Articles published in 2016
Stairs
All houses have stairs.
Or do they? My doubts about the sentence with which I started this article sent my thoughts off on a long digression – a digression which is now relegated to the Footnote.
So back to the substance of this article – stairs.
There is a book about plumbing which suggests that a key factor when designing a house is to place the bathroom above the kitchen (in order to reduce pipework). In a somewhat similar vein, I suggest that another key factor is the staircase. If you find your ideal layouts for the upper and lower storeys separately and then try to connect them by a staircase, you may not succeed. Having said that, there are innumerable configurations for a staircase. Here are some diagrams based on the examples given in The New Carpenter and Joiner. (See Further Info.)
Flights of Fancy: Some fancy stairs and some practicalities
Geometrical stairs
A geometrical stair does not have newel posts, and the handrail for a flight and landing is continuous. The flight may be curved or straight. These stairs are the apogee of the craft of joinery as applied to house-building, and they are invariably bespoke. (The name presumably comes from the deep understanding of three dimensional geometry required to make such a stair.)
If you are rich and you want to impress your guests, consider fitting geometrical stairs.
A Build Beside The Seaside, Part 2: Turning plans into reality
Last month we saw how John Hardiment and his wife, Nicole, became involved with selfbuild almost by accident. They realised that their seaside shack on the Isle of Wight was not worth repairing. So they undertook to build themselves a small, eco‑friendly, chalet bungalow in its place. John had worked in mechanical services for the construction industry for forty years, but had no previous experience of new house building.
Their bijoux build is a small chalet with a floor area of only 50 m2. We saw the architect's elevations last month. Here are the floor plans:
A Build Beside The Seaside, Part 4: Fitting Out
In the last three issues we have seen how John and Nicole Hardiment came to build a small, eco-friendly chalet bungalow on the Isle of Wight. Before retiring, John had owned a family business of mechanical services contractors, so he had prior experience in writing specifications, and in dealing with contract documents.
Continuing my interview with John...
Me:
So that's the shell [in the last issue]. Let's talk about fitting it out. Who made the stairs?
John:
My carpenter, John, did. He made them on site. I went out to tender all over the place for the timber. In the end, we got it from Lallow's, the shipwrights in Cowes. It's American ash. They machined it, putting the nosings on, and that sort of thing.
Solar Power: For PV
PV panels have become a common sight on roofs all over the country. For that, credit is due both to the Chinese, who make most of the world's PV cells, and to the former Coalition government, which introduced a Feed-In Tariff scheme that offered very generous rewards for producing PV electricity. Unfortunately, the FIT scheme no longer offers juicy fat carrots for new installations, only shrunken ones. (I'll be writing about the PV Feed-In Tariffs in a later issue.)
For a selfbuilder, there is also the stick to be considered, that stick being requirements in the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) of the building regulations. The 'Fabric First' approach to house design makes the stick irrelevant – no PV is required. But if insulation and airtightness are more modest, then PV is an obvious way to reduce both carbon emissions and primary energy consumption, and thereby satisfy the SAP requirements. (What will be the requirements for the 2016 edition of the Standard Assessment Procedure? See the Aside, below.) Of course, best of all is to go for the Fabric First approach and PV – they are not exclusive!
I wrote about PV electricity in the March 2008 issue, and the Feed-In Tariff scheme in July 2010. It's time to review the whole topic. There are now more options to consider, and deciding the optimum size and orientation for a PV system is more difficult.
PV Roofs
Last month we looked at the technical aspects of PhotoVoltaic systems, the two main components of which are the PV panels and the inverter. This month, we look at the more practical aspects of incorporating the panels into a roof.
On-roof or in-roof?
Most PV panels have been fitted retrospectively, and are raised above the roof tiles by several centimetres – an on-roof array. The gap between panels and roof allows a stream of air to rise upwards by convection, helping to cool the back of the panels and thereby maintain PV output. (See the Footnote: 'PV output falls as panel temperature rises'.)
