U values - 2003 Scottish regs

The Scottish regs on U values:

Note to self: 1

John Pawson talking about working with Calvin Klein

SIPS

This image from Kingspan Tek Haus.

I'm thinking about SIPS, Structural Insulated Panel System. Its probably the future of timber building so I should get on board huh? The disadvantages I can see so far are cost, travel distance from Germany (a major negative form a green point of view) and how it integrates with services - not easy.

Otherwise it offers big spans, thin walls, good fire protection, quick erection and very good thermal performance. It also uses waste materials from the timber industry - OSB. The insulation is one of the most efficeint available.

sketchup

By the way I recommend this 3D drawing program. Easy to use, powerful and fast.
http://www.sketchup.com/

revised again

There is yet another revised design.

The problem was with the entrance location (along with various other weaknesses of the previous design). So here we are back at a design I looked at in week two of this design process. I ruled it out because it took the best corner of the house - south, but the fact is this is the place the entrance has to be.

There are also some advantages as well as the obvious negative, mainly that the glazed lobby can act as greenhouse (overheating buffer) for the whole house.

Other design elements include a flat roofed deck which helps modulate the relationship between garden wall and gable wall. And a large glazed area to the south corner...

Green materials

Some interesting research out there on suitable materials for house building. The table is from a pdf on external insulation systems (published by the Energy Saving Trust) and highlights the environmental vlaue of various materials and systems (A being good C being poor). The most interesting thing about it is the number of categories considered: 17, ranging from recylable to amount of embodied energy and life span.
This system was developed by BRE.

Here is a very good article on the value of blown insulation (in this case highly efficient polyurethane) over fixed panels or batts. I was directed to this based on an aretcile on R-values on Wikipedia, otherwise I can't verify its accuracy.

Heat sink

I've been considering the issue of dense versus lightweight construction (a contenious issue) and am coming down on the side of dense heavy materials to regulate the internal temperature of the house. One idea is to re-use concrete railway sleepers for the internal house walls.
Could make an interesting wall.
Just an idea so far...

some other links
http://www.ihbc.org.uk/context_archive/63/schoolhouse/cottown.html
http://earthbuilding.blogspot.com/

Two houses

After battling and squeezing and shoehorning everything in at the size we felt was right and ending up with a complex and difficult to build plan, we finally decided that we should simplify the brief and hence the design. Like this: a house has two functions, sleeping and living. Cut the house in two sleep in one and live in the other. The middle can be used as circulation and to get light and heat into the house.
What I particularly like is that the middle strip can be fully glazed and lined with dense materials to soak up the sun's heat, this means the floors are freed up to be of lighter construction.
Anyway only developed this yesterday so this is early days still.

South

This is an option I still haven't excluded which orientates the whole house to south. The garden would work well for summer I think and its green credentials would be good - well sheltered, lots of passive solar gain and a sedum covered roof at low level...
Still thinking.

This is at least the 100th design option we've been through but already its out of date - we're changing it again but I need to post something of the design on here.
This is also my first 3D model using Autocad.