Green Building Forum - Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

tony — Sat, 27 Sep 2014 22:56:48 +0100

What design features should be avoided in new builds. Order worst first

Dot and dab
Dormer windows
Shower trays without upstands

Add to the list, feel free to bump the ones above down the list

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

owlman — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 00:22:58 +0100

Posted By: tonyWhat design features should be avoided in new builds.

"Georgiana", "Victoriana", or any other "iana"; Design for the present. Its the apeing of old architectural periods that often create many constructional problems.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Chris P Bacon — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 07:13:20 +0100

Roof lights

Chimneys/Flues

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Nick Parsons — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 07:20:48 +0100

Would you count the use of chipboard in bathrooms and kitchens as a 'design feature'? Ban that!

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

andyman99 — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 07:56:08 +0100

Integral garages

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Rex — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 08:02:57 +0100

In principle, I agree with internal garages, but even worse are garages that are located immediately in front of the new house.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Rex — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 08:06:04 +0100

Gutter and sewerage downpipes that are not a colour match (within reason) to the house. Black pipework on a white render; why does anyone want to make drainage pipework so obvious?

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Simon Still — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 08:17:04 +0100

Posted By: Chris P BaconRoof lights

Chimneys/Flues

Care to explain?

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Chris P Bacon — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 08:41:40 +0100

Posted By: Simon Still
Posted By: Chris P BaconRoof lights

Chimneys/Flues

Care to explain?

Roof lights are a nett waster of energy. Because they are installed at an angle they lose more heat energy than they gain. Because of their swivel mechanism opening roof lights are always a problem area for airtightness.

Chimneys/Flues by default means you are burning something creating air pollution and depending on, carcinogenic particles. Add in cold bridges and airtightness issues for good measure.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

jfb — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 09:41:17 +0100

light is nice though.....

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

rhamdu — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 09:49:23 +0100

Posted By: Chris P BaconBecause they are installed at an angle they lose more heat energy than they gain.

Fair enough if you are comparing with south-facing windows, which provide useful solar gain in autumn, winter and spring.

But not every room can have a south-facing window. In other situations a rooflight may be the best or only way of introducing natural light. As jfb says.

When not facing due south, rooflights assist summer cooling. Because they are placed high, they promote stack effect ventilation.

Finally, rooflights are a great help to designers trying to maximise the ratio of habitable space to external surface area. This reduces both construction and heating costs. There is a good example of this in the 'Â£40,000 house' article in the latest Green Building Magazine.

As for airtightness - if you really don't find modern opening rooflights satisfactory, you could always have a non-opening one.

Basically you need some natural light, and you need some opening ventilation. Assuming you go for the best U-value you can afford, the only issue is where and at what angle you situate the transparent and/or opening bits of your building envelope.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Chris P Bacon — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 09:55:26 +0100

Posted By: jfblight is nice though.....

True but if is just daylight you need then bring it in with fibre optics instead.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

rhamdu — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:00:30 +0100

Posted By: andyman99Integral garages

Care to explain?

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

rhamdu — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:05:00 +0100

Posted By: owlmanIts the apeing of old architectural periods that often create many constructional problems.

Totally agree.

Go to continental European cities and they/their planning authorities don't have the British hang-up about houses looking 'traditional' or just like the one next door.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

rhamdu — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:12:31 +0100

Baths

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Ed Davies — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:13:35 +0100

Central heating.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

markocosic — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:26:51 +0100

I'm unconvinced on integral garages.

Your long distance car (which most of us will have for some time to come) will be fossil fuelled. The overwhelming majority of wear, tear, and acutely toxic emissions occur at startup. Raise the temperature of the car to even 15C rather than 5C and this makes a significant difference. Preheat it electrically to 30-40C and you're laughing. Recover all that heat when it is parked up again after a long journey too.

Insulated floor; insulated door. Partially separated from the main envelope. (you insulate as if the garage were 'outdoors' but also insulate the garage, door between garage and house is an exterior insulated spec and a fire door)

It's your 'air lock' for when loading and unloading things from the property. (else you're walking between two buildings all the time) You don't get wet when getting in and out of your car. You car doesn't rust away. Your bicycle isn't frozen and the saddle isn't soaking wet. You bicycle hasn't been stolen either. You've got somewhere to charge your battery powered lawnmower. The dog has somewhere warm to sleep. Your 'armageddon' foodstuffs don't get damaged (honeys and oils separating/going permanently cloudy, mars bars melting and resolidifying, flour going soggy etc).

