Back to the barns!

Or would not tents be
the cheaper alternative?

Daily Mail: The Grand Designs house for first time buyers:
How you can get on the property ladder with a £41,000
three bedroom home

 Daily Mail

I know, Mr Neo and Mrs Lib are governing us. Clever is he who rips off his counterpart the best while best is calculated in buckets of Sterling, bags of Euro or piles of Greenbacks in our days and counterparts are regularly called customers, clients, often idiots and stupid.

I respect Kevin McCloud; he, his Grand Design programme has become a brand name, is the one who is trying to demonstrate that there are many different ways to build your home and dwell in a spectacular one-off or an ambitious dream home.

It is he who shows the nation that there is this opportunity of a self-build market against all the construction industry’s hard trial to channel the majority of all house buyers towards its shelves; readily available new builds, built while cutting all possible corners to reinforce margins, often part of soon-to-look-like-slums sleeping estates, where estate is too grand a word; one or two metre distance between the houses, bedroom three, four and possibly five being wardrobe-sized, the two designs, three colours, four shapes and five layouts so similar that I would need to raise a bespoke flag to find the one my family lived in cooped up in between cheapest wooden fences.

The industry claims UK house buyers would not want anything else but what it makes available; I doubt that.

But I also doubt that Kevin McCloud should use his name and brand for the described farmyard type barns; those poor and pity constructions are definitely not what we should aim for:

'We set ourselves the challenge of getting under the magic £50,000 and making sure that what came out the other side would be something we'd really want to live in, be really beautiful and not just more shoe boxes.'

The Barnhaus steel frame is lined internally with lots of insulation - straw bales being most cost effective - and doors and windows are added at either end.

Beautiful? ... not a shoebox? Give me a break!

 Daily Mail

Straw bales being most cost effective ... compared to what? To avoiding any need for any insulation or to living in a cave? Of all materials straw is probably one of the most complicated to deal with in reference to λ- and U-values, durability, fire resistance, etc. pp. Cost effective bales?! Another break, please.

I would have thought we finally have arrived at a point where designing, constructing and delivering any home would at least touch the subject of energy efficiency, durability, comfort and health? The article takes long and rather funny detours to avoid such basics:

Architect Ed Green came up with the award-winning design which gives buyers the 'skeleton' of a house, and allows them to adapt the original framework to their taste
....
The home, which is bigger than many modern new-build houses, will give first-time buyers the chance to build their own 'Grand Designs' home at a fraction of the cost.

Typically first homes under £90,000 will get a much smaller space to a 'substandard design', the winning architect claimed.

Is this some kind of April fools' joke? A substandard design replaced with a farmyard barn box? But it gets even better:

Pretty much the whole house could be built by a relatively unskilled person - except for the electrics.

Well, there is the real difference to the normal construction industry's approach; while it also uses relatively unskilled persons but charges an arm and a leg the self-barn-builder can build and finish his barn without going into any great detail, not to mention know-how, as to plumbing, heating, ventilation, tiling, windows, roof and foundation, thermal bridging, U-values, air changes and what not! Progress! Superb? The remains of British construction industry should turn pale.

Would climbing the property ladder starting from a substandard designed and built farmyard barn really work?

'And you can go on eBay and buy a steel barn frame the size of a family home for around £2,500.

Good luck, this is the next best solution to living in a tent; but then may be living in a cave would make more sense! It would definitely be more cost effective.

Carpe diem!

much more than a SIP...

The HANSE HAUS wallstructure explained:

example: HANSE HAUS Passiv Haus wall

Carpe diem!

at the end of a day's work...

...Inglisssh becomes Work Laenquish!

I know, I have posted this long ago, but with all the in-efficiency and un-sustainability around me today I thought I need to have to rough laugh!

This Gentleman is Europe's Commissioner for Energy!  So, should you need some... feel free to ask him... may be not in Inglisssh but in Swabian!

Carpe diem!

p.s. You think, if it wasn't so serious, it'd be very funny?
       Correct!

passiv or passive: House or Haus

Many of you have heard about the advantages of "going passive" when it comes to building your new home, house, office, nursery, hospital, workshop, etc.

