wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

wrote:


The Natural Philosopher wrote:


wrote:


AIUI the basic problem with straw bale is that when render
deteriorates, or something allows water onto the straw, repairs must be
made rapidly else things deteriorate fast. And yer average jo isnt
nearly quick enough with repairs. So ideal for someone wililng to
inpsect it regularly and repair themselves promptly, but that just
doesnt describe most people.


Its the same for timber.


But with quite a different time scale. Wet timber lasts a few years,
wet straw lasts what, a few weeks?


Dunno. About 15 years for straw thatch, and up to 60 for reed?

That's fully exposed - but not dug-in-the-ground straw...


Thats a fair point, though the conditions are significantly different.
A roof dries off and is well ventilated, both of these stop rot. But a
bale, once damp, would simply rot, with no drying and no airflow.



You have to look at what will decompose it.

Sodden straw in the ground is actually EATEN by things like nematodes.

Wod is attacked by fungi and wood biring insects etc.

Once in structure and even marginally drier than the ground, these
things don't happen.

Thatched rooves 'wear' more from constant pounding of water droplets for
example. Then build up of dust and dirt allows damp soil areas to
appeaar, and grass and other weeds and moss takes root...and the other
life then follows.

I would see the lifetime of a straw vbale wall doine decently as being
similar to timber - a couople of hundred years.


I wonder.


Maintenace would be a cinch. cut a hole, take our rotten, and stuff with
new straw and make good..


yes! no need for a builder there. I guess the problem then is if Jo
Public has a loadbearing strawbale house and doesnt maintain it, as
people tend to not do.


You cant make strawbale arches can you?? Would avoid a lot of timber...



Of course you can. Treat em like bricks, and do a 'roman' or a 'gothic'
arch.

As kids we used to palay in a harvested field and build all sorts of
houses out of bales.
NT

Mike wrote:

"Anna Kettle" wrote in message
...

On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 03:05:19 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:


Blue plastic held down with baler twine.

Baler twine aint what it used to be. I remember when it only came in
orange but the last bale I bought was blue

Disgusted of Pakenham on Sea


You know, SWMBO wants a summerhouse thing...I wonder if our farmer will
have some bales...

Oh good! It would make an excellent summerhouse and if you tell us all
about it I will be able to build a strawbale house by proxy



Perhaps we should have a summercamp get together to experiment with the best
way of building one.
I volunteer my field and straw bales :-)


Seiously mate, have a word with the CLA. I am not sure I didn't see some
such sttuff being displayed at hthe Game Fair last year.


I'll contribute some very rusty engineering knowledge

I DO know that a stack of bales lasts a LONG time if you keep rain off it.

wrote:

Not only does lime burning require a much lower temperature than
Portland cement manufacture, the carbon dioxide driven off in the
limestone to quicklime reaction is reabsorbed from the atmosphere as
the lime mortar sets by carbonation. So, overall, lime mortar has a
lower climate change impact than Portland cement.

I stand corrected then.


Oak trees are growing faster than they are being used, in Britain and
across the Continent. I'm growing some bent ones for you Anna - hope
you live to 150! It's no good saying there is more oil left than oak.
Oil doesn't grow on trees and the best guess is that oil production
will peak very soon, if it hasn't already, and from then on supply will
fall short of demand no matter how high the price goes. See
http://www.peakoil.net/

I dont dispute that, my point being that actually BRICKS and STRAW were
probably materials we had more off.


Linseed oil paint is lovely to use. It is the only paint I use on the
oak windows that I make, if they get painted at all. Get the Sweedish
Allback paint from Holkham Paints:
http://www.holkham.co.uk/linseedpaints/
or Peter Maitland-Hood makes it at The Real Paint and Varnish Co:
http://www.realpaints.com/

Interesting stuff about copperas at:
http://www.eng-h.gov.uk/archcom/proj...l97_8/2059.htm

We use straw to heat our house. It costs us 60p per bale delivered to
our barn.


That actually sounds expensive.

I cleared about an acre of general ahwthron and maple and mirabelle
scrub, and two sycamores, and that looks set to last about 6-9 years for
'addiotional winter heating' in open fires. Would work well in stoves.

I believe that coppiced willow is the fastest way to 'grow energy' ...

You can get industrial strength chippers and feed it to fan blown
furnaces...

I wish I had installed a heat pump and acres of plastic pipe in the
garden too.

Andy Dingley wrote:

On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 12:52:17 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:


Thats marginally less than green oak shrinks across the grain in the
first 5 years then! ;-)


Only in a log cabin though. We don't use framing timber in a way that
causes the shrinkage to make overall dimensional changes. OK, so your
sole plate might end up 1/4" thinner, but your walls aren't going to
shrink downwards by a foot.

;-) You spotted it.

About 1% on length...is typical.

Actually my sole plates are already about 1/2" thinner, and the final
shrinkage on the main beams looks set to be over an inch...

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:

You cant make strawbale arches can you?? Would avoid a lot of timber...

Of course you can. Treat em like bricks, and do a 'roman' or a 'gothic'
arch.

As kids we used to palay in a harvested field and build all sorts of
houses out of bales.

I was thinking theyd squash and bend, making the arch hopelessly
unstable, but maybe not. Also it only takes one bale to suffer rot on
one side and the structure collapses. So I still have reservations
about making structural arches in houses out of them.


