Selfbuild Spring 2023

Future

What does it mean to self-build a house? It can mean rolling up your sleeves and going full DIY (p126) but for most it will be a mix of DIY and outside help (p72) or hiring a builder or multiple tradesmen (p32).

It’s true that building a home is less complicated than it’s made out to be. It is possible to create a simple house to a budget that won’t make your eyes water (p62).

But it’s also true that you need a good structural engineer to help you along the way. You will rely on them for technical advice.

Astrid Madsen - Editor astrid.madsen@selfbuild.ie

And that’s the point. Selfbuilding is not so much about how much DIY you do, it’s about taking ownership of your project.

It means deciding how you will build your house (p88). It means keeping an eye on things to make sure you get what you want (p22) and that the house is regulations compliant (p14).

Your engineer or architectural designer will do site checks and will sign off on the mortgage stage payments (p84) so do take the time it takes to find the right advisor.

And enjoy the process. Happy building!

MARKETING

Calum Lennon calum.lennon@selfbuild.ie Victoria Hunter victoria.hunter@selfbuild.ie

SUBSCRIPTIONS/EVENTS Becca.Wilgar becca.wilgar@selfbuild.ie

EDITOR

Astrid Madsen astrid.madsen@selfbuild.ie

DESIGN

Myles McCann myles.mccann@selfbuild.ie

Shannon Quinn shannon.quinn@selfbuild.ie

Joanna McConvey joanna.mcconvey@ selfbuild.ie

Lisa Killen lisa.killen@selfbuild.ie

Advice

83 New Advice section on selfbuild.ie

Take a look at how we’ve revamped our online advice pages.

84 Self-build mortgages

What they are and how to get one in NI and ROI today.

90 Bungalow hemp renovation

A project in Co Cavan shows how it’s done.

94

Bathroom mirrors

The latest trends in mirrors, whether you’re looking for a statement piece or something functional.

Projects

Learn from other self-builders all over the island of Ireland who have built new or renovated their home.

22

A home in the forest

This modern new build blends into its forest surroundings in Co Wicklow, even though planning conditions meant selfbuilders David and Lisa Magnier couldn’t do it exactly as they wanted.

32

Universal design

A hotly contested planning application made its way to appeal in Co Antrim. Sean McHenry ultimately won the case for his parents as it was based on need. This is the house they built.

42 Back to the future

How Denise and Fiachra Sinnott transformed their tired old 1980s chalet in Co Cork into a 21st century family home. All it took was a new roof and an internal makeover.

62

Keep it simple

Quantity surveyor Emma Ford built her Insulating Concrete Formwork (ICF) home for just €250k in Co Waterford by choosing a beautifully simple design.

66 Building orchard house

Stephen and Vicki Murray share what it was like building in Co Louth during Covid and getting their open plan dream home at the end of it.

72

Add-ons

Under the spell of Slemish

52

This Co Antrim home was built by a developer who gave Leigh-Ann Jackson and family the opportunity to change the design and choose everything that was to go into the house, down to the sockets.

How Liam and Fiona Canavan are getting on with their timber frame bungalow style extension in Co Laois.

76 Finishing the tin house

86

Top 10 energy savers

Small changes that could make a big difference to your bills.

Matthew and Hannah Sterrett just finished building their modern house in Co Tyrone. They share how they fitted it out on a budget.

The case against open plan

96

Trendy and practical, open plan designs also have some downsides.

SELFBUILD: THE ALL-IRELAND

Eco building: Is it an option?

88

The case for building with natural materials in Ireland today.

All articles equally cover the 32 counties; when we refer to the Republic of Ireland the abbreviation is ROI. For Northern Ireland it’s NI.

No ban for rural one-off housing

The much anticipated ROI rural housing guidelines consultation document, to be published early this year, will include a right to build your own home in a remote area if you have a work or family reason to do so.

Minister of State for planning and local government Peter Burke told a Fine Gael Ard Fheis in November that there would be no ban on one-off housing. The rural housing guidelines currently allow one-off housing but in certain areas there is a locals only condition. This is under review following objections from Europe.

“The last guidelines on rural housing were issued in 2005, and there has been an absence of policy in the interim which has often meant housing authorities have been unsure how to proceed through the development management process.”

While the consultation document has not yet been published Minister Burke gave some insights as what it might contain: “The new guidelines clearly state that those who have a need to build their own home in rural Ireland will be permitted to do so if they have a clear economic or social need.”

“An economic need could be those who work in rural Ireland, whether this be on a farm or in a rural-based enterprise. An example of a social need could be if a person or family comes from the area, or have been living there for the last 10 to 15 years.”

“The same safeguards will still be in place in terms of site suitability,” he added. “As every area is different geographically, planning authorities can show discretion in order to get the right balance.” Some areas

near towns are likely to be harder to get planning for.

“While rural housing cannot be permitted in every area for every person, those who have a genuine need must be given the option to live where they come from, to continue to work on the land, develop rural Ireland and keep our towns and villages strong and vibrant places,” Minister Burke added.

“The planning authorities in each area will be updating their rural housing policies to take cognisance of these new guidelines once they are finalised. An Bord Pleanála too will take these guidelines into account when adjudicating on appeals.”

Self-build goes up in flames

A Co Kerry home was burned down due to a lightning strike early in 2023.

No one was hurt but the family of six lost all of its possessions. The blaze ravaged the upper storey of the home they built in 2006, with most of the roof now gone. Ceilings have collapsed downstairs due to debris and water penetration, according to a report on Virgin Media News.

A GoFundMe page was set up for the family by their friends, which raised nearly €40k at the time of Selfbuild going to print. According to an update on the page, the insurance company said the house was under insured by about €75k.

EV chargers for all new builds

ROI new builds now have to include EV charging points, bringing it in line with the situation in NI.

New dwelling houses with a parking space located within the boundary of the dwelling will have to include an EV charging point, announced the ROI Minister for Housing in November.

The new rule applies where the relevant works commence or take place on or after 1 November 2022.

New planning portal for NI

Paperless submissions are now the norm in NI thanks to a new planning portal launched in December. You can log on to submit and review planning applications online, report breaches of planning control and submit requests for regional planning applications.

Planning applications in NI can currently

time, including those who currently hold a Public Access account.

Validation checklists

Infrastructure Minister John O’Dowd also intends to introduce validation checklists for planning applications to further help speed up the process.

The checklists will aim to improve the

NI to scrap heat pump red tape

It could become easier to install a heat pump in NI as the Department of Infrastructure plans to relax planning permission rules around their installation.

The Department of Infrastructure proposes to revise permitted development rights to make it easier and quicker for homeowners to install low carbon heat pumps. The uptake of heat pump technology in NI has been much slower than in ROI.

Currently, among other restrictions, in NI air source heat pumps can be installed as long as its components are no less than 30 metres from another dwelling, not facing the road, and not more than two metres in height.

In England the distance rule is now one metre, Wales three metres while Scotland and ROI have no distance restriction.

The proposed changes would see the distance reduced from 30m to 1m and increase the height restriction from 2m to 3m. The heat pump will have to comply with Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) Planning Standards or equivalent standards, which have limits on noise and adhere to good practice standards.

take months to process. You need to apply for planning permission if you plan to build a house.

The new Planning Portal is now live for 10 of the 11 Councils in NI. Mid Ulster District Council provides its own online service for anyone wishing to submit or comment on a planning application in the Mid Ulster area.

The new portal was funded by the Department for Infrastructure and replaces the Northern Ireland Planning Portal (NIPP) which had reached the end of its operational life.

With over 12,000 planning applications submitted each year, the Department says this is the largest joint IT project between central and local government to date in NI.

Anyone wishing to submit a planning application or track or comment on an application will need to create a new user account when using the system for the first

quality of applications being submitted and speed up the overall processing times for applications. It is only when an application becomes valid that the timeframes for processing it kick in.

“The introduction of validation checklists would go a long way to improving the quality of planning applications entering the planning system,” said Minister O’Dowd.

“This new process would give applicants the clarity they seek when lodging a planning application, by clearly specifying at the outset what information is required for applications of a particular type, nature, scale or location. This new measure should also speed up the process by reducing the requests for additional information.”

The public consultation closed on January 6, 2023. There are no details as to when the checklists will be rolled out.

Other restrictions and conditions including those in relation to World Heritage Sites, conservation areas and listed buildings. These will remain unchanged, and will continue to require consent.

Ground and water source

Ground and water source heat pumps cannot currently be installed if any part of the heat pump or its housing is within 3m of the boundary of the curtilage of the dwelling and exceeds 4m in height, alongside restrictions in relation to listed buildings and road frontage.

The Department wants to align the permitted development rights with Scotland, England and Wales and allow ground and water source heat pump installations with no conditions or limitations.

The NI Department of Infrastructure launched a new website to streamline the planning application process.

One-off houses cheapest to build

Building on a greenfield site in the countryside remains the most cost effective way to build a house, says the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI).

The architects’ lobby group believes one-off houses in the countryside to be the most cost effective to build, reports the Irish Times.

“The lowest cost housing is building houses on greenfield sites outside our urban centres and, therefore, that’s what we’re generally getting, and while planning policy supports compact growth, affordability and viability is a really strong force,” said Claire McManus, an RIAI council member who supports the development of higher density housing schemes and the reuse of vacant buildings.

“What counts in the system is the cost to deliver, the sales values, and self-selected local opinion. Building houses on greenfield sites is the cheapest – it gets the least local opposition, and the sales values are higher

than anything else.”

“But if we started counting all the other stuff that we say matters, such as the ability to survive without a car, or the permanent loss of agricultural land and hedgerows, and the cost of all of these car journeys, if we counted all of those things and brought them into the system in a real way, in a financial way, then we’d start to see the more sustainable development being possible and viable,” she said.

She added that incentives would not necessarily prevent the development of detached homes and low-density estates, but it might mean there are less of them.

Construction activity slows

Planning permissions granted for new homes also sharply declined in ROI, with statistics from the Central Statistics Office showing a decrease of 41 per cent in the number of new dwellings given planning permission in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the same time last year.

In NI, developers report a cooling of the market too. “Home buyer demand in Northern Ireland remains high with the need for new homes continuing to outstrip supply,” said Padraig Venney, NHBC Regional Director for NI and Isle of Man, in the National House Building Council Q3 report on housing starts. “Despite this, only builders in commuter towns around Belfast are still providing strong sales, with all others reporting a slowdown.”

Meanwhile, the ROI government is funding a recruitment campaign to attract foreign workers, and expats to return home, in a bid to tackle the current labour shortage, with CIF director of skills Dermot Carey saying “somewhere in the region of 80,000 people over the next ten years will be needed to meet the demand for the industry”.

The recruitment drives are taking place from England and Greece to South Africa.

Inflation adds €20k to build costs

The house builder said that even though inflation persisted into the second half of 2022, it had eased compared the earlier in the year.

“The cost of building new homes in Ireland therefore remains significantly elevated compared to two years ago with our build costs having increased by about €35,000 per new home in this period,” the statement said. Their homes are highly sought after by first time buyers with 1,526 new home sales in 2022, up from 1,120 the previous year. The company is registering healthy profits.

ROI dearest place to build

The ROI government is paying up to €138,000 more to build social housing than other European countries, according to a report by the Land Development Agency dated April 2021. The Business Post published the report, which compared the cost of building in Naas to similar housing projects in France and Germany.

The cost of building developer homes increased by about €20,000 per new unit in 2022, house builder Cairn Homes said in a trading update.

It’s over €130k more expensive to build social housing in Ireland than in other European countries, according to a leaked report.

Inflation and slower house price growth “contributed to a sharp contraction in residential activity” in November, said John McCartney, Director & Head of Research at BNP Paribas Real Estate Ireland.

When Self Build Becomes a Team Effort

Our Name is changing but we will still offer the same great service with Free 1-2-1 Advice on your project.

As Unilin Insulation, we will continue to provide you with a range of high performance insulation products along with a full technical support and advice service to help you achieve a cost effective, passive standard new home.

Renovation grants open to all

ROI’s Croi Cónaithe Fund, which offers up to €50k to renovate derelict buildings, is off to a slow start.

The €30,000 Croí Cónaithe Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant, available to refurbish a home you will live in, was originally announced in July for rural towns and villages and is now open to all. Where a property is derelict, a maximum top-up grant amount of up to €20,000 is available.

Local authorities will prioritise applications in areas where the level of vacancy or dereliction is high.

The grants can also be combined with the SEAI Better Energy Home Scheme that covers works of up to €26,750.

Over 420 applications have been made since the grant was initially launched on 14 July 2022.

However, so far just €70,000 of the Croi Cónaithe fund grants aimed at renovating derelict buildings has been drawn down since it was launched. 419 applications were made to councils, of which 66 have been successful.

Figures obtained by extra.ie confirm 15 local authorities out of ROI’s 31 have not approved a single home so far under the scheme, including rural counties such as Cavan, Donegal, Kerry, Kilkenny, Longford, Louth, Meath, Roscommon and Waterford.

ROI Housing Minister O’Brien launched

the scheme to renovate derelict 2,000 homes by 2025 with a budget of €30m.

TD Claire Kerrane told extra.ie: “I initially said that the target to restore 2,000 vacant homes by 2025 wasn’t ambitious enough but looking at the tiny number of applications approved, should that continue, we’ll get nowhere near to 2,000.”

“To avoid this, we need to make sure these applications are approved in a timely manner and that the funding is there to meet that demand.”

The Department of Housing argues that interest in the grant has been “very encouraging” and that processing application can take time, due to local authorities carrying out site visits and requesting further documentation.

A government review of the scheme is expected no later than mid-2024.

Celebrity build in Co Galway

Yet the 42 year old sounds upbeat about her dream Connemara home saying it’s “very exciting” but as anyone who’s built a house knows, it’s a “lot of work”.

“The costing schedule is for the birds because absolutely everything has gone up,” she said. “We were over budget from the foundations being laid. No joke. Before we put a block on the site we were already over budget because we needed more fill in the land.”

“It’s unlikely it’s going to be fully finished at the end and we’ll probably have to consider a top up of the mortgage. But as long as we have the basics we’ll be grand. It all comes down to what we can afford, it might take ten years but we’ll get there.”

As Selfbuild went to print the windows were in and the exterior of the house plastered. You can follow her updates on Instagram @sileseoige

Interest rates jump

Plans for NI energy advice hub

The Energy One Stop Shop (OSS) is likely to copy the Scottish model whereby its government created new brands for the Scottish Net Zero One Stop Shop, Home Energy Scotland (HES) and Business Energy Scotland (BES). All three stand under the Scottish government’s Net Zero Scotland banner.

The Scottish government appointed Energy Saving Trust Scotland to deliver the HES and BES services in partnership and under contractual arrangement with other local organisations. The consultation favours this approach.

A Co Tyrone woman who self-built with her partner in January 2020 got a discounted rate, off the bank’s standard variable rate, as part of her self-build mortgage. When the build was done, the interest rate reverted back to the standard variable rate, greatly increasing the monthly repayment amount. According to a mortgage broker, the Bank of England increased its interest rates to 3 per cent with the banks now charging around 6 per cent for a fixed rate. Tracker mortgages offer the best interest rates, as they are pegged to the central bank’s.

NI plans to create a new entity for homeowners to get impartial advice about energy including guidance on what their options are and what supports they may be entitled to.

TV personality Síle Seoige is building her home in Co Galway, telling RSVP Home magazine “the cost of building a house is laughable at this stage”.

A story in

Belfast Telegraph highlights how interest rates jump on selfbuild mortgages after the build is complete.

Defects

This book is part history, part autopsy, of how Ireland managed to build so many defective homes and apartment buildings over the past decades.

Eoin Ó Broin gives specific examples of how statutes of limitations and bankruptcy filings in ROI protect those responsible for building homes. There’s the sad reality that developers and builders alike remain largely unaccountable for poor building practices.

Beyond the proverbial shoddy workmanship, there are the defective concrete products that contain high amounts of mica or pyrite. These faulty materials have affected thousands of homes and yet they too have no recourse. “In many cases of Celtic Tiger latent defects, having HomeBond [a warranty to protect homeowners from

structural defects] provided no remedy for homeowners,” writes Ó Broin.

What’s perhaps most troubling about this detailed account of defects is that to this day, homeowners seem to be no more protected than they were in the Celtic Tiger

days.

Yes, there were changes to building control legislation but these only added layers of paperwork for architects and engineers to sign off on projects. It even introduced a conflict of interest, in that the developer directly pays the architect for this certification.

Plus, if a defect were to appear there is still no recourse to have it paid for by the developer or builder. The litigation process is expensive and out of the financial reach of most people.

The solution on the first point is to have a building control system similar to the one in operation in NI, where the local authority oversees certification on every single building project at each key stage of the build. Ironically, the government’s main objection to this has been that they could be sued if their inspector didn’t do their job well. And there’s the need to

Mica homes in NI ‘tip of the iceberg’

hire more staff.

Even if they do get sued once in a while, it would be a much smaller price to pay (financially, ethically and socially) than bailing out developers and directly paying for the rebuilding of homes. It would also bring about better building practices and more attention to detail.

It’s true that currently, large developments do get inspected by the building control officer in the local authority, but primarily for fire. Which is something. But definitely not enough.

Defects: Living with the Legacy of the Celtic Tiger by Eoin Ó Broin, published by Merrion Press, irishacademicpress.ie, paperback, 208 pages, €16.95/£14.99, ISBN 9781785373961

Meanwhile Professor Paul Dunlop, Research Director in Geography & Environmental Sciences at Ulster University in Coleraine, did tests on his home in Buncrana, Co Donegal, in 2020 and found it was contaminated with mica and pyrrhotite.

“I don’t think there’s gonna just be one or five or 10 houses,” Garrett Harte, a spokesman for homeowners affected by mica, told The Newsletter. “It will probably be concentrated mainly in Derry and Tyrone.” In ROI 6,000 homes have been identified as having mica, a mineral that causes concrete block to crumble.

In November a Co Derry couple confirmed their home had mica and that it would take £100k to repair it.

“We have tested homes in Donegal and found pyrrhotite is the primary reason homes are cracking in. It is not mica.” He says pyrrhotite is much more serious and that houses containing the mineral will have to be demolished.

“Only one house in Northern Ireland has been proven to have the problem so far. But that is the tip of the iceberg I think. Do you think that concrete was sold for just one home in Northern Ireland?”

Poor building practices and defects tend to be chalked up to the Celtic Tiger years. Unfortunately, shoddy workmanship hasn’t gone away and there’s still no recourse for homeowners when things go wrong. Eoin Ó Broin’s book Defects explains how we got to this point.

5pc concrete levy will add over €1k to build costs

The ROI levy on concrete will now be introduced in September 2023, as the Mica Action Group and CIF say it does nothing to deal with quality control issues.

Concrete blocks and pouring concrete will incur the 5 per cent concrete levy, while precast products like hollowcore slabs will not.

Budget 2023 had included a 10 per cent levy on all concrete products to help pay for the rebuilding of mica affected homes. The move will add at least €1,200 to the cost of building a new block built semi detached three bedroom house, said the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland at an Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach on October 27, 2022.

For a timber frame house with block external leaf, it would add €700.

However, officials from the Department of Finance said it would be higher than that due to rising energy costs and inflation, among other factors.

Tom Parlon of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) indicated a figure of €2k, adding that timber framed homes required 2,000 blocks on average.

The levy will now be introduced in September instead of April, and the government expects it will raise over €30 million over 12 months.

Tom Parlon said the levy was a “blunt

instrument” and is not targeting those responsible for the defects. He said the defective blocks problem was “a quality control issue” that should be dealt with “surgically”.

Still no prosecution or regulation

Lisa Hone, chair of Mica Action Group, told the committee there still had been no prosecutions in relation to the reasons why defective blocks were allowed to be sold. She added that self-regulation still prevails: “Until the government grasps the nettle and overhauls the regime of self-regulation with an effective form of government, taxpayers will continue to be asked to sign a blank cheque to remedy the violations of an industry without accountability.”

Meanwhile Finance Minister ruled out a sunset clause on the levy: “I think it is important that this measure does not have a sunset clause so that we can keep it in place for as long as is deemed necessary to recoup back a good share of the additional money that is needed to help homes be rebuilt due to mica.”

Lisa Hone said that the suppliers of the defective blocks were not a “few bad apples” but a systematic failure across the country:

“The levy seems to be smokescreen to persuade the public the government is holding companies to account. This won’t touch them. They are operating unhindered and haven’t paid one cent.”

Most apartments have defects

The majority of apartments and duplexes built between 1991 and 2013 had fire safety, structural safety, and water ingress defects, said Junior Minister James Brown. The average cost of remediation is likely to be approximately €25k each; with 62,500 to 100,000 units affected the total bill estimate is between €1.56 to €2.5 billion.

He confirmed a government working report on the issue found there is no

single cause of defects. West of Ireland Independent TD Sean Canney blamed the building defects on past decisions within the industry to get rid of good practices.

“[I]t would not be appropriate for those in charge of defective buildings to delay the undertaking of any remediation work that is considered necessary from a life safety point of view,” said Junior Minister Brown.”

He said Housing Minister Darragh O Brien is looking at introducing new legislation to deal with the defects.

“Given that the overall potential scale and estimated cost to fix the problem is so considerable it will take many years to address all the buildings affected,” Junior Minister Brown added.

Two thirds of apartments and duplex homes built in ROI over three decades don’t comply with regs.

Bungalows back in the spotlight

One-off houses are most often built by those who plan to live in the house themselves. Self-builds in the sense that the homeowners manage the construction of their home.

What those houses actually look like has evolved over the years. First came the traditional cottage, a compact design built with locally available materials. Most often stone and thatch. Then came the bungalow, a house type that owes much to the book of house plans first published by John Fitzsimmons in 1971 entitled Bungalow Bliss.

The books sold so well that on average, one in every rural home owned a copy.

Again, these homes were built with what was locally available at the time, mostly concrete products. Themselves abundant due to the high number of quarries.

While the cottage is held up in the highest of esteem by both architects and the public at large, not to mention influential figures, the bungalow does not get the same treatment. Here to set

the record straight is Adrian Duncan’s new book on the contentious topic.

When Selfbuild has a chat with him, Adrian refused to take sides in the debate, instead pointing out that bungalows served a very important purpose. Empowering people to build their own homes. He argues there is a more nuanced way to look at them.

Little Republics

Adrian got a taste of house design when he was young, having grown up in a bungalow of Fitzsimons’ design in Co Longford. In the summer he’d help his dad out, a draughtsman who submitted hand-drawn plans to the planners for one-off houses.

Adrian went on to qualify as a structural engineer and ended up working on commercial projects. Then in 2008 he switched careers. Art was his calling. Through his studies, he was drawn to contemporary and modernist architecture in all parts of the world, from Brazil to Japan.

As he explored contemporary architecture, he circled back to how Ireland tackled the topic. That’s when he started to pour over

the unique story of the Irish bungalow. Adrian delved into why they look the way they do. And why they’re so disliked, especially by architects.

After all, bungalows have a good scale and are buildable. They retain pragmatic elements of the traditional cottage and are affordable. But they did not take much notice of their environment. In particular, the very sites they were built on.

Adrian argues bungalows on flat land worked reasonably well but as soon as they came up against undulations and hilly sites, common on the west coast of Ireland, they had more trouble blending in. “Where they were sited was not ideal,” Adrian says. Dispersed dwellings dotting the countryside became commonplace. Something that had happened before, he’s keen to point out.

It only became an issue because it was the first time services had to be brought to them. This had both cost and environmental ramifications.

He also highlights the fact

that cars on roads were the way to travel. That’s what the government and pretty much everyone else bought into. Car ownership is a major reason for the settlement pattern, which no one wants to be accountable for.

How are Ireland’s bungalows unique?

Off the shelf pattern books date back to the Victorian era. By the turn of the 20th Century it had taken off in the United States and Americans were buying kit homes to assemble themselves. Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold over 70,000 kit houses through its Modern Homes and Honor Bilt catalogues.

In the UK, the Daily Mail newspaper published a design book in the 1950s that had a big influence on Jack Fitzsimmons’ self-published pattern book.

Adrian points out that in the US Frank Llyod Wright had an answer to the kit houses, his Usonian Automatics. Wright was keen to create affordable house designs for homes that people could build themselves. But it’s probably fair to say that Walter Segal was more successful in getting that architectural message and mission across.

