preamble
specification
site
modelling
changes

albums

design
week 1 - earthworks
week 2 - foundations
week 3 - ground slab
week 4 - crane
week 5 - basement walls and monomur
week 6 - floor beams
week 7 - monomur walls
week 8 - ring beam
week 9 - truss frames
week 10 - erection of frames
week 11 - roofing
week 12 - boarding
week 13 - details
week 14 - windows
week 15 - self-build
week 16 - last windows
weeks 17-20 - electricity insulation
week 21 - plastering
week 22 - new machine
week 23 - masons

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Building a solar house in France is not to be undertaken lightly, even for an architect. Taking on another self-build project at the age of 72 is a bit of a challenge too. This is a picture record, - a plog rather than a blog - a series of 'albums' of annotated drawings and photographs, following the progress of the project, from its inception to completion, recording the setbacks, the frustrations, the rewards, the delays, the changes of direction, the incidents and accidents along the way.

beginnings

The project began in 2000, after a terrible hurricane that swept through this part of France leaving devastated forests, smashed electricity pylons and telephone lines, blocked roads and railway lines and damaged buildings and infrastructure. We were without electricity, water, and telephones for weeks. We decided then to build a new bioclimatic house that would be as self-sufficient as possible.

background

I had spent 18 years since the first energy crisis in the 70's, doing research into low energy and passive solar building at Sheffield University, and designing bioclimatic houses for myself and others. After that period, during the 90's, I was bitterly disappointed that those early concerns about ecology were forgotten as energy became cheaper and Western economies rushed ahead to consume more and more, producing increasing amounts of waste and pollution. Politicians rubbished the warnings of scientists and ecologists that the earth's atmosphere was becoming dangerously overheated by overconsumption of fossil fuels, destruction of forests, leading to climate change and, probably even more drastic in its effect on our way of life, the imminent exhaustion of the fossil fuels that have made a heavily mechanised, technological and enormously mobile way of life possible. The hurricane and its aftermath was an immediate and vivid illustration of climate change, and we decided to invest all our resources and energies in making a tiny personal contribution, by changing our way of life and expressing it in doing what I knew most about - building a house. Of course there was a selfish element, because I believed that soon the international competition for the diminishing resources of oil and gas would lead to soaring prices for fuels.

programme

The specification for our new house evolved slowly based on our experience of living here for 15 years in a farmhouse that we had restored. Bioclimatic architecture is based on an understanding of the local microclimate, and a study of the way that traditional buildings in the region responded to it. In addition I had become much more aware of wider ecological, health and environmental considerations, and their impacts on building design. So our requirements were for a compact house with very well insulated exterior surfaces, windows open to the winter sun but shuttered and shaded in summer, and built using locally grown timber and natural materials. Its heating would be by a wood-burning high efficiency boiler/stove. Because of the increasing frequency of severe heat waves in summer brought on by climate change, it would be naturally cooled by burying part of the house in the earth, and having a lot of internal thermal mass and exterior insulation. I wanted to avoid any high-tech solutions for heating or cooling. The only serious concession to technology would be solar photovoltaic collectors to contribute electricity to the grid to offset our own needs, and flat plate solar collectors to heat water for domestic use. In addition we planned to collect all the water from the roof in a large cistern for domestic (filtered for washing machine and to flush toilets) and garden use.

site

The search for a suitable site took 2 years. It had to be within cycling or walking distance of a local market and shops. We wanted about 4000 square metres with a lot of trees and the right orientation to benefit from direct passive solar gain, and solar collectors on the roof. When we found one that seemed to be ideal, and applied for planning permission, there were restrictions imposed on the size of house that could be built on it. We eventually found one nearby, 4 kilometres east of Brantôme, with permission to build a slightly larger house. We bought it in 2003 and started planning. the rest of the story is in the annotated picture albums.....

design modelling

At first, having been working as a printmaker for 15 years with very little architectural work to do, I reverted to my drawing board, 'T' square and Rapidograph, and simple rule of thumb thermal design. But as the need to test designs increased, I reverted to using my computer. I had to upgrade to use an up-to-date CAD system (TurboCAD and ArchiCAD). And luckily the SPIEL dynamic thermal modelling program that I had written in the 80's still worked with Microsoft Windows XP, despite having been written to work under DOS before Windows ever existed. It is the only good mark I can give Microsoft - the fact that they have always supported DOS programs - and long may it last ! Modelling with SPIEL was done for every little change that affected thermal performance, like changes in insulation, amount of glazing, heating system, controls of heating. The aim was always to acheive the minimum energy consumption in winter and summer and avoid overheating in summer.

SPIEL calculates temperatures in up to 25 zones every hour, throughout a year, calculating the solar gain absorbed through every window, the amount of heating put in to each zone, according to the type of heating system, fuel, thermostatic control used (or none). It takes account of heat from occupants, from lighting, heat from cooking, hot water use and equipment. It calculates the heatloss of every wall, floor, roof and window, the heat lost by ventilation or infiltration, and the amount of heat stored in every element of the building. From all this generated and calculated data it summarises the overall consumption of the building for a year or for a given day or period. The program can be used to size the radiators, or show the hour by hour temperatures in any zone on any day, for given exterior weather conditions of sun and temperature. It can be used to check confort in summer and the effect of blinds or shading.

design changes

The problem with building an ecological house at this particular time is that since I began the project, the level of interest in the idea has grown enormously, stimulated by worries about global warming, about energy, about health and avoiding toxic materials etc. As a consequence there are a lot of publications in France devoted to the subject - the magazine Maison Ecologique for example. New materials are being evaluated, or introduced without evaluation. Tax credits are being proposed or changed. As the house was being designed, and even while it is being built, I have had to consider new information and better options all the time, which have impacts on the design. Luckily I am simultaneously client, architect and project manager, and using a CAD system like ArchiCAD allows me to make changes very quickly and easily (sometimes too easily). Also the building industry in France is booming and builders have to be booked up so long in advance, that changes are inevitable by the time they come to do the work.

I had intended to build a house entirely in timber (over the basement) but could not find a local builder to give me an affordable price for the kind of construction I had designed. I had built about 18 houses in Britain using post and beam construction with bolted connectors, with infill framing and timber boarding. Local carpenters here are used to making frames and trusses of quite massive sections with mortice and tenon joints, and were not keen to change their ways. So paradoxically, the prices I was given for doing traditional construction using green oak were less than for using smaller sections in Douglas Fir with bolted connections. The local forests are mostly of oak and chestnut, and slightly further north, there are large areas of douglas fir and larch.

Bioclimatic architecture is founded on the idea of emulating the traditional wisdom of vernacular architecture, and trying to use local materials and methods. So I was quite happy to make the changes to use green oak frames and trusses made in the traditional way, especially as it saved us money ! I had already decided to use Monomur fired clay blocks for exterior walls for their thermal properties in very hot summer conditions, so the design had to change to accommodate these.

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