NT

"Anna Kettle" wrote in message
...
On a tangent, although some people are planting oaks today, I don't
think anyone is bending the saplings to get curved timber. If I were
planting oaks I would plant some bent ones

Is there a big enough market ? What angle should they be and how many years
growth ?

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

I believe that coppiced willow is the fastest way to 'grow energy' ...

You can get industrial strength chippers and feed it to fan blown
furnaces...

Correct. There was a scheme in Yorkshire to get farmers to grow the willow
and a power plant to use it. Problem was the plant went bust before it hit
production and there's lots of farmer with fields of immature willow. I
heard there was a rescue plan being muted but have heard anything since.


I wish I had installed a heat pump and acres of plastic pipe in the
garden too.

I just wish the compressors weren't so expensive that the possibility of
getting a positive or negative payback depends on where interest rates go.

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 4 Jun 2005 22:46:20 +0100, "Mike" wrote:

Yes - but not underneath. DPCs are a good idea no matter what the
technique
or era.

Not necessarily under straw bale. You need drainage at the bottom of the
stack and a poly sheet DPC is likely to cause more trouble by trapping
water from above than it will solve by stopping "rising damp" from
below.

I would have though a angled DPC to ensure good drainage would solve that
problem.
But if no DPC then definitely no hermetically sealed outside wall - lime
only.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Perhaps we should have a summercamp get together to experiment with the
best
way of building one.
I volunteer my field and straw bales :-)


Seiously mate, have a word with the CLA. I am not sure I didn't see some
such sttuff being displayed at the Game Fair last year.

Will do. Though I'm not their favourite person right now as I objected to
their proposals to restrict use of green lanes.

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 2 Jun 2005 19:14:48 +0100, "Mike" wrote:


And are you allowed to burn horse bedding ?

I bet it's covered under the animal byproducts legislation.

Is that a can burn or can't burn ?


Which new regs are you referring too? The NVZ stuff or waste disposal
from agriculture coming into line with other industry?

I don't keep stabled horses (at least not until I've build a new barn) but I
gather the new regs actually take full effect on July 1st after which all
bedding has to be stored for a year instead of just ploughing it into the
field.

there's lots of farmer with fields of immature willow.

I've just built a yurt out of a couple of hundred willow rods that were
destined for that power station near Selby. Allowing that venture to
collapse was really crazy.


If I were planting oaks I would plant some bent ones

I don't think you actually plant bent ones. There have been various
methods of getting oaks to produce curves for shipbuilding and hose
crucks including training the sapling and planting them in double rows
with conifers between so that they grow outwards away from the
conifers. Generally, oaks grown on their own and in hedgerows produce
curved branches while oaks grown closely spaced with other species as a
nurse to draw them up produce straight boles. Much of the modern
amenity planting should actually produce a good crop of oak timber in
80 - 120 years if the other species are thinned out at the right time.

60p...That actually sounds expensive

It's barley straw, which produces less ash than wheat and for which
there is a market. By the time the farmer has put it into my barn I
don't think she will have become very rich on what I pay. We're both
happy though.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Anna Kettle wrote:

400 years ago it was oak and wattle and daub and thatch. It looks nice,
but it has structural limitations.

seems to last longer than more modern building materials though.


I don't like buildings with steel exoskeletons 'celebrating the use of
modern materials' any more than I like a house with no damp proof
course, no foundations, and which absolutely requires a breathable skin
to eradicate the rising damp. ;-)

this is a bit of a popular misconception. Victorian houses do not
suffer from damp when properly maintained. The common occurrence of
damp is precisely because so many have been subject to inappropriate
works and failure to do basic maintenance. Damp is not a problem
inherent in their design in any way.


I am by no means sure that slaked lime takes any less energy to make
than portland cement by the way.

I think it does. It also allows the reuse of bricks and blocks, and
bricks are very energy intensive to manufacture, so it saves even more
energy.

Arguably we have more oil left than oak trees as well.

we do. Then again oaks will be with us in another 1000 years, oil
probably will not. We choose how much oak we want to have, and for some
reason we have chosen to have not a lot.


BUT we certainly have a LOT of straw around right now. And its
engineering properties are actually, in large bulk, pretty reasonable
for houses.

I hope straw houses become more accepted. It used to be used as
insulation sheets, I dont know how it compares to polystyrene, or
whether a hybrid might work well. A hybrid sounds like it might run:
the straw would reduce the volume of plastic used, and add some
strength.


As far as breathable/not breathable goes, houses with humans generate
water. That has to be eradicated somehow.

yes, ventilation being the near universal method.

In older houses with lower insulation, the water got to the walls and
condensed, making them damp, and the walls needed to breath outwards to
get rid of it.

such walls do not get damp


The walls got damp also because they had no DPC's.

no, that does not cause damp. Wall DPCs are a case of debateable
science, there is simply no need for them.


They
needed to be flexible because they subsided as they had no foundations.

Old houses routinely suffer settlement, not subsidence. It is misnamed
fairly often, but it is not normally subsidence.

And most do have foundations. 9" is shallow by modern standards, but
deep enough for the great majority of cases.


They got round all that by having open fires with chimneys that sucked
out warm sticky air,

old houses work fine without such chimneys.