More About Stairs: And the relationship between rise and going
There is some fuzziness in the use of words relating to stairs. In this article, I am using the singular word 'stair' to mean the steps, and possibly a landing or two, which connect one floor to another – as the word is used in the Building Regulations. (Colloquially, the plural, 'stairs', is generally used, and the singular 'stair' might refer to an individual step.) And I use the word 'staircase' for a stair with a handrail and some form of guarding, eg, balustrading. (In general use, 'staircase' can also include the fabric of the building surrounding the stair.)
In the UK the great majority of stairs are made of timber, so this is assumed in the following description of the terms involved.
A Build Beside The Seaside, Part 1: The accidental selfbuilders
John Hardiment and his Swiss wife, Nicole, have been living on the Isle of Wight for many years, much of that time living on a sailing barge, the Wilhelmina Maria – see the Footnote. But they have just moved into a little jewel of a house that they have built for themselves by the seashore near Cowes. From the outset, they wanted an ecological build (within their financial constraints), and I have been following their progress. It was a somewhat leisurely build lasting three years – one break of two months, for example, was for a cycle tour in Cuba.
Neither had any previous experience of new build, though John had chaired an historic building preservation trust for 25 years. He had originally been trained as an engineering draughtsman, and he put that training to good use during the project to produce detailed drawings, especially for details of insulation and airtightness.
At the end of the build I interviewed John about the experience.
A Build Beside The Seaside, Part 3: Building the shell and making it airtight
This article continues my interview with John Hardiment about his selfbuild at Gurnard on the Isle of Wight. He and his wife had originally purchased a shack by the seaside to get on the property ladder, but when it became clear that the shack was beyond repair, they decided to replace it with a small, very energy efficient, chalet bungalow.
Me:
How did you select your timber frame supplier?
John:
I did the drawings and specifications for my timber frame.
We went out to seven contractors for the supply of the frame and the additional cost to erect it, but we didn't get any satisfactory responses. So we went out to tender again, to two local companies and to four others on the mainland. There were some really weird and wonderful prices. They wanted to do their own thing, and they more or less ignored the spec. It was difficult to get the prices in for the same thing.
This was about three years ago when the housebuilding industry was depressed.
A Build Beside The Seaside, Part 5: Home at last
Here is the final part of my interview with John Hardiment and his wife, Nicole, about the building of their bijoux, energy efficient bungalow on the Isle of Wight.
Me:
Tell me about the incoming services.
John:
There was water, electricity and gas into the shack [the shack that had previously stood on the site]. Demolition was part of my contract with the groundworkers. They ran a new water pipe through the new footings to come up in the kitchen. Somehow or other the old water meter inside the shack got lost. I contacted the water company to have a new meter put in the road, which I understood was free of charge. They wouldn't do this as the plot already had a meter, albeit an internal one. They wanted to charge me £800 to put a new meter in the road. I thought that was too much, and eventually threatened to take them to the Ombudsman. In the end, they gave me an internal meter for free, and I got my plumber to fit it in the kitchen.
PV Systems
The main components of a PV system are an array of PV panels and an inverter.
PV Panels
A typical PV panel is about 1.0 x 1.6 metres in size, and composed of 60 PV cells arranged in a 6 x 10 grid. Each cell is about 15 cm square, and can generate a voltage of about 0.5 volts in bright sunshine. The cells are usually connected in series, sandwiched between a sheet of tempered glass (low-iron for maximum light transmission) and a backing of metal or plastic. (Or in special cases the backing may also be glass, in order to allow some light through the panel.)
Several panels connected together form an array. (The panels are usually connected together in series, as a 'string'.)
Feed In Tariffs For PV: and smart meters
Germany pioneered Feed-In Tariffs with a scheme in 1990, and a better one in 2000. A FIT scheme was introduced into the UK in 2010. For PV systems, two payments are made: for electricity generated, and for electricity exported.
For domestic systems up to 4kWp the generation tariff for a new build system was originally very generous: 36p per kWh – and for a retrofitted system an even more generous 44p per kWh. Moreover, the payments go up in line with inflation, according to the Retail Price Index. The export tariff was 3p per kWh.
The scheme has been very successful. Nearly a million domestic PV systems have been installed, and, as was the intention, prices of PV systems tumbled.
