experience the space? hippy!

Was it just me or did anyone else get the impression that the two wives were ‘very’ friendly?! Maybe the hairy armpits was a sign of which one was the giver and the fit one was the taker.
A couple of things that confused me though:
The bloke kept going on about how he was recycling the tyres……. but surely all he did was bury them (landfill!)? What advantage did the tyres give that an earth wall held back by wood/rock didn’t give ❓
How could he have been ‘recycling’ the 6 big wooden beams when they were ‘new’ wood from another job that he paid for – isn’t that the same as going to a timber merchants and buying the wood ❓
Made me laugh when KM went on about some wonderful craftsmanship in the building, pointing out the roof and stone wall – both of which were done by outside contractors 🙂

All in all I did like the whole thing though, mainly becuase I’m not sure KM liked it much, potential lesi action and an utter lack of rich idiots spending too much money on a building.

Oh yeah……… ‘Earth Ship’……. right 😕

I agree with aP – some iffy detailing on roofs/falls/major cold bridges/massive over gain of solar in summer/heatstore that would not work/damp an issue etc.

I do ‘get’ earth buried houses (And would do one myself, if the site was appropriate), but not ‘taken’ with the tyres etc – in a 100 years they still need recycling/something doing with them, but at least you got 100 years more out of them than if you hadn’t used them there. I also have a major concern with damp in the walls – and I sell ‘breathing’ natural walls for a living!

I also agree with the whole hippy thing / holes in walls etc being a distraction. It seems that to be ‘green’ you either have to have dreads or hairy pits, or be some smug upper classer with £’000’s to buy your way out of a crap lifestyle. Its about time mr & mrs average did it, without being wacky.

I do think KM’s last point was a good one – maybe the way they were ‘doing life’ was actually a way a lot of us could do life…..to the benefit of us and society.

and I sell ‘breathing’ natural walls for a living!

What would you go for Matt? I’m quite taken with the idea of a wood frame house with straw bale walls.

Rats missed that one, is it going to be repeated?

What would you go for Matt? I’m quite taken with the idea of a wood frame house with straw bale walls.

Why have two structural walls? Unless you mean the straw ‘cassette’ walls such as used on the S-House.

Totally depends on site, design, budget and then some more faffy bits.

Straw bale = great for self build, if done right (and maintain the waterproof render…), cheap, simple, long lasting. Almost impossible to sell on, NEVER going to be mass market, damp in bales = dead building.

Timber frame = soooo many options. May I suggest the best on the market? PassiveHaus or AECB sir? ohhh, suits you.
http://www.natural-building.co.uk/PDF/Pavatex/090129_Technical_Manual_PASSIVHAUS.pdf

http://www.natural-building.co.uk/PDF/Pavatex/Pavatex%20Walls/090128_Technical_Manual_Timber.pdf

http://www.natural-building.co.uk/passiv_haus.html

I’m thinking they may be hippy/eco warrior kinda people with a nice nest egg laid down by wealthy relatives who made all their money out of heavy industry, hence the “we must live an ecologicaly friendly lifestyle” to make up for what our loaded parents/grandparents did.

Maybe they worked, bought a house then sold it to cash in the equity?

Matt, can you build us a house in say 6 months time?

Maybe they worked, bought a house then sold it to cash in the equity?

That’s what I assumed. They were selling a reasonable big house in Brighton that they seem to have bought when prices were low and sold when they were high and spent the profits on a relatively cheap house somewhere that prices were much lower.

If we’d sold our house at the top of the market we’d have had £80k cash and that’s just a 3-bed semi in the cheap part of a North East town.