Today we go far far deeper with rigid steel reinforced foundations, so
our houses don't move,

Yes, though todays foundation requirements have become a bit removed
from logic. Sure, they wont move, but they are routinely 4x as deep as
there is any need to be, sometimes more. Inappropriate blanket policies
spend everyones time and money.


and with open fires being a bit polluting, we
have efficient boilers and hot water heating,

yes much better


and sealed double or
triple glazed windows and sealed doors

a very unhealthy move. Regrettably regs insist these dg horrors be
retrofitted in some cases as well, a move thats unlikely to save energy
or money.


and pack the walls with insulation.

The net effect of that is what water IS inside, stays there and will
condense on the coldest part of the house - generally just behind the
insulation. So we install vapour barriers on the inside.

And then punch holes in the structure to achieve enough 'background
ventilation/air change' to let the sticky fug out in a controlled way.

Daft to fit draught excluders then add more ventilation!

Theres nothing controlled about it. Airflow will be apx proportional to
outdoor airspeed, which varies greatly, and depend on direction. A
1000mm2 of grill gives no more control than 1000mm2 of other gaps -
which are easily measured afterwards or designed in beforehand.


My complaint about modern houses is their soullessness.

Yes. I think this translates primarily into sameness. Sameness is
caused by overregulation, and some amount of senseless regulation. For
example we are not allowed to build straw houses, despite them working
well. It is also caused to some extent by cheap transport. With low
transport costs, regional variation dwindles.

The dictation of a very small number of building methods will
inevitably result in a whole lot of sameness. Let alone the incapable
style police! Gawd. I say incapacble because despite all their efforts
to make nice houses, theyre still mandating what look very much like
drab council houses to me. Thers still no sign of them understanding
what the solution is.

The dictation against any creative buildings kills the variety,
interest, development and numerous unique innovative and unusual
decorations that characterise old buildings. A direct result of
numerous unnecessary build regs & petty PP practice.


I really do think that there is a sensible discussion to be engaged in
about what is the overall best way to build a house today,

I think that is precisely the problem. The whole point to regaining
healthy building practice is that there is no single best way, there
are a whole variety of ways, and we need to see any effective method
permitted again. Earth, straw, bottle, glass and steel, bare wood,
brick, jetties, follies, underground, lots of variety, and room for
interesting buildings again.


OTOH I am really for the *most* part a very firm supporter of current
building regualtions.

Why do we need upstairs sockets to be wheelchair accessible? Why do we
need 10" joists when 6" are perfectly good? Why do we need overly wide
corridors everywhere? There are millions of houses, mostly Victorian,
that meet modern build regs in no area whatever, yet are just fine. (In
all respects but insulation)

Build regs started out as a good idea, and brought good results, but
their mission has crept a very long way since WW1. While some are
concenred with serious and constructive matters, so many now are not.


Apart from the Part P and disabled ones which are
politically instigated, and not a reflection on 'best practice' as such.

Best practice depends on the situation. You've only got to look at
converting an old house to see this. It would be illegal under todays
regs to do all sorts of genuine improvements to old buildings: how does
that make sense?


The best of the old and the best of the new is my motto.

We do not have the best, never had, and never will. It is precisely
this denial of insisting that every new house should be the best that
is leading to our unhealthy building stock today. Rather than making
them the best, or a healthy variety, it is making them a uniform
standard with no room for the various clever ideas that people come up
with, and were once free to incorporate into their houses. 'The best'
is obviously far from the best, think Barratts, and simply kills
progress and character/ individuality.


I'm totally in favour of there being build regs, but I do think the
ones we have today have forgotten the plot somewhere along the line.
And the style police... theyre the problem, not the solution. Remove
them and there would be some yucky buildings, that is the inevitable
consequence of allowing more freedom, but style would become free to
develop again, and lots of lovely places would show up. The development
of style has been killed since WW2 by our overregulation, so much so
that there isnt even any style our present period will be known for.


NT

Mike wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Looking good for the strawbale housing market, me thinks. :-)


I think it could be incredibly effective. With 3ft thick walls

I think you've hit on a problem. Under Prescott's latest planning laws 3 ft
walls leaves you about 2 ft for the living space between them :-(


this rules them out for terraces and towns, but is a complete non
problem for detached and semis on large plots.


NT

wrote in message
oups.com...
Mike wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Looking good for the strawbale housing market, me thinks. :-)


I think it could be incredibly effective. With 3ft thick walls

I think you've hit on a problem. Under Prescott's latest planning laws
3 ft
walls leaves you about 2 ft for the living space between them :-(


this rules them out for terraces and towns, but is a complete non
problem for detached and semis on large plots.


I didn't think his new rules allowed for many of those. A village near us
has nine new 4/5 bedroom houses squeezed onto what I would have regarded as
a nice plot for a big bungalow.

On 5 Jun 2005 15:43:10 -0700, wrote:

we need to see any effective method permitted again.

It is. In that way our building regs are much better than the USA's.
Ours say that you can build anything, any way you like, so long as you
have planning permission and you meet certain _attained_ standards.

America insists on _how_ you build something, according to some
pre-defined rules. Inventing a new technique there is very difficult.

Sadly though our planning permission (which should take no real interest
in such things) is often withheld on sheer prejudice, even when the
building regs regard an unusual technique as entirely legitimate, if
novel.

wrote:

On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 16:54:51 GMT, (Anna Kettle)
wrote:


Not sure how to arrange for a wterproof skin though - breathable
membrane, air gap, metal lathe and render maybe?

