Welcome to our blog.

This blog will follow the ultimate in home improvement: demolish and rebuild!

This is our starting point: a 1930s bungalow. While not a bad house; it is too small for us with three teenage children so what should we do? A full storey extension versus complete rebuild - ultimately the stronger eco-credentials and more certain finances of a new-build helped to guide our choice.

For a number of years we've been trying to find the right route for us to build an eco-friendly, low energy home. We tried various architects and building companies and have eventually settled with a German prefabricated build. The new house will be nearly to passivhaus standards (but not quite due to budget constraints). In any case, the house will be heavily insulated and airtight.

As a family, we have not built a house before so everything is new and exciting but the risk of making a mess of things is quite high!

This blog aims to outline the day to day steps involved in our build.

Thursday 1 July 2010

The house snoozes in the sun

The air source heat pump has arrived!

This will take the latent heat from the air at the outside unit and use it to warm up a refrigerant that turns to gas even at low temperatures. This refrigerant gas is then compressed thereby releasing heat that is used to heat the water either for the underfloor heating or for the domestic hot water when the solar thermal panels aren't able to work.
The internal unit is attached to the wall in the utility room; it is where the refrigerant gas will be pumped to and will feed into a large cylinder (hopefully sometime next week).
The consumer unit is installed on the garage wall.
For the rest of the day the house has been resting, waiting for the screed to dry a bit more. The first screeding company will be returning soon to improve the upstairs floor and hopefully remove some of the materials from the front of the house so we can tidy it up. Currently there is D49 mesh and sand everywhere!

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