It's your services cupboard for all the meters, internets, computing and suchlike that you didn't want inside the house but don't want to cross the garden for.

Teeny tiny garages yes without insulated electric doors yes; ban those. A garage needs to be a minimum of 6 x 5 metres to be useful.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

marktime — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:51:35 +0100

I'll second baths and add draining boards.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Chris P Bacon — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 11:05:30 +0100

Posted By: rhamduIn other situations a rooflight may be the best or only way of introducing natural light. As jfb says.

A roof light will only ever be the best way if it is the only way. As I have already said if it is only daylight you require then fibre optics are a more energy efficient approach, best incorporated in a hybrid design with LEDs in the one fixture.

Posted By: rhamdurooflights assist summer cooling. Because they are placed high, they promote stack effect ventilation.

That argument demonstrates why they perform so poorly in winter. There may be a pane or 3 of glass in the way but your heat will still rise and escape out of your roof light.

Posted By: rhamduFinally, rooflights are a great help to designers trying to maximise the ratio of habitable space to external surface area. This reduces both construction and heating costs.

Lazy design in most cases. I am not a fan of "rooms in the roof" designs although we were forced into it on our new house by the local development plan. Most of that "cheap" space in the roof is heavily compromised by the sloping roof. A full two storey is a far better way to maximise usable living space vs. external surface area. If you do have to have a 1 Â½ storey design then it should be designed in such a way that the majority of rooms in the roof can have vertical glazing in the gable walls. That just leaves the issue of day lighting for any rooms in between those on the gables. I would disagree with Tony in regards to dormers. We have used large (3m &4m long mono-pitched) dormers to maximise the usable space of the rooms not on the gable ends so we have rooms without any sloping ceilings and provide vertical glazing.

Posted By: rhamduAs for airtightness - if you really don't find modern opening rooflights satisfactory, you could always have a non-opening one.

If you re-read my original post you will note that I was specifically referring to opening roof lights regarding the concern about airtightness.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

fostertom — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 12:20:56 +0100

For same U value, any element that 'faces' the sky (as opposed to 'facing' solid/liquid objects like scenery) will lose a lot more heat, all of the extra by radiation, when the sky is clear. When it's cloudy, no difference - clouds are liquid.

A clear sky is gas, and gas doesn't 'do' balanced radiation exchange because gas emits radiation only in small, discrete wavelength bands. Gas returns far less than it absorbs; the surplus that a clear(gas) sky fails to return to earth eventually gets radiated away into space.

That's why the earth doesn't get hotter and hotter from its core fires. And that's why you get dews and ground frosts - the ground, facing up to a clear night sky, gets cooled well below air temp, so acts as a condensing surface. You don't get dew or ground frost on a cloudy night.

And that's why caravans start to rot from day 1 - not by leakage but because their roofs' underside are a superb condensing surface, and the condensate can never dry out thro their vinyl wallpaper. If you set out to design a worst-case roof sandwich, it would be typical caravan construction.

So rooflights need to have very low U value, with coatings particularly to block radiation, to not be a worse heat loser than the windows. Nothing (or not much) to do with heat rising internally.

For same light transmission, fibre optics will give exactly same result as far as the radiant component is concerned - prob worse because fire optics can't be selective-coated. Of course fibre optics practically eliminate the conductive component, due to their large 'thickness' (i.e. fibre length), which far out-weighs their high conductivity - provided the fibre bundle is highly insulated around so heat can't conduct sideways out of it.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Ed Davies — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 12:33:33 +0100

For a given area roof lights also let in more light - because they see more bright sky and less dark ground. Or to put it another way, for a given amount of light they can be smaller and therefore also tend to lose less heat. Don't know but I assume it pretty much cancels; for a given amount of light you have a particular amount of heat loss.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

owlman — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 12:40:28 +0100

Posted by Rhamdu;
Totally agree.