I shan't rise to that bait


OK I will for my interest:

If the need is to arrange for air changes to expel human generated
moisture can the wall acts as a contra flow heat exchanger, with the
living space under slight depression and sealed doors and windows? The
cold air from outside migrating through the wall and picking up heat,
thus also lowering rh, as it permeates through the strawbale and daub.
The humid air then being rejected via a fan.


Sadly that cools te straw on the way in..

Drivel is always going on about aircon with heat exchangers etc..its the
best way..you suck warm sticky air out, pass it through a heat exchanger
to heat cold air on the way in.




AJH

wrote:

On Sun, 05 Jun 2005 08:44:14 GMT, (Anna Kettle)
wrote:


On a tangent, although some people are planting oaks today, I don't
think anyone is bending the saplings to get curved timber. If I were
planting oaks I would plant some bent ones


The oaks being planted today are for environmental effect, they are
not being planted for timber, nor managed for it, and will likely
yield little good timber compared with the stock we were harvesting in
the 70s.

Have you any knowledge of "bent" trees being trained for curves? I
only know of this for rootstocks for sticks. The bends, jowels and
knees coming from a consequence of the oak crowns developing as
islands in seas of underwood. This effectively grew short clean stubby
butts with large branches, quite different from the French and German
methods of growing long stems on long rotations.

Its actually fairly not good to use bent grown timber for structures.
The assymetry of the growth makes it move in quite drastic ways under
humid/dry cycles.

I suspect a lot of what Anna thinks is grown bent is, in fact, branches,
and the mediaeval chippies who used them went to some fairly extreme
lengths to accomodate the warping that they engender.

Read 'Understanding wood' by Hoadley for a more detailed analysis.


AJH

wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Anna Kettle wrote:


400 years ago it was oak and wattle and daub and thatch. It looks nice,
but it has structural limitations.


seems to last longer than more modern building materials though.



? eh?

(i) it isn't 2400 yet so who knows what of todays building materials
will survive

(ii) only about 1% of buildings of that age survive if that. The rest
all burnt down or rotted away.


(iii) If you look at any castles, the bits left standing are stone. None
of the timber survived lack of regular maintenance.


I don't like buildings with steel exoskeletons 'celebrating the use of
modern materials' any more than I like a house with no damp proof
course, no foundations, and which absolutely requires a breathable skin
to eradicate the rising damp. ;-)


this is a bit of a popular misconception. Victorian houses do not
suffer from damp when properly maintained. The common occurrence of
damp is precisely because so many have been subject to inappropriate
works and failure to do basic maintenance. Damp is not a problem
inherent in their design in any way.


Actaully, having lived in them they do.



Arguably we have more oil left than oak trees as well.


we do. Then again oaks will be with us in another 1000 years, oil
probably will not. We choose how much oak we want to have, and for some
reason we have chosen to have not a lot.


Its a very poor grower. Its main use was in framing because its very
strong for its size. Its totally superseded for almost all purposes by
steel, which we DO have a lot of.

I haven't seene many oak bridges or oak oil tankers, have you?




BUT we certainly have a LOT of straw around right now. And its
engineering properties are actually, in large bulk, pretty reasonable
for houses.


I hope straw houses become more accepted. It used to be used as
insulation sheets, I dont know how it compares to polystyrene, or
whether a hybrid might work well. A hybrid sounds like it might run:
the straw would reduce the volume of plastic used, and add some
strength.



I would guess that a 2 foot of straw beats 6" of polystyrene any way.


As far as breathable/not breathable goes, houses with humans generate
water. That has to be eradicated somehow.


yes, ventilation being the near universal method.


In older houses with lower insulation, the water got to the walls and
condensed, making them damp, and the walls needed to breath outwards to
get rid of it.


such walls do not get damp


Go tell it on the mountain. They do. If they are unsealed outside, and
relatively unheated inside, or heated by open fires, they dont show too
much condensation or efflorescence, but they are damp through and
through and you can generally smell the moulds.



The walls got damp also because they had no DPC's.


no, that does not cause damp. Wall DPCs are a case of debateable
science, there is simply no need for them.


You are a tosser, you really are.

I had a whole chimney (completely unrendered) sitting in wet clay, and
it sucked water up and rotted anything it touched.

Rising damp is a fact, and your religion will not make it go away.



They
needed to be flexible because they subsided as they had no foundations.


Old houses routinely suffer settlement, not subsidence. It is misnamed
fairly often, but it is not normally subsidence.


Semantics.
And most do have foundations. 9" is shallow by modern standards, but
deep enough for the great majority of cases.


Most don't actually. My old house was built on roes of bricks laid
straight on the clay. With no damp proof. The sole paltes rotted away
completely in several places, and ther were signs of considerable
movment along the whole length of them. Only the fact that the timber
acts as a aort of stiffener, spreading the load over the brick plinth,
stopped more serious problems. You can get away with a lot on a timber
fare, until it rots..however judging by what we found when we lifted teh
floors, the whole house had sunk into the clay by up to 8 inches in
places...



They got round all that by having open fires with chimneys that sucked
out warm sticky air,


old houses work fine without such chimneys.



Are you IMM in a new guise?

Today we go far far deeper with rigid steel reinforced foundations, so
our houses don't move,


Yes, though todays foundation requirements have become a bit removed
from logic. Sure, they wont move, but they are routinely 4x as deep as
there is any need to be, sometimes more. Inappropriate blanket policies
spend everyones time and money.


