…and Rigsby is not in sight…

I was watching an episode of QI the other night when the ‘myth’ of rising damp – or rather, the lack of evidence for the existence of rising damp as a ‘real’ issue, was mentioned. This wasn’t something I’d ever heard of and some further web-based research makes for some interesting reading…

There’s plenty of information on the subject across the web which Google will find for you, I’ll provide a link to one article that demonstrates the venom of the argument between ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. The Architects Journal carries a post, which you can access by searching in Google with this text – ‘architects journal’ Rising damp is a myth - make sure you read through the readers comments. [architectsjournal.co.uk doesn't allow deep links to articles, just to the home page - typical closed thinking of the kind I've seen a lot of from the architectural community recently..]

From my layman’s reading, it appears that there is little proof that water will rise through a ‘normally’ constructed wall by capillary action and therefore little basis for expecting damp to rise up a wall that hasn’t been protected in any of the normal ways (usually a damp-proof-course). It is often the case that what is diagnosed as rising damp is actually condensation caused by poor heating and ventilation or damp penetrating from exterior raised ground levels or leaking water pipes. As usual with a complex issue, this isn’t as cut-and-dried (sorry!) as some people would like. Personally, I tend toward the middle ground – that rising damp is rare, often misdiagnosed, but can occur given certain specific sets of circumstances.

Additionally, I’ve always been dubious of the usefulness of chemically injected damp proof courses, especially when applied to rubble filled masonry walls like those of the barn and the arguments around this issue confirm my doubts.

…So perhaps, under certain circumstances, rising damp does exist, despite what they say on QI…

With a small patch of woodland containing mainly young ash trees, a patch of willow around the pond and plenty of hedges I’ve long been interested in the potential for burning ‘home-grown’ biomass, from chips, through twigs to logs. So I thought a review of the domestic biomass boiler options was in order…

There are two types of biomass boilers – those fed with pellets and those fed with timber. Pellet boilers can be manually or hopper fed, with hopper feeding allowing a certain amount of unattended operation. Couple hoppers with high degrees of efficiency and the workload for the owner in keeping the boiler running is minimised. For example, Treco claim that the Guntamatic Biostar W boilers will “hold enough fuel for up to a month ….[and are] self cleaning and have ash boxes that only need emptying every 6 – 8 weeks”.

Pellets are small lengths of compressed sawdust, there is no need for any additive to bond the sawdust together as lignin, an organic binding substance present in the wood does this when the pellet is formed under compression.

There are a wide array of boilers available, I’ll concentrate on two of the main ranges available in the UK at the moment…

Baxi offer a number of biomass boilers. They offer two pellet boilers – the Bioflo is manually fed (there’s no hopper so you need to feed it like a traditional boiler) and it can modulate output depending on demand between 3.8kW and 12kW. Then there’s the larger Multiheat boiler – available in 15kW, 25kW and 43kW versions with an integrated hopper. There’s also the Solo Innova, a log fuelled boiler that comes in 20kW, 32kW and 48kW thermal output versions.

Treco supply a wide range of boilers, including those from the Austrian manufacturer Guntamatic. For domestic purposes I’ll consider the Biostar that is available in four different fuel supply options; the Flex (the fuel store can be physically distant from the boiler with the two connected by a flexible vacuum tube), the Box (similar to the Flex, but with the fuel store included in the price), the W (with a large hopper that only needs filling Weekly), and the Biostar Duo (which also burns logs). There are 12kW, 15kW and 25kW versions.

So how much do they cost?
A web search for the Baxi boilers gives me a lowest price of just under £9,000 including VAT for a Bioflo (I’ve also seen them priced over £11,000), with Multiheat boilers at just over £6,000 for a 15kW model and £7,000 for a 25kW version (although I’ve also seen them priced at more £2,000+ more) and Solo Innova at £4,800 for a 20kW model and £5,300 for the 32kW model (again I’ve also seen these priced at around £1,500 more). Treco / Guntamatic Biostar boiler prices range from just over £11,000 to just over £14,000 (excluding VAT).

You’ll also need to pay for installation and a suitable flue if you haven’t got one already.

Pellets v Timber
Personally I’m not keen on the idea of pellets. Too proprietary and too vulnerable to volitile markets for my liking, but I can see their value as an alternative to oil or gas where a local source of timber is not available. Additionally, they take a lot of the manual labour away and reduce the time demands made by logs in their splitting, stacking and seasoning. Pellets also offer the convienience of hoppers and unattended heating. My ideal of a biomass boiler that will burn any type or condition of biomass seems to be some way off as the biomass boilers I’ve been reading about require, seasoned, sizeable, well prepared timber.

