Elspeth Thompson

 


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April - May - June 2007

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07 Apr 2007 - DROUGHTBUSTER

Through the droughts and hosepipe bans of last summer, I religiously decanted my daughter’s bathwater out onto the garden using a simple pump and syphon device called a ‘DroughtBuster’(droughtbuster.co.uk). Come winter, with the garden no longer thirsty, all that practically clean water was yet again disappearing down the drain. To assuage the eco-guilt, I started using the still-warm water for hand-washing – throwing in a few woollen jerseys and so on with a capful of Ecover laundry liquid. It worked pretty well – the clothes came out clean, and I even got a bit of a workout with all that swilling and rinsing and wringing on my hands and knees. I felt pretty pleased with myself until I read Ecology Begins at Home by Archie Duncanson (Green Books £4.95 (01803 863260 greenbooks.co.uk) - a touchingly honest account of one man’s efforts to change every area of his domestic life for the ecologically better. Horrified by the torrent of suds emerging from his washing machine, and suspecting the manufacturers’ detergent dosage to be excessive, Duncanson experimented with cutting it, until he found a heaped teaspoon of powder to be sufficient, provided he gave cuffs and collars and stubborn stains a preliminary scrub by hand. This not only enabled him to cut the standard four rinse cycles down to one and reduce the washing time by half; it also means a 1kg box of washing powder lasts him an incredible two years. (He also uses beer as hair gel and urine against dandruff – but that’s another story…).

 

14 Apr 2007 - GREENHOUSE

Little did we suspect, when we hit on the idea of raising one of the railway carriages on to the roof of our eco house, that we might be in the van guard of an architectural trend. But a new book, XS Green: Big Ideas Small Buildings (Thames & Hudson £14.99) features several projects that favour this “piggy-back” approach.

Inspired by the vast acreage of vacant rooftop space in his native Berlin, Werner Aissinger designed the “Loftcube” to give urban nomads an affordable home they can pack up and take with them when work takes them elsewhere. Perching on a flat roof, with floor-to-ceiling windows and movable room dividers, the 39 sq metre Loftcube plugs into the services of existing buildings - temporary budget housing in a penthouse location. Also in Germany, Stefan Eberstadt dreamed up the ‘Rucksack House’ – a pod-like extra room that clings to the side of its host building, secured by steel cables that run up and over the roof like the shoulder straps of rucksack. The sensation of being suspended in space is enhanced by windows in the walls, roof and floor.

Mysteriously, the book is silent on the subject of planning permission. As I know only too well, no UK local authority is going to tolerate major alterations to a building’s profile without their approval. But come on, guys, let’s have a little vision. A skyline sprouting with small, well-designed dwellings – be they cubes, pods or even the odd itinerant railway carriage – could be just the rejuvenating spur that our urban architecture needs.

 

21 Apr 2007 - BIG IDEAS SMALL BUILDINGS
Little did we suspect, when we hit on the idea of raising one of the railway carriages on to the roof of our eco house, that we might be in the van guard of an architectural trend. But a new book, XS Green: Big Ideas Small Buildings (Thames & Hudson £14.99) features several projects that favour this “piggy-back” approach.

Inspired by the vast acreage of vacant rooftop space in his native Berlin, Werner Aissinger designed the “Loftcube” to give urban nomads an affordable home they can pack up and take with them when work takes them elsewhere. Perching on a flat roof, with floor-to-ceiling windows and movable room dividers, the 39 sq metre Loftcube plugs into the services of existing buildings - temporary budget housing in a penthouse location. Also in Germany, Stefan Eberstadt dreamed up the ‘Rucksack House’ – a pod-like extra room that clings to the side of its host building, secured by steel cables that run up and over the roof like the shoulder straps of rucksack. The sensation of being suspended in space is enhanced by windows in the walls, roof and floor.