Deep foundatins are beneeded for rigid strucrtures: I agree that a
timber framed house doesn't beed them THAT much, but even so, internal;
cracking between sections would be far more common if we had more
relaxed regs. Concrete is cheap and so are diggers.


and with open fires being a bit polluting, we
have efficient boilers and hot water heating,


yes much better



and sealed double or
triple glazed windows and sealed doors


a very unhealthy move. Regrettably regs insist these dg horrors be
retrofitted in some cases as well, a move thats unlikely to save energy
or money.



If you whack the insulation into the walls to get torwads a U value of
0.3 then the windows do need to be either small or DG I am afraid.


There is no law saying you must use them. You can do an overall energy
calc in the house like I did and show that your overall losses are
wihin spec.


and pack the walls with insulation.

The net effect of that is what water IS inside, stays there and will
condense on the coldest part of the house - generally just behind the
insulation. So we install vapour barriers on the inside.

And then punch holes in the structure to achieve enough 'background
ventilation/air change' to let the sticky fug out in a controlled way.


Daft to fit draught excluders then add more ventilation!


well I see the point...in my case though wioth two huge chimneys and
underfloor vents to them and enough fans punched through the walls, I
have to argue the case with the BCO that that is enough thank you.

Theres nothing controlled about it. Airflow will be apx proportional to
outdoor airspeed, which varies greatly, and depend on direction. A
1000mm2 of grill gives no more control than 1000mm2 of other gaps -
which are easily measured afterwards or designed in beforehand.


Hit an miss vents can of course be closed...permamnently once the BCO
leaves ;-)



My complaint about modern houses is their soullessness.


Yes. I think this translates primarily into sameness. Sameness is
caused by overregulation, and some amount of senseless regulation. For
example we are not allowed to build straw houses, despite them working
well. It is also caused to some extent by cheap transport. With low
transport costs, regional variation dwindles.

No, its not the regulations, its the generation of rock bottom prived
identical boxes done to a price by large building firms.

the cheapest house shape to build for a given size is a simple oblong
with gable ended roof.

The cheapest construction methiod is block - not even brick - and face
it with eiher render or a tacky plain common brick laid in the
straightest lines on piece work. Or maybe they will add some wetraher
board or a line of tiles.

The cheapest roof is machine made cement tiles.

The cheapest doors and windows are mass produced DG units.

To add a hipped roof, or use tiles instead of slates, or to use natural
wood windows, or add dormers, or make a house an L or a U shape adds
cost. Quite a lot of it actually.



The dictation of a very small number of building methods will
inevitably result in a whole lot of sameness. Let alone the incapable
style police! Gawd. I say incapacble because despite all their efforts
to make nice houses, theyre still mandating what look very much like
drab council houses to me. Thers still no sign of them understanding
what the solution is.


I am equaly sure that the unending sameness of 2 up 2 down victorian
terraced labourers cottages, most of which have thankfully been pulled
doen or the undending shabbiness of wattle and daub damp thatched fire
hazard labourers cottages of the 17trh century, were eqaully reviled in
their age. When you arebuidling down t oap rice, your optins are limited
and thats that.

The dictation against any creative buildings kills the variety,
interest, development and numerous unique innovative and unusual
decorations that characterise old buildings. A direct result of
numerous unnecessary build regs & petty PP practice.



Ther is no dictaion by te givernement agianst creative buildings., but
people won;t pay the extar for something when they are on a tight
budghetr and they need a new hutch for teh barts, conveniently located
fior Tescos.

The only few areas where interesting design is militated against are the
disabled regs, which make stpes to the only doors a thing of the past.


I really do think that there is a sensible discussion to be engaged in
about what is the overall best way to build a house today,


I think that is precisely the problem. The whole point to regaining
healthy building practice is that there is no single best way, there
are a whole variety of ways, and we need to see any effective method
permitted again. Earth, straw, bottle, glass and steel, bare wood,
brick, jetties, follies, underground, lots of variety, and room for
interesting buildings again.


None of those are prohibited under the regulations: However you have to
convince the BCO that they will meet the spirit of the regulations.

This is not impossible, but its not as easy as putting up a DG blockowrk
box.




OTOH I am really for the *most* part a very firm supporter of current
building regualtions.


Why do we need upstairs sockets to be wheelchair accessible? Why do we
need 10" joists when 6" are perfectly good? Why do we need overly wide
corridors everywhere? There are millions of houses, mostly Victorian,
that meet modern build regs in no area whatever, yet are just fine. (In
all respects but insulation)


No they trulty are not. I waled up to a friends 3rd floor under teh
attic, and realised that teh satirs were farnly dangerous. alamost a
ladder.

I am with you on disabled regs, which are stupid beyond belief, but all
the other stuff is about eliminatiing faults that have been found with
oldder buildings. Over engineering means they have redundancy in case of
strictural failure or rot, and people simply don't like flexible floors
that transmit vibration and noise, hence super thick joists.


Decent sized straicases and corrodoors mena yoiu CASN get an office desk
into a room.

If we did not have these, then builders would buoid totally unsuitable
houses.

Build regs started out as a good idea, and brought good results, but
their mission has crept a very long way since WW1. While some are
concenred with serious and constructive matters, so many now are not.



Many, but by no means a majority.


Apart from the Part P and disabled ones which are
politically instigated, and not a reflection on 'best practice' as such.


Best practice depends on the situation. You've only got to look at
converting an old house to see this. It would be illegal under todays
regs to do all sorts of genuine improvements to old buildings: how does
that make sense?


Er..name one?