But that "many of you" does by far not mean "enough"! Here is some more on the subject:






Carpe diem!

while we play stupid games...

... called Euro, Greece, Terrorism or Nuclear...

our human footprint is killing the remains of our habitat. We might not be past-peak-oil but we are definitely past-peak-manhood! Our front gardens are looking good, fresh cut grass, fertilised, nice roses in full blossom; meanwhile the surrounding rest of the planet becomes pretty hostile, the oceans will be amongst the first to go.

A very interesting report on the state of the ocean.org.

Carpe diem!


p.s.:

Expo's Funky Town

... one year later... things are really happening here.

It's sheer pandemonium!

August 26th, 2010: highland housing expo!

August 27th, 2010: eco, friendly, green and credentials...

January 19th, 2011: new year: old news


Carpe diem!

green wind for energy

Sustainable Energy from Druim Ba 

source: Druim Ba Sustainable Energy

Some kind of future his catching up with our area; so far we only watched such future going up from very high and very far, thankful for it not coming any closer. That changed when plans arrived for a huge wind farm that would alter our landscape, hardly making it any nicer.

Will it help to make future any better?

From the DBSE brochure:

On a purely technical basis, the site could accommodate 37 turbines.

A Scoping Report was submitted to the Scottish Government in the spring of 2010, for a wind farm with 31 turbines with generating capacity of 3MW each and a maximum tip height of 155 metres.

As a result of consultation with various consultees, the scope of the project has been reduced to 28 turbines and a reduced tip height of 150 metres maximum.

Interested in all kinds of energy generation, owning a (small) wind generator and depending on an highly efficient CHP-off-grid supply I am always trying to look at such a project from an angle as neutral as possible; it is difficult but clear figures and numbers on a spreadsheet help to keep that angle.

In an earlier post titled new thinking I said:

To question the efficiency of a wind generator asking from what point during its life span the 300ft cast-iron pole based in >1,000 tons of concrete will net generate electricity is seen as an anti sanctum.

That was two years ago! This time it is 28 times 500ft and much more concrete and iron, still you won't find anything answering that pretty simple question. One would think it would be the most straight forward calculation the want-to-be-wind-farming-company would present to its critics. An overall and detailed foot-print calculation putting input and output into relation from birth to death, from first scratch to the final recycling and regenerating process 25 years later; such a calculation could then be presented and steal most of the campaigners' thunder - if it was in favour of the technology producing carbon free energy.

Kiltarlity residents rally to fight plan for wind farm, a legitimate process (update 09-02-11: see what they have to say); however, in the majority of all cases these activities look like lame yogurt-knitters fighting bloated capitalists and vice versa. Pretty much useless when reduced to birds or bats, to "don't want" or "don't like", only, and even less entertaining where one democratic voice wants to eliminate the other:

A meeting led by campaigners against the Druim Ba wind farm will be held at Kiltarlity Village Hall on Saturday from 11am. It is understood that Druim Ba representatives will not be allowed to speak at the meeting.

Seeing what it could look like should rather force them to speak and explain.

source: Druim Ba - Say No

Not allow the representatives to speak matches the picture of the underdog having a sit-in and a yogurt while listening the green energy blues:

The invitation to discuss the project is found in the project's description and even its name: "Druim Ba Sustainable Energy"; so to take it by the word and investigate the project's true sustainability must be the prime aim prior to challenging the project's feasibility; the result could range anything from "Yes, it is!" to "No, it is not!" but any serious campaign could only be based on the above calculation which would then be put into proportionality e.g. with our society's or be it government's targets, the habitats, the environment, may be its costs, ROI, pay-back-time, its disruptiveness, influence or even beauty - or ugliness.

Anything else, a campaign for the campaigners' sake or a non-sustainable shareholder-value-first project are pure entertainment or sheer propaganda!

Apropos...

propaganda: the many words that you read and hear around those catchwords like green and sustainable, renewable or carbon-neutral while lacking numbers and thorough calculations often even proper thinking enhance the feeling of one party trying to pull a fast one on the other. It reminds me very much of the many bubble words that were made about the Highland Expo.

politics: some time ago the collective decision was made that energy generated from wind should become a major part of our grid supply; obviously the collective decision did not include to calculate the technology's footprint - why?