Costs and benefits
For comparison I looked up the statistics for my current multi-fuel stove. It’s a Charnwood Country 16B Multi-fuel central heating boiler with output statistics as follow:

• Space Heating Output (BTU) – solid fuel = 5.5kW (18,779) wood logs = 7.7kW (26,291)
• Water Heating Output (BTU) – solid fuel = 13.7kW (46,778) wood logs = 8.2kW (27,999)

This cost something over £3,000 fitted for 15kW or so of combined output.

At a guess I could get a 20kW Baxi Solo Innova installed for somewhere between £6-7,000 and if I wanted the full ‘hands-off’ luxury of a 15kW Biostar boiler I’d be looking somewhere around the £13-14,000 mark. So not cheap in comparison to more traditonal heating solutions such as my multi-fuel boiler/stove. The Energy Saving Trust (EST) tell me I can get a standalone pellet stove for £4,300 installed – I’m just not sure who from!

So how and why am I going to pay for this?
Treco claim that “Your fuel bill will drop by at least 30% when you make the switch from oil [to biomass]“ so there’s an immediate saving when switching from oil of several hundred pounds a year based on current fuel oil prices (and it looks like that saving is only likely to grow). Even with prices as they are, as of writing the annual costs of a biomass system are likely to be more that those of a mains gas powered system.

The main advantage in comparison to more traditional heating and hot water solutions such as wood burning are the relatively low amounts of ash and the opportunity for unattended operation. You can get that from gas (if you’re on the mains) or oil, but if you want a greener (albeit currently more costly) solution then perhaps a biomass boiler is what you need…

You may be able to get some financial support under the Renewable Heat Incentive, although as of writing details for domestic schemes will not be available until next year (2012).

Further information is available from:

http://www.baxi.co.uk/products/biomass-boilers.htm

http://www.treco.co.uk/domestic/domestic/

http://www.treco.co.uk/guntamatic/

The Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) is a piece of certification that has come along since I’ve started this project and is now a compulsory piece of paper required by building control as a part of the completion process. The requirement for an EPC came into effect from the 6th of April 2008, with the implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2002.

Why do I need one?

From October 2008 EPCs will be required whenever a building is built, sold or rented out.

So what is an EPC?

The EPC is part of a series of measures being introduced across Europe to reflect legislation which will help cut buildings’ carbon emissions and tackle climate change.
…
The certificate provides ‘A’ to ‘G’ ratings for the building, with ‘A’ being the most energy efficient and ‘G’ being the least, with the average up to now being ‘D’.
…
Accredited energy assessors produce EPCs alongside an associated report which suggests improvements to make a building more energy efficient.

Note the final point from that quote – you’ll need a accredited energy assessor to produce your EPC for you. Depending on the type of EPC, they’ll carryout a survey of the building, need copies of your plans and then plug some statistics into some software and provide you with a certificate.

For a conversion or new build an On Construction SAP EPC is required and for existing dwellings a RdSAP (reduced data SAP) EPC is required when the dwelling is sold or rented out. Both utilise similar calculations with data for the RdSAP calculation being gathered during a short site visit, whilst the SAP EPC can be derived mainly from the plans.

Frustratingly, although the EPC is a kind of SAP-lite you may find, as I have, that whoever did the SAP calculations for your planning application won’t be able to provide your EPC as it’s not financially worth their while. To become an EPC accredited energy assessor and then remain one is an expensive exercise. Combining that with a relatively low charge for an EPC means that this is a high volume business – one that is not suited to many traditional planners, designers or technicians.

The resultant certificate will look something like this example from the communities.gov.uk website.

Whilst I have no immediate plans (or money) to install any electricity generation technology at the barn, I like to keep an eye on future opportunities and thought a review of Feed-in Tariffs may be in order.

The Feed-in Tariff (FIT) scheme has been available through electricity suppliers since April the 1st 2010. The aim of the scheme is to encourage the uptake of small-scale (up to 5MW) low carbon generation technologies through tariff payments made on both generation and export of produced renewable energy. The scheme is designed with the goal of providing a monthly income from your installation that will be greater than your monthly loan repayment to install the equipment (bear in mind this factors in long term loans usually of 20-25 years). It is the large energy companies, (or rather their customers to whom they pass the costs on) rather than any government body that foot the bills for these systems.

The following technologies are eligible for entry to the scheme:

• Photovoltaic (PV)
• Wind
• Hydroelectric
• Anaerobic digestion
• Micro CHP – this is a pilot programme with 2kW upper limit to generating capacity.

The financial benefits of the scheme come in a number of forms:

• The Generation Tariff - you earn a fixed amount for each kilowatt hour of electricity (kWh) you generate and use.
• The Export Tariff – you earn an additional fixed amount for every kWh of electricity you generate and sell back to the grid.
• Savings made through the reduction in electricity bills.

