So the time has come to stop skirting around the fringes of this project and crack-on down the path that leads from barn to barn conversion (what a difference a word makes).

The builder started work yesterday, although I’ve not seen what’s been done, (I’m retaining a aloof distance for the next few days and avoiding the muck and machinery of the groundworks – although my father might sneek over later to take a look) with an end-date of next May for the major building work.

I took the opportunity at the weekend to take a full range of ‘before’ pictures that will help chart the journey to ‘after’ - here’s hoping for a pleasant journey.

[new photo's will be posted shortly - keep reading mbc!]

Being about to pour several tonnes of concrete into the floor of our barn I was interested to read about the environmental impact of cement usage. Apparently, world-wide cement production creates twice as many carbon emissions as the world’s airline industry does. For each tonne of cement that is produced 900kg of CO2 is released into the atmosphere ~ heavy stuff!

Moves are afoot from major producers to green the production process. Geocycle in Belgium provides technology that allows waste products to be used to power the kilns in which the ingredients of cement (limestone, calcium, silicon, aluminium and iron oxides) are cooked into a clinker before being crushed to a powder and mixed with further additives such as gypsum.

However, with no obvious substitutes and a voracious world-wide appetite for concrete the opportunities and needs for technology to address the issue of C02 in cement production is paramount.

Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein ~ 1977, Oxford University Press, New York.

In 1977, whilst in the UK the Sex Pistols where spreading a message of anarchy and being “Pretty Vacant”, in the USA Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein and co. were publishing three books that would enable us to bring order and thoughtful design to our homes, neighbourhoods, towns and cities. This, the second book in the series, is a working document for ‘a new traditional post-industrial architecture’.

The book takes the form of 253 patterns each pattern describes a problem that occurs in our built environment and then suggest ways to tackle that problem in a generic form, such that the application of the pattern to the problem will result in a unique and effective solution. The problems tackled range in scale, from number 1 the macro Independent Regions pattern that concerns itself with the size and nature of the largest autonomous congregations of people, through to pattern 253 things from your life a micro level pattern, that accentuates the need for the personalisation of our surroundings.

I can draw much from this book for my own project. The Secret Place pattern helps me to decide what to do in an awkward space between a bedroom and its en suite bathroom. The Six Foot Balcony pattern helps me plan a potential balcony and with reference to the pattern its usability should be ensured. Cooking Layout helps to derive the optimal kitchen design.

This is a pick-and-mix of a book, not all patterns will be of relevance to all projects, many are very high level, the first hundred or so are concerned with region, city, town & neighbourhood planning and so have minimal value to measly barn converters (although hopefully some relevance in planning shared spaces). Others betray the times in which they were written, Communal Sleeping, Dancing In The Street and Sleeping In Public evoking the more innocent, hopeful hippy-dippy 1970′s.

Having said that, despite its 30 year vintage, this book remains a thought provoking tome that is an essential reference resource for anyone designing or thinking of designing a building.

The term biomass heating refers to the combustion of plant based organic materials for the purpose of heating a volume of air. Biomass fuels fall into two main categories:

• Woody resources from sustainable sources such as fast growing trees or subsiduary waste products such as sawdust or recycled untreated pallets.
• Non-woody resources such as animal waste and the secondary organic output of activities such as oil seed rape and sugar cane processing.

These fuels are repositories for solar energy – energy from the sun is captured via the process of photosynthesis and stored by the plant, then released by combustion.

The important point to note is that fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas that have taken millions of years to form are excluded from the definition – a biomass fuel will be carbon neutral. The CO2 released when energy is generated from combustion of the biomass is balanced by the CO2 absorbed during the fuel’s production. In the case of fossil fuels, when burned they release carbon dioxide that was captured millions of years ago and as such only increase current total CO2 levels.

For space heating purposes, the biomass will be utilised either by the primary heating source in a room (for example, a wood burning stove) or the secondary heating source of the building (for example, a pellet fed boiler connected to the central heating and hot water systems).

Biomass systems are often bulky and so can require extensive storage space for both fuel and machinery. Unlike other sustainable heating solutions (such as heat pumps) the fuel will need to be sourced (often bought) and so fuel and transportation costs, as well the environmental impact of production and transportation will need to be taken into account.

With careful planning and appropriate sourcing of fuel, a biomass heating solution will have both environmental and economic advantages, providing a carbon neutral heating solution with lower running costs than traditional (gas, oil, coal) powered alternatives.