Carpe diem!


update 25-01-2011
P&J: Revised windfarm plans kept under wraps by developers

update 09-02-2011
The Druim ba - Say No website

P&J: Windfarm Protesters storm Village Meeting

Next exhibition:

Abriachan Village Hall, Wednesday 9th February, 2011, 2 - 8 pm

going passive, the future of construction...

making it fast, efficent and sustainable!

Simple answer on a simple question:

Carpe diem!

fish net will have to be something else, soon

The Spatial Expansion and Ecological Footprint of Fisheries (1950 to Present)

Using estimates of the primary production required (PPR) to support fisheries catches (a measure of the footprint of fishing), we analyzed the geographical expansion of the global marine fisheries from 1950 to 2005.


This approach enabled us to assign exploitation status across a 0.5° latitude/longitude ocean grid system and trace the change in their status over the 56-year time period.

At the end of the line there will be no fish:

The decline of newly exploited areas since the late 1990s, which corresponds to a decline in global landings [7], implies that the era of great expansion has come to an end. With a limited room for expansion, and excessive appropriation of primary production in many regions, the only way toward sustainability of global fisheries goes through reduction of PPR.

So we will have to find new applications for fish net...

Carpe diem!

hallelujah, school buses on snow tyres!

... and it just took another winter!

One evening a year ago our parents' council discussed the problems with school transport, mainly related to bad weather conditions; well, usually just normal weather conditions taking the season called winter into account.

The proposal to ask the bus contractor to install snow tyres was washed away by the local politician, indeed the local councillor, as being a condition to be included in the next contract term's agreement, only, as it had never been part of the current contract. With other words, as it was not ordered one wouldn't get it or: life is  "mostly sunny!", anyway.

Politicians?!?

So pushing all common sense plus those ever so destructive Health and Safety rules away our kids had the pleasure to sit in totally unsafe buses; okay, only when those made it up or out of the snow piles and across the ice patches which covered our roads for the first three months of 2010.

A mere eight months, early frost, heaps of new snow and may be the one winter on tyres blog post later those school buses show up on snow tyres!!

Victoria, victoria!

Common sense prevailed! Or would you think that a clever politician improved a contract?

Carpe diem!

the miracles of modern construction...

... based on fabulous marketing?

SupaWall® panels are extremely thermally efficient and have been tested by the National Physical Laboratory who confirmed a U-value of 0.12 W/m2K. When typical cladding is taken into account the U-Value is 0.11 W/m2K
...
As an option, the 50mm polyurethane insulation on the cavity face of the timber frame can be omitted, giving U values with and without cladding of 0.17 W/m2K & 0.18 W/m2K respectively.

We have calculated this wall construction several times; the best we come up with is an overall U value of 0.17W/m²K which is describing the best case scenario; the mentioned "typical cladding" is typically vented, so it does not really improve the U-value but rules the humidity level between the two walls which seems to make the dew point critical. Also, as the stone cladding needs to be attached to the wood construction, usually by stainless steel pins, the thermal bridging effect would further strain any U-value calculation, the correct one or its phantasy's version.

So what makes it 0.12? What did we miss?

Any suggestions?


Carpe diem!

smart meter rubbish

BBC:Smart meters 'may not cut energy use'

Research by a University of Oxford scientist found that the devices alone were unlikely to lead to an overall reduction in the demand for energy.

Indeed, who ever expected a meter hanging on a wall, smart or stupid, to reduce demand? Would you safe gas if the pump meter at the gas station was smart, which it most probably is?

Citing Italy and Sweden as exampled, she said: "They are not being rolled out with the aim of giving customers better feedback, except that the households will get an accurate bill whereas in the past they might have got an estimate.

No, they are rolled out to safe somebody being paid to collect data in situ; accurate, in time, remote monitoring of what is consumed simply helps to charge in time and accurately - it helps the supplier and you pay the cost and ensure profit! That's what is smart about the meter; the rest is bullshit.

"But in [the UK], it is part of government policy that smart meters will be rolled out with real-time electricity displays."