The Irish difference is that while many of these designs took their surroundings into account, bungalows here did not.

A key driver for this difference, argues Adrian, was the planning permission process being overseen by engineers. The planning offices had no architects or spatial planners involved. The focus was on 2D diagrams

Love them or hate them, bungalows are part of Ireland’s social fabric. Adrian Duncan looks at their cultural impact in his latest book and current expo.

Adrian Duncan

Today paints a different picture as county development plans require house design take into account the site.

But homes built today also tend to be much larger, and perhaps more architecturally ambitious than the humble bungalows built from the 1970s through to the 1990s. And it seems, they are no less disliked.

The Story of Bungalow Bliss exhibition curated by the Irish Architectural Archive and Askeaton Contemporary Arts takes place in Dublin from January to March 2023, askeatonarts.com

Mini Ireland

his model of a vacant house pictured right was built for Nathan’s exhibition on dereliction across Ireland. It’s a house in Bishopstown, Co Cork, that was intergenerationally rented. It was first occupied by Mr Lambe, the

land steward serving the farm behind the house, and his family. The farm was owned by a Mr Sheehan who left it to the African Missionaries and they built the SMA Church on part of it.

The area still had very much a rural feel to it up to the early 1970s in spite of Bishopscourt being built in front and below it. The small extension at the back was built by one of the tenants.

After the last occupant passed away

the property bounced around the courts and different developers over planning difficulties and now sits as derelict in the town.

“As an artist my passion is to capture buildings as they are, their soul and the people who inhabited them, it is not enough to create a sterile ‘model’ of a building, the art is in capturing its story as it is from all angles,” said Wheeler.

nathanwheelerdesign.ie

Two thirds say new homes should be timber frame

64 per cent of people in Ireland believe more timber frame houses should be built, according to Red C research commissioned by Coillte.

More than four in five agree Ireland should continue to produce enough certified Irish wood to support the construction of homes in Ireland. And two thirds believe more time framed houses should be built rather than using concrete or steel.

House prices ‘to moderate’

A European Commission report expects house prices in ROI to moderate after experiencing an increase in 2022.

The price rises were attributed to high demand from “excess savings” and the supply shortfall. In nominal terms, house price growth was 12.2 per cent in August. The Commission and ECB assessments find “no signs of house price overvaluation” but the report highlights the Irish think tank, the Economic and Social Research Institute did.

SPRING 2023 / SELFBUILD / 17 NEWS

Artist Nathan Wheeler is capturing the new vernacular: derelict buildings.

BOOK REVIEWS

There is strong support in Ireland for expanding Irish forests and forestry products, according to the new research published in October 2022.

House prices should fall as real incomes decrease, and mortgage interest rates increase, according to a DirectorateGeneral for Economic and Financial Affairs report published in November.

More than insulation

Leading insulation manufacturer Xtratherm has rebranded to Unilin Insulation after serving the Irish construction industry for over 30 years.

Eight years in the making, this change marks the company’s evolution to one of Europe’s largest PIR insulation manufacturers and to a global supplier of building products to the construction industry.

Self-builders will continue to benefit from the company’s Platinum Service which offers free advice for your specific project, from design stage to delivery of real performance on site. You get the assurance of a validation process from calculation to

installation.

The Platinum Service also includes your BER/SAP calculations off your plans, including certified U-value calculations, condensation risk analysis and Y-value performance calculations. Plus you’ll get a pre tender specification check, training on installation and a validation process to ensure the products are installed correctly.

The Platinum Service can be availed of on projects where at least one other Xi product is used along with a cavity wall system within that range achieving a U-value of less than 0.15 W/sqmK.

unilininsulation.ie

Cost effective and eco friendly

If you’re in the market for a highly sustainable heating solution for your home, check out the Grant Spira Pell condensing wood pellet boiler. Recently launched by leading heating technology manufacturer Grant, the Spira Pell is one of the manufacturer’s most cost-effective heating technologies. The fuel consists of wood pellets, an indigenous and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels.

The Spira Pell range is made using high grade steel and stainless steel, with the same simplicity of operation of any boiler type and is available in outputs from 5kW to 33kW. The model is easily installed and offers optimal control with an easy-to-use

touch screen which provides clear and accurate information on the system’s daily operations.

The original Spira was launched in 2011 and was the world’s first condensing wood pellet boiler. The new Spira Pell model includes new and improved features including a universal hopper and rapid ignition.

grant.eu

Lovin’ it

The popular Love Your Home event has been inspiring home improvers, garden enthusiasts and art lovers for well over a decade. This year, it’s back in Belfast at the Titanic Exhibition Centre from the 9th to the 11th June, 10am to 6pm each day.

Foodies will be glad to know a brand new show will run parallel to the main event: Love Your Food.

The Love Your Food show will showcase a wide range of local food, drinks, restaurants, kitchen gadgets, books, and food tours. Attractions include cooking demos, drinks demos, talks covering topics like nutrition, cutting waste, foraging and reusing leftovers.

There will be some fun elements too like competitions and audience participation. Attendance is free and you can book your tickets online.

loveyourhome.show loveyourfood.show

As Unilin Insulation, we will continue to provide you with a range of high performance insulation products along with a full technical support and advice service to help you achieve a cost effective, passive standard new

Overview

Words: Heather Campbell Photography: Dermot Byrne

AHomeforest in the

A gift of land provided David and Lisa

with the opportunity to return to Ireland to pursue building a dream family home.

Magnier

isa and I had been living and working in Amsterdam for a number of years, when we began seriously thinking about starting a family,” says David. “Lisa’s parents, Paul and Mellen, had previously very generously offered us a piece of their garden to build on, back home in Co Wicklow. We weren’t ready to leave at that point, but when they strategically reoffered it later, we jumped at the chance. It is so hard to get onto the property ladder in Ireland at the moment; we recognised this was a real step forward for us.”

“It is a beautiful piece of land, surrounded by forestry. Once we started to actually consider building our home there, our imaginations started firing at what we could do. We didn’t want to build anything ostentatious or opulent. We were driven to create something that was really efficient to live in, with no wasted space and lots of light. So space efficiency and light capture were the two themes that we made all our design decisions around.”

Perseverance

“Because we didn’t want a traditional style home, when we went to get planning permission we ran into all kinds of problems,” says David. “The council wanted us to build a dormer bungalow, because that’s the style of property that exists in the area. There was a lot of fighting to try and get what we wanted, and some of the compromises we had to make did affect our design decisions. For example, the height of our house is exactly the same as the dormer bungalow at the other end of the garden – to the centimetre.”

“It took us nine months to get planning over the line. It was frustrating, because the house style that what was ‘in keeping’ with the area came from a very different era. So, there was a lot of back and forth, and compromises made. We originally wanted to timber clad the building so it would sink into the forestry landscape, but they refused this. So that was one of the reasons we chose a dark render on the outside; to try and blend it into the background.”

“A local architectural designer provided

Build

the fundamental design and helped us navigate the planning quagmire. When it was time to build, we hired an architectural designer/builder team to project manage the construction. We chose them because they had a novel way of building using light gauge steel frame rather than timber frame. They originally pitched to us that they would build the wall panels off site and it would all go up pretty quickly. Although the panels ended up being assembled on site, the structure did go up quite quickly, probably over a period of six to eight weeks. That was the quickest part of the build by far.”

Overall, the project was a long and drawn out affair. “We were grateful that we could live with Lisa’s parents during the build, because we encountered every Grand Designs scenario you could think of – where no one is realistic about timelines and everything gets very stressful.”

“Perseverance was the overall theme of this build, right from the start, but we got there in the end. Ultimately it was thanks to the head contractor and his team, and the follow through of the secondary architectural designer and project manager, that we finished the build.”

Beauty and efficiency

“We built to a passive house standard,” says David. “There is a light gauge steel frame with a couple of steel beams for overhangs and we have large triple glazed windows and skylights above the shower and the hallway, a fibreglass membrane roof, air to water heat pump, under floor heating upstairs and downstairs and mechanical heat recovery ventilation. The house is very efficient.”

“We don’t have an entrance hallway, as it’s not an efficient use of space. When you enter through the front door there’s a small coat hanging area. To the right, there’s a staircase made of ash that incorporates a bookshelf and an understairs pantry located behind a hidden door. It’s a real custom piece of work made by my friends; a metal fabricator and a wood fabricator. They crafted it together, based off a design that

Q&A with David

What is your favourite room? Biggest splurge?

My favourite room, weirdly enough, is our ensuite bathroom. I just love the drama of the bottle green tile and the contrasting white grout. The glass roof above the shower makes it feel like you’re showering under warm rain. The room has a calm, boutique hotel vibe. We had a few splurges like the double sided glass fireplace in the living room. We don’t need it for heat – the house is passive – but during the winter we light it every night at its lowest setting. The custom made stairs was another big spend, but it’s a real centrepiece and the first thing you see when you walk in the door, so we don’t have any regrets. Plus, we were supporting our friends’ business.

What would you change?

I could have made my life a bit easier by compromising on a couple of things, like the skirting boards. Everyone is trying to get you to compromise, because it makes the whole process easier. But we didn’t really do that, which caused problems from the builder’s point of view, and also with the budget. But now that I’m living in it, I’m really happy I didn’t let go.

What surprised you?

Another thing that surprised me was how much I enjoyed learning about the process, and how fascinating the craft of it all is. There are a million baby steps towards getting a house finished, and I quite enjoyed watching them all unfold. That suits my temperament. I like understanding how things are made and how they work.

What single piece of advice would you give a self-builder?

My top piece of advice is to get more involved. Don’t sit back and assume that other people are doing things to the degree that you would want them done or to the timeframe that they have said they’ll be done by. You need to be across everything to make sure that things are arriving on site in the right sequence. Know who’s delivering them.

myself and Lisa had sketched out. It’s a real centrepiece; the first thing you see when you walk in.”

“From that point, you walk into a large open plan space. The kitchen is at the top right, dining area in front of you and then to the left – slightly hidden by a short dividing wall that houses a double-sided gas fireplace – is the living room. Beyond that, there is a small study. A utility/plant room and toilet leads off from the kitchen.”

“Upstairs we have three bedrooms. We could have fitted in four but we wanted the bedrooms to be a generous size. Our master bedroom is the largest, with an ensuite and

walk in wardrobe. The other two bedrooms share the family bathroom.”

“We knew what we wanted the interior to look like. In the evening rooms we have darker walls – dark green in the living room and terracotta with white highlights in the master bedroom. We wanted a sumptuous, cosy vibe for these rooms. In the kitchen we have brighter walls and light composite countertops contrasted with dark blue units.”

“I make furniture for a living, so I took the opportunity to deck the place out with as much stuff as I could possible make, like the big Wicklow beech dining table.”

“There are a lot of strong colours throughout the house. We chose pink for one of the bathrooms while the other one is dark green with black metal accessories. We went with a very modern style but accessorised with handmade and older pieces in natural textures which gives it a bit of soul.”

“Our ethos with the interiors was that nothing should be assumed. Obviously, builders want to put chrome handles on everything and they want to do normal skirting boards and so on. But nothing in this house is standard. All the skirting boards are recessed into the wall with a shadow gap around them. Every door handle has been carefully considered by us.”

“Yes, this caused a massive headache when sourcing everything, but every decision was a decision rather than an assumption. Especially seeing how we sourced absolutely everything, even down to the style of the skirting board. We wanted the detail to be accurate.”

“The living area downstairs is floored with hardwood parquet with some of the leftover parquet used to clad part of the kitchen wall, which helps tie it all together. The kitchen, utility and toilet floors are tiled.”

Upstairs we chose an engineered timber floor. The floorboards are a bit gnarly, with black filled resin bits that give it some character. Thanks to the underfloor heating we can walk around with bare feet with that warm timber feeling underfoot.

Future proofing

“We made the decision to invest in renewable technology to make it as efficient as possible so we wouldn’t have to stretch ourselves financially to pay for the running costs,” says

David. “We installed eight solar panels to generate electricity on the roof of the studio along with the air to water heat pump and mechanical heat recovery system.”

“We know we are going to be living here for a long time, and we are reaping the benefits of long term savings by having made an investment at the start.”

“This house is our future, and so we decided to plan and invest in it for any eventualities we might face down the line. For example, my studio is fully insulated, with a bathroom upstairs and an office that could be turned into a bedroom or living room, so this could be used as an independent one bed apartment if needed.”

“The main challenge of the build was the timeframe; the schedule exploded. It was an expectations versus reality situation. It wasn’t until I took ownership of the build as project manager that the build took on any real momentum. I should have got stuck in with my sleeves rolled up earlier, but I thought I wouldn’t need to do that. It turns out I did.”

“Sourcing good quality fit out items was another challenge. I had to source things from the UK, to buy most of the fundamental things like door handles, sinks, showers and so on. Luckily, we finished before Brexit came into force. I don’t know how we could have done that in today’s trading environment.”

Natural connections

“We have lots of really mature forestry around us. This borrowed landscaping is the backdrop to our garden, which is quite an unstructured, natural style. We don’t have beds, we’ve let nature take over a bit more. I put a pond in for local wildlife and we’ve

David and Lisa’s tips

Be determined but also be willing to compromise when you hit planning issues. Keep going and don’t give up, it will work out in the end.

Furnish the house. A lot of people have this habit of waiting until the house is built before starting to fit it out with furniture. The problem is, you end up under pressure trying to buy all your furniture in one shop. Instead, invest in nice bits of furniture before you even start building. Look out for things when you’re on your travels. Because you’re going to end up spending the same amount, or more, for something more functional and less emotionally attached to you.

planted fruit trees,” says David.

“Lisa’s parents’ back garden looks onto our back garden, so we didn’t want to overly formalise the boundary. We erected a post and rail fence and planted a copper beach hedge to create a soft border. We have a gate in between the gardens so we keep that connection between us.”

“Lisa’s parents have been amazing throughout the process. Without their involvement, it wouldn’t have happened. They were involved at a granular level, and they kept us going.”

“Now that it’s finished, I think they absolutely love it. There was a point during the build where they probably weren’t too sure how this big, grey, dirty cement box was going to turn out like. But overall, now that it’s finished, I think they really like the style of it.”

“We put a lot of thought into making this house work for us, and we haven’t been disappointed. However, there was a sense of an anticlimax when we first moved in, which surprised us. I was expecting to feel happier, get more of an explosion of emotion. It was all very subdued.”

“I suppose it was a two year build, and right up to the big day we had a huge snag list which dampened the sense of excitement. What we didn’t realise was the longer we lived in it, the better it became. The payoff is a long game – there’s no instant gratification. Every day it just keeps getting nicer. It’s a mad, slow reward.”

Spec

Walls: 100mm EPS on cement board on 150mm spray foam insulation between steel joists, U-value 0.18W/sqmK

Floor: 100mm PIR insulation on 200mm EPS graphite board, U-value 0.13W/sqmK

Roof: Fibreglass membrane flat roof with 100mm EPS board above deck and 150mm spray foam insulation between steel joists, U-value 0.17W/sqmK

Windows: uPVC triple glazed, argon filled. Dark on the inside but rosewood effect on outer finish, overall U-value 0.890W/sqmK

Words: Heather Campbell Photography: Paul Lindsay

design Universal

he layout of my parents’ existing home was becoming challenging for my mother due to her mobility issues and its isolated location –albeit just one mile away from the new house – made it difficult to access vital services during the winter,” says Sean.

“So the style of their new build was very much influenced by practical necessity and the physical aspects of the site. However, the plot is located in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and the conditions placed on us in the planning consent also impacted on the overall design.”

“The planning consent was one of the most interesting and difficult aspects of the whole project. It was draining. To get it all done took almost two years.”

Outstanding beauty

“I am a planning consultant so I did most of the planning aspect myself,” adds Sean. “This site is within Causeway Coast and Glens’ AONB so that created a

1

lot of sensitivity and the local council is rarely keen to consent houses outside the settlement boundary in any rural area, let alone within the AONB designation.”

“The new house was needed given my mother’s disability. My parents’ previous house was much further up into Glenshesk – one of the nine Glens of Antrim – and less accessible in winter months as the road is not gritted. It was also a two-storey house and so didn’t work well with my mother’s lack of mobility – she needed a house with predominantly single floor living, in a location closer to Ballycastle. As such, the outline application was submitted in compliance with the ‘personal circumstances’ policy.”

“Unfortunately, officers at the council felt my mother’s situation didn’t comply with the policy and so resolved to refuse the application. Thankfully, locally elected councillors and MLAs, who understood my mother’s circumstances, offered their support and called the application to Planning Committee.”

“I genuinely didn’t agree with the planners’ views that this was going to be a completely unacceptable or particularly harmful development in the AONB. I felt it could be absorbed into the setting quite well. There are trees in the area to provide some level of screening and context. There are also existing properties there, so I was of the view that it would assimilate with them – it wasn’t going to be a house in the middle of nowhere standing out like a sore thumb.”

“My view was backed up by a local environmental, ecological and landscape specialist who submitted representations

2

“The house is a mix of traditional Irish bungalow, merged with a more contemporary style.”

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advising that he felt the house could be absorbed into the landscape without unacceptable impact, and we felt this assisted the Planning Committee in their decision making and addressed the concerns planners raised about landscape impact.”

“When the planners asked the question why we couldn’t renovate the current house to provide a more single storey living environment, I explained that if we had renovated it was still too far out into Glenshesk. The roads aren’t gritted there in the winter and it becomes

a dangerous road – not very accessible for health professionals, or in emergency circumstances either. Where the house eventually got built is a very short distance to Ballycastle town and from there, you’ve got all the main routes to the hospital in Coleraine.”

Planning drama

“I spoke at the committee and there was significant debate about the application,” recalls Sean. “It eventually went to a vote and resulted in a 6-6 draw. The Chair was then given the deciding vote and he

resolved to consent the application – all very dramatic and approved on the finest of margins.”

“When the consent came there were numerous restrictions. We were content to work within the majority of these, however, there was a condition prescribing the exact location of the house on the approved site. This was right down in the hollow beside the river and we didn’t feel this was appropriate in the circumstances and so I made another application to the Council to vary that condition.”

“The Council were initially in opposition to this but we worked together to reach a compromise that we were all happy with, but it took another six months to get to that point.”

“Soon after this we involved our designer Ciaran who did a brilliant job in designing a house that is both practical for my mother and the family while also being beautiful. He also managed to meet the very restrictive planning conditions, build on a challenging site and also take advantage of the beautiful views.”

“The external style is quite traditional ‘Irish bungalow’ at the roadside, merged with a more contemporary style with the semi-circular roof. Internally, we were geared towards open plan communal and

What is your favourite design feature / room?

My favourite part of the house is definitely the huge open plan kitchen/ dining/living area. This part of the house also opens onto the outside patio that’s south facing, so in the summer that works brilliantly. We’ve had lots of family BBQs here and a few larger parties as well.

My sister’s bedroom with its high curved ceiling and views to Rathlin Island is stunning.

The drawbridge style staircase is also amazing – especially as it’s in a part of the house where you can appreciate the full length, cross storey glazing and the internal curved ceiling. Another of the bedrooms also has the curved ceiling and looks directly up Glenshesk. It’s a beautiful view to wake up to.

What would you change?

The living space on the second floor of the traditional part of the house is better than initially expected. It’s currently being used as loft space but we may replace the office with a staircase and turn the second floor into another bedroom, office or leisure space.

In the meantime, there’s a room in the house that’s very underused and I’m trying to convince my father that it should be a man cave with pool table and football memorabilia on the wall –that’s the next change we’ll make!

What surprised you?

So many days, especially weekends, we’d arrive on site and there would be people stopped having a look around the build, keen to ask questions and see progress over the months. It surprised us how interested people were with the project – in a really nice way.

What single piece of advice would you give a selfbuilder?

I’d suggest to spend time getting the best tradesmen you can. The right ones will take most of the issues out of the build and make it less stressful. They’ll also leave a better end product, so it’s worthwhile getting the right people onboard from the start.

Q&A with Sean

“I am a planner, my brother is a joiner and pretty much the whole extended family works in construction, so there are plenty of skills but also lots of opinions.”

living areas that were easy for access. The curved roof at the more contemporary section of the house was largely influenced by the planning conditions.”

“Planning consent meant that the ridge height could be no more than 5.7m, roof span of 7m, roof pitch not exceeding 35-40 degrees and the frontage no more than 16m. We felt that there would be little liveable space with headroom on the upper floor due to the roof span and pitch, which we were tied to in the planning conditions. That’s when the

designer suggested a round roof – it would fit within the planning condition parameters but also provide comfortable liveable space.”

“At this stage we just let Ciaran manage the whole reserved matters part of the planning process and this went through relatively swiftly and without issue.”

“The planning aspect wasn’t over yet though. By this stage my father had agreed to sell their current home to a young local couple due to get married, only to find that it had an agricultural occupancy condition on the consent that would prohibit the sale. So I needed to

submit another Removal of Condition application to the Council. It felt like it was never ending, but we got there!”

Family of trades

“My father is retired now but was a housing developer for most of his adult life so has significant experience in construction. I am a planner, my brother is a joiner and pretty much the whole extended family works in construction, so there are plenty of skills but also lots of opinions.”

“However, we asked a contractor, Gabrielle Emerson to manage the build

for us. Gabrielle was the main contractor across the build and did a great job – the house is a credit to Gabrielle and his team.”

“As a family we have lots of tradesman connections and Gabrielle was very amenable in allowing us to suggest our own tradesman for parts of the build.”

“The house is built with a relatively standard structure – standard foundation, block built and plastered. My brother, Niall, did the roofing on the house. This is complicated given the different types of roof across the house. The more traditional aspect of the house is done with a cut rafter pitch slate roof using steel beams instead of trusses.”

“The structure of the round roof was then done using a shuttering technique Niall learned when working in New York, before we got specialist contractors to do the zinc finish. The traditional roof and round roof sections were then connected via a flat roof, which included a skylight.”

“The glazing was a challenge given the size of some of the units and the need to incorporate the round section into the glazing. The windows are mostly triple glazed for insulation and acoustic reasons.”

“The floor consists of an insulated slab before we applied insulated liquid screed finish. My uncle, Eugene is a top plumber so we just let him do his thing with the heating and hot water.”

“We put in an underfloor heating system for all of the ground floor, which is the vast majority of the house. This uses an oil boiler system. Ventilation is via two positive input ventilation systems. Water comes in through the mains and

Sean’s tips

Simplify the build method. Always ask an engineer to review the design as they can often offer structural suggestions that will save money and effort.

Don’t give up if you come up against a roadblock. Don’t take no for an answer. When it comes to the planning process, persevere, stay determined and keep going. Speak to the right people and gather your evidence. My planning application on behalf of my parents was supplemented with letters from doctors and health professionals who explained my mother’s condition and how the new house design and location, would ease some of those issues.

Speak to local councillors as they have an input into the planning process and also understand the personal circumstances of their constituents. They can speak about that to planning officers and planning committees.

Spend time documenting. Get your ducks in a row in terms of gathering the evidence. It’s about telling the whole story to the planners. Tell them the background, tell them why you need the house and explain why this is effectively the only solution that will appease those issues.

wastewater managed via a septic tank system into the nearby stream/river.”

“Yet again, family played a large part in the interior. My cousin Conor owns a fit out company and he provided all the interior and exterior floor/ground tiles. Conor designed the kitchen while my other cousin, Simon Scott, designed and delivered all of the bathroom/ensuites in the house.”

“We worked closely with the furniture company and they were heavily involved with large parts of the interior of the house – both in terms of design and finish. We also spent quite a bit of time with the electrical contractor, room by room, to determine the best lighting options across the house. This was also external, with lighting for the driveway, upshots to highlight the curved roof, gateway and along the roadside.”

“Furnishing the house was one of the most tedious parts of it all. None of the family is very artistic so we’d a few challenging days trying to find the furnishings that were both practical and looked right for the house, and that the family were happy with.”

“Overall, the the house is very energy efficient, built with six-inch insulated cavity walls (triple skinned in places), insulated screed flooring and triple glazing. However, we don’t have any renewable energy aspect attached and that’s something we may look at in the future in terms of PV panels.”

“Landscaping was done a year after the house was built and we’re looking forward to seeing it mature in the spring. We were advised to keep the landscaping relatively minimal – just enough to emphasise the house without being a distraction, while also being low maintenance.”

