Month: June 2008

As should be pretty obvious to any regular reader of this site, I'm pretty keen on the use of design patterns to ensure the goodness-of-fit between building plans and specifications and the requirements of the eventual end-users of a building. Patterns help inspire, guide and polish building design at all levels. A Pattern Language ~ the 'bible' of building patterns So, when I stumbled across the architypes site my interest was piqued. architypes.net is a library of architectural design issues, solutions and ideas. At the heart of architypes.net are two simple but powerful ideas: Patterns: The principles and ideas are…

One of the (admittedly very dull) things that I spend quite a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with is the presentation of information. One of the newish developments that is overused on the web, but can be very effective is the word cloud. A word cloud is made up of the key words found with the domain of a certain topic or article with the size of each word in relation to the others determined by the frequency of use of that word. The site wordle provides a great on-line word cloud generator. I used it to generate…

Competition now closed I'd love the forum to become a useful resource for asking questions and getting answers related to 'healthy house', sustainable, ecological & environmentally aware building. There are other places out there to ask questions but they can at times be daunting, unwelcoming sorts of places. I want to keep things friendly and inclusive here. To encourage questions and answers I'll be running a competition over the Summer. There are a number of categories: Most interesting topic. Awarded to the most interesting or thought provoking new topic posted on the forum. Most interesting reply. Awarded to the most…

Now we have pipes (and lots of them as well). In addition to lots of electricity cables, we now have complex pipe-work that will form the basis of the even more complex heating and hot-water system that we'll be installing. This also means that first-fix electrics and plumbing is now complete... (worthy of a small cheer...) The pipework to/from the hot-water store (not installed yet!)

I've long considered adding a forum to this site mainly to allow questions to be asked in a general manner rather than tied to a specific post. So, after fiddling about with it for a while, here is the new... mybarnconversion.com Discussion Forum My Barn Conversion Forum is the place for discussion of sustainable, ecological & environmentally aware building, conversion and renovation projects. You'll need to register before you can add comments or questions >> register here It's pretty spartan at the moment, I've added in a few entries derived from comments on this site - please feel free to…

May has been a month of windows. The roof lights in the western elevation We now have a six 'velux' type windows in the roof, a new window opening in the south facing gable-end of the barn and the ventilation (arrow) slits have been glazed. The amount of light that the new roof lights let into the building comes as a real surprise. Obviously they were going to brighten things up, but we've gone from a dull shadowy first floor of the building to one that is light and bright. The new window in the gable-end is also a small…

Tax Freedom Day 2008 falls is TODAY! 2 June 2008 There's good news and bad news... The good news is that from now on every penny you earn, you can keep... The bad news is that since the start of the year every penny you've earnt has gone to the government to pay for their expenditure. Read more about Tax Freedom Day on the Adam Smith Institute website.