Real time displays: if that display besides the consumption figures gave you the on-time price for what you are or are about to consume that would help; however, you would have to watch it when and while you switched on the washing machine or put the kettle on? That could be at one o'clock at night or seven o'clock in the morning, when we all have our tea... during that time the imported electricity will be most expensive anyway, so you might have a cup of water for breakfast which, no doubt, soon will be monitored by a smart water meter. The suppliers are what's smart here, that's for sure.

No, smart meters do not reduce consumption! Who ever believed or believes in that fairy tale fell or falls for another trick of another trade; don't worry, you are in good company, the government does it again and again.

We should understand and know what we get for our money; the rest is just daffing.

Carpe diem!

carbon for the winter last

neighbour:

are you getting ready for a cold winter?

I:

no! for the last!

No, I won't discuss this stupid "wood is carbon neutral again" while my nose is still full of those fossil fumes from the chainsaw, the tractor and the hydraulic splitter from yesterday's workout in the forest.

Last Winter we ran out of gas (LPG) which fires our CHP Island solution (i.e. off-grid); producing electricity and thermal energy (i.e. heat). The gas tanker - a high-tech-one-wheel-drive (1WD) with no locks but on Formula 1 slick-like tyres, what else would you expect North of Loch Ness - wouldn't make it up for weeks. So we installed two 48kg bottles and had the complex of 22,000 sqft run on bottled gas, one lasting two days! Hard to believe it worked, electricity-wise and for some of the thermal energy we need; for the additional heat we started up the good old 110kW wood-chip boiler which we hadn't used for three or four years. Worked so-so and we had to chip more wood to fill the hopper; at minus five feeling rather like -18°, a solidly frozen chipper and horizontal snowstorms not really my favourite amusement; but again, and lucky us it worked.

This year, surprise, we want to be prepared and with this crazy weather all around the globe who knows what this coming Winter or the next will have in mind for us.

So we cut about 30 stacked cubic metres of wood; that's more than what 4 to 5 hectare of matured woodland reproduce every year. 0.7 kg CO2 are stored per square meter and year, so, once fired we will have emitted what CO2 the 45,000m² have not stored in one year, i.e. 31,5 tonnes! That's a load - and a nice plot of land, isn't it?

I don't know in detail how long it will last us; in theory this depends very much on the quality of the wood, humidity and how old it is and in practice, how cold it will be; as we cleaned up wind fallen trees as well the moisture content and quality defer very much. I will monitor the figures - however, theory would calculate about 1 cubic metre spruce weighing app. 350 kg, the equivalent of 1.400 kw/h, so we stacked 42,000 kWh.

So far so easy; but we are replacing LPG; 1 kg LPG equals 12.4kw/h, so in theory we will then not burn about 3,390 kg of LPG which are about 6,600 litres and not emit about 9.3 tonnes of CO2 but then, surprise, surprise, 31.5 tonnes while burning that wood will not be stored.

Understood? It just tells us how difficult and complicated the process of replacing fossil fuels with any renewables is and will be... it also tells us all that every single step, theory, material and technology will have to be thoroughly analysed and it tells you that burning wood emits more CO2 than using gas! Why?

... and still the forest needs replanting, managing, protecting, harvesting...

The proof is in the pudding - and in lots of muscles.


Carpe diem!

be prepared `a la China

China follows that old warning "be prepared", something that Europe definitely has unlearned; or, may be Europe is still just not old enough to understand.

Meteoric growth and scant domestic energy reserves mean that action is urgently required. Energy efficiency must be taken into account right from the planning and construction stage and the energy requirements of new buildings must be significantly reduced.

With German assistance, China is aiming to improve the energy efficiency of its buildings. At a meeting of the "German-Chinese working group on energy efficiency in buildings", the German Federal Ministry of Building, the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), the Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH (dena) - the German Energy Agency - and the Chinese state-controlled Center for Energy Efficiency in Buildings (CEEB) adopted wide-ranging cooperative activities and a new working programme.

The Chinese state's control obviously is not discussing global warming, whether its man-made, coming or going; China has decided that they better prepare for energy becoming even more expensive while their population and economy is growing. So not only do they invest in all kinds of resources but at the same time they are covering the consumption end.