“The build actually went really smoothly. With the house being splitlevel, there were some challenges getting it out of the ground, making sure it was tanked properly to stop any damp between levels, but other than that it couldn’t have gone any better. My father has a bit of a ‘his way or no way’ attitude so that was a bit of craic making him see sense some days.”

“The house works incredibly well, and that’s a real credit to the designer. It has significantly improved my mother’s situation and is just so much more accessible in every way.”

Timeline

Apr 2015

Outline planning submitted

Feb 2016

Outline planning consent Nov 2016

Condition variation approved Aug 2017

Reserved matters approved Jun 2018 Build start Nov 2019 Build end Dec 2019 Moved in

Project info

Suppliers

House design

Laverty Architecture, lavertyarchitecture.co.uk

Builder

Emerson Construction, emerson-construction.co.uk

Roofer/Joiner

Niall McHenry

Glazing

S Dooey and Co, sdooey.com

Electrical contractor Haughey Electrical, haugheyelectrical.co.uk

Plumber

Eugene McHenry

Ventilation Drimaster

Interiors

Ballycastle Homecare

Garden landscaper Ryan Magee

Photographer

Paul Lindsay, paullindsayphoto.co.uk

Spec

Wall: Render on dense 100mm concrete block, 150mm cavity full fill PIR insulation, 100mm dense concrete block, internally rendered and skimmed. U-value 0.21W/sqmK

Curved roof: Zinc on high performance waterproof membrane on two layers 12mm plywood on three layers 50mm insulation on metal deck on rafters and eco joists, U-value 0.13W/sqmK

Flat roof: PVC membrane, 150mm insulation, 1000g vapour barrier, 25mm external grade ply, joists, 12.5mm plasterboard and skim, U- value 1.9W/sqmK

Ground floor: 100mm sand and cement screed, 1000g polythene, 150mm insulation, 200mm concrete, U-value 0.11W/sqmK

Upper floor: 75mm sand and cement screed, 150mm insulation, 1000g polythene, 150mm reinforced concrete slab, U-value 0.14W/sqmK

Roof insulated at joists: Concrete roof tiles, roofing felt, loft space, 250mm glass fibre on top of joists, 150mm glass fibre between joists, plasterboard and skim, U-value 0.10W/sqmK

Roof insulated at rafters: Concrete tiles, felt, air space, 125mm insulation between rafters, 50mm across face of rafters, plasterboard and skim, U-value 0.14W/sqmK

Windows: Double glazed uPVC argon filled with low e coating, overall U-value 1.4W/sqmK

Words: Heather Campbell

Photography: Mike O’Leary

How Denise and Fiachra Sinnott transformed their tired old 1980s chalet bungalow into a 21st century family home.

Fiachra moved into my house in Bandon when we first got married, but we always wanted to take on a project that we had chosen and bought together,” says Denise. “We spent years looking because where we were living was lovely – it needed to be the right project to entice us away.”

“We gave ourselves a property search radius of two miles from the town. We were looking in the countryside, as we had three kids and wanted them to have more freedom. However, the house we bought is four miles out of town, which raised a red flag to me when I first saw it listed. But when we viewed it, I just knew it was the one. Plus, it was going to be an easy reno, because the existing design of the house was so good. All it needed was a general refurb.”

The architecturally designed house was built in 1980 by the owner occupier. “For its time, the best of everything had gone into it,” says Fiachra. There was a solid oak kitchen, corner windows and state of the art features. But it was tired and old. The windows were broken and when you flushed the toilet upstairs it would leak through the ceiling.”

“When we bought it, the banks weren’t as friendly as they used to be,” says Denise. “I had hoped to renovate it before we moved in, but we couldn’t get a loan. So we ended up moving in and renovating in stages. Saving and renovating, saving and renovating.”

“The plan was to live in it for a couple of months just to make sure we were making the right decisions and the right changes to the house,” she adds. “There wasn’t a lot that needed done to it, from a structural point of view. We knew it needed a new

RENOVATION

roof and things like that, but the design and the layout were really good. And we didn’t need to extend it either so that was a bonus.”

“The only structural changes were to the windows, which we enlarged, and the removal of one internal wall to create an open plan kitchen, dining and living area. We moved the kitchen from the original dining room to the old utility room which was a much better use of space.”

Living on site

The Sinnotts employed a builder to carry out this scope of works, which was completed in three weeks. “We lived in the house while all the building work was going on,” says Denise. “That was very tough going. We had three small children including a baby who was crawling. One week we had no electricity or running water. It was a hard three weeks but we got through it.”

“The original living space was much smaller than what we have now, with the detached garage quite big in comparison. So we converted most of the garage into a pantry/laundry space off the new kitchen. This significantly extended the overall living space.”

“We didn’t have the money to replace the roof right away but then Storm Ophelia came along causing carnage. We were forced to do something, so we went to the bank with our begging bowls and eventually arranged funds to pay for a new roof.”

“The beams were okay, but all the batons and slates had to be replaced. We struggled to get a roofer at the time because the house is very unusually

shaped. In essence, we have three roofs. The main house has two roofs because there’s a hip in the middle and then the garage has another roof. A lot of local builders came and said the job was too big, that it would take them away from other work for too long. The quotes we got from them were coming in at around €50k.”

“In the end, following a personal recommendation, we got a professional roofing company from Cork. I didn’t think there was any point approaching a builder from the city to do a job in West Cork, but they came in well under, with a quote of €25k. They had their own scaffolding which, as I had just discovered, can add thousands to the cost when it’s rented on a weekly basis. Their team of six roofers took six weeks to complete the job. It’s amazing how the new roof makes it look like a brand new house.”

“We even had passers by stop and exclaim they hadn’t noticed this new house before, even though it’s been around since 1980,” says Fiachra.

COMING HOME TO CEDRAL

At Cedral we are on a mission to build more beautiful worlds and we know that your home is your world.

With almost 90 years’ experience in Ireland, we’ve been helping people come home to Cedral and their world since 1936.

Irish made for Irish weather, our slates have been tried, trusted and tested on thousands of homes across the country. So you get complete peace of mind about protecting your roof - and what’s under it - when you choose Cedral.

more at cedral.ie

Tel: +353 (0)59 863 1316

Email: info.ireland@cedral.world

Taking charge

Once the initial structural work was completed by the builder, Fiachra took on the responsibility of renovating the rest of the house. “If we’d had to pay somebody privately to do it all, we

wouldn’t be anywhere near finished right now,” says Denise.

A chemical engineer by trade, Fiachra learnt his house renovating skills on the job, although he pays tribute to the years helping his dad out with DIY tasks for

his general knowledge and ‘handyman’ abilities.

Denise interjects, “Fiachra is very modest, the work he has done on this house has been exceptional.”

They decided not to insulate. “We initially considered pumping the cavity block walls. The price wasn’t extortionate, just €1,000, but we thought we’d do it later, if we needed to. As it turns out, we’ve never felt the need. The house, with all the solar gain, is very warm and cosy.

“The biggest and toughest decision we had to make was with the windows. We originally wanted high spec windows, but the builder was suggesting another cheaper manufacturer. We ended up being very unsure, not knowing what to do. We knew what we really wanted, but the cost, and the opinions of other people, were making us wobble.”

“But we ended up deciding to pull back the budget on other items to cover the extra cost of our number one window choice. We don’t regret it; they really make the house.”

A love for interiors

“I’ve always had a serious love for interiors,” says Denise. “When I was younger, other girls would dress up their

Q&A with Denise and Fiachra

What is your favourite design feature?

The house was just so cleverly designed to have all that living space on the south facing side. Even in the middle of winter the aspect is so warm and sunny, there are days we don’t need to have the heating on.

Biggest splurge?

At €25k our triple glazed aluclad windows. Worth every penny.

What would you change or do differently?

A lot of our decisions were made for financial reasons. If we had received the money from the bank at the start, we would have replaced the roof right away. I would have gone for the hardwood parquet floor not the laminate. But we had a limited budget at the time and we can live with those decisions.

We might consider installing a stove in the future. We love our open fire, but a stove would be more economical given the current energy climate.

What surprised you?

The cost! I think we were very naive when we took on the house. I remember showing the original property ad to a builder friend at a dinner party. At that time Fiachra and I thought €50k would renovate the house. He looked at the photos and property details and said a good €70-80k would do it. I remember thinking, he’s crazy – yet here we are having spent €130k.

What single piece of advice would you give a friend who’s looking to embark on a project similar to yours?

Make a decision and stick to it. Don’t keep second guessing yourself. We drove ourselves crazy about the windows –will we, won’t we. But we knew what we wanted and we should have made it work right from the start instead of getting confused by listening to others.

Would you do it again?

Yes, we would definitely take on another renovation or new build project in the future, but our current plan is to rear our family and create some good memories here and then maybe think about selfbuilding down the line.

barbie dolls. I would be rearranging the furniture in the doll’s house instead.”

“Our previous home was styled very traditionally, in a Georgian period style,” says Denise. “In the new house I wanted a contemporary modern look. So we have lots of white walls with injections of colour coming from our hanging art and accessories, which really pop out.”

“There were formica shelves built into the alcoves when we first moved in,” says Fiachra. “Most people would have removed them, but Denise painted them and they’re completely transformed.” Denise adds: “We thought we’d replace

them with something else later, when the money was there, but they won’t be coming out now. We love them.”

The bathrooms were fully refurbished, with Fiachra tackling the majority of the tiling work. “I really struggled finding a bathroom unit that was affordable yet big enough,” says Denise. “Eventually, I asked our kitchen installer if his company did bathroom units, which they don’t, but he offered to custom build two fabulous units. I sourced the sinks separately.”

The modern theme continues in the kitchen which is handle less and has a concrete effect worktop. “The original

kitchen was in our main dining area and our current kitchen was used as the utility room. But we felt it was a very poor use of the space; there was no room for a table and chairs. So we completely rejigged the area, with the old kitchen becoming the dining room. We knocked through into the utility room to make the new kitchen and converted the garage for additional storage, which is just off the new kitchen.”

Denise carried out a lot of research into flooring options. “At the start, I wanted hardwood parquet but that would have cost €50k. Needless to say, it went out the window. In the end, we went with an oak laminate with an abrasion coefficient (AC) of 5, and 14mm thick, which was the highest grade we could get. It means it can withstand moisture, heat and heavy traffic. I am very pleased with it, and it hasn’t dated. Then upstairs, the bedrooms have a grey laminate, AC5 as well, 12mm thick.”

Into the light

“When we moved in, the house was surrounded by 40ft trees. There was no view and it became very dark inside once the sun went behind them – it was like being in the middle of a forest. We had the tress gradually topped off, which revealed spectacular views.”

Despite Storm Ophelia forcing their hands on the roof replacement, the Sinnotts are happy with how their renovation project went. “There were no major hiccups, beyond the roof,” says Denise.

The house’s name, Dunfern, reflects the couple’s shared determination and combined strengths that have made

Denise and Fiachra’s tips

Listen to your gut. I remember the builder was really annoyed that we went with a different window manufacturer to the one he suggested. But we don’t regret it for an instant. The builder was never seen again, but here we are happy looking at our choice years later still.

Be resourceful. I bought most of our bathroom suites on the internet, unseen. Although it was a risk, I couldn’t afford to buy in the mainstream shops. There were one or two mistakes, but to be fair, they worked out mostly in our favour.

Rely on friends who are in the same situation as you. I shared a lot of tips with friends who were building or renovating at the same time. We all helped each other out.

RENOVATION

it into a fabulous ‘first’ home. Denise explains: “Fiachra comes from Ferns, County Wexford and I come from Dunmanway County Cork. Dunfern is a play on those two names. A combination of where we came from and where we are now with our joint venture.”

“It’s been a long process, but we are overjoyed with the modern finished home we have created. Maybe we will be tempted to take on another project in the future, but we are happy where we are right now. If we lived here another 30 years, we would have no regrets.”

Read up on Denise’s and Fiachra’s project on their Instagram account @dunferndesign

“It’s been a long process, but we are overjoyed with the modern finished home we have created.”

Find

Suppliers

Contract builders

Hurley & White, Dunmanway

Windows Rationel, rationel.ie

Roofing contractor

Willy McCarthy, Cork City

Patio

Aiden Walsh Civils & Landscaping, Bandon

Kitchen and bathroom units

Classic Kitchens, classickitchenscork.com

Bathroom tiles

Delforno Tiles & Timber, delforno.ie

Laminate timber flooring

Right Price Tiles Ballincollig, rightpricetiles.ie

Carpets

John McCarthy Furniture, johnmccarthyfurniture.ie

Balcony glass for landing/ mezzanine

Cork Glass Centre, Cork City

Kitchen appliances

DID Electrical Bandon, did.ie Rangemaster cooker

MD O’Shea & Sons Ballincollig, mdoshea.ie

Franke boiling water tap Screwfix.ie Interior

Denise Sinnott @dunferndesign on

Under the spellSlemish of

NEW BUILD

At the start of 2019, we were living in Newtownabbey and looking to buy a new build home in or around Greenisland, as my husband and I both work in Belfast,” says LeighAnn. “But I had a niggling feeling that I should keep looking online to see what was available further afield. That’s when I saw a new build house out in the countryside with a great view. We went to see it, really liked it and bid on it, but missed out to other buyers. We were really disappointed. It felt like a missed opportunity.”

“However, the builder of that house, a private developer, got in touch with us to say he would be building on another site shortly, and do we want to come and take a look at it? We did and fell in love with the fabulous views of Slemish Mountain behind and the valley in front. He only builds a couple of properties a year to an incredibly high spec – which we had witnessed at the previous new build. So although it was an unconventional approach for us, we agreed to go ahead with this, as yet, unbuilt new build.”

The fixed price agreement stipulated that the developer would manage the build while the Jacksons had the freedom to pick everything – right down to the plug sockets. “We essentially had all the perks of a self-build, but without any of the hassle of managing a contractor or direct labour or project managing, which was incredible,” says Leigh-Ann.

“We got access to the plans, which had already been granted permission, and made some changes with the builder’s architect to make it work better for our family lifestyle. We added a sunroom extension, moved

some internal walls around and added structured fireplaces and a more traditional chimney breast. We also included pocket doors for the children’s playroom and this needed structural enhancement to the supporting wall. To futureproof the house, we changed the roof trusses to allow us to convert the attic into a second floor, should we need extra space when the children get older. These were all add-ons to the original plans and came at an additional cost, adding £8k to the final bill.”

The revised layout was resubmitted to the planning office and they received secondary planning permission eight weeks later.

Building time

“We visited the site each week and felt really involved in the build process, which was lovely,” says Leigh-Ann. “It feels very much like our home that we built, but without the potential trauma of a three-year build that’s gone astray.”

The construction process was efficient and issue free. “Our property was the builder’s only project that year, so he was

very focused,” Leigh-Ann says. “He has an amazing network of trade specialists to call on and despite building quickly, he builds to a very high quality standard with custom joinery and high spec kitchen and bathrooms. There were no cracks or poor

finishes and the only delay was waiting on the build to dry out over the summer.”

“We had the choice at the beginning to go for a timber frame or block build and we opted for block, because it felt right for us. We were put off by potential problems

we’d heard about sound insulation and also the practicalities of hanging things on the walls. We like knowing we can hang a heavy mirror without worrying about finding the studs to hang it onto.”

An oil fired boiler heats the water and provides space heating downstairs through underfloor heating, upstairs through radiators.

Interiors

Leigh-Ann has a love for interior design and revelled in this part of the build process. “I used ideas from online mood boards and magazines to inform my decisions,” she says. “I wanted to create a modern style with traditional elements but without making it look like I was trying to recreate a period home in a new build.”

“So we opted for natural materials in warm tones throughout and used panelling, cornicing and herringbone flooring to provide some classic charm.”

“The kitchen units are a traditional shaker style but we’ve kept the look fresh and natural with a modern marble worktop and wooden floors. My husband was a chef and he influenced the choice of integrated appliances. He wanted to have uncluttered kitchen counters so all our appliances are hidden away.”

“We did away with the need to have

What is your favourite design feature?

The staircase. Originally, I wanted a mahogany tread and handrail. Before I realised how expensive mahogany is. Instead, we worked with the joiner to find a solution by using ash and staining it with an ebony black and then a mahogany stain. It made the perfect wood tone. We loved discovering ways to get that high end look for less.

What’s your favourite room?

My favourite room is definitely the kitchen / sunroom because it’s so open and bright. When you enter it from the hallway you can see right through to the garden and when you walk into the kitchen, you look up and see Slemish rising above. It’s beautiful, the landscape changes with the weather, the seasons and time of day.

What would you change or do differently?

Nothing, really – the house works really well for us. But, if we were starting completely from scratch and money wasn’t an issue, I would build the house a little wider to accommodate a larger utility room. It would be great to have extra space to include a walk in pantry, laundry space and a bootroom.

What surprised you?

At first, we both totally freaked out when we saw the foundations. We thought there’s no way this is what we paid for and agreed on in terms of sizing, because it looked so tiny. Then we were surprised just how fast the blocks went up. In just two weeks the shell of the house was up. And then we were surprised how long it took for the house to dry out before we could implement the interior fit out.

What single piece of advice would you give a self-builder?

We have family members and friends who are in the process of starting direct labour new builds themselves and we are advising them to think a stage ahead of where the build is at. So when it’s time for decisions to be made and the contractor and a team of trades are waiting on your word, you’ve already visualised it, planned it and budgeted for it – and no time is wasted. That way, you don’t have to compromise on what you ultimately want by making a rushed decision.

Q&A with Leigh-Ann

“We opted for natural materials in warm tones throughout and used panelling, cornicing and herringbone flooring to provide some classic charm.”

Kitchen. Traditional shaker style kitchen units kept modern by the choice of colours.

a ceiling extractor fan by installing an induction hob with the extractor built in. We opted for an instant hot water tap to avoid having a kettle on the countertop.”

The kitchen, dining and sunroom are open plan. A playroom sits off this open area with clever pocket doors asked for by LeighAnn at the secondary planning stage. “The sliding doors have been amazing,” she says. “Whenever our two children have friends over, the kids can all play in the playroom with the doors open while the adults can sit and have coffee in the sunroom and still keep an eye on them. And then when we’re ready to sit down to eat and relax in the

evening, we can close the doors and hide away all the toys and carnage.”

Floor to ceiling windows in the main open plan living space make the most of the spectacular views of Slemish mountain. “That was the whole reason we fell in love with this area,” says Leigh-Ann.

Downstairs is floored exclusively in tiles. “We felt it was the most efficient choice to accommodate the underfloor heating,” adds Leigh-Ann. “Our main living room and hallway is floored in a herringbone wood effect tile, while the playroom and open plan area is tiled in wooden plank effect.”

“I chose a blue and white Moroccan style

Living room. It’s the little touches that make this family home so cosy and homely. The panelling and shutters, the different colours and textures, including velvet sofas and jute rugs.

tile for the utility and downstairs bathroom as I wanted something a bit more interesting in these smaller spaces that wouldn’t be on show all the time. Our upstairs bathrooms again have wood effect tiles, but we have wool carpet on our stairs and bedrooms – all in neutral tones for a warm cosy effect.”

“For the lighting, we specified a mixture of spotlights and pendants. All the upstairs bedrooms are pendants except for our walk in wardrobe, which has spots as do the bathrooms. We have a mixture of spotlights and feature lighting in the living spaces, so we have the option to increase the brightness in the daytime or dim it in the evening to make it feel like a warm and relaxing space.”

“The large floor to ceiling windows at the back of the house and the kitchen let in a lot of natural light. Even in the north facing playroom and living room, the large windows bring in plenty of brightness.”

The lockdown garden

The Jacksons were well settled into their new home by the time the global pandemic shut down Ireland in March 2020. “I’ve always liked gardening,” says Leigh-Ann, “but during the first summer of lockdown I developed a serious passion for it.”

“I planted a deep country garden style border along the retaining wall at the rear of the house and planted the raised plant beds at the front. I have filled these with shade loving evergreens which have now grown up to window height. When you look

Leigh-Ann’s tips

Go to your kitchen supplier before you build your foundations because it could affect your architectural plans in terms of where you might want the window or where you might want to move the doorway to accommodate the kitchen cabinetry and appliances.

Use mood boards or create a folder on social media to save imagery of things that you like. Avoid sticking with trends; just include things that you are drawn to. By adding enough images, you will start to notice a pattern. You’ve just found your style.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the choice of styles or the latest and greatest trends, especially with your kitchen and bathrooms. These are big purchases which will be with you for a long time, so try and think okay, will I still love this down the line? Choose something you love, because it’s your home at the end of the day. Don’t just copy what the latest magazines are showcasing.

Be patient with your garden. Just give it a go, because by and large it will work out. Mother Nature just takes care of it.

out the front window you get the country views in the distance, and then the close-up greenery from the plant bed creates a lovely connection to the spectacular landscape surrounding us.”

“When we moved in, the site was really overgrown with hawthorn and oak trees which were trimmed down to quite a low level to allow us to open up the view to Slemish. But we wanted to revive the hedges so my husband spent weeks weaving in branches to allow it to grow properly.”

“Most of our plot is actually at the front of the house, but it’s too steep and not really usable as a garden. So in the first year we sowed it as a wildflower meadow, which was beautiful. However, in the second year it didn’t come back. I didn’t realise it needed digging up every year to get going again, so it’s turned into a bit of an urban wasteland.”

What’s next?

“We are installing solar panels to the roof of our garage. It’s a large, south facing roof with no obstructing trees, so we should capture enough solar energy to power the

1

house. We’re also going to invest in a good battery system so when we eventually upgrade to electric cars, we’ll have a renewable charging point.”

“We know we were lucky to build when we did,” adds Leigh-Ann. “Being able to move in just before lockdown meant we had lots of time to work on the house and garden and also get to know the area as a family. We were so fortunate to be able to get out for walks and have time to explore. That was amazing. I just love it here and the community as well. It’s been a very happy move for all the family.”

She says she enjoyed the whole build process: “As a project manager who loves interiors, it felt like it was my time to shine. I was at ease with making speedy decisions, to always be thinking ahead to the next part of the build. To get ready for another round of decisions.”

“The build ran smoothly, all the trades turned up on time. I think the only issue we had was trying to get everything we wanted within our budget allocation, but that’s the same for everyone. Perhaps I’m remembering it all through rose tinted glasses but, really, nothing caused us any stress at all.”

up on Leigh-Ann’s project on Instagram @theslievehome

2

Catch

“Most of our plot is actually at the front of the house, but it’s too steep and not really usable as a garden. So in the first year we sowed it as a wildflower meadow, which was beautiful.”

Suppliers

Tiles

Tuscany Tiles, Ballymena Carpets

Inspirational Furnishings, Belfast Staircase design and understairs storage JP Joinery, Antrim

Living room joinery Precision Works Joinery

Panelling and office joinery Meadow View Joinery & Home Improvements

Kitchen and utility room Ballycastle Homecare Photography Paul Lindsay, paullindsayphoto.co.uk

Entrance hall. “Having a large entrance hall is a huge luxury for us,” says Leigh-Ann. “In our previous home you could walk three steps forward from the front door and one step to the side. Bringing in a pram or other people was a huge crush.”

Keep it simple

If you want a stress-free build, don’t complicate your house design, says Emma Ford.

Overview

House size: 2,600 sqft with attic conversion in progress to add another 110sqft

Plot size: 3/4 acres

Heating and hot water: air to water heat pump with a stove as a secondary heat source

Ventilation: natural Build method: Insulating Concrete Formwork (ICF)

BER: A2 Build cost: approx. €250k

Tell us about your design.

We bought the site with planning permission, but the layout was old and not current as it had been designed back in 2008. I made alterations to the drawings by sketching over what was there to change the inside to meet our needs, and had it redrawn by a friend.

We didn’t want to delay the build by having to go back to planning. We weren’t from the area so didn’t want to rock the boat as the site had no local tie. But because planning was in place, we had less than two years left to complete the build. All on a shoestring budget.

To achieve that, we chose a simple design, square and rectangular shapes to keep the cost down, opened up the inside to suit it to modern living. It really doesn’t have to be complicated. Not over engineering it saved us hassle in the long run and a lot of money.

What are your top tips to manage the project?

