BONUS: 11/10/24 - Panel 1 - Balancing Comfort, Sustainability, and Design

During the Self Build & Renovation Show on the 11th and 12th of October 2024, we ran a series of panel interview shows with expert guests to give their take on a particular topic based on their expertise and organisation.

Panel 1 discussed balancing three different areas when designing and building your dream house; comfort, sustainability, and design.

We were joined by Jenny Chandela from AC Architects, Mike Shufflebotham from 221 Degrees (glazing and airtightness), and Paul Wood from Nu-Heat

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These episodes will investigate various subjects in more detail, with expert guests, and previewing upcoming shows and events to help you with your potential or current self build and renovation projects.

I feel like I've done so much already.

I'm over this one, aren't I?

Just thrown because my

laptop was playing up mid broadcast there,

but welcome.

My name is Chris Dawes from

Visual PR and delighted

that we're going to carry

on these various broadcasts

through the day at the

Self-Build and Renovation live show here.

It's Friday, October the eleventh,

twenty twenty four, day one of two.

So if you're not planning to

come along today,

make sure you do tomorrow.

There's still time to get here today,

so make sure you do.

What we're doing is three of

these live panel discussions.

The boxing gloves are in the corner.

It's fine.

It's not a problem.

But we've got three experts

on three different things

from their own companies.

And we're going to open up conversations.

So let me introduce the

panel that we have here.

And I'm going to just start

the nearest to me.

So I keep myself out of

trouble because I'm not

doing anything else.

We got Paul Wood from New Heat.

Morning, Paul.

Yeah, as you say, Paul Wood from New Heat.

We specialise in warm water

underfloor heating and air

source with ground source heat pumps.

We've been doing this on a

bespoke basis for the last

thirty two years.

Personally been at the

company for the last nearly

nineteen years.

So I like to think I've

picked a little bit up along the way.

I would say that's fair.

Next up,

we've got Jenny Chandela from AC

Architects.

I am Jenny Chandela from AC Architects.

As you said,

we specialize in helping

self-builders realize their

dream of a low-energy home.

So we work almost

exclusively with self-builders,

and it is all sort of

fabric first all the way

through passive house

design principles that we're focusing on.

So every design is unique,

but every design is low-energy.

Okay.

I like it,

and we'll be with you for the

Rome a little bit later for

your virtual reality as well.

I'm looking forward to that.

Last, but by absolutely no means least,

it's Mike Shufflebotham.

Yes, I'm Mike.

I'm the sales manager at

Twenty One Degrees,

previously called Green Building Store.

People know that.

We've been promoting Passive

House since two thousand eight,

and we've developed a range of FSC,

Timber, Windows and Doors,

Mercantile Ventilation and Heat Recovery.

We promote air tightness tapes,

but we also,

we do the design and detail

of all these as well.

And we've now progressed on that.

Not every building we work

on is a passive house,

but we use the principles

of comfort and indoor air quality.

It's everything we get involved in.

We try and encourage people

to think about their

comforts and their air quality.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I get that.

We did chat about that sort

of angle in episode three

where we had total home environment.

And it was like that you

either have it fully sealed

or you then have the ventilation.

And it just feels like a

seesaw of which way you want to go.

Yeah, it's a whole other story.

And Passive House does that.

But nobody can do Passive House.

But you still...

Put some of the principles in.

Yes.

Put it to the whole house,

not just bits of it.

Presumably, and again,

apologies if I ask stupid questions.

I'm not the expert.

You guys are.

But presumably,

that's more for new builds

rather than renovations,

because that must be quite

hard to make a renovation.

Any iteration can be difficult,

but Passive House,

Enerfit is the retrofit for

Passive House.

And my next appointment on

our stand is just that.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, so it is doable.

It is doable.

So don't discount it.

Yeah.

Okay, that's cool to know.

Right,

let's launch into questions that

I... Don't shoot the messenger,

by the way.

I'm going to openly say I've

been given these questions.

Nick W can take the blame for this.

Right, first question.

I've got to break this down

because it's quite long.

How do you weigh up the impacts...

of using materials which are

eco-friendly to produce.

So materials that are

eco-friendly to produce

versus the operational

energy efficiency over the

life of that product.

I'm going to start with...

You shouldn't have looked so confuzzled.

But I guess let's break it

down to simple terms of

what's eco-friendly to

produce versus the energy efficiency.

How do you balance that up?

It's a difficult one.