Hello? Anybody out there seeing the consequences? China is - here too - boosting its competitiveness!!!

Carpe diem!

draught-tight or air-proofing...

or is it vice versa?

I am sure our forefathers already tried to find that draught-proof cave...

The other day I was left with the following tweet line:

...(I) prefer draught proofing for general public & getting them to understand concept, couldn't sell ' air flow control'.

I had initially provoked the line when I had criticised the terminology "draught-proofing" as being not good and precise enough in comparison to the term "air tightness" or rather "air flow control". My intention had not been to offend the addressee, an architect, but to make clear that modern construction need to be built to a precise standard, for example to meet a given standard of air-tightness level.

Why?

Well, the air we breathe among others transports water (humidity) and thermal energy (heat/cold), but also all sorts of dirt, dust, germs and spore. So to set a level for the air exchange rate helps to control the levels of what it contains; many reasons speak for an air tight building envelope:

• it avoids structural damage
• ... draughts
• ... and energy losses;
• it improves noise protection within the building and to/from the outside
• ... and air quality.

Of course, the tighter your envelope becomes the more ventilation is a must; the best solution is to install a controlled automated ventilation system including thermal energy recovery (heat/cold), something that we had installed in our first house in 1981 and love ever since.

I think even the "general public" ought to know and understand these principles as I am a firm believer in customers that not only know what they want but understand why they want it. Ignorance may help to close a clever deal for one side but will turn out to be a bad advisor for both.

The technology exists; what is needed is the understanding and education of both, the industry and the customer accompanied by the will of both to make a difference. Once that happens health and comfort will replace the discussions about morbid homes and heating allowances.

A win-win situation as it will be the time when "Affordables" become affordable.

Carpe diem!

EPC rated "A" Nursery ...

recommended for health and wellbeing:

As a side effect this Nursery's CO2 emissions are ultralow as are the running (energy) cost; a 6,000 sqft paradise for 75 children in the centre of Glasgow.

More on this soon.

Carpe diem!

nuclear's value added cost

According a today's report in FTD (Financial Times Germany) the German Government is faced with an extra €10.6bn of clean-up cost for the decommissioning and decontaminating of old nuclear plants and research facilities including "Asse II" and the former GDR repository Morsleben. The figure (10.6) remains based on 2010 prices and is not "audited" with other words, the tax paper has to pay the gamble anyway so why bother and go into any details.

So much for the realistic cost of every kWh of nuclear power and the ones that rant against PV and other renewables' subsidies and the "enormous" cost for the consumers. At least those cost have a calculatory base and are fixed while nobody knows what this 10.6bn clean-up figure will ever end up with.

That is - no need to mention - for the same payor, every tax payer, i.e. consumer - and not any kind of anonymous government!

Carpe diem!

a continental miracle...

or just lousy British motorists that need that sniff?!?

...the nozzle and crank in action, so both hands
free for taking the photo while refuelling...
Photo taken in Germany: land of high and tech!

Coming back from abroad, by car, from overheated Germany, through this sophisticated Eurotunnel stopping at the first British gas station makes me wonder: are these Germans the better gas station users? Are they the ones to deserve better than the British "refuellers"? Do they have a better moral or just the higher and deeper technical understanding of how to fill up their gas tanks?

Why do these automatic "high-tech" filling stoppers work fine and always in Germany while we in Britain have to stand just above those benzene and benzol fumes squeezing the nozzle harder for speedy refilling while taking deep sniffs of what is a globally acknowledged cause of cancer?

I assume to learn how to take advantage of this tiny wee high-tech crank pushed backwards to allow it to stop the filling process just in time is not a lesson to take too long to learn and take advantage of; even for the below average British motorists!

Charles Stewart and Henry, i.e. Messrs. Rolls and Royce would still be rotating in their graves if they had ever been treated that stupid.

Carpe diem!

I can see clearly now...

... the oil has come!

you owe him and his to go here

... can see all
... obstacles in my way!

Carpe diem!

give us our daily sun...

part II: a park, not a farm

One PV-mover might be lonesome; but a number of those make a PV-park:



Carpe diem!