The exact amount you get paid through the Generation Tariff will vary depending on your specific generation system. For example, a new Solar PV system generating four or less kWh is eligible for a payment of 36.1 pence per kWh, for a medium-large sized wind turbine (>15 – 100kW) the payment is 24.1 pence per kWh. The tariff levels are index-linked for inflation and will be paid for a set period of time – in the case of the examples, 25 years and 20 years respectively. The full table of tariff levels is available from the Energy Savings Trust website in PDF format.

There are plenty of example scenarios with tempting £’s value headlines around the web, I’ll leave it to you to search them out if you’re interested. There are also plenty of online calculators out there to tempt you in and hopefully further inform you – start with the one on energysavingtrust.org.uk, the link is below. But, to summarise what I’ve found, typically for a family home consuming 4-5,000kWh of electricity per year, 2-2.5kW of solar PV panels will generate an income for the householder of upto £1000 per year with around £150 in savings from reduced electricity costs.

Bear in mind that you’ll need to work with a Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) certified installer to be eligible for the scheme.

Futher references:

http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Sustainability/Environment/fits/Pages/fits.aspx

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generate-your-own-energy/Sell-your-own-energy/Feed-in-Tariff-scheme

Here I’ll consider the actual costs of converting your barn and making it habitable.

The Conversion
So we’ve safely purchased our pile of stone, slate and wood and it’s quietly decaying away in the corner of a farm-yard somewhere, how much will it cost to convert it to a place a person (rather than a pig) could live in?

When I started out on my project I shied away from those cost-per-square metre charts that building books such as The Housebuilder’s Bible Eighth Edition (8th Edition) and Building Your Own Home are so fond of. To my inexperienced mind averaging the cost of the roof, floors and other works across the whole of the building made very little sense. I preferred a schedule of works, with each individual item costed and an overall total. I could then grapple with these and manage the individual components. To be honest usually finding that when the bills came in I’d under-estimated so needed to juggle the books or put other things off until later.

I can now see the value of a per-square-metre costing as an additional tool in managing costs. A per-square-metre cost provides an easy rule of thumb to see just what you’re getting for your money – and perhaps question it. Let me try and explain…

A total cost is a big budget and directs you to the question how much money do I need and where can I find it? Your thinking becomes goal oriented, you look for ways to achieve that goal and value for money can quickly become neglected and your flexibility compromised in pursuit of your budgetary target (…and of course, if you can find the money somewhere you probably will and therefore your budget becomes an (upward) moving feast – a far from ideal way to manage your finances).

Per-square-metre costs make you ask different questions, both when looking at the project as a whole and also at parts of the project. It helps address the over-riding big question of is it worth paying that much per square metre? … when I could have a new build / self build / existing house for less? (We could be optimistic and say perhaps more but the one thing most convertors discover quite quickly is that conversion is one of the most expensive ways to get a place to live). Also helping with the smaller questions – when you think in terms of per-square-metre costs the effect of the £200sqm marble flooring on your budget is pretty obvious.

So whilst a total cost is essential and individual costing of scheduled items of work is necessary, I think the per-square-metre cost is a handy yard stick for day-to-day practical purposes and decision making.

Once my conversion is completed I’ll calculate my own per-square-metre cost and see how that comes out (gulp). (Don’t be surprised if I chicken out on that one).

There are many factors to bear in mind when considering costs. Not all conversion projects are created equal. There is a scale of complexity and costs with conversions, at the hard and more costly end those conversions that need under-pinning, a new roof, rebuilding of unsound walls, have no utilities on site etc. and at the easier (never easy) and less costly (never cheap) end those that are structurally sound, have a workable roof and pre-existing utilities etc.

scale of complexity

Back to answering the question at hand, how much will it cost me to carry out the conversion:

You can’t really put an upper limit on costs, but I’ll chance my arm here and give a range of per-square-metre costs. I think as a minimum, for a project at the lower end of my ‘scale of complexity’, with decent finishes and materials, some work undertaken by the owner and no major headaches along the way, there’s a minimum per-square-metre cost of £800. Further along that scale you soon get in excess of £1000 and I’ll put a more complex project with better finishes at £1500, with the sky being the limit at the top end.

So, my neck on the line, per-square-metre cost, Summer 2010 is: £800 – £1500+ …and you need to add a further premium to that in the more expensive, southern parts of the UK.

In summary I think the cost of a barn conversion is currently (Summer 2010) going to break down, as a minimum, something like:

• Barn with permission – £150,000 to £200,000.
• Plans and planning (no architect, self project managed) – £3,000+
• Conversion work – for 100 square meters – £80-100,000

So, in answer to:

I am thinking of buying a barn for myself … could [someone] give me a ballpark figure as to how much this is lik[e]ly to cost?

My answer is basically, £250,000+

Please feel free to agree, disagree or discuss further…

Previously>>
Part 1: the building, Part 2: architects & plans