We managed it ourselves getting direct labour to do what my husband couldn’t. He did do the majority though. I am a quantity surveyor so managed the cost side of things, and he is a concrete finisher.

You built with insulating concrete formwork. What are your tips?

ICF construction gives you an insulated and airtight house. The blocks are hollow and made of expanded polystyrene (EPS). You fill these with concrete to build a mass concrete house. They are strengthened with rebar in between the blocks and around the openings.

This means you don’t need insulated plasterboard slabs internally, as you well meet the U-values with the standard ICF block, especially if you go with a 350mm wide wall. We paid a lot for underfloor heating which rarely ever kicks in, and we only have 300mm walls.

My tips would be to use an ICF installer that’s been trained by the manufacturer. They know exactly what they are doing. Putting up the blocks is a lot more complex than it looks. The walls have to be braced and square before the pour. If this goes wrong, there is no going back.

I would say not to overdo it on airtightness as ICF is pretty much airtight by itself. We only used tape around our windows and got the reading we needed; we have natural ventilation.

Make sure you put plenty of openable windows as in the summer when it’s warm you will be glad you did. With mechanical

ventilation it can be a struggle to cool the house in the summer if you can’t cross ventilate. The new regulations make our houses ready for winter, but we must consider that our summers are getting warmer too.

Mark out on your floor where the webs in the ICF are. The hollow blocks have webbing inside them, and this is what you will hang heavy objects onto. You could also take pictures for when you are hanging items later. It saves a lot of guessing.

What roof construction did you go for?

We went for a truss roof for simplicity and speed. They are self-spanning trusses which gave us much more options on the walls inside as there were no requirements for load bearing walls.

Any issues on site?

No issues really, everyone worked very well together. We coordinated it so contractors weren’t falling over each other. Every evening we would have a tidy up and be ready to start the next day. The build took just over a year, but the shell was up within six months.

We did have to add some land drains as the site was wet but once we did the land dried out very well and have had no issues since.

SUPPLIERS

SPEC

Walls: 300mm ICF walls, U-value 0.2W/sqmK

Roof: 400mm of mineral wool in two layers crosslaid, U-value 0.14W/sqmK

Floor: 190mm EPS insulation with 100mm concrete, U-value 0.13W/sqmK

Windows: double glazed uPVC, overall U-value 1.4W/sqmK

Doors: Combination of uPVC and aluminium (bifold), U-value 1.2W/sqmK

How did you manage the budget?

We had no mortgage and built the house from savings and money made renovating our houses over the years. We did have to pause the build to wait for more money to come through from a house sale.

Being a quantity surveyor, I managed the finances. My advice would be to get quotes from three contractors if possible.

Cheapest is not always best. And as I said before, don’t overcomplicate things. It just costs money.

Set up a trade account with the local builders’ providers. Ours was fantastic and gave us the best deals on the materials. Ask for trade prices and lock them into a price per meter or sheet of material. So if you need extra, you still pay the discounted rate.

Shop around for materials where there is a saving to be made. We substituted our insulation for a different brand that offered the same U-value. We just had to go thicker, and we saved €1,200. Just make sure you buy from a reputable brand and check reviews.

Look to Europe for items. Since Brexit a lot of Irish suppliers are still buying from the UK and they are buying it from Europe so there are two lots of markups there, rather than going straight to Europe.

We didn’t pay for an electrical plan. We made a generic plan per room, i.e. number of sockets, etc. And we got that priced up then appointed an electrician.

We then got him to put in what we wanted instead of him installing standard sockets and switches. We also did some futureproofing as we knew we would be going up to the attic at some point.

What was your biggest splurge?

Definitely the kitchen. We wanted something modern and spacious with lots of drawers and I definitely got that. I also love our living room, being able to retreat to it in the evenings and just relaxing by the stove. In winter of course as the house is so warm.

What general tips/advice do you have for others taking on a self-build?

Don’t over think it. You can always add stuff later. And don’t get bogged down by what you see on Instagram. Those house accounts must have massive mortgages lol! Get it built and add the pizzazz later. As long as the main elements are right, the rest will come in time.

Would you do it again?

Absolutely, I’m in construction almost 20 years and love everything about it.

What do you wish you had known at the start?

That Covid was coming as it delayed us a lot getting in. But we made it in the end. I don’t think I would change the design as it works for us. The build went very well so wouldn’t change that either.

Follow Emma’s house building journey on Instagram @from_the_ground_up_budgetbuild

“We chose a simple design, square and rectangular shapes to keep the cost down...”

Building orchard house

Stephen and Vicki Murray share what it was like building during Covid and getting the home of their dreams at the end of it.

Overview

House size: 2,400 sqft

Plot size: 1/2 acre

Build: blockwork (cavity wall)

Heating and hot water: Ground source heat pump

Ventilation system: Central extract unit and humidity vents

BER: A2

Tell us about the site.

We built our house where the old orchard used to be on the farm. Because of that, we wanted to maintain a traditional old farmhouse feeling but with a modern styling including floor to ceiling windows, double height spaces and lots of light and glass.

We wanted the house to look as though it had always been there. And when researching and speaking to different designers and architects prior to building, we kept hearing to fit the design in with the vernacular which we did with the introduction of the red galvanised roof over the sunroom. Oxidised red paint is traditionally used on farm sheds and outbuildings, as opposed to the more common fibreglass roofs on houses.

How did the design process evolve?

The main elements of our wish list were a smart use of space, a large open plan kitchen/dining area and a sunroom. We also wanted four bathrooms and an office area.

We met with a few architects until we found the right one who understood

what we were trying to achieve. A modern farmhouse that fit in with the countryside. We found it was so important to find an architect/engineer who shared our vision and understanding.

They need to support the idea for it to come to life as well. If it means having to meet multiple architects and engineers to find the right one, then it is worth it. We wouldn’t have been able to do the build without our architect/engineer’s belief and

Timeline

July 2019

Planning permission application

September 2019

Request for further information

January 2020

Planning approved April 2020

Mortgage approval, application in the day before lockdown in March July 2020 Build start December 2020 House shell completed March 2021 Floors poured May 2021 House plastered July 2021 House painted July 2021 Connected to electricity September 2021 Kitchen fitted October 2021 Moved In

support.

Top tip for this stage is to make sure you consider your sun path. This is so important for light and solar gain.

How did the planning application process go?

We first met our designer in March 2019, and planning was submitted that July. In September we got a request for further information and some amendments, which included a reduction in the height of the roof. This did lead to some changes in the drawings as it impacted upstairs windows and the pitch of the sunroom

roof. We got our final grant of planning in January 2020. We opted out of the preplanning meeting as the waiting list to be seen was as long as the actual planning review timeframe.

How was the build managed?

We had a hybrid build. The initial shell structure was completed by a contractor who had his own crew come in to complete the outside shell to roof level and windows sealed. They started work in July 2020 and handed the project back to us on December 23rd, 2020. From this

stage the build was managed by us. We completed insulation/airtightness membrane and plasterboard ourselves, while organising the plumbers/ electricians/screed and tilers ourselves. Most of the joinery was also completed by us.

The biggest undertaking of the build was the installation of the red roof. We completed this ourselves three days before Christmas. The galvanised sheets were measured and ordered from a roofing company and they came primed.

From here they had to be covered in oxide paint and installed on the batten roof. There were additional steps taken to install the roof for sound proofing, which included foam mats attached to lats before felting was placed, and then the sheeting. We also sourced anti-vibration washers for attaching the sheeting. Internally on top of rigid insulation board, we also used acoustic insulation rolls to deaden the sound. The sunroom roof is actually now quieter than the slate roof.

How did you go about choosing your windows?

Our windows were done as part of the shell build and so went through our builder. Our builder knew the fitting crew and was on site to oversee the fitting. He was confident that if there were issues they would be resolved through him as he works with them a lot.

We were able to visit the showroom and review the different types of windows, and the rep came out to the site and went through all of our options. We found him great as he offered all of the technical specifications and design elements. There was a five week lead time for the windows, and no issues

with the fitted product.

We went for triple glazed, uPVC in RAL 9005 for all windows. The majority of windows are tilt and turn and we find these fantastic during the summer.

We had to put in steels supports in the sunroom windows and toughened glass due to their height and width (9ft x 4ft).

How about your heating system?

Initially we were considering an air to water heat pump as we didn’t really know about many other options. However, with the way the site is laid out, the external unit would have been at the left gable of the house and in full view of the entrance and driveway.

After talking to suppliers at the Selfbuild Live show we began looking further into geothermal ground source heat pumps. Although the initial cost was higher, after a lot of research it seemed to have more longevity than the air to water and we liked the thoughts of all the piping being buried out of sight. Based on this and the fact we had extra garden space, we felt the initial investment would be worth it.

We have a small paddock area to the left of the house where we were able to run the collector pipes and we have a concrete collar at the back of the house for easy access to the pipes and system. So far, the running costs are what we expected

them to be. And on occasion, less than we expected which is great considering the current energy costs. The settings can be turned down lower during the summer months with no impact on hot water supply.

The installation was very quick. When we were doing groundworks and had a digger on site, we also laid the pipes for the heat pump. The pipes are buried horizontally one metre below ground in the paddock. The internal elements for the heat pump system are fitted into the office space and the manifold is under the staircase. So although the system is relatively big it has been tidied away through panelled doors.

How did you keep on top of the budget?

The budget was again managed by us. We had a quantity surveyor complete an initial costings report for us. This was a great resource to have as it allowed us to have a point of reference for pricing.

We kept up to date with upcoming cost increases and bulk ordered in advance of the date for things like insulation, plasterboard and internal doors.

For things like mushroom fixings and plasterboard screws, we found it good to purchase them from building merchants or local hardware shops. When buying in bulk there was more leeway for discounts. We tried to avoid DIY/homeware chains unless we were really stuck as these were generally more

expensive.

What was the day to day like on site?

The initial part of the build was very straightforward, it was just a case of catching up with the builders in the evening and making sure everything was ok.

When it moved to us taking over the build it was much more full on. There were a lot of phone calls during the day and going over and back to the site to answer questions or make decisions. No matter how organised you are, there are always going to be questions or issues that pop up.

We were also building during Covid, which had its own share of problems. We went through two lockdowns where our initial builders couldn’t be on site and when our own contractors couldn’t be there either. This did lead to unavoidable delays.

During the second lockdown, we tackled the work ourselves and completed the insulation, airtightness membrane and plasterboard. This was a huge amount of work but it set us up to keep the build moving forward. When the lockdown lifted, the house was ready for screed, skim coat and second

NEW BUILD

Heat

Ireland

SPEC

Walls: 150mm cavity pumped with EPS beads and 50mm insulated plasterboard on the external walls to meet NZEB requirements. The stud walls and ceilings have 80mm rigid board.

Roof: attic has 150mm rock wool in the joists, fibre cement slates roof covering

Floor: 150mm PIR boards under the screed.

MINI CRUSHING IRELAND Benefits � Huge savings up to 75%* � Environmentally friendly � All done on your site � No disposal costs Phone: 00353 87 2800851 Email: minicrushing@gmail.com @minicrushing mini crushing Ireland Recycling all types of rubble on-site into usable aggregate. * Based on crushing 100ton of material on site versus buying in 100 ton of quarried stone and disposal of 100 ton of rubble. Project Supplier

fix.

It was at times difficult to have more than one contractor on site due to social distancing, but we were able to manage this by alternating contractors when needed. People were incredibly flexible and kind during this time as we were all navigating the strange times.

What are your favourite parts of the house?

It changes on a daily basis. But I think the sunroom and kitchen win out. The whole area is so bright and airy, there’s always so much light and natural heat in this room. The sunroom is down two steps which has created a double height space. There is also a glass balustrade in place which gives amazing views from the kitchen over the sunroom and out to the sunset.

Architect/Engineer

Colm Marron of Finegan Jackson Building Surveyors

Builder JSM Kelly Kitchen O’Connor’s of Drumleck Bathrooms

FIRST FLOOR

What are your tips for kitchen design?

Make sure the kitchen is functional, try and put the dishwasher close to the plate/cup drawer etc. Think about pop up sockets in the island, will they last or will they need to be replaced? Consider different options here such as USB chargers in drawers instead. Or a USB charger tucked away under the stone on the island.

You can never have enough storage in the kitchen, always add more. The kitchen cabinets were brought down lower in our kitchen as I’m quite short. But as a result we were able to add light boxes in over the units so they are still tall looking while at an accessible height.

How about bathroom design?

Don’t waste space. Bathrooms don’t need to be very large. They can look quite empty otherwise. Map out each bathroom and see where the sanitaryware will work best. Allow for joists moving under slate trays as this may affect the runoff of the shower at a later stage. If this might happen opt for an XPS wetroom tray ready for tiling instead. Decide on shower niches early on.

For all aspects of your build, make sure you are choosing options because you love them, not because they are on trend.

Biggest splurge?

The biggest splurge in the house was the bathrooms. They are stunning and we did go for top range here. We visited a showroom and when we saw what was available we made the decision to invest.

At the showroom, Martin and his team were amazing to deal with and they helped us design the perfect bathrooms, from tiles to shower heads they guided us superbly through it all and made sure we had everything we needed.

With hindsight, what would you change?

The build has matched the design perfectly. When we look at the plans, the exact house has been built. However, I would have made the utility/boot room bigger and made the dressing room a little wider. And rather than having wood window sills internally, I think a plastered finish would’ve yielded a cleaner look.

Would you do it again?

We would do it again, but on a smaller scale and maybe more of a renovation instead of a brand new build.

GROUND FLOOR

Add-ons

When Fiona and Liam Canavan bought a one bedroom house, they took their time deciding how to add onto it. They chose a bungalow style timber frame extension built off site.

How did the project get started?

It was always our plan to move out here to the countryside near Fiona’s family. The house we bought had been originally built through a locals only provision. When we purchased it from a relative, it came with a planning condition to be living in it for at least another seven years. And we had to prove that we had lived around here for at least 10 years. Being from the area, Fiona proved that we had.

The house was a blank slate inside and needed the electrics and plumbing done, along with the septic tank, and internal decorating so we did that and moved in thereafter.

Why did you extend?

It was only a one bedroom house. And with two children, we needed more space. But we didn’t want to rush into a decision. We took our time figuring out what we wanted exactly from the addition.

What options did you consider?

We researched our options and chose to go timber frame. Mostly because it would be quick to put up – the house was to roof level within a week including foundations. And also to get a good standard of insulation and airtightness. The company we chose included the windows and internal and external doors and the internal stud wall timber in the package.

So when it came to have the house erected the windows were already fitted into the walls.

The thing that took us the longest to decide on was what we would be building. We looked at two storey designs, different shapes and sizes. We changed our minds quite a few times. We just didn’t want a storey and a half.

In the end, we chose a bungalow layout because we felt an upper storey would result in too much wasted space between landings and hallways. And as this is our home for life, we figured we might not want to be climbing stairs as we get older.

The timber frame company had plans off the shelf and we reorganised them for our purposes. The design we chose was of a full house, 18.4m by 7.9m, but we

Render of the extension Fiona and Liam plan to build, with existing house to the left.

Timeline

2015 House originally built

May 2020

House bought

Aug 2021

Planning permission applied

Jan 2022

Planning granted

Nov 22

Groundwork, foundations, walls and trusses in

Dec 22

Roof covering done

Jan 23 onwards

Link corridor and internal wall insulation, start fit out

didn’t need a kitchen for example. Or an ensuite in the bedroom, but we did want a walk in wardrobe.

The bungalow is separate from the main house. In that we are building a corridor to link the old and new. The wall in the corridor that faces the view will be completely glazed, and we are going with a pitched roof as we didn’t want to risk going with the more common flat roof. I’ve heard too many stories of them leaking.

roof and windows. The roofer came straight after to make the house fully weather tight. Apart from the door linking to the corridor to the main house, which hasn’t been delivered. We will be getting the plumber and electrician in to start first fix.

We might have considered getting the timber frame company to finish the house for us but they don’t offer that service outside their immediate area. Next steps are for us to do the internal insulation including vapour permeable membrane, jointing and taping. We’ll be drylining the walls as in we won’t put a skim coat on the plasterboard. It should save us a bit and if done well it can look just as good.

Once we had the design signed off on, we tried to lock in the price of the build. The timber frame company normally would let you do that with a six month lead but, because the way material prices were going, they’d only commit one

We’re glad to be doing it ourselves, to get stuck in. There’s a sense of achievement and control we wouldn’t have gotten with hiring trades by the day.

Overview

House size before: 104sqm

House size after: 248sqm

Plot size: 1.2 acres

Heat and hot water (whole house): oil combi boiler

Ventilation (extension): centralised mechanical with heat recovery

Build method (extension): timber frame

month before building the house in their factory.

Then we had to get the groundwork organised. This proved to be more complicated than we anticipated as we had to source very specific blinding. Two layers of certified stone, and a third layer which had to be clean stone 19mm in size. We found it hard to source. It would have been a whole lot easier if they could have organised the groundwork for us as they requested +/- of 5mm over the entire ground level.

After that a crew came to build the insulated raft foundation. Because we couldn’t get the exact specification they’d asked for with the stone, they had to spend time sorting it out. Which was an extra cost and we were charged a penalty for not laying exactly what had been specified.

Once the foundations were ready, another crew came to put up the walls,

It came in just eight pieces. Because it’s a rectangle, it was a simple enough installation. It took them two days to get it up and ready – it could have been a day if we’d built in summer, with more daylight to play with.

The joists took three men to take off the articulated truck. We had to rope in Fiona’s nephew to help unload them. On the Monday they brought their equipment, Tuesday the crane came at the crack of dawn and it was all done and dusted by Thursday morning.

We wanted to future proof the original house so we added compatible radiators and a new hot water tank system that would work well with a heat pump.

we first moved into the original

What did the kit look like and how long did it take to put up?

What did you do for space heating and hot water?

When

Walk us through the process, from having signed off on the design to construction.

Scandinavian Homes Ltd.

We will be adding 16 solar photovoltaic (PV) panels too. We got conflicting advice as to whether or not we should install a battery and had a chat with three different suppliers. We chose the one based on a recommendation that included a battery system, and they were reasonably priced too.

house, we had toyed with the idea of getting a company to rout into the concrete floor to add pipes for underfloor heating but decided against it. We went ahead and installed an oil boiler because it was more cost efficient. But we may

switch to a heat pump in due course as we’re plumbed in for it now.

In the extension we put two types of underfloor heating – pipework for the wet system if it gets installed, and also electric mats.

It is dearer but the speed of construction and the levels of insulation (we went with the super passive option) make up for that in our book. We don’t have the final cost yet, and there might be some haggling at the end. An extra we hadn’t factored in was the crew’s accommodation cost for the days they were on site, as they had to travel to us. Between foundations and the kit, it was an extra €2k.

As for the groundworks, we knew from experience dealing with the septic tank on the original house and building the gates that we’d be looking at the crux of €20k and that’s what it turned out to be.

Was it more expensive to choose timber frame over blockwork? How much did it cost?

“We’re glad to be doing it ourselves, to get stuck in. There’s a sense of achievement and control we wouldn’t have gotten with hiring trades by the day.”

Finishing thetin house

Overview

Plot size: 2/3 of an acre

House size: 169 sqm

Bedrooms: 4

Construction: blockwork (cavity wall)

Heating and hot water: oil condensing boiler with PV backup, plus 5kW wood burning stove

Ventilation: passive input ventilation

Expected SAP: 83 (89 with PV)

Every choice we made for the finishes felt like a big decision. We wanted to do the house justice but at the same time didn’t have an unlimited budget.

Overall, what helped the most was that the suppliers we chose understood what we were building. A ‘black tin house that is like a barn but modern’ did the trick to explain what we were after. Here’s how we got on, and what we learned from the experience.

Whatever your budget is for tiles, budget the same amount for a tiler Because we opted for underfloor heating, we felt it was important to maximise the heat output. Special types of

carpet or laminate can be used with underfloor but we felt a hard surface would still do the job better. It was a big decision because tiles do feel more permanent than carpet.

Initially we looked into the option of a polished screed to give that bit of a rustic industrial feel. However cost wise, tiles were the better option. And they allowed us to personalise the flooring slightly more.

Main tip here is to shop around. Most suppliers have a similar offering, but larger overheads might make the difference in the end cost.

The cost of the tiler needs to be factored in addition to that. And a good tiler is worth his weight in gold. We were lucky to get an incredibly skilled local tradesman with great

Matthew and Hannah Sterrett are building a modern house that’s designed to blend into its agricultural landscape. Here, they share their experience finishing off the house...

Timeline

See Spring 2022 edition of Selfbuild or go to selfbuild.ie for timeline up to this point

08/10/21

Electric started 11/10/21

Window flashings in and windows ordered 26/11/21

Solar panels installed 21/12/21 Windows installed 20/01/22

Plastering started 04/03/22 Plumbing started 09/03/22

Underfloor heating pipes installed 19/03/22 Screed poured 29/03/22

Outside groundworks and drainage started, boiler fitted 11/04/22

NIE water connection made 25/04/22

Patio laid and pillars built 04/05/22 Tiling started 23/05/22 Electric switch on 25/05/22 Stove fitted 07/06/22

Internal doors, architraves etc 16/06/22

Showers etc fitted 21/06/22

Stairs and balustrade complete 24/06/22

Utility, kitchen and sliderobes fitted 09/07/22 Moved in

experience in unique tile layouts. He used the same tiles throughout but by arranging them differently, each area is different.

Limit the number of floor finishes

In the bathrooms and all of downstairs we opted for a cement effect tile. By chose the larger 60cm x 60cm tile throughout the downstairs, we didn’t have to worry about breaks for the rooms and change of tile design.

This also really helped to minimise wastage. For the upstairs, we wanted the bedrooms to have a warmer feel so opted for a tile made to look like wooden flooring.

Despite keeping most of the house to the two tiles, we decided that our ensuite would give us a bit of an opportunity to mix things up. We decided to go for a white hexagon and metro tile to accentuate the black fittings.

Consider MDF stair treads

Our plans originally included oak stair treads, however on looking at the budget we decided to opt for Medium Density Fibreboard as a cheaper alternative. To dull noise and to protect the stairs, we needed something.

As our entire house is tiled, we didn’t want it to be fully carpeted as we thought it might look out of place. So instead we opted for a simple stair runner in grey then requested a black trim, which perfectly complements the window frame and grey floor tiles.

quite like the look of as we felt this made the stairs and upstairs hallway look really narrow.

After the green light from the structural engineer and Building Control, we found out that we could actually get away with a normal balustrade at the top of the stairs. We chatted back and forth with the builder about ways of satisfying building control but to allow as much light through the space as possible.

The original train of thought was to run a glass balustrade along the hall which would allow the light to fully shine down the hallway, however the thought of even more glass to clean was off putting.

After endless nights on online mood boards, we came up with the idea of having some element of steel balustrade to complement the black. But we also wanted the design to mirror the simplicity of the lines in the tin without too much fuss.

Our amazing builder set to work and the next day he brought us a handmade sample. The finished version couldn’t be any more perfect as the simple vertical box line design allows the light to fully penetrate the hallway and turned our narrow enclosed stairway into a bright and open focal point.

All in all, using a contractor may appear more expensive, but can make the build easier as the contractor will deal with all the day to day on site and provides accountability for the build. Main tip then is to still keep an eye on things on a daily basis. So you can deal with snags as you go through the build. These are easier sorted when the individuals are on site.

We have a straight up and down flight of stairs to maximise space. In the original house plans, the top of the stairs was closed in. It’s the one thing we just didn’t

Choose the one company to do the interiors

From the very start, we approached the house design as a means to fulfil our

Don’t be afraid to make changes, and consider hiring a main contractor

wants and needs for areas like the kitchen as well as storage in the bedrooms and beyond. We always knew our kitchen would have an open plan feel and loved the idea of the space being filled with light from the 2m x 2m window and 4m sliding door. We both really enjoy cooking, so wanted the kitchen to really reflect that, but also provide function over all else.

Living in the country with two dogs, a functional utility space with plenty of storage was a must. We didn’t want it to be a pokey room hidden away.

To save time and make the process smoother, we approached a company that specialises in interiors. Having the one point of contact made it easier for coordination on site. An upside is these companies have the ability to give discounts on bigger contracts.

We put together our thoughts and ideas and arranged to meet Turlough, who was our contact. Initially we wanted to see if they could provide a solution for the kitchen and pantry, but after one appointment we knew that we had to have them design as much in the house as possible. Kitchen, utility, wardrobes.