The best of the old and the best of the new is my motto.


We do not have the best, never had, and never will. It is precisely
this denial of insisting that every new house should be the best that
is leading to our unhealthy building stock today. Rather than making
them the best, or a healthy variety, it is making them a uniform
standard with no room for the various clever ideas that people come up
with, and were once free to incorporate into their houses. 'The best'
is obviously far from the best, think Barratts, and simply kills
progress and character/ individuality.


Barratts *is* the best for a first time buyer who wants a rock bottom
price on a living unit.

If you want more, build your own. And pay the price.



I'm totally in favour of there being build regs, but I do think the
ones we have today have forgotten the plot somewhere along the line.
And the style police... theyre the problem, not the solution. Remove
them and there would be some yucky buildings, that is the inevitable
consequence of allowing more freedom, but style would become free to
develop again, and lots of lovely places would show up. The development
of style has been killed since WW2 by our overregulation, so much so
that there isnt even any style our present period will be known for.



What style police? Planners? you just need to emply a fancy architect
and you can get away with murder.

NT

Its a very poor grower. Its main use was in framing because its very
strong for its size. Its totally superseded for almost all purposes by
steel, which we DO have a lot of. I haven't seene many oak bridges or
oak oil tankers, have you?

Oak grows better than steel and requires far less energy to produce and
fashion than steel. In houses, it is more versatile and adaptable and
easier to use. It performs better in a fire. You are right to suggest
that oak is not much good for oi; tankers but then we won't be needing
them in a little while.

Rising damp is a fact, and your religion will not make it go away

Dunno much about religeon but the science tells us that capilliary
action does not cause moisture to rise more than a couple of brick
courses. I'm not sure whether what the DPC industry says should be
regarded as religeon or mythology, but science it ain't.

Deep foundatins are needed for rigid strucrtures:

Domestice building just does not need to be rigid - ban spirit levels
:-)

Concrete is cheap

Concrete is only cheap so long as oil is cheap and we don't take into
account the cost of climate change caused by one of the most guilty
industries - ban OPC as well!

wrote:


Concrete is only cheap so long as oil is cheap and we don't take into
account the cost of climate change caused by one of the most guilty
industries - ban OPC as well!


The point is, that even if oil goes through the roof, oak still won't be
the material of choice.

Softwoods might be though.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Its a very poor grower. Its main use was in framing because its very
strong for its size. Its totally superseded for almost all purposes by
steel, which we DO have a lot of. I haven't seene many oak bridges or
oak oil tankers, have you?

Oak grows better than steel and requires far less energy to produce and
fashion than steel. In houses, it is more versatile and adaptable and
easier to use. It performs better in a fire. You are right to suggest
that oak is not much good for oi; tankers but then we won't be needing
them in a little while.

Rising damp is a fact, and your religion will not make it go away

Dunno much about religeon but the science tells us that capilliary
action does not cause moisture to rise more than a couple of brick
courses. I'm not sure whether what the DPC industry says should be
regarded as religeon or mythology, but science it ain't.

Deep foundatins are needed for rigid strucrtures:

Domestice building just does not need to be rigid

It does. British homes notoriously leak air like crazy. A ridgid
air-tight structure means you control the ventilations instaed of having it
by excessivly by default. 40% of heat loss ia via air leaks.

These days you will not get away without a rigid foundation, so why all this
lime mortar, that is good for old building that move on poor foundations,
but pretty inappropriate, and expensive, for a modern building.


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wrote:

On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 02:40:33 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:


Its actually fairly not good to use bent grown timber for structures.
The assymetry of the growth makes it move in quite drastic ways under
humid/dry cycles.

I suspect a lot of what Anna thinks is grown bent is, in fact, branches,
and the mediaeval chippies who used them went to some fairly extreme
lengths to accomodate the warping that they engender.


The thing about bends, knees and jowels is that they were natural
structures and the grain followed the curve, sawing was not needed
other than to square the timber (really only to accept joints) so no
fibers were cut across to cause problems with short grain. The warping
did not occur (other than causing fibres to split apart as cracks)
because, as was previously mentioned, wood only shrinks as it drops
from about 25% mc down to whatever equilibrium mc it ranges over as
the rh of the local environment changes. Then its length shrinkage is
negligible and the movement only becomes a problem if the baulk has
been cut such that the large difference in radial to tangential
shrinkage has an effect. In general the curves were used as boxed
heart, though I am told crucks would often be a halved tree. Even then
the changes would only be in cross section.

It's things like flooring boards that warp because to get the width
they were often through sawn. The real problems arrive with large
knots, as then any plane through them has longitudinal, tangential and
radial features. This is why the trees planted now will have less
value as structural timber.

Mm. I aree that you can make nice curved pieces out of curved wood, but
they liked that because the amount of effort to cut wood in those days
was immense. We don't have that problem today.

And curved wood - wood that has been grown that way - exhibits extremely
assymetric ring growth and is very prone to movement whether whole sawn
or cut into beams. In fact its better to cut it to separate the wide
ring areas from the narrow.

It's never a good idea to confuse what people did because there was
nothing better, with genuine engineering excellence.

You may want to adze down a piece of reaction wood to make an oak arch,
but frankly I won't bother.


AJH

wrote:

On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 02:37:17 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:


If the need is to arrange for air changes to expel human generated
moisture can the wall acts as a contra flow heat exchanger, with the
living space under slight depression and sealed doors and windows? The
cold air from outside migrating through the wall and picking up heat,
thus also lowering rh, as it permeates through the strawbale and daub.
The humid air then being rejected via a fan.