I mean,

we've always recommended with any

customer that they need to

take the fabric first approach.

It's our products are great products,

but they're designed to

work in much lower conditions,

lower temperatures than

conventional modern old properties.

Yes.

So it's got to be fabric

first approach for all of what we do.

Jenny,

you've said that phrase already as well.

The fabric first.

Can you explain just to make

sure I understand exactly what you mean?

What does fabric first mean?

yeah fabric first is a

design principle and it

starts actually with really

smart design decisions what

I always say is sort of

architecture one-on-one

where are you going to get

solar heat game but not too

much of it where is your

heat loss make sure you're

positioning the house

On the plot and considering these things,

put your plant room on your

north side if you can,

because that's actually.

Generating a bit of heat,

so it's going to shield you

from that that heat loss.

So it starts with sort of

where you're revealing wins.

It starts with laying out

the house appropriately on the site,

but then it.

starts it goes further to

say let's think about the

fabric of the house the the

building system the

construction system and

that construction system

needs to be thermally

efficient it needs to limit

cold bridging cold bridging is um

If you think about the

insulation of your house being a warm,

fuzzy blanket around the entire building,

you don't want holes in your warm,

fuzzy blanket.

So traditional construction

has a lot of junctions that

result in cold bridging.

and then finally it's

putting in things like the

the ventilation systems and

um you know having the

appropriate window

specification because your

windows are some of your

your weak points and then

because you've gotten all

that right you have a much

lower requirement for

overall heating load so you

can use things like

underfloor heating air

source heat pumps ground

source heat pumps really

really efficiently

So that's sort of the starting point.

And then that all leads into

Passive House design.

And we always say,

even if you're not gonna go

for a Passive House

standard or Passive House certification,

get your fabric right and

strive for passive house

air tightness because at

some point your return on

investment for your insulation goes down,

but that indoor air quality

and indoor comfort goes way

up when you strive for the

passive house air tightness.

Yeah, we try and put that all the time.

If you can only do two things,

if you're on a limited budget,

if you get your air

tightness right down and

then put mechanical

ventilation and recovery in,

you'll get so many benefits

of indoor air quality,

reduced heating costs.

Yeah.

even if you have a single

brick Victorian building,

you can still make an

improvement by airtightness

and MHR alone.

One thing that's confused me,

and this is sort of like a

personal observation by accident,

someone I know had,

and I'm pretty sure that it

was linked this way,

they had solar panels

fitted onto the roof and

the big box in the garage,

and they love seeing the

levels of everything.

But the team that fitted it

went and planed the bottom

of one of the back doors,

so there was more of a gap.

What's that?

I mean,

I'm seeing chuckles and I'm worried

that they've been sort of

taken in a wrong direction.

Who do I aim that question at?

Why would they do that?

I mean, one of the things that we say,

and I'm sure Mike would agree with that,

is that when you're designing a house,

in particular, well, any house,

but in particular,

a low energy and a fast house, design,

design, design,

get all of your details

worked out before you start building.

So you don't get on site and say, oh,

I forgot I had to drill

this hole in the house I needed.

Yeah.

you need to have it well

sealed and you need to

think about where services

are coming in where they're

going out so that that's

already been designed into

all of the systems and I

think this is probably an

unfair situation because

they're not suddenly you

know it's literally they

already live in this house

and they've they've

suddenly got the ability to

put solar panels on there

but the team that that

fitted it when we need more

of a of a gap there and I'm like

Hang on, that's weird.

And then you guys are going, no, no gaps,

no gaps, seal it up.

Which makes sense to me because, Paul,

for example,

you go and put your systems

in and you've got all this

underfloor heating.

It's no good if it's just

disappearing straight out again.

No, absolutely.

And what we do ourselves is

room by room heat loss calculations.

We take it to the next level.

A lot of our industry does

whole house heat loss

rather than room by room.

And the shape of the room

will make a massive impact

on how that heating system will perform.

So by doing the room by room

heat loss calculations,

play straight into the

passive house side of things.

You want to make sure that

it's actually designed,

bespoke to the property

rather than just a one size fits all.

Because I've heard quite

often a floor-by-floor is

quite a common thing to do

different things on different floors.

We're literally room-by-room.

Yeah, we're done.

We add that into the password, into PHP.

We look at the room-by-room

eat-loss calculations on

top of the password.

Password tends to be the whole house.

So we then look at

individual eat-loss calculations as well.

That makes sense.

