embodied energy

Structural principles

The Building RegulationsThese are the legal regulations which govern how a house is constructed. (not to be confused with Planning Permission which is about whether you are allowed to build the house at all or what it might look like) see Building Regulations), part Apart A of the Building Regulations Approved [...]

Lammas eco village

summer 2011

The Lammas project at Tir y Gafel, Glandwr, Pembrokeshire, is Wales’ first collective initiative based on what is now the (TAN)6 national planning guidance for sustainable rural communities. (One Planet Development).

Planning permissionthe legal basis for being allowed to do some form of development such as building a house. (not to be [...]

Retrofit

‘Under the Sun’, a Victorian terrace house in Birmingham is an outstanding example of bringing a fairly typical old building up to PassivhausSee more on the Passivhaus standard. The PassivHaus Institute has pioneered a standard for low energy buildings. It includes very low energy usage and ways of achieving this. The word is derived [...]

Timber

January ’13

Advantages of timber

Constructing with FSCForest Stewardship Council (who accredit timber) timber (or another accreditation organisation such as PEFCProgramme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. See their web site) is potentially one of the greenest ways of building for several reasons.

Timber itself captures and locks up CO² as it grows and keeps [...]

Windows

multiple glazing Types of sealed unit

As a minimum try to use sealed units with a spacing of 16 or 18mm. rather than 6mm. This is the optimum gap for heat insulation. However the frames need to have sufficient rebate for this. See window design. Use a filler of argon gas rather than air. [...]

Aluminium

Aluminium tends to be used as a waterproof barrier in buildings because of the slow rate at which it oxidises (rusts). It can be treated to stay nice and shiny for a decade or two and can also be colour coated to last quite well. It’s other attraction in building work is the ease [...]

Designing with timber

timber house in the Field of Dreams, Findhorn FoundationThe Findhorn Foundation is a large community near Inverness. There is a strong emphasis on sustainable building and living.

See some of the wealth of interesting UK timber designs here.

advantages and drawbacks

Timber can provide some of the greenest solutions to house building for several [...]

PVC

PVC is a difficult subject because the criticisms have come from several distinct directions

those who find the chemistry of producing PVC dangerous. GreenPeace has campaigned long and hard on this issue for two reasons – PVC is oil based and therefore dangerous for several reasons it involves shipping oil around the world and [...]

Insulation properties

A cork oak. The bark (cork) is stripped about every 8 years and regrows

Assuming that the question of designing in enough insulation has been dealt with the question is about what kind of materials to use. Here the issues are -

resistance to moisture compressive strength if needed is it self supporting? is [...]

Cement and concrete

There are several problems with cement

the huge amount of energy which goes into making it because of the high temperatures needed in the kilns. (However it is worth noting that if you are designing high thermal massthis is about how much heat something can absorb – so it involves its specific heat [...]

Building Materials

Smile Plastics recycle plastics into beautiful high quality sheet materials. Here’s an example of bottle recycling

Sustainability of building materials

This can have several slightly different meanings which are to do with:

Whether the material is actually running out or very rare (e.g. Cuban Mahogany) Whether the embodied energythe total amount of energy it [...]

Energy

January 2011

Energy use in our society is almost always associated with pollution and habitat destruction so all types of energy use are worth looking at:

While a house is being built reducing embodied energythe total amount of energy it takes to make a material (or a building). See more on embodied energy of [...]

The embodied energy in a house is the total energy required to build it. That includes the extraction, mining etc. of the raw materials, processing and manufacturing them and transporting them to the site and assembling them.

The embodied energy of materials can vary enormously depending on how you measure it, where it is located [...]

Concrete blocks

Concrete blocks, though used widely, have the drawback of being very high in embodied energythe total amount of energy it takes to make a material (or a building). See more on embodied energy due to the cement they contain. They may also produce a wall which is too thick . Achieving PassivhausSee more on the [...]

Brick

The green credentials for brick walls vary, with three main factors:

the embodied energythe total amount of energy it takes to make a material (or a building). See more on embodied energy depends on what sort of bricks are used the environmental policy of the manufacturer the effect on the wall design

The embodied energy [...]

Hemp / Lime

Hemp lime walls are a relatively new construction method to the UK although they have been around in mainland Europe for a couple of decades. Hempcrete, as it is generically known is a mixture of lime and hemp shiv (chopped hemp straw after the fibres have been removed) in a ratio of about 1:5 [...]