Sadly that cools te straw on the way in..


I know, that is what I was asking, as the whole wall is acting as a
heat exchanger it would have a thermal gradient across it, as do all
walls, but the air entering through the wall would be picking up heat,
which would be lost through it anyway, and entering the house warmer.

Either teh air is going in or going out through the walls. If going it
it cools the walls if going out it heats them..

Only a heat exchanger actually can combine the reverse flows with good
thermal coupling, I am afraid.

May I suggest you study some basic engineering, especailly with respect
to the engineering properties of wood?

I quoted the best ever book on the subject "Understanding wood" by
Hoadley.

All your misconceptisn will be cleared up..


AJH

On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 02:40:33 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Read 'Understanding wood' by Hoadley for a more detailed analysis.

Not a good book on framing practice though. Hoadley is writing from a
fresh continent, full of big straight trees. If you take him literally,
cruck framing is impractical - the existence of Herefordshire suggests
differently.

Doctor Evil wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
snip
Deep foundatins are needed for rigid strucrtures:

Domestice building just does not need to be rigid

It does. British homes notoriously leak air like crazy. A ridgid
air-tight structure means you control the ventilations instaed of having it
by excessivly by default. 40% of heat loss ia via air leaks.

These days you will not get away without a rigid foundation, so why all this
lime mortar, that is good for old building that move on poor foundations,
but pretty inappropriate, and expensive, for a modern building.

Under current building regs.
Regulations for "one size fits all", whether you are building on
swampland or solid granite isn't actually going to lead to
cheap buildings.

A rational approach accepting limited movement in a structure, where
it will not cause it to fail, and building regs that reflected this
could make buildings cheaper.

Mike wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
snip
I wish I had installed a heat pump and acres of plastic pipe in the
garden too.

I just wish the compressors weren't so expensive that the possibility of
getting a positive or negative payback depends on where interest rates go.

Unfortunately, with current prices, at best you're looking at around half
the price of gas.
More insulation is generally the right way to go.
If you can of course, sometimes it's impractical to reterofit in an
old structure without extreme measures.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

this is a bit of a popular misconception. Victorian houses do not
suffer from damp when properly maintained. The common occurrence of
damp is precisely because so many have been subject to inappropriate
works and failure to do basic maintenance. Damp is not a problem
inherent in their design in any way.

Actaully, having lived in them they do.

Sorry but can't agree with this. Changes in our lifestyle have led to
problems of damp in old houses but in most cases a bit of sensible repair
work to guttering, garden and suchlike together with using appropriate
materials fixes the problem. Yours may have been one of the ones which this
didn't fix of course but this is unusual.

In any case, damp was not a problem in their design at the date of the
design - it was our changes of use that caused it.

On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 02:40:33 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Its actually fairly not good to use bent grown timber for structures.
The assymetry of the growth makes it move in quite drastic ways under
humid/dry cycles.

The point is, that even if oil goes through the roof, oak still won't be
the material of choice.
Softwoods might be though.

Now that we have developed techniques of preserving softwood, oak has
lost one of its huge advantages of the past - durability. Nowadays
treated softwood will generally be a more practical building material

On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 20:11:33 +0100, "Mike" wrote:

Is there a big enough market ? What angle should they be and how many years
growth ?

I don't think there is a market at all and there won't be until some
rich heritage organisation hatches a plain to replicate the Mary Rose.
Then whoever has been growing a set of bent trees will coin it. Dunno
what angle. Shipbuilding and cruck houses are beyond my ken

Anna

~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642

On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 03:16:33 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

(ii) only about 1% of buildings of that age survive if that. The rest
all burnt down or rotted away.

Which is a good argument for building regulations. Its the Grand
Designs of the past which are still standing today. Joe Public lived
in the most basic accommodation that his (land)lord could get away
with providing. At least nowadays Wimpey & Barrett have some
restraints on their build quality

this is a bit of a popular misconception. Victorian houses do not
suffer from damp when properly maintained. The common occurrence of
damp is precisely because so many have been subject to inappropriate
works and failure to do basic maintenance. Damp is not a problem
inherent in their design in any way.

Actaully, having lived in them they do

The most basic Victorian houses were crappily built, but houses built
for artisans and clerks were generally reasonably good construction
quality in Victorian times and any damp is your own problem. You
didn't happen to have emulsion paint and wallpaper on all of the walls
perchance?

Anna

~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005 11:04:22 +0100, "Doctor Evil"
wrote:

These days you will not get away without a rigid foundation

True

so why all this
lime mortar, that is good for old building that move on poor foundations

True

but pretty inappropriate, and expensive, for a modern building.

Why do you consider it inappropriate? There is nothing inherently
wrong with using lime for modern rigid building

At the moment its expensive compared to concrete. Delivered to site in
silos the cost of lime mortar is (from memory) four times the price of
concrete.

If lime becomes more widely used there will be increasing economies of
scale and also lime takes much less energy to produce than does
concrete which will definitely be in its favour as oil prices
increase, which they will.

Anna


~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642

On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 11:46:44 +0100, wrote:

I've just built a yurt out of a couple of hundred willow rods that were
destined for that power station near Selby. Allowing that venture to
collapse was really crazy.

What? Do you mean like it was crazy for MG Rover as well?