And I mean, Jenny,

you were bringing up about where it's put,

and I've heard comments about

It's got me, you know,

even using trees or bushes

outside to shade certain

windows or whatever.

Because you've not got just the heating,

there's the cooling could

be important as well.

And it's not always just

about the physical.

It needs to be deciduous trees,

so you get leaves in summer, shade,

and fall in the winter.

So you get solar gain,

you can get through the winter.

Exactly.

And it's amazing that you

don't just go and think

about the building itself.

There can be an awful lot more to it.

Okay.

But I mean,

I know the question that was

posed to me was, you know,

the difference between

materials that are eco-friendly to produce,

whereas operational energy efficiency,

I mean,

able to get into that kind of trade-off?

So it is individual by

individual what the

client's motivations are

for creating this house.

So some people are going to

be really motivated by the

fact that their energy

costs keep going up and up and up.

There are other people who

are going to be really

motivated about their

overall carbon footprint and what

their individual impact is.

So it's a different approach for everyone.

And I may have my personal opinions,

but as someone who works

with self builders,

it's our job to understand

what their motivations are

to help them create the

best environment for them.

Unfortunately,

no single house is going to

save the world.

And people have different

opinions about what it is

that needs to be done to do that.

So we're here to provide options.

And your natural materials

are always going to be

The ones that have the lower

carbon footprint.

So timbers is a renewable resource.

You have natural

installations you can use.

Those tend to be less

efficient in terms of their

installation value.

So then your walls can get much thicker.

And some of us don't have

the options on the plots that we have.

To have really thick walls.

It's not an easy thing, is it then?

And there's a lot of

sustainability that

actually longevity of a

product is sustainable as well.

So we use a lot of stainless

steel ducting with our MHR designs.

You can argue stainless

steel is not necessarily very sustainable,

although it's quite recycled.

But when designed and put in the building,

it could be there for the

life of the building.

Yeah.

So there's that size of

sustainability as well.

Which I guess in a lot of

the self-builds and the renovations,

people are thinking they're forever home,

aren't they?

Yes.

So that longevity becomes an

important issue.

Yeah.

I know that I've had the phrase,

if someone ever turns around and says,

when will I get the payback?

It's like end of conversation.

You can't do a straight

equation like that.

How do you put a price on

comfort and healthy?

How do you put a price on that?

It isn't that easy.

And also with regards to heating,

everybody's usage is different.

Yes.

How do you model that?

Yeah.

If you walked into my house,

my wife would have the

heating around fifteen

degrees because she likes

to wear it myself.

I would automatically put it much higher.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I like my shorts.

Yeah.

In the middle of winter.

He hasn't got any on now, you're on.

So, you know,

it's very difficult to model that.

You can work with

percentages and all the rest of it,

but that's probably the

best guide you've got.

yeah okay that this question

went a little bit further,

how do you make decisions

about whether it's more

effective to reduce energy

demand versus using more

renewable energy.

Any of you in a position to

address doesn't that go

back to the fabric first

fabric is still the same thing,

so I think probably yes

yeah fine and if you.

reduce your overall load,

you need less renewables.

That's the bottom line.

So you'd always prefer to reduce your load,

I would think.

This is the cheapest energy

you could ever get.

It's that energy you don't use.

Of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So fabric first.

Or a jumper.

Yeah, a jumper.

I agree.

Yeah, but you can't say that.

You've just admitted you're

the one that still wants to

be in the shorts in the winter.

How can someone balance, again,

apologies if we've covered it.

I'm reading this out as we go.

Their personal design

preferences with

performance and long-term value.

So how can someone

emotionally balance that?

Because I know we've already

largely covered where

they've got personal preferences,

but they're also looking at

performance or longevity.

I mean,

these must be difficult

conversations that you all

get involved in.

One thing that seems to

solve it is the budget.

quite often to get a

thorough performance that

they want to achieve but

they want a certain look

the cost of doing that and

making the thing twice ah

okay it's quite simple you

get a very good film

performance keep everything

simple is the easiest way

to get there both cost wise

and performance wise do

most people start with

utopia and then bring it

down to reality is that

does that happen a lot

I think there are some people,

but there are a lot of

people who are really clued

in to the construction.

The people who are self

builders are at events like today,

they're at many of the other shows,

they're reading in their spare time,

they often come spouting

off a lot of information that, you know,

it surprises me the level

of detail that they know

about what goes into a low energy home.