Originally, we had planned on sourcing each of these elements separately, but finding Turlough was a blessing during the build as this meant we had the one company dealing with the majority of the major interior work.

Space saving tips for kitchen and utility

We originally had planned to have an island in the kitchen however, due to space restrictions, Turlough suggested opting for a built in peninsula design. This allowed us to have more worktop and seating space, as well as creating a separate kitchen area which is perfect for hosting.

From the initial plans, we knew we wanted a built in pantry where we could store all our appliances and dried foods, but wanted to make sure we could close a door and hide everything away when needed. This freed up more cupboard space which is really helpful as we opted against any high cupboards to make sure the light wouldn’t be restricted. The built in fridge and freezer into the kitchen alcove also helped make the kitchen space feel larger as they were built flush with the wall.

Having the benefit of light in the kitchen, we knew we had a bit more flexibility over colours meaning we could get the dark tint of our absolute dreams without making the space feel restricted. Sterling silver cooker and antique glass splashback also helped in opening up the space and again making the most of the light throughout.

Turlough then turned his eye to our utility space. The brief was for him to design a functional space and so he designed a laundry area with raised

washing machine and tumble platform along with basket storage underneath. Perfect for not having to bend and stretch through the never ending washing pile. We ended up with function and style, a far cry from being the hidden room.

After all, you are more likely to change curtains than you are to change your windows. But the same holds true of permanent storage solutions.

With our two upstairs bedrooms, we agreed to pay a bit extra to add a wall that split the rooms to create a mirror image. This created two equal alcoves which perfectly allowed mirror fronted sliderobes with a mixture of rails and storage.

Making use of every millimetre of space, we ended up with lots of stylish storage spaces along with a matching built in vanity unit and mirror.

Laneways and gates

We didn’t want a long lane to our house, as we knew bringing the bins out every week would be a battle we wouldn’t win. But living on a relatively busy road with two dogs has its own challenges.

As we wanted our entrance to fit in with the feel of the house, we wanted to find gates that could complement the overall design. After looking online for endless hours and not coming up with quite what we wanted, we approached a neighbour who is conveniently a blacksmith.

We had a vision in mind for simple plain black gates. Or as we described, a cattlegrid on its side. So without too much of our input, we ended up getting the most stunning entrance feature that complements our house perfectly.

One of our luxury wants for the house was to have the gates automated, which

Spend money on things you won’t change.

really helps with security. Thankfully we had contacts in our local intercom manufacturer. The company took us through the full range of options, and based on our needs, we went with an intercom in our favourite colour – black!

The intercom has been amazing as it is all mobile app based, so meant no drilling into walls to install a receiver in the house. So, if a visitor arrives, we get a video call through to our mobiles, giving us stalling time to do some emergency cleaning.

We splashed out on a system that opens the gates as we go down the drive. There’s a small plate with a sensor, screwed into the tarmac.

Budget for a turnkey finish

It is easier to get people on site when no one is living in the house, and there is less cost if you do things like the groundwork when the digger is there. In NI, the ability to claim back VAT is a massive advantage, so make the most of it by doing the big things during the build.

In our case that meant doing the tarmac and kerbing. A family friend had recently built and had advised us to get our kerbing down as soon as we were closing in with finishing the build as it would save time and money.

We originally had planned to do the tarmac sometime in the future, but the VAT saving was what convinced us to do it then. Before completion and before we filed out our VAT claim with HMRC.

The tarmac was the last thing to be done and this gave us time to make sure we had any cabling or piping under the ground. We ran some ducting across

either side of the driveway in case we ever need to run any further cabling.

We used a local tarmac company Hannah’s father had used a few years before so we knew we would be in good hands. We opted to go for 50mm of SMA10 which would allow us to have the best finish to the surface. After a day of prep (and about 17 tonnes of blinding) we had the tarmac poured and finished in one full day.

Although it was a somewhat unexpected thing to do, I think the tarmac really finishes off the build.

Last but not least, build a garage

Within our original plans we included a single storey garage but as soon as we

broke ground, we made the decision that it wouldn’t be within our budget to build it. Sure enough, we came to regret the decision as we found storage to be a real stumbling block.

We started looking at cost effective alternatives to a block built garage that wouldn’t detract from our unique house design. We spoke to a local steel shed manufacturer and found that we could get what we wanted with a price we could live with. After a design consultation we came away with a black tin look with black fixtures. The garage complements the house perfectly, mimicking the its design and style just on a much smaller scale.

Read up on how Matthew and Hannah connected to utilities, installed their solar panels and more on selfbuild.ie, and follow them on Instagram @ourweecountryhome

More photographs available at selfbuild.ie

GARDEN DESIGN

A modern garden for a rural home

We live very differently than our parents did not that long ago. Working from home has fundamentally changed what we need from our houses. Our tastes and styles are also informing what kind of spaces we want to live in.

Yet when building in a rural location, the landscape makes its own demands. If we don’t build our homes and gardens to embrace the landscape, shaped over many centuries, the house ends up looking out of place.

How then to make a modern home and garden sit comfortably in an existing landscape, while still meeting the contemporary demands of the family who lives and works in it? This project is a good example.

Project profile

This bright, airy, modern home is surrounded by fields on one side and on the other, a country lane with a lovely old limestone wall. Mature native trees are visible behind.

Because the house has several entrances, the homeowners wanted seating areas close to most of them to take advantage of the movement of the sun at different times of the day, particularly in summer.

The kitchen doors open to the south and west, so it makes sense to have an outdoor dining area here. A drop in levels towards the rear allows for a lounging space for later on, when little ones are in bed and the grownups can gather round the fire pit to relax.

The area around the front door or main entrance, faces the mature trees. It is a perfect cool and shady spot on

hot summer days and benefits from the morning sun. So it made sense to have room to sit here too. But access to and from the front door for family and visitors had to be considered.

Parking is another issue that can pose new challenges. With plug-in electric cars becoming increasingly popular, parking space needs to be close to the charging

annebyrnegardendesign.com

point. But it also needs to be convenient for family use, while allowing room for guests and delivery drivers to park, turn and exit easily.

Blurring theboundaries

The design for this garden effectively blurs the boundaries between inside and outside.

Outside the kitchen, a paved dining area is surrounded by planted raised beds with the colourful planting visible from both indoors and outdoors all year round. Steps lead down to an evening lounge area, and ground level planting on either side brings extra life and movement.

Paving continues along the front

This self-build in Co Galway needed a garden that would be both sensitive to its surroundings and easy to use. Landscape designer Anne Byrne shares how she delivered just that.

Anne Byrne

Example of a mosaic

façade and around to the main entrance, where it widens to accommodate an informal seating area that leaves plenty of space for access to the front door.

Block planting of evergreen shapes and ornamental grasses keeps the front of the house looking attractively neat year round and contrasts with the more seasonal mixed planting elsewhere.

A low hedge separates the seating and parking areas, acting as a visual cue to visitors not to park too closely to the entrance. There is room near the utility room door for parking too, as the charging point is located here and this is where shopping will be unloaded.

Grey porcelain paving complements

the old stone wall that forms part of the borrowed view as well as providing a seamless contemporary finish. Outdoor furniture was kept modern and practical, with concrete adding a touch of industrial chic and acacia wood a note of warmth.

The glass atrium to the rear offers views across lawn, wildflower meadow and some new native trees. A pebble mosaic here features bees and beehives, which have traditionally been on the site and are to be reintroduced by the family over the next few years, with the latest generations of bees benefitting from the mixed planting and wildflower meadow.

TIPS

� When choosing paving, consider the local stone in your area and opt for complementary tones so that your garden looks like it belongs in the landscape.

� Consider parking needs prior to laying your driveway and kerbing, and be realistic about which doors you’ll use most often. Remembering you might want to encourage visitors to park elsewhere.

� If installing an electric charging point, consider how this will affect views of the garden from indoors and outdoors – could your favourite focal point be blocked by a vehicle most of the time?

the

lowdown

OPINION . ADVICE . INSIGHT . KNOWLEDGE

New advice section on selfbuild.ie

We recently revamped the Advice section of our website to bring together the topics you want to know more about, in one convenient place. Here’s a snapshot of what to expect…

Are you building a new house? Are you renovating or extending your current home? You’ve come to the right place. We’ve gathered our most popular articles on those topics on selfbuild.ie/advice to prepare you for what’s to come on your self-build journey.

Whether you’re interested to learn more about insulation and airtightness or want to revamp your old bathroom, we’ve got a goldmine of content to bring you up to speed.

For each topic, we have gathered our top articles, videos and podcasts to cover how much your project will cost, how to design for maximum efficiency, and how to translate all of that on site when you have to make decisions in a heartbeat.

We also have featured projects for each of the nine themes we’ve selected based on your recommendations.

So go on, have a gander and let us know what you think of our revamped Advice page. We’ll be updating more sections of our website this year, so get onto Instagram or Facebook to stay abreast of the latest developments.

Log on to selfbuild.ie/advice

Self-build mortgages

Find out what a self-build mortgage is, how to get one and how they work.

Aself-build mortgage will help you get the funds to get started building your own home. However, they are quite different to a standard mortgage. Here’s what you need to know.

What is a self-build mortgage?

The biggest difference between a self-build mortgage and a standard mortgage is that the bank lends you money in stages, as your home is being built.

In a traditional mortgage, the loan is secured on the value of the final property and only made available at the end of the buying process. Unless your build contractors have incredible payment terms, this simply doesn’t work when you are building.

As you are getting money in stages, you only have to pay interest on the funds you have already drawn down. Not the whole amount of the mortgage.

This also protects the mortgage lender from being left in the lurch if the build goes wrong, by ensuring that each individual loan is matched up to the value of each build stage.

How much can I borrow for my self-build mortgage?

In NI, you can typically borrow 75 per cent of the project costs. Or more if you already own the land you are building on. You can borrow up to 4.5 times your income.

In ROI, from the 1st of January 2023, lenders will allow you to borrow up to four times your gross income for your self-build. In exceptional circumstances loans of 4.5 times can be made, but that’s usually only to applicants with higher salary levels as the lenders assess these as lower risk.

You will need at least 10 per cent of the total build and site cost for a

deposit. It’s also important you have around 10 per cent of the value of your build saved on top of your deposit to cover any unforeseen costs. The lenders will look for proof of this contingency fund.

In ROI first time self-builders are eligible to apply for the Help to Buy scheme, which can provide up to €30,000 in tax relief to help with your deposit.

The First Home Scheme, where the government can provide up to 30 per cent of the value of your property on top of the help to buy scheme, currently does not extend to selfbuilds, but is expected to be extended in 2023.

The UK’s Help to Build scheme operates similarly to the Republic’s First Home Scheme, providing 5 to 20 per cent of the cost of the build, in return for an equity stake in your home. However, Help to Build is currently not available in NI.

What do I need before applying for a self-build mortgage?

Mark Coan Financial expert and founder of online finance guide moneysherpa.ie

Before applying for a self-build mortgage, you will need two things. First you will need to find a site to build your property. Then you will need to get planning permission for the house you plan to build on that site.

Note that lenders will not give you the funds until you’ve obtained planning permission. They will also not help fund the cost of getting planning permission.

How much of a deposit do I need for my self-build mortgage?

First time buyers need a 10 per cent deposit, with a maximum Loan to Value (LTV) of 90 per cent. Loan to Value refers to the value of your mortgage compared to the value of your build.

This LTV is based on the cost of the site along with the cost of construction, or 90 per cent of the site value once it has been completed, whichever is lower. Second time buyers need a 20 per cent deposit, with a maximum LTV of 80 per cent.

Image by Photo Mix

However, many lenders allow you to use the site as a deposit if you already own it.

If you are gifted the site, this can count toward your deposit, so for example if your site is worth over 10 per cent of the combined build and site cost, then you can borrow 100 per cent for your build.

How expensive is a self-build mortgage?

Usually building your own home will turn out to be cheaper in the long run, so you can get a better loan to value. Which usually means a cheaper mortgage rate.

Mortgage rates for self-builds and buying a home outright are the same in ROI. However, in NI different mortgage rates apply to self-build projects. Unfortunately these are higher than standard mortgage rates due to the higher risk to the lender.

DO ALL LENDERS OFFER SELF-BUILD MORTGAGES?

Once you have a site and planning permission, you can get started on your self-build mortgage application. Only certain lenders offer self-build mortgages.

In ROI, these are AIB (who own Haven and EBS), Permanent TSB and Bank of Ireland. In NI there are more to choose from, with 26 different providers offering self-build mortgages.

Talk to a mortgage broker to help you choose which lender is best for your particular build.

WHAT DO I NEED TO APPLY?

You will need the following documents to get started:

� Evidence of contribution

� Full planning permission

� Map of site

� Estimates of building plans and costs

� Fixed price contract

Once you have these documents in order, you will get an initial offer from a lender. It’s important to note that your building plans and cost estimates must be realistic for your loan to be approved.

If your cost per square foot is too low or there is insufficient contingency the lender will almost certainly not approve the loan. So if you are planning to cut any corners it is easy to come a cropper here and not get the funds you need.

How do the stage payments work?

After your self build mortgage is approved, you will begin to receive funds that correspond with the stages of your property being built.

There are generally four to six stages depending on your build, which can include:

1. Buying the site 2. Substructure 3. Completion of roof 4. Completion of floor 5. First and second fix

6. Certified completion

Depending on the length of your building period, these stage payments are generally spread out over 18 months.

At the completion of each stage lenders will seek proof that the build has reached a certain level, before releasing the next tranche of funds.

At each stage above the architect, as your assigned certifier will send a certification of completion to your solicitor who in turn sends this to your lender.

Once the lender receives the certification then funds for the relevant stage will be released.

Usually you don’t need an independent valuer to visit the property at these interim stages, but one is usually required at the point of certified completion.

Be warned this process involves a lot of paperwork and can slow your build down significantly if you aren’t on top of what you need at each stage.

In NI it is possible to get funds in advance of each stage of the build rather than in arrears, but you will pay extra interest for the privilege. This is not an option in ROI.

What are the disadvantages to a self-build mortgage?

Financing your home takes much more time and effort than finding an already built home. It also requires a serious amount of planning and can be a very long process.

You have to plan out all aspects of the build such as finding an architect, getting planning permission, finding a site, finding a mortgage etc.

And there are some risks attached with building your own home, such as construction taking longer than expected or going over budget. If you are up to your maximum lending amount, this can become a significant issue.

Central banks relax mortgage rules

In NI, the affordability test recommendation from the Bank of England was scrapped as of August 2022.

The stress test assessed prospective borrowers’ ability to repay their mortgage. However, borrowers will still be subject to the wider assessment of affordability required by the Financial Conduct Authority’s Mortgage Conduct of Business (MCOB) responsible lending rules.

The loan to income ratio of 4.5 remains in place, meaning lenders cannot lend more than four and a half times the applicant’s income.

Meanwhile, a study by the Bank of England shows, first time buyers were the least likely to get the best deal on their mortgage. Young people and first time buyers were the most likely to make “very expensive choices”.

In ROI, for first time buyers the Central Bank is increasing the loan to income ratio from 3.5 to 4 as of January 2023. However, second and subsequent buyers will still be subject to the 3.5 limit.

The loan to value (LTV) limit remains at 90 per cent for first time buyers. This means the value of the loan cannot exceed 90 per cent of the house value. Second and subsequent buyers will see their LTV increase from 80 to 90 per cent.

Lenders are allowed to lend above these limits in some cases, and the rules for this have changed too. Now for first time buyers, 15 per cent of lending can take place above the limits and 15 per cent of second and subsequent buyers.

The Central Bank is also making changes their definition of a first time buyer to include fresh start applicants. A fresh start applicant is divorced, separated or has undergone bankruptcy or insolvency, and no longer have an interest in the previous property.

Those who get a top up loan or remortgage with an increase in the principal may also be considered first time buyers, provided the property remains their primary home.

It’s now easier to get a mortgage in Ireland as new central bank rules allow more people to borrow to buy or build their home.

Top 10 energy savers

Energy saving tips that could shave hundreds of euros or pounds off your bills.

Afamily of four could be spending as much as €25 per day on electricity, gas and home heating in ROI. That’s according to research from Queen’s University, which estimates that over a standard winter monthly billing period the total cost to run a household exceeds €700. The biggest money pit in winter relates to having the central heating on for five hours a day, €11.40 per day or 46 per cent of the total. The researchers estimate the average household in Ireland could save a few hundred euros a year on their bills. Here are some thrifty ways to reduce your use today.

1. Set the thermostat to 19degC in living rooms, 15-18degC in hallways and bedrooms. By lowering your home temperature by just one degree you can reduce the energy you use by 10 per cent.

2. Service your boiler. Servicing your boiler is a necessity (carbon monoxide kills) and it will pay dividends too because it will run more efficiently. Check that no air is trapped in your radiators (bleed them with a radiator key) and use the correct time or volume setting to heat the water you need.

3. Turn your heating off 30 minutes before you intend to stop using it.

4. Draughtproof. Close doors to rooms that are not used very often, and find the source of cold draughts (windows, doors, letterboxes) and plug the gaps. Never block wall vents as they are essential for good air quality in your home.

5. Set your hot water to about 60degC. If your water is being heated by a central heating boiler, fit a cylinder thermostat to moderate the temperature of the water. Consider installing an immersion timer to ensure you have hot water only when

you need it. Ask your plumber for help and guidance on how to work or upgrade your boiler.

6. Insulate your hot water cylinder if it isn’t already. Insulate hot water pipes with foam tubing, especially in unheated areas like the attic.

7. Reduce showering time. A regular shower uses only 20 per cent of the energy it takes to heat the water for a full bath. However, pumped electric showers are still one of the biggest energy users in the home.

8. Wash when machine is full and set to a low temperature. For both dishwasher and washing machine.

9. Don’t leave the fridge door open for too long. It takes 45 minutes for the fridge to cool down to its original temperature afterwards.

10. Unplug appliances when not in use.

Adapted from the ROI government leaflet Stay Warm And Well This Winter, gov.ie/reduceyouruse

The It All Adds Up energy saving campaign provides more energy savings tips for households in NI.

LOW COST MEASURES

• Save £100 a year by reducing the temperature your boiler heats water to (known as the boiler flow temperature) from 75degC to 60degC. This will not reduce the temperature of your home.

• Save £70 per year by turning appliances off at the plug.

• Save £70 a year by using your tumble dryer less. Save £40 a year by washing clothes at a lower temperature.

• Save around £60 a year by reducing heat loss with measures such as putting draught excluders around doors or by adding clear film across windows.

• Save up to £55 a year by switching to energy saving light bulbs.

• By closing your curtains and blinds, you can help stop warm air escaping and reduce heating costs, especially if you have radiators below your windows.

• If you have a smart meter, there are free apps such as Utrack by Uswitch that allow you to track your hourly energy use over days, weeks, months or years. This can help you find the best ways to reduce usage and save on your energy bills in a safe and manageable way. Smart meters provide automatic readings to your energy supplier, meaning an end to estimated bills and enabling easier budgeting. Contact your energy supplier to arrange a smart meter installation if you don’t have one already.

SPEND TO SAVE MEASURES

• Save up to £460 per year with insulation. Tackling the roof and loft is one of the most straightforward ways to increase insulation in your home. According to Energy Saving Trust, if you don’t have any, adding 270mm thickness could save you £355 a year. If you already have 120mm, increasing this to 270mm could save you £35 a year. Installing underfloor insulation could save you £110 a year.

• Save up to £455 per year by installing photovoltaic (PV) panels on your roof. These panels capture the sun’s energy and convert it into electricity that you can use in your home.

• Save up to £235 a year by upgrading to double glazing. It will also reduce cold draughts and sound pollution

from outside.

• Save up to £70 a year by insulating your hot water cylinder.

• Save up to £60 a year by installing smart thermostats and heating controls.

• Upgrading to more energy efficient appliances could save on your energy bills. For example, upgrading from a C rated washing machine to an A rated one could reduce the energy you use to wash your clothes by 25 per cent.

• Replace your boiler. Although grants for heat pumps are not open to those living in NI you can get a grant to replace your boiler if your household income is less than £40k (upgrade from inefficient fossil fuel boiler to more efficient oil, gas or wood pellet). For those earning less than £20,000 the grant is £700 to replace the boiler or £1,000 if controls are also being installed. For those earning over £20,000 but less than £40,000 the grant is £400 for the boiler or £500 if controls are installed. To get the grant, you must receive written approval from the Housing Executive before you replace your old boiler.

Eco building: is it an option?

Natural and ecological building methods are branded as non-standard. Tom Woolley laments the current state of play.

Most people want to live in a healthy, thermally efficient house. But when they start researching how to build such a house, they often find the array of options available confusing.

Many assume that the place to start is to spend a lot of money on expensive technology such as solar panels, heat pumps and heat recovery systems. While these should not be ruled out, it is important to start with the fabric of the building.

If a house is well insulated, you can save a lot of money on heating. And this is far more effective than fancy alternative technology. This applies to building a new house or renovating an existing one.

Tom Woolley Architect based in Co Down

Mainstream vs eco building

Architects, builders and even official bodies will say that it is better to use standard synthetic plastic materials to insulate your house. They will say that you should stick to tried and tested solutions, that natural materials are too expensive and not reliable.

I would argue that using petrochemical synthetic materials such as polyurethane, polyisocyanurate, expanded polystyrene, or spray foam, into buildings is introducing an unnecessary amount of hazardous chemicals into your building and your life.

Synthetic materials perform very well when it comes to insulating buildings. But sealing houses up with airtight membranes where occupants can breathe in chemicals, flame retardants and fungicides, is not the

Hempcrete house

Inside the Co Down hempcrete house

approach I would adopt.

It is not unusual to find that indoor air pollutants are well over the safe levels set by the World Health Organisation and other bodies.

There is also a massive problem with mould growth, even in new houses, as the fabric of these buildings cannot breathe and require careful detailing and installation to manage moisture and condensation.

Natural alternatives

We are now able to build and renovate houses with natural materials that do not contain toxic chemicals. These include timber, wood fibre, hemp fibre, hempcrete, sheep’s wool, and many more. These materials are widely available and there are plenty of examples of their successful use.

In many cases natural products are more effective than synthetic ones and easy to apply. They are vapour permeable (breathable), thus less prone to mould and damp, ensure good indoor air quality and create an attractive natural feel to the house.

Despite the many benefits of these natural ecological materials, many people remain nervous about using them, preferring to stick with concrete and flammable petrochemical materials.

A large part of it has to do with cost. Some excellent imported natural materials can be more expensive than they should be, as they are made in other European countries. When I work with hempcrete, for instance, we get hemp from Yorkshire and a lime binder from Northern Ireland or Shropshire. Some hempcrete materials are imported from France and Belgium.

But even at that, it is possible to keep the cost of building or renovating with ecological materials close to the cost of conventional products. Although selfbuilds always cost that bit more.

The hempcrete cottage that we built in County Down 12 years ago has been a useful test bed. The house needs very little energy to keep warm and we have tested it for airtightness and cold bridging.

Over the past year, it has been monitored by University of Ulster and so we have data showing how relative humidity stayed the same all year round whatever the weather conditions or occupancy.

People who stay in the house, as it is let as a holiday cottage, comment on the beneficial air quality and some have even gone on to build their own hempcrete houses.

So if you want to build or renovate with natural healthy materials, don’t be put off. It’s your house, your health, and your choice.

“ “Many assume that the place to start is to spend a lot of money on expensive technology such as solar panels, heat pumps and heat recovery systems. While these should not be ruled out, it is important to start with the fabric of the building...”

Tom Woolley is the author of Natural Building Techniques, published by Crowood Press, which goes through the different materials and techniques.

Hempcrete house in Co Down

Bungalowhemp renovation

What is the background to the project?

When we moved into this mid-1980s house we saw it as a fantastic opportunity to renovate. It needed work done in many areas, from electrical upgrades to plumbing. And we felt some physical alterations could make the space more expansive and let in more light.

We were both born in the 1980s and grew up in rural Ireland, so there was a lot of nostalgia for us around creating a home of that era in the countryside. It had a lot of potential, and when lockdown hit, we saw it as a great opportunity to bring in some new systems and change the philosophy of the home to a more breathable, clean, efficient environment.