No, crazy like it would be if you plumbed in a new bathroom, didn't
turn the water on at the mains and then condemned the bathroom as
useless

Anna

~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642

"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...

I wish I had installed a heat pump and acres of plastic pipe in the
garden too.

I just wish the compressors weren't so expensive that the possibility of
getting a positive or negative payback depends on where interest rates
go.

Unfortunately, with current prices, at best you're looking at around half
the price of gas.

About that, yes. Have been looking at either driving the compressor from
our stream to avoid losses (and costs) from using an alternator followed by
an electric motor but lots of other problems to overcome.


More insulation is generally the right way to go.

Agreed - I think I'm one of Secondsandco's and Optiroc's best customers.


If you can of course, sometimes it's impractical to retrofit in an
old structure without extreme measures.

That's what they used to say on the period property website but I am quite
happy with the results. You can't 'hug the stone' inside but you don't
freeze to death looking at it anymore either. Flooring still looks the same
but there's huge amounts of Optiroc and lime underneath and the roofspaces,
though still adequately ventilated all have effective U values of under
0.075 at the bedroom ceilings.

You want an example of bent oak? Go he
http://www.greenoakcarpentry.co.uk/
and click on Museum Gridshell
There's a rather nice oak bridge on that website too.

I don't know of methods of preserving softwoods without messing up the
environment - why not just use the naturally durable softwoods such as
larch, Douglas fir, Western Cedar and, interestingly, that much beloved
of subusban gardens, Leylandii?

wrote in message
I don't know of methods of preserving softwoods without messing up the
environment

paint ?

On 6 Jun 2005 14:55:55 -0700, wrote:

You want an example of bent oak? Go he
http://www.greenoakcarpentry.co.uk/
and click on Museum Gridshell

Hardly timber framing though, is it - that's as much Mecanno as it is
joinery.

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005 23:03:29 +0100, "Mike" wrote:

paint ?

Poor at preserving timber (it's just a skin - penetrate that and it rots
just the same). It's also horrible environmentally - most paints, and
pretty much all of the external ones, are either toxic resins, toxic
pigments, or full of solvents.

Personally I like to use larch, if I'm not using oak. Pick the right
board and the stuff's damn near pure plastic resin anyway.

paint ?

Interesting point - I was thinking of the 'preservative' fungicides.
Of course the trouble with most modern paints is that they form a
waterproof layer untill they inevitably crack and then they let in and
trap water in the timber hastening its rot. Thus paint can do more
harm than good by not allowing timber to dry out. Real linseed oil
paint does not give rise to this problem.

On 7 Jun 2005 04:36:33 -0700, wrote:

Real linseed oil
paint does not give rise to this problem.

Real linseed oil and real linseed oil paint is unavailable. You need to
do paperwork to permit it, because of the lead content, and then you
need a licence to make it, because there are no current producers. I
make and use my own, but I can't sell it, or use it on products for
sale.

Someone recently posted a link to Holkham paints. They offer a good
range of linseed oil products, but they're dried with a manganese salt,
not lead salts or a mix of both. This is better than the usual cobalt
salts (dreadful things, but the shelf life is better). However
manganese-dried oils work better in a dry climate. In the UK you can
typically only apply them for a few months over the Summer. They also
tend to crack more than lead-dried oils in damp weather. The mixed
lead/manganese driers are by far the best for outdoor use in a damp
climate, as they don't shrink so much.



--
Cats have nine lives, which is why they rarely post to Usenet.

Real linseed oil and real linseed oil paint is unavailable. You need to

do paperwork to permit it, because of the lead content, and then you
need a licence to make it, because there are no current producers.

Oh dear. What I meant by real linseed oil pain is paint made with real
linseed oil. It is available, as I said, from Holkham who supply the
Sweedish Allback paints and from Peter Maitland-Hood's Real Paint and
Varnish Co. The pigment is titanium dioxide rather than the poisonous
lead carbonate. Colourwise its a very permanent pigment, actually
performing better than lead in polluted atmosphere where lead pigments
go yellow in a reaction with sulphur. You are right, Andy, about the
greater flexibility of lead paint which makes it an even more durable
product than Allback's. For this reason it is permitted to use it on
grade 1 listed buildings with permission from English Heritage. Lead
paint is still manufactured and available for such pruposes.

When using real linseed oil paint is certainly better to do exterior
work in the summer and the trick is to paint it as thinly as you can.
I find it can be repainted with another coat after two days.

Ian Stirling wrote:

Doctor Evil wrote:

wrote in message
groups.com...

snip

Deep foundatins are needed for rigid strucrtures:

Domestice building just does not need to be rigid

It does. British homes notoriously leak air like crazy. A ridgid
air-tight structure means you control the ventilations instaed of having it
by excessivly by default. 40% of heat loss ia via air leaks.

These days you will not get away without a rigid foundation, so why all this
lime mortar, that is good for old building that move on poor foundations,
but pretty inappropriate, and expensive, for a modern building.


Under current building regs.
Regulations for "one size fits all", whether you are building on
swampland or solid granite isn't actually going to lead to
cheap buildings.

Not so.. My foundations are at varying depths depending on te proximity
of mature TREES never mind being in granite/sand etc.

Look in the regs. Depths are given for many types of soil, and
proximity of trees is factored in as well.
..


A rational approach accepting limited movement in a structure, where
it will not cause it to fail, and building regs that reflected this
could make buildings cheaper.