Devon low energy house

A previous Touchwood customer (Colin) wrote to us today saying how amazing the performance of his Touchwood house has been over the winter months with regard to minimal heat demand:

"Still regarded by locals as "the best house in the village" and we remain absolutely delighted with everything. Dropped to -5 at night last week but never below 20 inside.  No woodburner lit (only twice for an hour each time) over two winters and no heating apart from one "timed" bathroom floor and similarly, a towel rail.  In duct heater has never come on!!"

With a high quality finish to the house, and extensive groundworks externally (garden walls and the like) the self build cost was £1480/m2. This for a house that now has very very low heating costs. If you're going to build a house, do it properly and build one that doesn't require endless fossil fuels (and so high running costs) to heat. Even if you're building the house to sell, low heating builds will be a marketable asset, and morally it's just plain wrong to build new houses with needless fossil fuel heating demands - when it isn't particularly more expensive to build an air tight and super insulated Touchwood House -  just a different approach.

Why doesn't the government force volume house builders to build this way via building regulations? Probably because the volume builders have such powerful lobby powers they dictate government policy (and they don't want to change from their current build methods). No doubt locking us into expensive fossil fuel heating means we always have to buy fuel - good for the fossil fuel companies short term - disastrous long term (global warming/energy security). The only option is to self build houses to the passivhaus standard, showing it can be done affordably - embarrass the government to get the volume builders to do the same!

Chepstow home nears completion!

Touchwood supplied the new timber frame super efficient home for a client in Chepstow that is now near completion. The building is constructed on a hill side so has complex groundworks, and a connection to an existing dilapidated stone structure on the site that has now become part of the house. 

Mr Francis sent the images below and commented:

Many thanks for all your help with everything.  Super pleased with the service from Touchwood, and how everything has turned out. Mr Francis, Chepstow 

Office phone number change

Please note that after a transfer period of a year our old office number is now closed - please only use the new one : 01279 842675

By the power of Logs!

The owners of the Touchwood built Porters house (on the gallery page) have been keeping a record of how many logs they use to provide all the heating and hot water requirements for their home, please see the graph below:

the graph, which runs from summer 2014 to summer 2015, shows the solar panels provide all hot water during the summer periods, and some contribution during autumn / spring.  On cold winter days a 4 hour burn provides all hot water and heating for a 24hr period. In total they lit the fire 89 times during the graphed period, using 33 barrows of wood. This shows the point of building the passivhaus way - so little heat is needed that it can be delivered via a small log boiler, and Porters is a large house (290m2).

The small log stove with back boiler is an attractive centre piece for the lounge which since they source their own logs, provides free thermal energy. Logs boilers have other advantages too - they are near to carbon neutral - the carbon released when burnt was absorbed by the tree when growing, so no net change in atmospheric CO2 levels (bar that emitted during log processing). Also if you buy logs, you are supporting your local log processing / woodland management industries - surely better than paying for oil to be extracted from the ground to support the fossil fuel industry? One day it might even revive our ancient coppice woodland which when managed provides a superb habitat for insects and wild life.

Traditional Oak Home but super low energy!

We visited our Streatley project last week to install the MVHR machine and see how the build is going. The external and internal of the build is nearly complete and it looks stunning! The Oak integrates into the low energy structure very well to create the required look, and with the structure constructed from our usual super insulated and air tight I beam frame method the home is extremely warm. In fact when we visited there was no heating on but the home was warm throughout. 

Please take a look at some images we took on the day:

American Wind Energy

We're interested in wind energy at Touchwood, and see it as one of the ways (along with PV and tidal) we can wean ourselves of fossil fuels. This short video of American walkers expressing how they feel about the look of the turbines we found refreshing and optimistic - most people in the UK also approve of onshore wind, but the media seem to focus on the moaners!



https://youtu.be/wJ5S8X0Vo3c

Banbury Low Energy Bungalow Nears Completion

Our works on the Banbury bungalow are now near completion - this super efficient timber frame building has traditional stone cladding so it fits into to the local area. We like this architectural approach - the house doesn't look like a low energy home but will perform exceptionally with minimal heating costs - contrasting to the traditional way a home of this look would have been built.

The home us built using our usual high performance timber structure:

* walls from 300mm I beams 

* rafters from 350mm I beams

* air tight board over entire external surface to create a simple, long term air tight solution

* cellulose fibre insulation blown into structure for excellent thermal, acoustic and thermal mass properties

* Norrsken triple glazed windows and doors

* Touchwood designed and installed PAUL MVHR system, with Lindab steel ductwork

Our duct work routes are all factory pre-cut in the frame, allowing us to use large bore rigid steel duct work - larger bore means lower air speeds for the same volume of air - so much quieter performance.

Our ducts are also in the joist zone, were they will be surrounded by cellulose insulation avoiding heat loss, and minimising noise creating a near silent system. MVHR is a critical component to an air tight home, cutting costs here by using flexible duct work or, not putting ducts in the insulated zone will impact the house performance