Tony,

Just had a look and am very jealous indeed!!! It looks great and I am pleased your doing it if it's been 30 years in the planning then I bet you can't wait for completion. I was thinking about thermal stores for solar gains etc and in my dream house ( in my head ) I alway thought it would be great ( site earth permitting ) to have some internal walls as rammed earth walls. Just an idea that while labour intensive could be very cheap. Best of luck!

Good luck Tony! I am also curious as to why your windows aren't bigger. Also is there any particular reason other than storage why you went for a basement?

Tony, great site, and very accesible. The simple layout makes it easy to get around, and the content is great as it show what's done in a real house. Can't wait to see the build progress.

Sorry if dim, but I see nothing about the interseasonal store - how implimented?

Interseasonal thermal store. still to be added to the web site ( give us a chance ) I only started building in December! aint had time to write it yet.

Before starting to build I drilled five 9m boreholes on the site, two of these are for my interseasonal thermal storage. They are approximately central under each half of the house. On digging out the basement we were careful not to damage the pipes loaded into and grouted and managed to carefully re route them to in line with the central basement wall. These pipes will carry warm and hot water down under the house to a depth of 6.5m below the basement floor. The heat will be from the deliberate excess of solar thermal capture during the summer months. I will probably have to insulate the basement floor to stop it getting to warm down there!

I have three loops of pipe one full depth in each bore hole and one half depth in one bore only.

None of the holes hit any water! Two of the other are for drainage and one for a poor mans gshp or “earth tube” set up to pre warm incoming ventilation air.

I think looking at such projects from the perspective of the builder/self-builder is one of the most valuable resources in an environment where journalists pick and chose content to suit the often loaded agenda of their articles.
Thank you Tony for being so open with your experience in this case and providing such a valuable resource to students and practitioners alike. It is easy for journalists, politicians, lecturers and construction professionals to talk rhetoric but the reality is often far removed from the ideals being purported. Hence why I have tried to push the use of free or low cost website tools on the forum.
Anyway :
Just wanted to query the ring beam mentioned in the diary but not visible on the details.

I've bookmarked your site. Great photos. best of luck with everything.

Tony,

great to see what you're doing - best of luck,

Paul

Is your borehole heat exchanger going to be something like this ?
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20080202723

And would it be worth installing hydronic pipework in a screedless underfloor heating system just in case you find you need additional heating at a later date. Just thinking cost/benefit especially if it avoids being chased round the new house by wife wielding a rolling pin cos the house isnt warm enough.
http://www.jupiter-system.com/product-eco.php > screedless underfloor heating system

Would also enable cooling of the basement if the interseasonal store works a little too well/unpredictably.

Tony I'd have thought, to deposit appreciable amounts of heat distributed in a large chunk of subsoil, you'll need massively greater heat transfer surface than whatever you can put in 2 9m boreholes?

I don't know much about building so please excuse me... but... Tony in the '10 worst mistakes in British building' thread you have Cavity Walls. Can you explain simply to me what makes the walls you are building not 'cavity' - they look like it to me - albeit with a fantastic amount of insulation!

(Thanks for the excellent website and information - a great resource.)

Any of you like to take a stab at maximum heat loss for the whole house 20 indoors and -3 outside? 240 m^2 -- soon real calculated ones will be on web site.

tony,

is this a sneaky way of getting Paul to do your sums??!!!

I did write to the local university -- zilch (they will be sick when they realise what they missed)

I will have lots of thermocouples buried in the fabric and some in the ground. I will monitor temperatures and log them.

Water used in building will all go within six months and steady state will be reached for the house after a couple of months but the basement will take longer.

Thanks for the offer -- I would like to take you up on the offer may be in the late autumn (happy to pay)-- I 'm petrified of thermal imaging cameras though.