But at the same time,

I want to make this

absolutely clear to anybody

that may not be in that

situation where they know,

because there's a lot of

other people that are suddenly going,

do you know what?

Housing market has gone up

through the roof and

they're not providing what I want.

And, you know,

we've done several episodes

where going actually to go

and self-build or renovate.

I think the self-building particular.

is a lot more doable than people realise.

Yes, it is.

And so this is where a

centre like this is

absolutely precious because

we're getting all of you people here,

available with your technology,

with your knowledge and all

of those things,

and shows like this

particular one with two

days of presentations.

So even if you're a bit further back,

they might not know how to

get that budget,

but you are able to guide them.

Yeah, absolutely.

And people can do a lot more

in their self-build.

There's the term self-build,

and everyone thinks, well,

I can't build my own house.

But actually, you don't.

There's the range of the

people who are out there

every day doing the work

and the people who are

delivering it as turnkey.

Self-build is just terminology for...

Sort of creating your own bespoke home,

whether someone else is building it,

you're building it.

But actually,

most self builders who come and say, oh,

I can't do any of that.

Well, there's a lot you can do, actually,

and not the project

management is one if you're

not a hands on person.

you can probably do a lot of

that oversight and programming.

And that's something that

someone can really bring

down the cost of their

project if they're involved

on an administrative level.

So you can do it.

It's possible.

And there are a lot of

people here to show.

And I've talked to a few

people already this morning who have said,

well, we did it once,

but we think we can do it better.

So we're going to do it again.

Yeah.

Doing these shows for nearly

eighteen years,

it's amazing how many

people come back to you and say,

saw you fifteen years ago,

we did our first one for you,

we're doing it again.

Yes.

And that makes sense, doesn't it?

Because with anything,

you live in it or you use something,

you kind of go, this is brilliant,

but now I'm using it,

what would be even better if it is?

And so you go and do that

again and it makes sense.

interesting that you're then

selling someone else your design,

but that's for the one

you're moving out of.

But a really high quality house.

Yeah, exactly.

Even if it was built with technology,

twenty, thirty years ago,

the self-built house,

than the new housing that

you're getting today.

Agreed, absolutely.

Right,

another question that was thrown at me.

How can homeowners

future-proof their

self-build or renovation

projects in terms of technology,

accessibility and energy efficiency?

back to the same thing again

it is and it probably

you're back to fabric first

again yeah you're right

back to the same same place

which is and this is just

interesting where people

are coming up these

questions from different

angles um and I guess it is

still their priorities and

their minds are changing

but it does still come back

which actually is quite

encouraging is that hey

addressing it with this

fabric first is always

going to address all these

questions that people have got

Well,

what you're looking at is designing

better than building rigs.

Building rigs are always

going to change and improve.

And if you look

North, we look in Scotland,

what they're doing with

their building regs.

I mean,

they're basically building regs is

past house equivalent.

And what happens in Scotland

trickles down to England.

So keep one step ahead and

build beyond what the

building regs are saying.

Because building regs, remember,

they're the minimum.

Do you want to build to the minimum?

Our definition of building

regs is the worst

performing building you're

legally allowed to build.

What can I get away with?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Accessibility-wise, that's, I guess,

the not fabric one.

Just think about everyone at

some point is going to have

some sort of injury, you know,

put a bedroom or a

comfortable bedroom with a

shower room downstairs.

And that's

that's probably the number

one a flexi space that can

turn and that is what they

expanded onto to be fair

allowing flexibility in

dying design so the homes

can adapt to changing needs

and and that that kind of

makes sense I guess the

problem is you never quite

know what that future can

be but you can second guess

a few things I guess yeah

no it makes sense um key

thing then to wrap up with

on this uh because I know

we could just carry on to

attack it for ages why

should someone come and see

you guys at the show and

I'm going to go one at a

time I'm going to go the

opposite direction mike

what I what would someone

gain from coming and

chatting to you guys the

key thing is we try and

find out what they're

trying to do what's the

driving force behind what

they do find out where will they go

directing how we can help them.

And I quite often then send them to Jenny,

to them.

Because you can actually

start at one point on any

of the stands and they can

actually guide you.

Actually, what you talk about,

part of what you need is to

go over there.

And that's a key thing that

we've emphasised in all the

episodes is that this is

not a sales first

environment where you're going to go,

I'm not letting them go.

I'm not letting them go.

It's like, no, no, no, no.

They're the people you want to speak to,

et cetera.

