relation to the incentives that are available in the UK from the government. I’m interested in an air-source heat pump to provide an…

One of the cornerstones of energy efficient, healthy, sustainable building design, the PassivHaus standard aims to provide comfortable year round living conditions through minimal energy expenditure. These aims are achieved through: An effective passive solar design that will provide the necessary heat gain (heating). To manage the heat gain: …very highly specified insulation, …near complete…

A term often heard, but of rarely understood, just what does it mean? Some definitions: “within ten years every new home will be a zero-carbon home“ Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, in pre-budget report 2006. When asked for further clarification, a zero-carbon home was defined as one that does not contribute to global warming – hardly…

Despite the various pieces of tinkering and potching that I’ve committed over the past months, I never really felt that we’d made a real start on conversion of the barn. That is until the last couple of weeks when the wall came down. As dramatic as it sounds, the wall coming down entailed the removal…