Articles published in 2011

The AECB Gets Wised Up

For ecobuilding enthusiasts, the big event of the year is the annual conference of the AECB. This year, the conference took place in October at CAT, in their WISE building. Many readers will know that CAT stands for the Centre for Alternative Technology, located just outside Machynlleth in West Wales. WISE stands for the Wales Institute for Sustainable Education – their remarkable, new building complex is described below.



How Green is your Selfbuild?

During my lifetime there has been a big shift in attitude towards the environment. Its largesse used to be taken for granted. No matter how badly we treated it, we expected the Environment, or Nature as it used to be called, to recover. In the Seventies, I was in the insulation business, and we obtained materials from a company called British Industrial Plastics. On one occasion the company invited us to visit their factory in the West Midlands. There happened to be a stream flowing across the site, and our guide mentioned in passing that if any of their drums of resin passed the use-by date, the contents would be emptied into the stream. Such behaviour would be unacceptable nowadays. Indeed, the company’s website now sports a very worthy Environment Policy. 



CSH Category 3: Materials

Last month we looked at the first two categories of the Code for Sustainable Homes: 
Category 1 – Energy and CO2 Emissions, and Category 2 – Water.
We now continue, but remember this account is only an overview. For the fine detail the reader should check out the Code for Sustainable Homes Technical Guide.



CSH Categories 8 and 9

In our exploration of the Code for Sustainable Homes, we have reached the last two categories – Management, and Ecology. 



Last Thoughts about the Code For Sustainable Homes

It used to be that an architect had all the expertise required to design you a new home. Just possibly he might have to engage a structural engineer if there were some steelwork involved, but in general he had the competence to undertake the whole design. (Even so, a builder sometimes has to tweak a design to make it buildable.)



Accounting For Carbon

Last month we looked at the embodied carbon of the products used in the building of a house. As has become common practice, the word ‘carbon’ is being used here as a shorthand for greenhouse gas emissions. So the embodied carbon of a product is a measure of the greenhouse gases emitted during the varied processes by which Nature’s raw materials are transformed into the product.  


Keeping Up with the Building Regulations

The core of the Building Regulations is made up of the fourteen parts of Schedule 1, from Part A (Structure) to Part P (Electrical Safety). Fourteen? There is no Part I or Part O. 
Each part contains requirements described in general terms, and there is an Approved Document for each part. Approved Document A, for example, quotes the requirements of Part A and gives detailed guidance on how to comply with them. (Eg, there is a table showing the minimum width of strip foundations in different subsoils.) Usually, when people refer to the ‘Building Regulations’, knowingly or not they are invoking the requirements of Schedule 1 and the guidance in the Approved Documents. 



CSH Categories 1 and 2: Energy and CO2 Emissions, and Water

We saw last month that the Code for Sustainable Homes is based on assessing the sustainability of a new home by awarding points under nine categories. These categories range from the most important, ‘Energy and CO2 Emissions‘ (maximum points: 36.4), to the least important, ‘Surface Water Run-off’ (maximum points: 2.2). There are mandatory requirements (ie, minimum standards) in some of the categories, too.



CSH Categories 4, 5, 6 and 7: Surface Water Run-Off; Waste; Pollution; Health And Well-Being

We continue with our exploration of the Code for Sustainable Homes, looking this month at four of the nine categories considered in the Code. (For the Code’s methodology, see earlier articles.)



CSH: Getting to Level 3 The Easy Way

In some parts of the country the planners require new homes to reach Level 3 of the Code for Sustainable Homes. For this, at least 57 points are required out of the 100 available. (We’ve seen how points are scored in earlier articles. For other introductions to the Code, see Further Info.)
As we see below, Code Level 1 is there for the taking; and most selfbuilders should be able to get to Level 3 easily enough. Getting to Level 6 is difficult and costly. 



Embodied Energy and Embodied Carbon

In the beginning was Energy. 
The Standard Assessment Procedure of the building regulations is much concerned with the number of kWh’s of energy that is required to keep a home warm, ventilated, lit, and supplied with hot water. 
For several decades, eco enthusiasts have also been concerned with the energy that is used in the creation of a home. This energy is called the home’s ‘embodied energy’, and it’s the energy used in taking the natural materials of planet Earth and transforming them into the home.  



The AECB Conference 2011

The annual conference of the AECB – the sustainable building association – was held in September on the Jubilee campus of Nottingham University. We were welcomed there by Professor Saffa Riffat, Head of the Department of Architecture and Built Environment. He told us that Nottingham University was the first foreign university to establish a campus in China, at Ningbo near Shanghai. And the buildings on that campus were modelled on the listed buildings of the original campus in Nottingham. According to the professor, the Chinese like English architecture.