The UK is more energy efficient than it’s peers :-)

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Good result for the UK.
– it seems we are doing the same, with less energy than other large economies 🙂

The UK has taken the top slot an energy efficiency ranking of 12 of the world’s largest economies. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) gave the UK the number one position in its first International Energy Efficiency Scorecard report.
It ranks 12 of the world’s largest economies across 27 metrics to evaluate how efficiently these economies use energy.

– http://www.aceee.org/research-report/e12a

The report shows there is, as you’d expect, plenty of scope to do better. But, for me, this is a great start.

Vertical slats for the staircase

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Vertical slats to let the light come down the stairwell from the skylight and south facing window on the top floor.

I want the vertical slats going to the floor or the ceiling. So like this for at the bottom:

vertical wooden wall on the stairs

&

vertical wooden wall 08

The top / cap to the vertical slats to be capped with a hand rail, as shown below:

vertical wooden wall hand rail cap

The slats give a continually different view / aspect.

http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/2576588/list?utm_source=Houzz&utm_campaign=u111&utm_medium=email&utm_content=gallery3

 

A charging station ?

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How about putting a “charging” station on the low wall between the dining room and the lounge. So also near the kitchen.

A charging station.With so many gadgets to charge these days, we’re all running out of outlets. Houzzers suggest having a designated charging station where they can get all the juice they need while staying neat and organized.

Funky looking, 3 compartment recycling bin

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“Comprises of three compartments and a central bottle crusher to compress your waste with ease.”

“Made from recycled plastic”

“Each compartment has a door for bag removal and a small upper opening with a cover for waste deposit. The covers close tightly so that bad odours cannot escape.”

“Standard supermarket shopping bags can be inserted into each of the compartments for ease of use.”

£179.99 from http://www.ecocentric.co.uk/acatalog/Eco_Centric_Office_Bins_Ovetto_Recycling_Bin_-_Yellow_Blue_Green.html


Automatic fire !

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Scandinavian HWAM fires have a heat sensitive spring that auto regulates the amount of air going into the combustion chamber of the fire, so that you continually get optimised buring of the wood:

  • More heat from the same amount of wood
  • Less ash
  • Less hassle
  • Less soot on the glass.

Video that shows the auto system (jump to 1 minute in !).

Above picture of the HWAM I30/55 that has the Nordic Ecolabel. For more info see

http://hwam.com/products/insert+selection/hwam+i+3055

Fire Heat Storage / Thermal Store

Create a thermal mass, with the chimney around the fire, so that post the fire dying out heat is slowly released into the room.

HWAM have a page on their soapstone system at http://hwam.com/hwam+advantages/heat+storage

UK HWAM Distributors:

 

Frame the sea view ?

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How about, as suggested ages ago by Jo Brannan, reducing some of the north, sea facing glazing (glass windows, doors, panels) to have more of a frame on the view.

Yes it’s great to have some rooms where it’s full whack the view, where the end side walls, roof and floor are the frame.

But maybe some other rooms have less glazing. Walls are also much more thermally efficient and cheaper for the heating efficiency of the building.

This extreme framing (ie mostly wall Vs small window) works to amazing effect.

The above photo is from www.houzz.com

For this endless ocean view, instead of the windows going floor to ceiling, the designer chose to pull the focus tight by using a smaller window. The minimally framed window creates the look of art on the wall and brings your attention to the balance of sea and sky and the subtle gradient of color.

It seems almost any frame, can end up adding to the view:

Second pre-app meeting with Cornwall Council

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Today, Robert (the architect) and I had our second pre application meeting with Cornwall Council.

The first pre-app was great. We felt the verbal meeting and post meeting written response were both very positive. They wanted some tweaks / work done on 2 small areas. The first was more that we hadn’t covered that we were making all the considerations we should. We did have it all covered, but this was written up in the pre-application we made. The second was that they felt we could change the treatment of one of the areas to visually improve it.

So this second pre-app was to go over our submitted suggestions and ideas. The planning officer had a preferred option, which, in our view, looks great and lets us crack on with finalising plans.

The next step is to run the general scheme past a few potential builders, and probably a structural engineer and probably a Quantity Surveyor (QS) so that we can confirm it’s all feasible to build and that the budget is sufficient for the current plans and ideas.