I would use double or triple glazing, depending on where you are. Minimise heat loss.

I intend to have a house that is cheap to run. Maximum use of passive cooling and heating, shade trees, orientation of the house, breezeway, ventilation etc. Cheap and easy to run while being cosy and allowing me to pursue my interests.

Cellar if possible would be great, let my beer/mead/cider cold condition under constant temperatures and mature wines bought young. Also act as root cellar to keep root veges like potatoes, carrots, parsnips good. If I can’t get a real cellar—too expensive to dig, soil not suitable etc then there are some ways to make small cellars or just the space under the floor would do, will have close to a meter of space.

Strawbale walls are not just cheap they are excellent insulation—and lock up lots of carbon!

Double glazing should be enough. Not going to have curtains but may have vertical blinds in some windows.

Working on a design to maximise natural daylight, a few problems with geometry to be worked out probably by simplifying the design. Covered atrium which will act a little bit like a greenhouse, will likely need a greenhouse there as well.

Want the house as much as possible in the Art Nouveau style, same with the furniture. For my arthritic joints a nice deep bathtub, ahhh. Be nice if I can find a turn of the last century bathtub.

Want a wood fired brick oven for pizza and bread, a hot smoker and a cold smoker. Hot smoker flavors and cooks food, cold smoker flavors and preserves food. Need a firepit located very safely (fire danger, keep out of reach of kids etc) located far enough away from the cold smoker to cool the smoke.

Here is a nice tidbit of history: if you have read any of the books by Dickens or Trollope or other Victorian writers you will read that when arriving at an inn they would go to the smoking room. This was not so they could smoke, Victorians smoked constantly and everywhere, the smoking room had a smoky fire always lit and hams etc hanging near the ceiling being smoked. It therefor was the warmest room at the inn.

Don’t tell me you want to plant cherry trees?

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 6^th, 2017 at 10:14am:



Yes I do - many of them.

Jovial Monk wrote on Aug 6^th, 2017 at 10:37am:



My idea was to plant them on the grass verge all down the street
without telling the council.
I'll put a tiny fence around the base of each seedling so that they won't get mowed.
People will think that it's an official council job. 

already trying to turn environment into just another of your pet projects predictable - just get your brew thread underway already and your thread on stollen 

Bobby. wrote on Aug 6^th, 2017 at 10:54am:


a row of trees is good booby. Gives you somewhere to hang the cats

this is the environment thread booby ... feral cats are an environmental hazard. The only one ruining anything is you by encouraging the keeping of cats