"Mike Mitchell" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 18:38:25 +0100, "IMM" wrote:


"Mike Mitchell" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 4 Jun 2004 16:48:08 +0100, "IMM" wrote:

Best of luck. I hope you get it and you build the house. We need more
people
like you around.

I hope he's got plenty of money, as
the kind of spec you just came up
with will cost a fortune! Probably half
a million to build, I reckon.

You reckon? On what do you base this groundless assertion? Zero heating
houses cost no more to build than any other. It is primarily design and
selecting the correct materials.

All that kind of stuff is specialist work that doesn't come cheap.
This is not Barrat the Builders we're talking about here. I reckon you
might get it erected for a bit cheaper, say £495K.

Nonsense! Where do you get that figure? Wet finger in the air. You have no
experince of these matters.

Facing a house south with larger windows on the south side and less on the
north (passive solar), calculating the roof overhangs to give shading (keeps
the house cool), calculating the roof pitch for maximum solar gain (max
insolation) is all design only. This costs nothing in materials or labour.
The calulations can be done yourself.

The only extra above a normal house is the extra insulation, but this can be
negated by using a timber frame or SIP panels. The UFH has to be larger to
run at alow temp and will cost a few hundred quid. Many new buillds have
UFH as stadard. The roof as a solar panel is offset by not installing tiles
and is cheaper to do as a new build. The thermal store is offset by the fact
you already need one for the UFH anyway, it just needs to be bigger.

"Sue Roaf's Ecohouse in Oxford is one of the most high profile low energy
houses in the country. Sue has had a one-woman crusade to get ecohouse
design on the agenda. In
1994 she put her money where her mouth is and took on a huge mortgage to
design and build what is still one of only a handful of net zero energy
houses in the UK"

She was out build a "low" energy house that cost no more to build than
others. She succeeded. It has a heating system of 3 rads and high thermal
mass with a PV roof too. It is about 5-6 years old now and if she did it
today I'm sure she would do it differently. She does mention what would
improve the house.

The economics DO add up. She built a low energy house to the local
vernacular (built to last 500 years) and spent no more than building an
energy sucking house. Deveci in Scotland has done the same. There must be
over 1000 very low energy homes now in the UK.

Just because Wimpy is not building them doesn't mean they are not cost
effective. They are.

See ECO-House A Design Guide by Sue Roaf.