My first blog to accompany a revamp of our web site. We have added lots of photographs of recent builds and several new products. Our year seems to be settling down into a Summer and Autumn installing bespoke offices, studios and workshops in gardens of various sizes and shapes and a Winter designing buildings for the leisure sector, notably dormitories, holiday accommodation, lodges and the like. That said, we are busy installing a workshop for a bookbinder in London the week before Christmas and enquiries for work space in the garden show not signs of reducing.

Although we would love to offer standard buildings, we seem to be asked for bespoke designs more often than not. Unusual requirements, odd shaped gardens and requests for good quality natural light all make it difficult to deliver an acceptable solution using a standard product.

If you have stumbled on our site and have a keen interest in ‘green’ building then here are some other sites with much more comprehensive information than we can provide.

www.greenspec.co.uk
www.aecb.net

Sponsored by the AECB, itself a great source of information and a set of green building standards, this site is well on its way to examining every element of buildings and providing relatively objectives assessments of their benefits both in use and manufacture. Well worth looking at even if you are only buying floor coverings.

Several of the green building stores have useful information as well as selling materials for self builders. Try any of these:

www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk
www.natural-building.co.uk
www.ecomerchant.co.uk

Unbiased advice on renewable energy options is less easy to find and my advice is to invest as much as you can on insulation before considering any renewable sources of energy. The technology which is most likely to give you a decent payback is solar water heating. If you have a really well insulated house then you might even be able to use the water for space heating. You will need a back up source of heating for the Winter and there is a wide range of wood burning stoves with back boilers if you are determined to live off grid.

If you do go for solar water heating, there are lots of companies claiming to know what they are doing but be very wary. Try these sites:

www.nef.org.uk/actonCO2/renewableenergy.htm
www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generate-your-own-energy 

I can’t let the opportunity go by without commenting on the recent changes to planning requirements which makes it almost impossible to install a structure within two metres of a boundary. Since most people want to put offices, workshop and even sheds close to boundaries and in corners of their gardens this severely restricts what can be installed. The height restriction of 2.5 metres within 2 metres means that it is virtually impossible to design a building with sufficient headroom and insulation under this constraint.  Lets hope 2009 brings a change of heart from the planning authorities.

From Nina, Tony and I we wish you a Happy Christmas and a secure and healthy New Year.

We have not sent Christmas cards again this year but have bought tools to dig a well and provide a water pump through Water Aid.  If you want to see what Water Aid do or buy a gift from their excellent on line shop www.wateraid.org/uk

Looking back over 2008 it has been a very successful year for us with many more people appreciating the benefits of our low energy, high comfort, minimal maintenance designs. Every building has been different and our ability to incorporate standard components into a design which meets the need of each customer at a reasonable cost is increasingly recognised as offering great value for money.

As more people look to take holidays in the UK and are looking for more unusual places to stay we are confident that our pavilion range and canvas lodges will deliver the experience they seek. For site operators, benefits include the option of making the structures as basic or as luxurious as the market requires. The investment required is much less than a more substantial building and some aspects of the installation can be undertaken by customers.

For larger structures such as nurseries, cafes, restaurants, visitor centres etc. there is a lot of interest in creating a space which is comfortable year round but does not require a huge amount of energy to heat or cool. Through intelligent design and attention to detail this is eminently achievable and we anticipate building several structures next year which reflect these principles.

To cope with the growth of the company, we are very pleased to announce that Tony Higginson has joined us as Installation Manager.

Tony will be responsible for the installation of all our structures throughout the country and has many years experience of building. In his spare time Tony sings with one of the country’s best U2 tribute bands - U2UK.