Did you extending?consider

The house was built as a bungalow, and the upstairs had been developed previously. So we did not feel an extension would add to the aesthetic of the home.

What were your aims for the renovation?

We wanted to take the opportunity to make the home fit our environmentally conscious lifestyle, and felt simplicity was a theme that would fit a country home such as this. Chemical and mould sensitivity is on the rise and something I have suffered with myself, so that was a consideration too.

While doing our research, we came across a hemp insulation supplier that piqued our interest. We looked further into the benefits of using hemp-based products to create an efficient home. After researching as much as possible and knowing the use of hemp as an insulation material worked well in other climates, we were willing to take the leap.

How Ethel and Stan Smith chose hemp insulation to achieve the best indoor air quality they could. Ethel shares their story.

How did hemp compare to other insulation products?

It’s got great environmental credentials, as it’s a fast growing plant. But it also came out on top for the health benefits, in terms of air quality, mould resistance and regulating indoor temperature.

The more we researched, the clearer it became that renovating using hemp and lime-based products was the answer for us. These products are better able to handle the elements of humidity when it comes to environmental issues, including mould.

Plastering with lime immediately led to using more breathable paints/no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) paints and other natural products as the project continued. We love that there are new and natural answers out there in all areas of construction.

How did it compare cost wise?

Since the company we took on to renovate our home is perhaps the only one in the country that imports, distributes, and uses certified hemp blocks, we got a reasonable quote. Ronan was our point of contact and he managed all communication and delivery of the hemp products directly to our door.

We asked Ronan to both supply the materials and fit them. It was a relief to have one company take on the entire renovation for us. Ronan managed the retrofit process and liaised seamlessly with us, clarifying options step by step throughout the entire process. Ronan and his team worked diligently and swiftly to insulate our home with hemp.

On the plus side, we did not have to broker other companies for materials. The cost was transparent from the

beginning and given the benefits of the products, we found it reasonably priced.

Did consider getting a Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland grant?

No, we didn’t look into it. I don’t even know if we were eligible. Covid hit and in the end we had to decide fast on going ahead with the renovation at

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that time. A window opened where we were both off work, and we just kind of went for it.

Were you nervous about trying a relatively new product?

Hemp has been used for thousands of years to insulate homes, so it’s not new. But it is a product that’s only just making inroads here in Ireland. Still, we were confident in its credentials. Also Ronan was hugely generous with his time – he showed us how best to maximise heat retention, design finishes, along with safety features including fire retardation.

He has vast experience in using a multitude of plastering styles, which we incorporated to create statement walls in the living room and kitchen, as well as a minimalist, Mediterranean theme on the bathroom walls.

How did the renovation go?

At the design stage we experimented using blocks of different thicknesses to vary heat retention as well as maximising space as it’s an internal wall renovation. We began gutting the house in January of 2021 and moved in October of the same year.

Something that helped us throughout the process was realigning our ethos and reminding ourselves why we were doing things. Especially when the details and decisions were flooding in.

What other upgrades did you carry out?

Because we stripped the entire house back to its bare bones, we were able to plan our home heating and hot water solutions to maximise the insulation materials we installed.

For this reason, besides two fireplaces, we also installed infrared heaters on the ceilings of each room. Infrared is a form of heating we became interested in and had experienced in another setting.

These became the primary heating solutions for the entire dormer bungalow. Removing all radiators, and old piping relating to gas central heating felt rather brave and radical at the time. We are into our second winter and while there was a drying out process, as there is with any home, we find these two forms of heat completely adequate based on the house size.

How does the house feel compared to other homes you’ve lived in?

It’s unlike any other house we have lived in. It’s really something you have to experience, as it can be hard to put into words.

The air feels clean and healthy.

On hot days, the house is quite cool, and during winter months, the house retains heat extremely well and distributes this heat to the hemp walls surrounding it.

Many mornings we have gotten up to make breakfast and felt the wall at the back of the fireplace, only to discover that it was still warm, even nine or 10 hours after the fire has died! Hemp blocks have the incredible feature of regulating the temperature in a home. While remaining entirely breathable, they manage to improve air quality while also retaining valuable heat.

One of the best features for us in our home, is the fact that hemp prevents mould from propagating, since the material is entirely breathable. At the end of the day, we are happy knowing our home is healthy from the fabric of the building itself, right through to the low-tox cleaners and paints.

CO CAVAN

What would you change about the design or build process?

The entire process was very creative, and we honestly wouldn’t change a huge amount in how we completed the retrofit, even despite the fact that we had never used this material before.

Hemp is incredibly pliable and easy to manipulate, enabling us to make last minute changes if we needed to the design. Unlike concrete blocks, hemp blocks are light and can be cut using a handsaw or electric saw.

This allows for easy handling and construction. Not only that, but the grains that are created while cutting can be reused so as to completely reduce waste.

Supply and fit of hemp insulation: Hempbuild, hempbuild.ie

Bathroom mirrors

Mirror, mirror

on the wall, which of yee looks best of all? Victoria Hunter shares her favourites.

Picking the perfect mirror to complement the rest of your bathroom is often a challenge. After all, a bathroom mirror is normally the first place we see our reflections in the morning and the last in the evening. They also set the tone for the room.

Bathroom mirrors are in fact just like regular mirrors, but with added benefits such as safety features. As in the glass is often tempered. But not always, so check for this.

They are usually waterproof (metal and plaster will suffer from moisture) and they often include lighting and

other tech. That means they are usually more expensive than standard mirrors. The more tech you add, the more it will cost.

After that there are many designs and types of mirrors out there for you to choose from to match the style of your bathroom. The basic thing to consider, beyond aesthetics is what the mirror’s core function is. Do you need it just to brush your teeth? To do your makeup or shave? There is going to be a different answer for each bathroom.

To help inspire and make your decision easier, here’s a list of what’s trending in bathroom mirror design at the moment.

LED mirrors

Having the best natural lighting is an important feature for many when it comes to placement and type of bathroom mirror. With LED mirrors, different light settings will help you get natural colour combinations in your bathroom regardless of the time of day.

Bluetooth mirrors

Alongside different light settings, Bluetooth mirrors also allow you to connect to speakers in the mirror, meaning you can listen to your music while getting ready. They also may have other features such as anti-fog demister and electric razor/toothbrush charging sockets.

Photo by julie aagaard

Photo by SONAS Bathrooms

Cabinet mirrors

Although a bit old school, cabinet mirrors are still common in bathrooms because of how practical they are. They provide extra hidden storage for those daily items you may want to be kept out of sight. They can double up as a medicine cabinet and hide away toothbrushes if you want to keep the bathroom surfaces pristine. Ideal for smaller bathroom sizes.

Bold mirrors

Modern mirrors tend to have little or no frame. But why not bring some elegance and personality into your bathroom with a bold, gold framed mirror? Or if gold is not going to fit the aesthetic of your bathroom, why not try to incorporate other colours to help make a statement and add character?

His and hers mirrors

It is common these days to have his and hers sinks in ensuite bathrooms, so why not stick with this theme and have his and her matching mirrors above. The more room you have the better this looks.

Photo by Joey Photo by Max Vakhtbovych

Photo by Filios Sazeides

Photo by Christian Mackie

The case against open plan

Open plan designs suit families particularly well, and their contemporary lifestyles. But there are some downsides. Here to explore them is Andrew Stanway.

For many years the dream has been to make the most of our space by embracing open plan living. But with changes in the way we live and the soaring cost of fuel, it might be time to think again. Perhaps, more than ever, we now need to consider function over form.

Here are some disadvantages to open plan living.

Expensive to build

Although open plan looks enticing and can make the most of the available space, creating such expansive areas is costly because it involves large structural steels and other supportive elements. And not only is such support expensive, it can also be complicated. Doing away with walls to create wide open spaces also means losing useful elements that would otherwise support the rooms above. This, in turn, can involve more expense.

Noise

Although modern white goods are quieter than ever, food preparation and cooking involve all kinds of noise, including that from powerful extractor fans. People playing on electronic gizmos or working on screens also create noise. Then you have young children playing, annoying one another and fighting,

which can all be a serious nuisance. For the noise sensitive among us this can make open plan living seriously unpleasant.

Heating and cooling

With the increasing cost of fuel more of us are concerned about our bills. A major drawback of open plan designs is that you have to heat the whole area, even if you’re only using part of it

Andrew Stanway Author of Managing Your Build published by Stobart Davies

at any one time. In very low energy builds that’s less of a consideration but something to think of in an existing home or extension.

The current fashion for rooflights, lanterns, clerestory windows, and very large areas of glass as walls mean solar gain (overheating) can be a serious issue. In many low energy builds today that feature a lot of glass, self-builders have to get their heat pumps to provide cooling in summer because of this.

Open plan designs refer to the kitchen, dining and living areas merging into one large communal space.

Privacy

With increasing numbers of us working from home today, open plan simply doesn’t work. Having a small area that can be shut off, with its own door and controllable climate, can be a life saver.

It’s almost impossible to do Zoom calls for work if you have a busy family in the background. Children who find it hard, or impossible, to concentrate on their homework also crave private space.

Loss of walls

This is a very serious disadvantage for many families who need lots of storage space. And that’s most of us. Obviously, because you have no walls, you’ll have fewer surfaces on which to hang pictures or other decorative or homely things. But it also means there’s nothing for cupboards to hang on or sit against. This can make a big difference to the pleasure of family life. We all need to put our stuff somewhere.

Smells

It’s amazing how far bad smells penetrate in a large open plan room and how long they persist. A single burnt toast episode can blight the whole area for hours. It’s also not much fun living with the remains of even normal cooking smells in every part of these large spaces.

Clutter

If you hate clutter, don’t even think about open plan living. Wide open spaces with little storage make for clutter zones unless you work endlessly at preventing them. Kitchen islands are notorious for this. And other people’s clutter can be really annoying. Cooking is intrinsically messy so unless you are happy to clear up as you go, you could be in trouble.

Loss of home office potential

Many of us today value

a separate place in which to work or study. Having such a space not only provides some peace but also means we can keep our work private. Working within a large open area often means having to clear up our work things. This can be disruptive and annoying, especially if the work involves physical materials that can’t be stored on a laptop. Lots of us need samples of various things for our work, for example.

Expensive redecorating

If you have single rooms for single functions, then when it comes redecorating, these areas are easy and cheap to do. It is very hard not to find yourself redecorating the whole of a large, open plan, area even if much of it doesn’t really need doing.

Harder to make homely

However stylish or impressive open spaces may look, they rarely feel homely. It’s far easier to make a collection of separate, enclosed spaces feel welcoming, emotionally warm and homely. Having more rooms also means more fun creating individual personalities for them, which in turn makes your home more interesting.

Separating rooms with glazed or sliding pocket doors can achieve the best of both worlds.

For ease of installation and to maximise energy conservation, our range of Brink MVHR units is self-balanced as standard.

By balancing air-pressure outside and inside the home, the risk of exporting heat on cold, winter evenings and importing it on warm, summer nights through the fabric of the building is avoided. So, you can expect are a more comfortable living environment, with fewer drafts, together with enhanced levels of energy efficiency all year long.

Surprising as it may seem, not all MVHR systems feature inbuilt self-balancing as standard. Self-balancing technology is just one of many features which differentiates Brink. When installed alongside our clever, click-together Air Distribution System, Brink MVHR units combine unsurpassed ease of installation, with remarkable levels of efficiency and incredible levels of airtightness.

FLOOR GUIDE / OVERVIEW

Flooring Guide

In simple construction terms, a floor is a level horizontal surface that supports its own weight but also that of internal walls and other loads including occupants, fixtures and furnishing. This guide explains how they’re built and what other functions they serve.

A floor is a level surface that can support the occupants and their furnishings and fixtures safely. It may need to also carry its own weight and internal walls and can also form part of the primary structure of a building, acting as a horizontal diaphragm to provide lateral support to walls.

Floors therefore need to be properly designed to account for their anticipated loading and use. In addition to general loads, larger point loads need to be considered. For example, a full bath and its occupant could weigh as much as a third of a tonne (double that for a cast iron bath), so they need additional support when placed on a suspended floor.

But a floor also serves to control extremes of noise, vibrational frequency and temperature. And in a ground floor, should prevent unwanted ingress of moisture, contaminants, gases and infestation from pests.

The choice of materials for the floor and its finishes will be based on aesthetics, economy, durability, environmental credentials and availability.

For instance, a floor made from solid concrete or similar dense materials can act as a heat mass by absorbing excess heat during the day and slowly releasing it at night. The solid floor, if given a suitably dark heat absorbent finish, can make use of solar gain in a highly glazed room, essentially collecting free heat to release as the room cools. In warmer climates, solid floors can become part of a passive cooling system.

Most floors can also be used to route services such as pipes,

ducts and cables through them. The choice of floor construction can also be influenced by the intended floor finishes and whether underfloor heating is to be used, each of which may affect the build up of the floor

plan house designs and the opportunity to use alternative systems and materials. Simple steel beams, of course, remain an economic and efficient way of supporting floors over open spaces and are easily

and the thicknesses of the various layers.

Much of this guide deals with the design and use of structural concrete and timber elements, as these remain the most frequently used materials in domestic floor construction. Other systems that can be used for domestic construction projects, including steel or concrete frames, engineered timber, or composite steel and concrete deck flooring can be adopted from commercial or industrial floor construction techniques.

These systems offer additional scope for open

repurposed or recycled at the end of the building’s lifecycle.

In terms of reducing embodied carbon overall, timber and any other plant based alternatives should be used wherever it is possible and feasible. A good design signed

off on by a structural engineer will provide the correct solution for you.

Note that this guide does not cover the different foundation configurations, see selfbuild.ie for the different types.

About the Selfbuild Floor Guide’s Author

Les O’Donnell is a Chartered Architectural Technologist and structural engineer with over 30 years’ experience designing and supervising the construction of new builds. His practice, Landmark Designs, is based in Co Tyrone. All of the information contained in the guide is for information purposes only; professional guidance must be sought for your own specific project.

aturally when people look at a floor, they see only the surface, not the construction underneath. But designing a floor requires thinking not only about how it will look but how it can be used beyond something to merely walk on. Les O’Donnell has the details.

Les O’Donnell landmarkdesigns.org.uk

Insulated, precast concrete flooring system

Spantherm, creaghconcrete.co.uk

Solid ground floors

A solid ground floor relies on the existing ground underneath it for support. This is how they’re made.

A solid ground floor should not be confused with the similar term solid floor which generally applies to any floor construction that does not contain hollow spaces or voids. Just to complicate things a little, a floor made up of precast hollowcore concrete slabs can also be described as solid.

The predesign site appraisal will allow the designer to not only decide on a suitable foundation design, but also to determine the best type of ground floor construction.

Let’s suppose that after clearing back the topsoil, you find that the existing ground is relatively level, dry and hard, does not contain features which may cause instability and no part of the building footprint will require more than 600mm of additional underfill to bring the ground floor to the level required.

In that case, a solid floor

construction using a ground bearing concrete subfloor is most likely to be the easiest and most economical solution.

There are probably as many different methods of building solid ground floors as there are recipes for pizzas. But as a general rule, the floor will be typically built up in layers of a subbase and hardcore underfill. Then a dampproof membrane and/or radon barrier with concrete subfloor and insulation. Finally, the screed and floor finish. We will take each layer in turn.

Subbase and hardcore underfill

A base of correctly graded and mechanically compacted quarried stone aggregate on top of the exposed subsoil is required to ensure that the building footprint has a level base with uniform loadbearing

Example of where a reinforced concrete ground floor is required for overly deep underfill

Selfbuild

characteristics upon which to lay the solid ground floor.

The top 200mm should be gas permeable hardcore of 4mm to 40mm diameter and contain no small particles. Underneath this should be structural unbound granular fill material of an ‘all-in’ graded aggregate of up to 32mm diameter.

And below that it should be graded structural unbound granular fill material of up to 125mm diameter. The hardcore materials supplier must prepare and provide a Declaration of Performance (DoP) with every load dispatched to your site.

An underfill depth in excess of 600mm could result in undesirable settlement and therefore, instability of the floor above, even long after the building has been completed. If underfill is likely to exceed 600mm, it will usually be necessary to support the floor across the base walls and foundations, by constructing a reinforced concrete floor on site or by using precast reinforced concrete floor slabs.

Using precast slabs will have the advantage of avoiding the cost of laying an excessive depth of underfill whereas the onsite reinforced concrete floor will usually be faster.

To illustrate the consequences of ignoring the importance of underfill, I was called out not so many years ago to carry out a structural engineer’s survey on the solid concrete hall floor of a two year old bungalow.

This floor had collapsed in the night, with, in the words of the occupants, “an almighty bang, like an explosion”. As it turned out, the overly deep underlying base fill had been gradually settling over time and the resulting voids under the subfloor had enlarged to the point where the floor could no longer carry its own weight and

failed catastrophically.

Luckily, apart from the fright experienced by the family, no one suffered any physical injury, but it was interesting to note that they had seen or heard nothing before that night to forewarn them of the structural failure.

I have also seen a number of less dramatic failures where the floor settles gradually. This usually comes with warning indicators showing up as cracked floor tiles, out of shape door openings, or gaps appearing between the bottom of the skirting boards and the floor surfaces. Dramatic or not, any such failure of a solid floor is nevertheless a costly thing to remedy and must be done correctly.

If you have onsite concrete to dispose of, recycled concrete aggregate may be used in certain situations as a substitute for hardcore, but check with your designer before you use it.

Big chunks of concrete or other masonry will not be acceptable as underfill for your floors, so it must be properly crushed and graded. Note that the practice of buying in recycled concrete hardcore from elsewhere ceases to become environmentally friendly when the carbon output and energy required from transport and processing outweighs that of buying ordinary fill material. In other words, check what distance it has to travel. Needless to say, any material which may deteriorate over time, such as timber, plastic, plaster

or other general building site waste; should not be used in the underfill.

Blinding layer

This allows the surface of the hardcore base to be quickly and easily levelled and if the radon barrier is to be laid first, a 15mm to 25mm blinding layer of clean sand will help to avoid punctures occurring as heavy concrete is poured over it.

Radon barrier or damp membraneproof(dpm)

The designer will have worked out whether the building requires a radon barrier membrane and will specify it accordingly, along with any additional measures which may be required such as vents, sumps, ducts and mechanical ventilation.

The radon barrier, being impervious to gas, should also fulfil the role of the DPM to prevent damp from rising into the floor construction but it must be certified by an approved body in accordance with the building regulations.

Most importantly, a punctured radon barrier is no longer a radon barrier, so the utmost care must be taken during construction works to ensure that it remains undamaged. It must be laid to cover not only the base of the dwelling but it must also be continuous over the entire footprint of the building, extending through the outer face of the external walls.

Any pipes or ducts passing through the barrier must be bonded to it using properly fitting ‘top hats’ and all joints in the barrier must be lapped and taped in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. Where walls are built below and above the barrier, continuous dampproof courses (DPCs) suitable for wall construction and approved by the necessary regulatory bodies must be laid over and be bonded to, the radon barrier.

A word of caution. Installation of a radon barrier and other measures is NOT a guarantee that radon gas concentrations in the building will be reduced to safe levels. Building owners

Radon barrier punctured at doorway

FLOOR GUIDE / SOLID GROUND FLOORS

Mica & pyrite

Pyrite or iron pyrite is a common mineral that can be found as crystals in sedimentary and some metamorphic rocks. Because of its gold-like hue, it is otherwise known as Fool’s Gold. The presence of large amounts of pyrite in construction materials such as aggregates can cause those materials to expand, crack and disintegrate over time due to a chemical reaction when they are exposed to oxygen and moisture.

These processes can cause pyrite rich underfloor hardcore to lead to defects in walls and floors. Not only that, but a high presence of pyrite in the aggregate used to make concrete can lead to severe deterioration as the pyrite oxidises.

Replacement of faulty materials with ones that meet the new building standards appears to be the only practical solution, but can be very costly. This is another reason why the supplier’s DoP certificate is a requirement of the building regulations.

Mica

By now, everyone involved in the construction industry should be aware of the 2017 Irish Government report on defective concrete blockwork which affected thousands of homes across mainly the counties of Donegal, Sligo, Mayo and Clare. And now it seems, further afield.

The source of the problem was found to be a higher than normal amount of muscovite, also known as common mica, in concrete blocks. A presence of just 1 per cent of muscovite in the concrete apparently reduces the strength of the internal bonding by 5 per cent and also weakens the blocks’ bond strength with mortar.

The mica can also absorb water which can lead to further damage to the blocks, due to winter freezing and thawing cycles. In some affected homes, the amount of mica in samples was found to be potentially up to 14 per cent, which is significantly above the 1 per cent limit accepted by the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI).

Any companies producing building materials must comply with the regulations which are in place to avoid such problems as may be cause by the likes of mica and pyrite. The risks of non-compliance are now so potentially costly that any similar future scandals are highly unlikely, however all selfbuilders would be wise to actively seek evidence for the chain of custody (CoC) and a Declaration of Performance (DoP) for any building materials that they purchase.

must ensure that the radon concentration level is assessed when the building is in use and again after remediation action, should such prove necessary. Radon test kits are inexpensive, readily available and simple to use. See epa.ie (ROI) and ukradon.org (NI).

Subfloor

The subfloor provides the strength and stability for the whole floor. It also provides a base for most of the following construction works. It is usually made up for 100mm to 150mm of plain concrete but it can be made thicker and reinforced with either reinforcing bars or reinforcement mesh if there are any doubts about the underlying ground conditions or if the underfill exceeds 600mm in depth.

If internal solid brick or block walls are to be supported directly on top of it, localised reinforcement will also be needed. The design of any reinforced floor must be carried out by a structural engineer.

Know that, as with the familiar trend for unnecessarily sticking reinforcement into concrete foundations or floors in situations where they do not require it, there is also an unfortunate inclination to order over specified concrete ‘just in case’.

This can be costly, so the task of specifying a suitable concrete mix requires specialist knowledge and should be carried out by either your designer or by the structural engineer, who will specify the most economic solutions for you.

Some of the more environmentally friendly concrete mixes can have better thermal insulation qualities

than ordinary concrete, so using one of those could reduce the amount of insulation required.

Insulation layer

The specification for this will be determined during the design process and the insulation will typically be a board type which can carry the floor loads above it without becoming compressed over time.

Most building projects now use foil backed polyisocyanurate (PIR) insulation boards (also known colloquially as ‘polyiso’ or ‘iso’) for floor insulation. There is a builder’s version of an urban myth whereby many seem to believe that they must always use PIR.

This is not the case, so do ask your designer whether a cheaper type of insulation will do the same job in terms of durability, moisture or condensation control, U-value and load carrying ability. A lowercost option such as flooring grade extruded polystyrene (XPS) would need to be thicker than PIR to achieve a similar U-value, but if there is sufficient space to accommodate it within the overall floor thickness, then when properly specified and installed, there is no reason not to use it.

Other types of board insulation are available, so take time to explore the options under advice from your designer. Today, most board insulation manufacturers use foaming agents that don’t use chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) or hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), both of which are harmful to the earth’s ozone layer. But it’s better to check to make sure of what you are buying.

The screed is the upper layer of the floor ‘sandwich’ upon which the flooring is laid, so it must be finished level, flat and dry. Incidentally (and I have seen this done), a well finished screed could be painted and will last for years until those expensive oak floorboards can be purchased. Here follows some of the terminology used to describe screed construction.

Types

The term cementitious screed simply means that the material contains a cement that acts as a binder. Some cementitious screeds will use an ordinary sand/cement mix, whilst others will use a proprietary mix.

If a screed is described as non-cementitious, it usually means that the cement has been replaced by an ecofriendly alternative. A floating screed is one which sits on the insulation layer, whereas an unbonded screed usually describes one that is laid on the dampproof membrane (DPM) or a similar membrane so is not bonded to the underlying floor slab.

Power floated screeds are finished using machines which leave a flat, smooth, hardened surface. Resin bonded screeds make use of epoxy resin to bond the screed to the substrate, in order to avoid cracking and curling in thin screeds.

What they are and how they’re installed.

Traditional screeds

Made from a combination of sand, cement and water, usually in a sand/cement mix ratio of anywhere between 3:1 and 5:1. The lower sand ratio means a higher ratio of cement, which gives a stronger mix.

