My Barn Conversion … musings in small-house, off-grid, architecture, design with smatterings of art, history and literature

From a full Passivhaus design to a simple loft conversion the effective use of insulation has never been more high profile. One of the key features of current renovation and new building design is the effective utilisation of insulation to minimise heating requirements. Whilst in the UK we historically tended to think of insulation in…

Insulation. June has been a pretty slow month … progress has been dominated by insulation and plasterboard. First fix electrics and plumbing are complete. The roof and walls are being insulated and plasterboarded. Internally, the old stone barn is being lost behind a new structure of wood, plasterboard, insulating panels and rock wool. It feels…

Expanded Polystyrene insulation is made from small beads of polystyrene that are heated to expand them. To create boards, the beads are heated further to fuse the beads together. Boards are typical used in walls, roofs and floors. Polystyrene beads can be used as lose cavity fill in masonry walls. Description Lose or in boards…

last weekend’s raking out In what seems to be an annual event, I’ve restarted repointing the exterior of the barn. When working with lime you have to take a break over the cold, wet winter months – it’s taken me this long to get restarted. This time, I’ve taken a more scientific approach and attempted…

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 ~…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Last year I noticed that there was a colony of bees living in the base of a red wood tree near my garden gate. As wasn’t too bothered about them at the time as the place was more or less a building site. One of the bees Then, a couple of weeks ago my father…