Go to continental European cities and they/their planning authorities don't have the British hang-up about houses looking 'traditional' or just like the one next door.&lt;/blockquote&gt;

It seems a peculiar British hang up, that is wanting to keep turning the clock back. I often see it on interiors for instance with the inability to design a stylish contemporary interior, as for exteriors;

Small pane windows
Parapet gable walls
Ostentatious and often pointless Porticoed entrances
external soil pipes

and with the whole copying thing also comes,
Sliding sash windows
brick and block cavity walls
excessive amounts of lead flashing and/or mortar flaunching
Inadequately designed doors and windows

Volume developers are the worst, and put them together with planners who wouldn't know Art Deco, from Art Nouveau, Victorian from Georgian, and you have a recipe for inertia.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

atomicbisf — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 12:44:47 +0100

Why baths? I can't think of the last time I had a bath rather than a shower, but find a bath useful for washing other things occasionally.

Not sure where on the list it would go but unnecessarily complicated or fussy roofs should be there. We really need to be thinking of making as much use of the sun as possible for energy, so sacrificing this for the dubious architectural merits of silly little gables over upstairs windows and things like that that don't have any function is bad.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

atomicbisf — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 13:01:23 +0100

Posted By: owlmanPosted by Rhamdu;
Totally agree.

Go to continental European cities and they/their planning authorities don't have the British hang-up about houses looking 'traditional' or just like the one next door.</blockquote>

It seems a peculiar British hang up, that is wanting to keep turning the clock back. I often see it on interiors for instance with the inability to design a stylish contemporary interior, as for exteriors;

Small pane windows
Parapet gable walls
Ostentatious and often pointless Porticoed entrances
external soil pipes

and with the whole copying thing also comes,
Sliding sash windows
brick and block cavity walls
excessive amounts of lead flashing and/or mortar flaunching
Inadequately designed doors and windows

Volume developers are the worst, and put them together with planners who wouldn't know Art Deco, from Art Nouveau, Victorian from Georgian, and you have a recipe for inertia.

I think a big part of the problem is that for the average home buyer it is their largest purchase, but also one they know least about. This leads to extreme conservatism because people naturally in the absence of knowledge tend to want the 'safe' option, which is what everyone else has. Basically everyone wants a brick box because they think it's what a house should be because everyone else has one. It's like a dead weight that stifles innovation in efficiency, building methods, style etc and causes inefficient, bland, fake, fussy or boring homes. The big home builders of course are happy to pander to it.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Rex — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 14:06:52 +0100

I live in a part of leafy Surrey, not too far from a well known football club training ground. All the new build houses around the area look the same, some kind of Georgian look-alike mansion with Doric column supported porch and usually plenty of dormers. They just look c**p.

They may have all the mod-cons inside but if I was buying a 21st century house, costing millions, I would want the exterior to also look 21st century.

Japan has some incredible modern architecture. They manage to a cube with a 10m sq footprint look really contemporary and desirable.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

rhamdu — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 14:27:35 +0100

Posted By: markocosicYou've got somewhere to charge your battery powered lawnmower.

Don't talk about my EV like that

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

andyman99 — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 14:56:45 +0100

Integral garages

Perhaps I am just reflecting my experience of up and over doors which are very leaky. Can electric doors, presumably the ones that sit in channels be made properly airtight? Also around here nobody actually uses them for their intended purpose, single or double.

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

tony — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 15:26:23 +0100

Much bigger problems with general air tightness, internal cold spaces introduce virtually unsolvable thermal bridges and continuity of insulation problems.

So we have these, anyone fancy prioritising them?

Small pane windows
Parapet gable walls
Ostentatious and often pointless Porticoed entrances
external soil pipes

and with the whole copying thing also comes,
Sliding sash windows
brick and block cavity walls
excessive amounts of lead flashing and/or mortar flaunching
Inadequately designed doors and windows

Baths

Gutter and sewerage downpipes that are not a colour match

Roof lights

Chimneys/Flues

internal soil pipes

Dot and dab
Dormer windows
Shower trays without upstands

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

CWatters — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 15:31:16 +0100

In no particular order..

Boring brickwork
Unimaginative room layouts
Rigid insulation hacked up to fit between rafters
Down lights that penetrate Insulation.
Part M access (usually a ramp) added as an after thought rather than designed in from the outset.
Door and windows rain seals that fail after a few years.
Foil covered insulation that block mobile signals
Visible/multiple satellite dishes
Electricity and gas meter cabinets next to the front door

Top Twenty design features to be avoided

Chris P Bacon — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 16:29:26 +0100

You forgot your favourite Tony! Flat roofs.