Water is added to ensure a thorough mix and to aid workability. But too much water will extend the drying time and weaken the finished screed. In certain cases, especially for some precast concrete floor slab systems, the floor screed contributes to the overall floor strength, so its thickness, mix and material specifications are important design considerations.

To protect the often expensive floor finishes over it, the screed should not be susceptible to cracking. For this reason, increases in the requirements for the thickness of insulation material to hot water pipes has led to a corresponding need to increase floor screed thickness when insulated pipes are laid within the screed.

Similarly, when the screed is laid directly on top of the floor insulation, thicker screeds are required. For these reasons, traditional sand/cement floor screeds are generally required to be not less than 100mm thick.

Many floor finishes are very sensitive to the moisture content of the screed, so it must be allowed to dry properly. Allocate sufficient time in the work schedule. Actual drying times will differ, sometimes by quite a bit and will depend on factors such as the cement-to-water content of the screed, any admixtures used and its thickness.

Additionally, when the screed is drying, the process will be influenced by the relative air humidity, temperature and the rate of air flow across it. As a general rule of thumb for working

out drying times of sand/cement screeds, you need to allow up to as much as one day for every 1mm up to 50mm thick and one day per 0.5mm thereafter. By this calculation, a 100mm thick screed would take about 150 days to dry properly!

More accurate timings can be ascertained firstly by checking with the manufacturer’s technical guidance and then by carrying out an accurate moisture content assessment towards the end of the drying period to make sure the screed is fit for purpose.

Moisture testing is vital and should be done before you let the flooring installers on site and all such tests should be conducted using the calcium carbide method. Note that simple moisture meters will not give accurate results and heat introduced in an attempt to accelerate the natural drying process may cause cracking.

Fast drying screeds

As the name suggests, these dry much faster than the traditional screeds, at about one day for every 10-15mm of depth. Some products will dry in a few days and a few will dry in as little as 12 hours.

One product claims that you can walk on it after three hours, lay ceramic and natural stone tiles after four hours and lay

carpet, wood and vinyl after 48 hours. When researching which product is best for you, do not confuse curing time (how long it takes before you can walk on it) with drying time (how long it takes before you can install your floor covering).

Self-levelling screeds

These are free flowing calcium sulphate liquid products which will virtually level themselves when poured, although they may require a little help at times. You will most often hear the terms

anhydrite and hemihydrate used to describe the various products.

They both consist of a calcium sulphate mix, but the hemihydrate has a stronger and harder crystalline form of binder. They have different characteristics, so take time to check which suits you best.

Most self-levelling screeds are designed to be used with underfloor heating. Be aware that they can sometimes be sold as fast-track solutions, but this is not correct.

They are liquid floor screeds which usually dry at a rate of

“ “The screed is the upper layer of the floor ‘sandwich’ upon which the flooring is laid, so it must be finished level, flat and dry...”

FLOOR GUIDE / SCREEDS

Quick guide to liquid screeds

A liquid screed has an unique formulation over regular concrete in that it can achieve a very flat finish and is designed to allow for the heating up and cooling down of the floor in conjunction with underfloor hearting (UFH).

At what stage is the screed placed. Once the building is weather tight with doors, roof and windows installed. The weathertightness is important to reduce the possibility of surface cracking. Also there is less likely to damage the components of the floor makeup at this stage over placing them at foundation stage with regular concrete.

Depth of screed. Liquid floor screed is ideally placed at depths of between 50 -75mm in conjunction with UFH.

Who places the screed. A competent contractor with pumping equipment and knowledge of the screeding process.

Cost. Prices will vary on floor area, depth of screed and site location. There are numerous contractors nationwide that will quote for the project.

How soon can floor coverings be applied. Depends on the type of floor covering, type of screed used, length of time the heating has been functional. Important to get technical advice from adhesive and flooring contractors.

Sustainability. Liquid screeds have a varying amount of recycled material incorporated that would otherwise be destined for landfill.

Enda Gallagher, Roadstone Flooring Solutions

1mm per day for the first 40mm and 0.5mm per day after that. So a 50mm screed should be dry in 60 days. The good news is that they can be encouraged to dry faster by activating and gradually raising the underfloor heating. But only start this after seven days of the screed being laid. You can also use a dehumidifier.

Do check the manufacturer’s written technical advice before trying any of this. Most selflevelling screeds will also require grinding and buffing before they are ready for the final floor finish. This is due to laitance, a weak layer of fine particles that is formed on the surface as the screed cures. Removing this also helps reduce drying time.

When laying tiles on anhydrite screeds, the surface should be primed with a calcium sulphate screed compatible

primer in accordance with the tile adhesive manufacturer’s written instructions.

Insulating screeds

Insulated foundations can take care of your floor insulation needs but in many cases, new builds still rely on insulation above the foundation level. Whilst products such as hempcrete and lightweight concrete (see p116) can be used as insulating screeds, there are also dedicated insulating screed products available. For example perlite and pumice aggregates or polystyrene insulation beads will enhance the thermal insulation properties of the screed. Be aware that many of these products are intended as alternatives or additions to the floor insulation and are not, strictly speaking, screeds in the traditional sense. They

are not therefore intended for use as a final wearing screed, so may require a topping screed. It may be possible to lay a ‘floating floor’ surface such as floorboards directly on top, but the manufacturer’s (not the supplier’s) written recommendations should be obtained first. Nevertheless, such a screed can be very useful as a base layer under an underfloor heating (UFH) system and can save a lot of time in situations where it can be simply poured and levelled around service pipes. Note that insulating screeds should not be used above, or to encapsulate, any UFH system. With any of these solutions, one of the most important design steps will be to calculate and compare the U-values and thicknesses of each of the completed floor structure options which are being considered.

Example of an insulating screed

Ultrabead by RTU, rtu.co.uk

Recycling Water

Over 50% of the water we use is either harvested rainwater or water that is recovered and then reused in the manufacturing process.

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Suspended floors

What they are and how they’re built.

A suspended floor is one that’s built across walls, beams, columns or foundations, spanning across an open space or void underneath. Upper storey, intermediate floors and mezzanine floors are all suspended.

The most common types of suspended floors that we use in domestic construction today are based on either reinforced concrete, or on a timber based joist construction method.

Incidentally, a reinforced concrete floor which is cast on site onto an underfill base is somewhat of a hybrid between a ground supported and a suspended type of construction.

This is because it will be designed to act as a suspended floor when fully cured but relies on the underfill to support it initially, until it gains sufficient strength to support itself and any other design loads that may be imposed upon it.

It should be noted that the ground level of any voids below suspended ground floors must be sealed to prevent infestation. This is usually achieved with 50-75mm of concrete on a layer of underfill.

Suspended floors using structural concrete

Of the examples given below, in

Suspended ceiling being fitted under concrete floor slabs

modern domestic construction the first two or three are the most often used, but the others present unique solutions which should not be ignored when considering floor design.

You can also obtain precast concrete floor units with inbuilt insulation, which neatly solves the tricky problem of how to fix insulation under precast slabs at the ground floor level. It is possible to directly plaster the underside of most precast concrete slabs to form ceilings, but the necessity of incorporating cables, ducts and recessed lighting, etc. means that most will require a ceiling to be suspended about 150 mm below the slab.

1. Simply reinforced precast concrete slabs or planks are usually 600mm wide by 150mm thick and will span up to about five metres depending on the manufacturer’s specification.

2. Prestressed reinforced hollowcore concrete slabs will cover greater spans than the simply reinforced types and can range in thickness from 85mm to 500mm.

3. Beam and block floors use prestressed reinforced concrete beams as the structural elements of the floor, where the beams are set as inverted Ts and ordinary concrete blocks are set between them.

4. Composite floors are used to create large open plan spaces, so are usually found in commercial or industrial buildings but can be used in larger domestic building projects as well. They are usually built using reinforced concrete which is cast on site on top of steel decking sheets which are fixed onto a framework of steel beams and columns.

5. Ribbed floors use shallow concrete beams or ribs and can be built as troughed floors which are ribbed in one direction, or as waffle or coffered floors

“

“A suspended floor is one that’s built across walls, beams, columns or foundations, spanning across an open space or void underneath. Upper storey, intermediate floors and mezzanine floors are all suspended...”

Suspended concrete floor slabs carried on steel beam

FLOOR GUIDE / SUSPENDED FLOORS

which are ribbed in two directions. Compared weightfor-weight with flat slab floors, ribbed floors can generally span further and carry more of a load.

6. Vaulted floors are found in older buildings where the underside of the floor is constructed in arched shapes using stone or brick, with later examples in concrete. A modern take on the idea has recently been developed by researchers at the Universities of Bath, Cambridge and Dundee. Their

system uses 75 per cent less concrete than a flat concrete slab covering the same floor area. The ACORN Project team manufactured their prototype floor in a number of curved and jointed precast concrete pieces that can be disassembled and reused. The carbon reduction was calculated at 60 per cent and it is believed that this figure will improve as the process is further refined.

7. A hollow pot floor is another version of the ribbed floor and

is cast on site using hollow clay or concrete pots as permanent formwork.

Suspended ground floors structuralusingtimber

Firstly, it is quite unusual nowadays to see a suspended timber floor constructed at ground floor level. This is largely due to the labour intensive process required to incorporate a radon barrier and a sufficient thickness of insulation, all whilst

controlling thermal bridging, damp proofing, air permeability and interstitial condensation risk.

Having said that, if it’s what you really want, don’t let the complexity put you off. It can be done but requires a proper design and faultless workmanship. Building this type of floor requires support from brick or blockwork dwarf or sleeper walls to carry it at the correct level above the ground underneath.

Suspended concrete floor slabs propped to support temporary construction loads

Airtightness

Nowadays, in order to maintain high levels of airtightness, bare timber (e.g. joists) should not be carried in the traditional way through the internal skin of blockwork or brickwork cavity walls. This practice means that, as all joists will continue to shrink until they reach a stable moisture content, air leakage pathways from and to the wall cavity will open up around the ends of the joists, even though they might have been sealed with mortar after placement.

Flexible sealants should not be used to try to counteract this. One solution is to place preformed rigid plastic pockets into the joist holes in the walls and properly seal around them. The joists then fit into the pockets and any timber shrinkages will not cause air leaks. Another solution is to not create any holes in the walls at all, but to support the joist ends on galvanised steel joist hangers which are directly fixed to the inner faces of the walls. All of these methods require special attention to be paid to the provision of lateral support to the walls.

Timber floor joists

For upper storey floors then, the traditional timber floor uses solid natural timber floor joists which should be spaced at such centres as to make the most economical use of the maximum spacing required by both the floorboards or timber decking above and the plasterboard for ceilings underneath.

The span of the joists will depend on the floor loading and on the grade of timber used. A higher strength grade number equates to a stronger but usually more expensive timber.

However, the stronger grade should require a smaller timber cross-section for a given span and joist spacing, so it may work out to be more economical.

To find the most economical solution, get your designer or structural engineer to calculate your timber sizes in two ways so that you can (a) price the lower grade with a larger size, then (b) the higher grade with a smaller size. The design should also take into account the most economical joist spacing. Ideally, do not specify or use a mix of timber grades throughout a floor.

When laying tiles on timber joist floors, use an adhesive laying system on a substrate of weather and boil-proof plywood (WBP) of a minimum thickness of 15 mm, with phenolic glueing and screwed to the floor structure every 300 mm.

Notches and holes in joists

The building regulations have limitations on how much and where traditional joists can be notched or drilled to allow cables and small-diameter pipes through them. If it is expected that excessive numbers or sizes of notches or holes will be required, such as in a floor above or below a room which contains a high ratio of service fixtures and fittings (perhaps a kitchen), it may be necessary to increase the designed joist size accordingly or look for an alternative solution.

Open web joists

Also known as space joists or open metal web joists, these are sold under a plethora of trade names and offer a modern alternative to the traditional joist. They are typically made using a length of timber top and bottom,

with diagonal galvanised steel webs separating the two.

They have certain advantages over traditional joists in that they will span across much greater distances to create larger open plan floor areas underneath and they possess inbuilt spaces which will accommodate cables, ducts and pipes.

These openings avoid the need for notching and drilling normally required to get pipes and cables through joists, thus reducing the possibility of weakened floors, all with the benefits of reduced labour costs. The main disadvantages are that they may require a longer lead time when ordering and will be more costly than traditional joists.

I-joists

I-joists are another prefabricated system lying somewhere between traditional joists and open web joists. These are so called because they look like a capital letter ‘I’ at the ends, being formed of a run of small section solid timber glued along the top and bottom of a plywood ‘web’. These offer potentially longer spans than traditional joists and have a much smaller solidto-void ratio which offers an improved thermal performance when insulated. They should not be stored or used where moisture may be a problem.

Attic roof trusses

Attic roof trusses may be used to create rooms in the roof space. The bottom chord of the trusses perform the job of floor joists and the whole timber roof structure is carried on the external walls. A few structural questions have to be considered, such as the need to joint multiple trusses together, for instance on each

side of openings in the roof (e.g. windows and chimneys) or in the floor (e.g. stairs). Fire regulations will also require things like fire-resistant ceilings, floor decking in voids and firestops; in order to reduce the risk of fire spreading between storeys.

Engineered timber

Engineered timber is manufactured by layering timber boards, veneers, fibres, or chips and binding them all together using heat and pressure and/ or special adhesives. It is designed to maximise the natural strength, uniformity and straightness of the timber and comes in a range of different types which may be used as joists, beams or rafters. These types include parallel strand lumber (PSL), laminated strand lumber (LSL), glued laminated timber (Glulam) and laminated veneer lumber (LVL). The first two are available but do not have common standards for production and are not included in British Standards or Eurocodes, so their use could prove difficult in gaining building control approval. It is the last two that we would normally encounter in the UK and Ireland.

Glulam is the shortened name for glued laminated timber and is made by finger-jointing planed timber boards lengthwise and then glueing them together in layers to make long large-sized sections. It is generally chosen for its excellent load-carrying ability and aesthetics and can be made in curved shapes, with concealed connections. This is the type of engineered timber that you will often see as exposed roof beams and support posts in larger open plan buildings.

LVL manufacture begins with

FLOOR GUIDE / SUSPENDED FLOORS

debarking logs, conditioning them in hot water and then slicing the timber into the thin strips or veneers of no more than 3mm thick. The strips are scanned for defects, dried to a moisture content of between 8 to 10 per cent and oriented in the same direction. They are then coated with an adhesive and heated under pressure and cut to the required sizes.

Although each comes in different strength grades, LVL is typically stronger and cheaper than Glulam but doesn’t look as good, so tends to be used in structural situations where appearance is not such a critical factor.

Timber quality and strength

The two most commonly available softwood grades for general use structural timber are C16 and C24, with TR26 being supplied for trussed rafters.

Hardwoods are given D numbers from D18 to D70. These are all strength grades, but to be technically correct, the grading of species such as Spruce and Larch in the UK and Ireland tends to be governed by stiffness.

All structural timber should be properly marked with a stamp that shows the supplier’s licence number, the machine number, timber species, chain of custody (CoC) number, the standard number (i.e. BS or EN) the strength grade and the certification body (e.g. BM Trada) and its quality mark (i.e. Q mark).

Other logos on the stamp should include the supplier’s company name or logo and KD to show that it has been kiln dried.

All timber used in

construction projects should be sustainably sourced from forests where more timber is grown than is harvested and should all carry a PEFC logo (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) or an FSC logo (Forest Stewardship Council Certification).

Timber marked DRY is graded at a maximum moisture content of 20 per cent and should be transported, stored and installed in the building in a manner that does not allow this moisture content to be exceeded.

Although a moisture content of 20 per cent or less is permissible for internal use, timber joists used in intermediate floors for instance, can dry to around 12 per cent moisture content, so expect

progressive shrinkage as the timber dries over time.

Sometimes a lack of knowledge sees timber being cut lengthwise from a specific grade such as C24 to provide two or more smaller section sizes. This procedure will not necessarily result in two or more smaller section sizes of C24.

More alarmingly, we occasionally hear of ungraded timber being unofficially stamped to make up a shortfall in available graded timber. This practice is harder to control, but you should be aware that if it looks like it is poor quality, then it probably is.

Warning indicators would include wet timber, a higher than expected number of irregularities such as holes, notches, knots, wane (an uneven

edge caused by a residue of bark), a discontinuous or sloping grain and maybe splits or shakes (the splitting of the wood fibres along the grain).

Given the cost of timber nowadays and the safety implications of using an inferior quality, it is imperative that not only is all timber obtained from a reputable supplier, but that you check it before it is used.

If you don’t know enough about grade marking, a reliable reference source such as the Timber Development UK (TDUK) website is a good place to start learning. Easier still, if you have employed your designer to act as the independent certifier for the project, he or she can check it for you.

Hollowcore floor slabs cantilevered at stairwell

Floors with underfloor heating

Things to bear in mind if you plan to use underfloor heating.

Floor types

Guide

Selfbuild

Underfloor heating (UFH) systems usually consist of hot water being fed through a series of pipes, known as a wet system, but can also utilise electric heating mats. Either system is used to heat up the solid part of the floor which in turn radiates heat into the room.

There is still some misunderstanding about which floor finishes can or cannot be used along with UFH. Essentially, high density surfaces (e.g. stone or concrete, etc.) will conduct and radiate heat better than low density ones such as cork or carpet.

It is estimated that a Tog 2 rated carpet will permit roughly one third less heat emission than stone or tiles. The thickness of the material also makes a difference.

To maximise energy efficiency, the surface material must be in contact with the UFH or be in direct contact with the material in which the UFH system is laid. So avoid placing an insulating underlay below timber laminate flooring.

Note that a UFH system laid within a sand/cement screed will take longer to heat up but will retain heat for longer than a system such as one which for example, has been laid in a thin screed directly under a timber laminate floor.

Underfloor heating can also be used with limecrete. Accurate

Almost any durable material, within reason, can be used as a flooring product. Here’s what to consider.

calculations of factors such as intended usage, the thermal mass properties of the material, underfloor insulation and anticipated heat load, etc. are required to arrive at the optimal thickness and buildup of floors containing a UFH system.

Here’s what to consider when installing UFH:

• Before being laid, timber flooring must be allowed sufficient time to acclimatise in the building to reach a temperature and humidity that will be experienced during long term use.

• Floor screeds should be properly dried before most finishes, especially timber and ceramic or vinyl tiles, are laid.

• The Tog rating of carpets and rugs will determine their insulation effect. A 2.0 or 2.5 Tog rating is regarded as a reasonable maximum value for UFH. Not only will carpets and rugs diminish the efficiency of heat transfer upwards, but polyurethane (PU) foam or acoustic underlays will add to the problem.

• Control heat output using floor heat sensors, especially where heat sensitive floor coverings such as vinyl and linoleum are laid.

• A decoupling membrane under tiles will allow small differences in shrinkage or expansion between the tiles and the floor structure to occur without cracking the tiles.

There’s a lot of choice when it comes to floor coverings including: stone, ceramics (tiles), timber, rubber, concrete, composites, bamboo, carpet, limecrete, plywood, vinyl, cork, clay, resin and the list goes on. Most of these materials can then be subdivided into other forms.

Take concrete for example. With a modern self-compacting concrete mix, it can be levelled quickly and easily to provide a flat, precision surface which can be used to lay floor finishes directly onto it.

Terazzo, although nowadays mostly applied as an epoxy resin based thin-set finish, can still be created in the traditional way of exposing and polishing marble chips and other fine aggregates on a concrete base. Limecrete and hempcrete or hemp-lime are lower carbon alternatives to regular concrete and can be used in a similar way.

Grant Uflex underfloor heating system

Concrete types

What types of concretes are out there and what’s added to it to make it more effective and ecofriendly.

Specifying the concrete you’re going to be using can be a complex task, with five main methods for compiling the specifications. These are known as designated, designed, prescribed, standardised and proprietary. Every project has different requirements, so the decision on which method to use and how to use it is best left to your designer or structural engineer.

Standard concrete Standard or regular concrete is what’s commonly used for modern domestic floors. It’s made of cement, aggregates (sand and stone) and water. Admixtures can be added to enhance the concrete. When

mixed together, the aggregates and water interact with the cement in a reaction called hydration.

The combined materials gradually harden and grow stronger over time. It usually takes 28 days to reach its target strength. Typical simple unreinforced concrete mix ratios of cement-sand-aggregate by volume are 1:3:6 or 1:2:4, Gen 1 and Gen 3 mix respectively. Gen 1 could be used for foundations on a good load bearing subsoil stratum or for kerb-laying and Gen 3 could be used both for foundations and subfloors.

A higher ratio of cement content results in stronger concrete, so of these two mix ratios, the second one is strongest. Mixing concrete on site is not often seen nowadays, but in those cases where it is preferable, the quality depends on being consistent with the mix ratios, water content and admixture dosage for each batch. For speed and batch volumes, most building contractors use ready mixed concrete.

Water and admixture content affects workability and a factor known as the slump class, which is simply a measure of the distance a sample of fresh concrete slumps over a given period of time. Be aware that too much water results in weaker concrete so there will be a trade off between slump (workability) and performance.

Chemical admixtures are commonly used to extend the duration of the workability, reduce water content, enhance durability, provide a measure of protection against freeze-thaw cycles and to protect against corrosion of reinforcement.

They can also be used to retard or accelerate the setting time, improve flowability, enhance the strength and help to control crack propagation

Image by Ag Shotcreteservices

For speed and batch volumes, most building contractors use ready mixed concrete.

Selfbuild

by reducing shrinkage. Note that the mix examples given above are just two out of many possible mix specifications which can be used.

Gen 1 concrete is roughly equal to C10 and will have a strength of 10N/sqmm and Gen 3 is similar to C20 with a strength of 20N/sqmm. As a general rule, reinforced concrete should have at least a minimum strength of 30N/sqmm.

Concrete strengths are generally expressed as their compressive strength.

Self compacting concrete

Self compacting or self consolidating concrete (SCC) was developed in Japan in the 1980s as a solution to the need for a fast flowing concrete. It can be pumped and flowed into formwork without the need for mechanical compaction. It uses superplasticisers and stabilisers to enhance its flow characteristics and should not be vibrated or otherwise compacted.

It usually is supplied with a strength of around 40-50 N/ sqmm and should be specified in terms of its flow rate. SCC offers a fast method of laying floors, especially around potential obstructions such as reinforcement, pipework and service ducts.

It is possible to use it as a single floor layer with the floor finishes directly on top instead of the usual combination of subfloor and screed. For this floor solution, the cost and time savings could be significant, but you need to be absolutely sure that the design and preliminary site works procedures have accounted for the positions of all of the service penetrations beforehand.

Reconstituted or composite stone

A spin-off concrete product which is made to look like stone, but being around in one form or another for centuries, has no standardised formula for its manufacture. This method of manufacturing ‘artificial’ stone is nowadays used for a wide range of attractive construction components, for example in both interior and exterior walls and floors.

Low carbon concrete

Whilst there is no question that we need concrete in some form or another, the big question now is how to make it a greener product. Portland cement is responsible for the continued success of regular concrete, but it also accounts for most of its carbon emissions.

Cutting the emissions in its production is feasible through the use of green energy sources, whilst lower carbon content can be achieved by the increased use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) and other recently developed products.

Geopolymer concrete describes a group of alternative solutions to ordinary Portland cement-based concrete and is made by adding regular

aggregates to a geopolymer cement slurry.

This type of cement is made from inorganic aluminosilicate polymer compounds that makes use of recycled industrial waste such as fly ash or ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS), resulting in lower carbon dioxide emissions.

The concrete also has the added advantages of possessing greater thermal and chemical resistance and better mechanical properties. It is claimed that specifying pulverised fly ash (PFA) also known as fly ash or ground granulated blast furnace

slag (GGBS) can reduce the embodied CO2 of a reinforced concrete flat slab by 35 per cent.

It is also generally understood that the use of GGBS (as a partial cement replacement) results in a denser cement which increases the conductivity of the concrete. This may be bad for its thermal insulation properties but is good for its thermal mass properties of absorbing, storing and releasing heat. Both PFA and GGBS need to be used in conjunction with a certain amount of Portland cement.

Silica Fume (SF) is a byproduct of the manufacture of silicon

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“Every project has different requirements, so the decision on which method to use and how to use it is best left to your designer or structural engineer...”

