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Insulation and wall thickness

With increasing levels of insulation, the total thickness of a wall becomes an issue in relation to land values, especially in densely built urban areas where space is restricted. The total footprint of the external walls of a house can easily be around 15 – 20% of the ground floor area and this becomes significant.

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Emitters (rads etc.)

Central heating

Emitters tend to be of two types – traditional radiators and underfloor heating. It’s a bit of a toss-up as to which is better. They have their respective advantages and drawbacks.

Underfloor

a pleasanter heat because it is better distributed no wall space taken up by radiators possibly more efficient because of lower [...]

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 [...]

Part L and SAP (England)

The Building Regulations, part L, is the section which covers energy conservation for new buildings (with part L1A covering new buildings and part L1B covering existing ones)

At present there is a period of transition which is well explained in an NHBCThe National House-Building Council describes itself as being “the leading warranty and insurance provider [...]

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 [...]

Stonework

New buildings

As a building material, locally sourced (or possibly newly quarried), reclaimed stone may be a viable option but suffers from the drawback that stone itself has virtually no insulating value.

This can obviously be overcome by including sufficient insulation within the rest of the wall construction but it does tend to lead [...]