Exactly, yeah.

occasionally,

although my managing MD may

be nomadic with this,

occasionally I'm talking to

people about windows and

we're not the right company for them.

Right.

So I don't want to waste my

time or their time,

so I'll go and take them to

the stand that's probably

the right company for them.

So what questions would they

have in their mind that

would signal that they need

to come and see you, though?

If they want to build better

than building regs,

if they want a healthy

indoor air quality and comfortable,

that's what we're all about.

And that is twenty-one degrees, so glazing,

double glazing, all of that.

And yeah, triple glazing.

Triple, sorry, yeah.

Windows and doors,

we calculate ventilation,

we do airtightness tapes

for the products as well.

And then we've got,

we have consultancy built in,

we have a little consultancy team within,

so we can do PAPP,

we can do heat loss calculations.

And growing later this year, I mean,

we will certainly say that

it's going to expand as well,

the business,

so keep your eyes out for that,

everybody.

Jenny, same question really.

Yeah, I mean,

if you're just curious about

the self-build process and

you like what you've heard

about fabric first and low energy,

we have a lot of experience

with self-builders and

putting together a package

of drawings that is amazing.

sufficient for a

self-builder going out and

and designing a low energy

house so just come and have

initial conversations and

even if it's you know just

something you've maybe

thought about we have

resources we are you know

we really pride ourselves

on educating um

self-builders whether

you're our clients or not

we want you to be our

clients but um you know it's

I'm here to provide you with resources.

And just like Mike said,

there are going to be so

many people you need to

talk to along the journey.

It's so fantastic to be at

the NSBRC and say, oh,

we need help in financing.

Go talk to that person.

And tomorrow at one thirty,

I've got a talk that just

talks about low energy design principles.

That's in the building theatre.

Yes, that's that way, isn't it?

Mike, we did forget that you've got,

what is it?

It's a discussion panel at

twelve thirty today in the

building theatre.

Perfect.

So that's a sustainability theatre.

You're in that one.

That's what it says here.

That'll do me.

I'll go the right direction.

Paul, same to you.

Last but not least.

So,

thirty-two years of experience within

the underfloor heating market.

We've been supplying heat

pumps since two thousand and seven.

We're very lucky to be one

of the very few companies

to offer the combination of

both air and ground and the

combination of the underfloor heating.

And we've also got sort of

nearly seventy different

ways of installing underfloor heating.

So no matter what the

scenario of your build is,

we'll design it bespoke to

the property and advise you

along the way.

And we'll answer questions

like floor finishings.

How do we do this?

What fabric of the building?

And we'll work very,

very closely with these

guys along the way.

And presumably that can be

both retrofit as well as from scratch.

Absolutely.

The retrofit market is massive.

Yeah.

You know,

the majority of the housing stock

in UK needs to be brought up to standard.

And, you know,

with the changes in building

regs a couple of years ago, then,

you know,

lower flow temperatures means

underfloor heating is a

really great way of

achieving what we need.

So it's, yeah, it feels great as well.

So it's one of those, it's...

Yes, it frees up space.

But as a company,

we pride ourselves on service.

And service is paramount to

us much before our service.

And I think if you were to

speak to any of our customers,

they'd agree with that.

well episode two in

self-build and renovation

live we uh with Mark dudes

and Tom McSherry and they

brought up the stat that

this country is something

like ten percent of the

market is is self-build and

yet Europe is up at like

forty odd percent I think

it was and it's just

something's not quite right

there so hopefully with

this new guys all coming

together in a venue like

this and events like this

is it enables us to consider

that it is more viable an option.

It's certainly really cool.

Honestly,

you walk around some of these

setups and the fake houses

and all of that, and you're going,

I want that.

And the beauty with

self-build is we'll have

that then because you're

building it from scratch.

So make sure that you come

and see these people.

There are experts throughout this venue.

What have we got?

Two hundred odd trades

village stands that are here.

Lots of shows.

Really, really cool.

So thank you so much for

coming and joining us.

Mike, Jenny and Paul, absolute pleasure.

Any more questions that you've got,

go and see them.

Simple as that.

So thank you for your time.

We'll be back at eleven

o'clock for a roaming camera,

which will include your stand again,

Jenny, actually, apparently.

And we'll be back at twelve, I think it is,

for the next panel, which is Pitfalls,

Opportunities,

Revelations.

I better research that one

because they've thrown all

sorts at me at that one again.

But we'll be back later for

the roaming at eleven o'clock.