Mysteriously, the book is silent on the subject of planning permission. As I know only too well, no UK local authority is going to tolerate major alterations to a building’s profile without their approval. But come on, guys, let’s have a little vision. A skyline sprouting with small, well-designed dwellings – be they cubes, pods or even the odd itinerant railway carriage – could be just the rejuvenating spur that our urban architecture needs.
28 Apr 2007 - UNDER-FLOOR HEATING

Aesthetics and eco-building don’t always go hand in hand, but in the case of under-floor heating, they do. On the eco-front, the water circulating in the coiled pipes beneath the floor does not need to be very hot (45 -50 degrees compared to 80 in radiators), and can easily be supplied using alternative heat sources such as solar panels, a ground source heat pump or wood-burning stove. As the heat is gently radiated from a large area, the localized hot and cool spots, dry air and draughtiness often associated with other heating systems should be less likely. When it comes to style, radiators, even salvaged ones, are seldom things of beauty, and need to be below a window to operate efficiently, making floor-length curtains a no-no. Under-floor heating takes up no wall space – a real bonus in our open-plan sitting room, with floor-to-ceiling french windows on one side and carriage doors into the compartments or rooms on the other. So we just need to decide on a material for the floor. Stone, slate or tiles are preferable, as they transmit heat evenly and are unaffected by changes in temperature and humidity. Trouble is, I’ve set my heart on wood and its warm reflective surfaces. There are countless cautionary tales about supposedly seasoned wood warping after a few weeks, so I’m setting my sights on reclaimed wood that’s had a century or so to settle down. Stability, the patina of age, plus no new trees being felled :let’s hope it’s a winning combination.

 

26 May 2007 - PLANNING UPDATE

The structural engineer can’t see an obvious problem with our idea of raising the rear railway carriage off the ground to create a large open-plan living space underneath. A local crane company has quoted the price of a small runaround car to hoik the train up off its concrete base to allow the building work to begin, and then winch it back once foundations have been laid and the necessary supports put in place. Even the planners, after an on-site visit, have made positive noises – though I hate to tempt fate by saying so. And Mike, our architect, is confident that we’ll still start work this summer. (One effect of global warming that he has observed is that outdoor building work can usually continue well into autumn without being overly disrupted by the weather.) So all is not as glum as it had seemed.

We’re having a few tussles finalising the plans. A rather severe front facade, which in my darker moments I’d likened to a grain silo, has been replaced by something more in keeping with the existing structure, and the solar porch is back. We’ve had to lose the strip of sedum roof along the front, as the depth of insulation, liner and growing medium would have encroached too much on the curved roof lights that give the house so much of its character. But we can keep it on the kitchen roof. Let’s hope that soon it will be full steam ahead.

 

02 Jun 2007 - POTTED VEG PLOT
As our garden will soon hopefully become a building site with a stray railway carriage stretched across it (while the work is being done in order for it to become our new first storey), there seems little point in doing much more sowing or planting. I learned the hard way at our London house that horticulture and building work simply don’t mix, losing hundreds of pounds worth of plants in the process. So I’m just going to have to be patient. In the meantime, our aspirations towards self-sufficiency are confined to containers in which I am attempting to grow a fair amount of fruit and veg. A collection of old zinc baths is home to herbs and salad leaves, while in three old salvaged apple crates (each about 1.3 metres square and 80cm above ground) I have a burgeoning crop of broad beans, spinach, strawberries, courgettes and ‘Tumbler’ tomatoes.
09 Jun 2007 - ALL CHANGE!

What a roller coaster ride this building lark is. There we were, after a great meeting with our architect, feeling optimistic about getting the revised drawings in for planning permission soon. And then came an early morning email out of the blue. Due to personal reasons, Mike is closing down his practice. He’d hoped to keep our job on, along with one other eco-project nearby. But circumstances have changed, and this is no longer possible. Nearly two years and several thousand pounds down the line and we have no planning permission, no plans and no architect.

