[Closed] Tell me about Low Energy and Passive Houses

chances are the next house will be a new build

building and/or living in low energy or passive houses?

😀

You need to speak to Natural Building Technologies. Briliant an helpful bunch of people who can put you in touch with a local architect and advise on such issues in a practical, and proven, way.
[url] http://www.natural-building.co.uk/ [/url]
(Matt, ex NBT)

I want one of these too. No money or land, mind..! 🙂

If you can get to one of the homebuilding shows, there's one starting Friday and running over the weekend

[url= http://harrogate.homebuildingshow.co.uk/ ]http://harrogate.homebuildingshow.co.uk/[/url]

there will be tons of people pushing their version of this, among other useful stuff. A trip to CAT in Machynlleth where they have a demo house too as well as well informed people to talk to is worth doing too. One basic idea is to have a super insulated shell with a big conservatory pointing south. You gather heat in the conservatory and duct it around the rest of the shell. How easily(or passively) this works depends on layouts and stuff. Top up heat with woodburners or pellet stoves. Solar water heating has just had a step increase in efficiency too by switching to vacuum tubes filled with a more efficient heat conducting liquid, then using a dual/triple coil tank as a heat exchanger to use that for water heating and CH. I live in a massively inefficient Victorian house so am looking at this stuff to cut bills rather than go off grid, but even simple stuff like rockwool beneath floorboards and sealing gaps makes such a huge difference. Stoner's new place looks to have a lot of this stuff so he may be along sometime.

Agree with most of Midlife's comments - ecept the one about solar and central heating - dont go there, althoughsolar water heating is a definite - we are awaiting detail of the renewable Heat incentive(RHI) to be finalised.

The RHI will pay you an annual income for various technologies - Heat Pump, Solar thermal and biomass - details still to be finalised but should be firmed up by the time you are at decision time.

If you can squeeze some PV panels (say £14K) into the build cost, they can generate an income which will more than offset ALL your utility bills.

As for Passive hiouse, you will definitley need some Mechanical ventilation/heat recovery but Thats not my expertise - some debate about the british climate/passive house in general - wont make comment other than to say investigate thoroughly.

HTH
Smudger

Just been to the Big Green Home Show at the National Self Build and Renovation Centre which is just open the road from us in Swindon. There was a Scottish company making big claims about their passive builds in the highlands costing £100 a year to heat. Also made some enquiries about ground source and air source heat pumps and solar. Every supplier is keen to play up the effectiveness of their systems. All sounds good but it would be good to get some input from end users.

Ask again in 6 months and I'll be able to give you the inside on construction of a low-energy house - my dad's planning on building 8 of them soon!

No heating, only leccy and water.

If you're in Scotland, it might be worth contacting CCG Ltd in Glasgow - big construction firm with a firm commitment to building low energy houses (they're building/built a bespoke plant for manufacturing pre-fab houses...)

Solar pannels are something we were thinking about for our house, especially as this part of Germany is the world's centre for the production of them. I said were because after talking to a heating engineer he convinced me that ATM they are just too expensive. It would take over ten years before you've broken even with the investment. That was for hot water, with electricity it's even worse.

I'll PM you tomorrow when I have more time mate.

And join the AECB as well.
http://www.aecb.net/