FLOOR GUIDE / CONCRETE TYPES

and can be used as a dense powder or slurry in concrete production. Due to cost, it is generally only used in concrete where resistance to harsh environmental conditions are expected, or where high strength is required. The silica fume content of such concrete is usually about 10 per cent by mass of the total cement content.

Limestone fines are created simply by grinding limestone, which is a much less energyintensive process than producing Portland cement. The fines can be added to ordinary Portland cement to create Portland limestone cement and in the UK its content by mass is currently 6 to 10 per cent of the total cement content.

It is expected that updates to the British Standards for concrete in 2023 will cover some 112 general purpose cements, including those with greater ratios of more sustainable components. The update is set to include

ternary cement blends of up to 20 per cent limestone fines in addition to GGBS or PFA. These ternary blends should become the default over time, which is already the case in Ireland where they have been allowed for some years and ‘limestone cement’ has become the norm.

Carbon neutral cement

As coal power stations are phased out in the future, PFA will gradually become unavailable and GGBS is already fully utilised, so supply of that is now limited. This means that current research projects are trying to find alternatives to the alternatives already used in geopolymer concrete.

A company called Seratech in the UK has won the prestigious 2022 Obel Award for its work on producing a prototype carbon neutral concrete which replaces part of the cement content with a type of silica created from the capture of carbon dioxide from factory flues. As industrial

emissions reduce over time, the long term plan is to draw the carbon directly from the atmosphere.

Elsewhere, other experimental work includes an innovative concrete produced at the University of Colorado Boulder, which uses limestone grown by microalgae to entirely replace the cement content.

The concrete made from this biogenic limestone is net carbon neutral. It can even be made carbon negative if the additional ground limestone which is typically added to the cement mix as a filler material, is also replaced by the algae grown product.

To produce enough raw material to make all of the cement needed by the USA, the total area of algae ponds required is estimated to be roughly equivalent to just 1 per cent of the area that the country currently uses to grow corn. To keep concrete prices low, researchers suggest using the same algae to make other products such as biofuels, food and cosmetics.

Limecrete is a combination of natural hydraulic lime and lightweight aggregate such as sharp sand or glass fibres. The result is a vapour permeable material that can be used as an alternative to regular concrete, in particular for floor slabs in the conversion of old buildings, where it helps to deal with naturally occurring moisture.

It can be laid on a base of foamed glass beads rather than hardcore and without a damp proof membrane (DPM). This enhances the vapour permeability of the slab. Limecrete is relatively slow to set and absorbs CO2 during the drying process. And although more flexible than concrete, it is strong enough under compression to serve as a floor slab material. It can be strengthened by adding fibres and increasing the lime content, although this requires expert knowledge and experience.

Hempcrete (or hemp-lime) is a mix of chopped hemp shives and a binder composed of natural hydraulic lime and a small amount of cement. Typically used as insulating timber frame infill, it can also be used for floor slabs when combined with aggregates. Hempcrete is carbon negative and vapour permeable and contributes to regulating the temperature and humidity of a building. It can also help to reduce or eliminate the need for heating and cooling systems. Being vapour permeable, hempcrete is ideal for use both in historic buildings and in modern buildings using natural materials.

Other types

No-fines or pervious concrete contains less or zero fine particles (e.g. sand), so is a mix of cement, aggregate and water. Containing between 15-25 per cent voids, it is usually used as a solution for dispersing surface water.

Lightweight, aerated, cellular or foam concrete is a concrete produced by the addition of an air-entraining component to the mix. This can be in the form

Limecrete floor

The Limecrete Company, limecrete.co.uk

of a foam which introduces air bubbles. Alternatively a product such as lightweight expanded clay aggregate, waste cork granules, vermiculite or perlite can be used.

The main idea is to replace concrete mass with small air pockets to enhance its thermal and/or acoustic insulation performance, albeit at the expense of strength. The weight by volume of lightweight concrete can be as little as an eighth of that of regular concrete, so at such low density it would no longer be suitable for use in a structural element but would act more as a filler or insulation layer.

The term aerated concrete should not be confused with aerated autoclaved concrete (AAC) or reinforced aerated autoclaved concrete (RAAC), which is an entirely different product. Some precast RAAC panels used in the UK for roof, wall and floor construction from the mid 1950s until the mid 1980s have been subject to sudden failures. Their potential for failure risk is now categorised depending on when and how they were manufactured.

Other concretes not usually found in use for domestic construction projects include High Strength Concrete (HSC) with a minimum strength class of C50/60 and High Performance Concrete (HPC) which conforms to standards above those required for the usual purposes.

Not all high-performance concrete is high-strength but high-strength concrete is a highperformance concrete. There is also Ultra High Performance Concrete (UHPC) and MicroReinforced UHPC, neither of which are ever likely to be needed in normal house building. Likewise, Shotcrete and Vacuum Concrete are also available but are more suited to industrial or infrastructure projects.

Quiz

1. Concrete is a very old material, the true origin of which is still debated today, but it is believed to have been developed somewhere around the Middle East region of Syria and Jordan.

Of course, much depends on what you think is meant by the term concrete. Contrary to popular belief, it was not invented by the ancient Romans, although they were first to use it in much the same way that we see it being made today.

Their most successful versions used a mix of harena fossicia (a naturally reactive volcanic sand) or pozzolana (volcanic ash), mixed with lime, water and various aggregates. Portland cement which forms the basic binding component of all modern concrete, did not come along until 1824.

In Britain, Ireland and other parts of northern Europe, an early version of concrete which can still be found in some old rubble stone walls was made from sand and lime, or lime and clay, or sometimes all three. This might be better described as mortar, but in any case was inferior to the old Roman concrete.

Australia and New Zealand

Globally, we are now producing around 14 billion tonnes of concrete annually. That is equivalent to laying around an 18” deep layer of concrete over the entire surface area of Northern Ireland every year.

Most houses at the end of the Victorian period were built with suspended timber ground floors. Before this, houses had ground floors built with stone or clay flags laid on a bed of ashes or directly onto compacted earth. Slate was also used as a natural damp proof membrane.

The Janka hardness rating scale is created by using the Janka Hardness Test to measure any type of wood’s ability to resist dents and scratches. The test is named after Gabriel Janka, an Austrian wood researcher who developed a system for testing wood hardness by measuring the amount of force required to press a small steel ball into the wood to a certain depth. The scale number can typically be expressed in either N (Newtons) or lbf (pound force), so it is important to know which units the timber supplier means if they just give a number.

Working with concrete

How to work with regular concrete to make your floors in hot or cold weather.

Defects in concrete can occur because of chemical and environmental conditions, construction or workmanship issues, or unexpected loading. A gradual loss of performance is usually described as deterioration. Here’s what you need to know about controlling the environmental conditions.

Concreting in cold weather

No matter what you may have heard, there is no such thing as a concrete antifreeze additive. There are additives which help concrete to endure freeze/thaw cycles, but that is a different problem.

If you must lay concrete in cold weather (below 5degC), it needs to be protected. If the temperature of the concrete falls below freezing point (0degC), the water in the mix will freeze and expand, which will damage the concrete strength to the extent

that it needs to be removed.

Your aim during cold weather is to keep the concrete above 5degC for at least 48 hours so that it can begin to gain strength. Remember that concrete strength will develop much more slowly in cold weather than it would in warm weather and you need to allow for this extra time delay before placing any loads onto it.

There are three categories of severity of cold weather that need to be considered.

Ambient temperature below 5degC but with no frost: After taking steps to ensure that the concrete remains at a minimum of 5degC, bear in mind the slow rate of strength gain before removing formwork or supports to beams or slabs. To increase the strengthening rate, your structural engineer might consider increasing the cement content and reducing or eliminating the ratio of GGBS or PFA in the mix.

Slight frost at night: Protect all fresh concrete immediately after it is laid. The temperature of the concrete when delivered should be a minimum of 5degC. If the supplier cannot guarantee this, decide whether you can protect it adequately or whether you should delay the concreting until the weather warms up. If proceeding with the work, protection should be provided by frost blankets and insulated formwork. Allow for the provision of temporary covers and space heaters if the temperature continues to fall. Make sure that sub-bases, formwork, reinforcement and any other equipment used in contact with the concrete are all free from ice and snow.

Frost day and night: Protect and insulate the concrete as for Category 2 and provide additional heat using electric concrete

blankets or hydronic heating systems which circulate a hot water and glycol liquid through flexible pipes which are laid in direct contact with the concrete and insulated on the exterior side. If a heating system is not available, it would be wise to delay concreting until the weather conditions improve.

Concreting in hot weather

Concreting in hot weather can give rise to a number of problems as the heat increases the rate and therefore the temperature of the hydration process. The main issues are:

Delamination. The surfaces of the concrete will tend to dry faster, which will cause the topmost surfaces to de-bond from the main body of concrete, resulting in later delamination and flaking of the surface finish.

Cracking. Thermal cracking occurs where the normal heat in the concrete due to the hydration process is increased during hot weather. This causes the heat of the interior of the concrete to raise significantly above surface temperatures, resulting in cracking. Significant cracking may also occur when concrete cools rapidly during a cool night after being placed on a hot day. Plastic shrinkage cracking occurs when hot weather dries the surface of the concrete too fast so that the natural dispersal of moisture is disrupted.

Workability. When the setting time is reduced due to hot weather, this allows less time to place and finish the concrete. Concrete slump rates will slow in hot weather and therefore workability and flow rates will decrease more rapidly. Adding water to compensate must be avoided, as such a course of action would weaken the

concrete and adversely affect its long-term durability.

Some checks and precautions which can be taken to reduce the impact of hot weather are:

� Specify the correct mix for the conditions.

� Control the use of admixtures to maintain the ratio of cement to water.

� Use an approved plasticiser or retarder to slow down the setting time.

� Check the type of cement being used, as some cement mixes can accelerate the rate and heat of hydration more than others.

� Try to place concrete during the cooler times of the day or even at night.

� Be aware that cold joints may form between one batch and another. These are formed when one batch of concrete has started to set before the

next batch has arrived. Unlike the compaction of two fresh workable batches of concrete, it then becomes impossible to knit the start and finish of the two batches together. Depending on the position of the joint, this could become a potential plane of weakness.

Chemical and environmental conditions

The correct specification of concrete at the design stage will help reduce the probability of defects or failures due to environmental and chemical conditions. The most common forms of chemical attack are from acids, sulfates, chlorides, and physical salt weathering.

The designer must therefore know the environmental and chemical conditions to which

the concrete will be subjected. Concrete is usually attacked by chemicals which it happens to be in contact with, as long as they are of sufficient concentrations to cause damage. Here are of the most common culprits.

Water. The cement content of concrete standing permanently in water will eventually dissolve and the rate of deterioration will be greater in more acidic, softer water. Concrete made with limestone aggregate will suffer even greater deterioration due to the increase in the dissolution of the aggregate as well as in the cement. The solution is usually simple in domestic building projects, i.e. construct a properlydesigned drainage system to reduce the level of groundwater to below the base of any structural concrete.

Sulfates will react with

Roadstone, roadstone.ie

in concrete can occur because of chemical and environmental conditions, construction or workmanship issues, or unexpected loading...”

concrete, resulting in cracking and exfoliation of hardened concrete. If there is a steady supply of sulfate, for instance through movement of groundwater, the reaction can lead to a softening and further disintegration of the concrete. Sulfates can be found in de icing salts and are usually the culprits that you might hear about attacking the concrete in multistorey carparks, bridges and other highway structures.

Chloride accelerates the corrosion of steel reinforcement in concrete and the simplest methods of avoiding this is to increase the depth of cover of the concrete over the reinforcement, decrease the permeability of the concrete and to use stainless steel reinforcement.

Domestic sewage generally does not attack concrete. However, if enclosed spaces are left unventilated above the sewage level, hydrogen sulphide gas produced by anaerobic bacteria can combine with moisture (such as that produced by condensation), to create sulphuric acid. The acid then attacks the concrete and is the reason why you can sometimes find significantly damaged precast concrete manholes and concrete pipe crowns. Properly

ventilated sewage systems are therefore key to avoiding this problem. (See also ‘HAC’ below.)

Air. The most common concrete problem in my experience is that of general environmental corrosion of concrete reinforcement and is usually found in the sides and soffits of beams and lintels in exposed locations. Steel corrosion (otherwise known as rust) takes up a much larger space than uncorroded steel, so that concrete around the corroded steel will burst, crack and spall under the pressure of the expanding corrosion.

The cracks that appear on the surface of the concrete will run parallel to the steel and the reinforcing bars closest to the surface will tend to be the first to be affected by corrosion. Adoption of the steps taken to avoid chloride attack should also work well with simple reinforcement corrosion problems.

Salt. Although not entirely unknown, problems which you would rarely expect to find in concrete in domestic buildings in the UK and Ireland include those of physical salt weathering, delayed ettringite

Steel reinforcement (rebar) can corrode. The simplest methods of avoiding the concrete cracking is to increase the depth of cover of the concrete over the reinforcement, decrease the permeability of the concrete and to use stainless steel reinforcement.

formation (DEF), the influence of hydrocarbons and non-ferrous metals, phenol contamination (in brownfield sites) and alkalisilica reaction (ASR).

Note that concrete made using high-alumina cement (HAC) should not be used for structural purposes in the UK or Ireland but continues to be used for non-structural use under the name calcium aluminate cement (CAC). This product is resistant to hydrogen sulphide attack, so can be used for repairs to sewers and manholes where the situation allows.

Roadstone, roadstone.ie

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“Defects

Concrete construction issues

Some common mistakes tend to crop up on site. Here are the causes and what to do about them.

Many problems with concrete can be designed out during the design phase. If the design and specification processes are properly carried out, it’s then down to the contractors to get it right on site. Construction errors during concreting works may result from a failure to follow the design, the specification or good practice.

It might also be down to carelessness or just a lack of knowledge. Some mistakes may not have immediate serious results, but all will result in a structure that will not perform as well as intended. Of the following list of potential errors, the first is probably the most abused aspect of concrete construction and the next two are unfortunately very common in self-build projects.

Curing

Concrete needs time to set. It other words, it must be properly cured before other works proceed. Otherwise you run the risk of affecting its strengthening process. Sometimes, on top of floor slabs which may have only been laid for a few days, we see walls rising rapidly, or materials stacked up. Everyone knows that this is bad practice. During curing, maintaining the correct humidity is vital, as is the proper temperature. If either is inconsistent with the concrete specification, adjustments should be made as necessary. Precast components should be delivered

only after they have achieved their design strength.

Adding water

Adding more water to concrete that has already been mixed to the correct specification simply should not happen. It might ease the concrete worker’s load by increasing the workability and pouring rate, but it results in weaker, less durable concrete than what was intended.

I have even seen one occasion where, before he could be stopped, a driver tipped the washings from his delivery truck into concrete which had just been poured. Telling that driver to shovel it out of the foundation trench did not go down well.

Another situation can arise where water is added during the finishing of structural members. This leads to scaling, crazing, and dusting of the concrete. If you see a large paint brush in a bucket of water near concrete that is being finished, it should tell you all you need to know.

Very gently spraying a fine mist periodically over rapidly drying concrete on a hot day is an entirely different thing and if expertly done can help to avoid plastic shrinkage cracking. Everyone should also know that very wet weather will damage exposed freshly laid concrete, so weatherproof covers should be provided in such situations.

Reinforcements

Poor reinforcement installation can lead to a serious deterioration in concrete performance. If the reinforcement does not remain securely in its proper position when workers are walking around on it and heavy wet concrete is poured over and through it, the slab will not achieve its designed strength. Where reinforcement moves so that the minimum required depth of concrete cover

is reduced, the strength and durability of the concrete will suffer.

The most common mistake therefore is to fail to tie and support the reinforcement securely enough to keep it in the correct place. Potential weaknesses can also be introduced into a reinforced concrete ground floor slab by setting reinforcement on bits of brick or broken concrete spacers.

This creates large holes of potential weakness in the bottom of the slab, whereas there are ready-made steel and plastic supports available which do the job much better. Any respectable concrete contractor should either have a supply of these to hand or should have pre-ordered them in good time.

Alternatively, strong precast concrete cubes typically measuring 50 x 50 x 50mm can be used. Spacers for parallel bars should be staggered to avoid creating a plane of weakness in the concrete and supports for top steel should be preformed steel chairs, or other proprietary products.

Measurements

Dimensional errors in domestic concrete floors cast on site are relatively rare but checks should always be carried out on reinforcement type, position, spacing, size, bends, welds (if any), supports, ties and cover depth. These checks are quite technical and should be carried out by the structural engineer.

Other defects

Other defects such as surface voids are less common in floor slabs but may be caused by inadequate compaction. If found after the concrete has cured, they should be repaired using epoxy

bonded concrete.

Frequently, a fear of over consolidation is used to justify a lack of effort in consolidating concrete and is usually due to a situation in which the vibration effect of the process causes coarse aggregate to settle to the bottom while the paste rises to the surface. If this situation occurs, it is more likely that you have a poorly mixed or proportioned concrete rather than too much consolidation. Be aware that some concrete should not be consolidated (as in self compacting concrete).

To tamp or not to tamp

Tamping concrete is a process, not often seen nowadays, of ramming concrete floors level using a tamper which was often just a simple wooden plank with

a handle or handles. Tampers should only ever be used on very stiff or harsh mix types of concrete, in which the coarse aggregate materials don’t sink naturally. A modern concrete floor slab made from a well designed concrete mix should not be tamped.

Adding cement

Adding cement to the surface of concrete is done to dry up water which ‘bleeds’ from the freshly laid concrete as it dries, so that finishing can take place sooner. This creates a thin cement rich surface which will tend to flake off or craze, so should be avoided.

Finishing should only commence after the concrete has initially set and water bleeding has ceased. The waiting period depends not only on the concrete mix, but also on the

temperature. A slab which is partly in the sun and partly in the shade should usually commence finishing at the sunny end.

Floor Guide references and further reading:

sustainableconcrete.org.uk, The Institution of Structural Engineers istructe.org, concretecentre.com, BS 8000-02-1 Site Workmanship - Concrete Mix & Transport, BS 8000-02-2 Site Workmanship - Insitu & Precast Concrete, BS 8500-1

Concrete_Method of Specifying and Guidance for the Specifier, BS 8500-2 Concrete_Specification for Constituent Materials and Concrete, BS EN 206-1 Concrete_Specification and Performance, BS EN 1992-1-1 (2004) EUROCODE 2 - Concrete Structures_General

DIY timber floors

Understanding the potential strength of timber is the first step on the path to using this renewable resource. Here’s what you need to know to build a floor.

Building our homes up off the ground is standard practice in the majority of the world’s wet or humid countries. It protects us from rising damp and rainwater runoff as well as making services and utilities easy to access and repair.

There are several ways to build a structural timber floor. This is one such method, but all concepts are the same – it is all about gravity and load disbursement.

Considering the loads which will impact your structure is necessary before you begin constructing. Refer to the span

chart before you begin planning your floor (see key terms p129).

To make a 4mx4m suspended timber floor, you will need 14 lengths of pressure treated timber 150mmx50mmx4m, 100 framing nails size 90mm, exterior wood glue, 3 clamps size 200mm.

1. If you’ve already poured your concrete foundations and did not allow for any way to attach a timber frame, it is not too late. You can make the transition from masonry to timber by drilling a hole through both the timber and the concrete and installing an anchor bolt. As you tighten the

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Photography: Shantanu Starick

nut, the sleeve around the bolt will expand and grip within the hole.

2. You are now going to create three laminated beams. Lamination is the process of joining timber together to create a thicker piece of timber. Cut six lengths of timber, each 4m long. Lay two of your pieces of timber beside each other and apply your exterior wood glue to the flat 150mm wide surface of one of the pieces. Be generous with the glue but don’t add too much that it spills out when you press the two pieces of wood together. Place the other piece of timber flat onto the glued piece, pressing them together firmly. Line up the two pieces of wood accurately, and fix one nail in each end so that they are securely attached. Stand this piece of combined wood on its long edge and apply the clamps evenly along the length of your wood to press it together. Add nails, in a zigzag pattern, at 30cm intervals, the whole way along. You can drive the nails in at a slight angle to ensure a very tight grip. You can

now remove the clamps and let the nails hold your laminated beam together until the glue dries. Repeat the process with the other four pieces of wood to create three breams which are 150mm by 100mm by 4m long.

3. You have options when it comes to transitioning from your masonry work in the foundations to your carpentry work. You can make or buy steel brackets which you can anchor into your foundations using concrete anchor bolts. These saddles support your timber and raise it away from any potential damp. Or you can anchor a pressure treated timber plate directly on the foundation concrete and use ordinary timber screws to attach your beam. Place your laminated beams across your foundations and attach them by whichever method you have chosen.

4. Now cut two more lengths of timber 4000mm (4m) long and cut 11 lengths at 3900mm. The shorter lengths will fit between the longer lengths and you will end up with a 4mx4m square.

5. Mark two 4m lengths at

Centre positioning also known as edge to edge positioning means that the distance between the studs is calculated from the centre of one stud, to the centre of the next stud, as opposed to the gap between them.

400mm centres and mark an X on the side of the line where your timber is to be fixed. Mark both pieces identically.

6. You can now lay all your timber across your laminated beams. Do this so that the 3900mm lengths run across all three laminated beams and the 4000mm lengths fix to the ends and hold them all in place.

7. You can now nail your structure together, making sure to line up your marks and crosses with your timber. Always making sure you are on the correct side of the line.

Key terms

Stress can be understood as the amount of force being applied to a material over a certain area, whether that force is gravity, a car or an elephant.

Strain can be understood as how much a material stretches or compresses under a given stress.

Strength of a material can be determined by how much force is required to break it. Materials should not be compared with each other by their strength alone, but rather by what makes them strong. The strength of a material is the potential stresses it can carry, combined with the strain it might experience under these stresses.

Elasticity or rigidity of a material can be understood when we divide the stress by the strain. All materials fall somewhere on a scale from rigid to elastic. And all structures are made of a considered combination of both types of materials.

Span is the gap between two supporting elements. Understanding span is critical to managing load displacement in our buildings. It allows us to determine the grade, dimension and quantity of timber necessary to safely achieve our supporting

structure.

A span chart will help work out how many roof rafters or ceiling or floor joists we will need to cover a certain area, as well as the specific thickness and height these planks must be.

There are numerous free span charts available online* and understanding the language of these charts makes them a useful reference. It is important to ensure you are referring to a span chart that is relevant to your location, material and end use.

These charts can be used in both directions, meaning if you already have the timber you plan to use, the table will show you how far apart your joists will need to be. Similarly if you have already decided the span, the table can show you which dimension of timber will be most suitable. The terms in a span chart are as follows:

Loading refers to the quantity and type of load that the joists are designed to carry. A load can be defined as the weight or source of pressure which is experienced by our structures.

The average three-bedroom home weighs somewhere between 36 and 80 tonnes, which is the equivalent of six to 12 adult elephants or 500 to 1,000 people. The perpetual pull of gravity, which pushes the weight of our house down into the ground, requires an equal and opposite resistance to prevent it sinking down into the earth’s surface. The role of foundations is to not only connect us to solid ground but to evenly disperse the weight of the building over as great an area as necessary.

Some load is referred to as dead or static. Some is referred to as live or active. Dead load does not move. An example of this would be your appliances, furniture and the

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building materials themselves. Live loads refer to the weight of occupancy and suggest vibrations and movement. An example of this is the second floor of a building where human activity would affect the load at any given time. Foundations are designed to work specifically with your building and to spread a point load, which is a load focused on any one point of the structure, right across the foundation.

Strength class of timber refers to the suggested grade of timber permitted for use. Before a tree is milled, a certifier will examine the end grain of the timber and assess the species and grade. They then divide it into different strength classes. The higher the grading, the stronger the timber and the greater the distance it can span.

Spacing of joists refers to the distance between your joist members. This is measured between the centres of each joist, rather than the space between them. The more often your joists occur within a space, the greater the number of joists and thus the more elements there are to disperse the loads.

Target size refers to the dimensions of the joists. Joists are always placed in a vertical orientation, so they should always be taller than they are wide.

Maximum clear span is the maximum distance the joist can carry the load.

*Editor’s note about span charts: The NHBC publishes a span chart for NI and Woodspec has guidance for ROI. Always refer to current building regulations and consult with a qualified structural engineer.