We try to tell ourselves things aren’t as bad as they seem. We know exactly what we want to do with the place, and the drawings just need to be turned from sketches into something that will impress the planners. Several friends who are architects are interested in the project – perhaps one of them can help. I get on the blower. Top of the list is the chap who had the idea to raise the rear carriage off the ground. But he works for a well-known London practice and is too busy working on an eco-building in the States – which, paradoxically, involves him flying out for meetings every few weeks. Nick, who works mainly in London yet spends weekends near us at the sea, is extremely interested. As is Laura, who has a longstanding interest in railway carriage houses. And then there’s the local practice to whom most of our ex-architect’s work is being entrusted. After all this time, it is back to the drawing board. But whose?

One of the advantages of container growing is that produce is kept above ground level, away from the ravages of rabbits, snails, slugs and curious children. The major disadvantage – particularly in a dry year such as this – is that they need more watering, but we’re hoping to set up a timed irrigation system using leaky hose pipes. “Remote control” gardening may seem crazy to some, but it seemed to be working for us – until we discovered the neighbours’ cats had been using the strawberry bed as a high-rise litter tray in our absence. Oh well, nothing a bit of netting and a few spiny plant supports can’t solve…

 

16 Jun 2007 - CAMPER VAN RESCUE

While clearing the garden the other weekend, I was inspired to give our ancient lilac VW camper van an overhaul. The veteran of many a music festival, and even employed as a mobile greenhouse in my allotment days (I’d trundle it round the block in the afternoons to make the most of the sun), it has been languishing unloved for far too long. Dreams of getting it back on the road were thwarted when the mechanic who collected the van returned it, terrified, after the brakes and steering went on the way back to his garage. But it suddenly struck me that our camper might have a quieter and rather more ecologically sound retirement (we were lucky to get 20 mpg) as an extra outdoor bedroom. One becomes very popular in the summer with a house by the sea and this way, should the spare room already be occupied, we can accommodate the odd “pitcher-upper” in style. Also, once building work finally starts and the railway carriage house becomes uninhabitable, we’ll still have somewhere to stay on site so we can keep an eye on things. I was just planning where to park it, and plant a purple clematis to scramble over the roof, when Frank announced that he’d thought of the perfect solution for his outdoor “boys’ den”: an old tug boat. It’s an inspired idea – and might be useful in other ways should sea levels continue to rise apace. But, unless we’re careful, this place is going to look like a nursing home for elderly dilapidated vehicles.

 

23 Jun 2007 - INSPIRATION FILE
As we search for a new architect, I’m compiling an “inspiration file” of photographs, magazine cuttings, eco-suppliers and other paraphernalia that may help us get over the aesthetic and ideas we are after. Unused to reading architects’ drawings – particularly those that are computer-generated – I find the gap between what I see on the page and what will go up on the ground quite hard to fathom, and want to ensure we set off on the right footing. After all, we employed the first chap because he was the only other person (bar one) I knew who’d come across Handmade Houses: the Woodbutcher’s Art – a handbook of hillbilly huts and hideways in the States – only to find that he went all modernist on us towards the end. So I’ve been sticking in pictures of clapboard cottages, shingle-clad cabins and even a treehouse incorporating an abandoned boat and fragments of an old passenger plane, now lived in by a former aide to Jimmy Carter (see another fantastic book, Treehouses by P Henderson and A Mornement - Frances Lincoln £25). There are some modern buildings – the conservatory of a Swedish house to show the slim proportions we favour for the windows; a simple silhouette for the untreated chestnut railings and deck. It’s all about detail now – we’ve arrived at the overall layout and are happy with our sketches. When it comes to aesthetics, it is always easier to demonstrate than to describe – and having learned the hard way (paying to have a new brick wall re-pointed and a custom-built bookcase dismantled because I felt they weren’t quite right), I now favour images over words every time.

 

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The.Guardian:
Green House


Introducing Elspeth Thompson’s diary of the transformation of two dilapidated former railway carriages into a state-of-the-art eco-home/ the eco-home of her dreams.
 

 
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