tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-147980902009-12-30T14:24:17.163ZThe online ramblings of Housebuilder's Bible author Mark Brinkley. The paper version is updated every two years and is widely available via UK bookstores and amazon, but it's best (for me) purchased direct from the publisher, Ovolo, on 01480 891595 or at <B><A HREF="http://www.ovolopublishing.co.uk">www.ovolopublishing.co.uk</A></B>Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.comBlogger356125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-35670206696967957512009-12-14T10:01:00.008Z2009-12-14T13:26:00.395Z

Continuing with my “What happens next?” theme, I am struck just how divided the responses are becoming. I must first make it clear that I am not in Copenhagen (haven’t been there since 1971 and have no plans to visit again, lovely though it is) and am not party to any of the negotiations going on. It’s just me, sitting at home in front of my Mac, with the usual mixture of writer’s block, a long

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-79659767548939290632009-12-08T12:24:00.001Z2009-12-14T10:31:12.824Z

The great Copenhagen climate summit is now well underway and many people seem to be making encouraging noises. But at the same time, there seems to be a huge and growing amount of scepticism around. Such is our suspicion of politicians and opinion formers these days, that if they all seem to agree on one thing, then they simply MUST be wrong, or so the thinking goes.For me, the worry isn’t about

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-44737183116714525772009-11-25T10:06:00.002Z2009-11-25T10:09:12.897Z

It’s been a sort of unwritten principle of planning that replacement dwellings were not very contentious, at least in principle. Planners would set limits on any increase in size, which caused angst for lots of people wanting to replace a clapped out 1930s bungalow with a six-bedroom, four-storey gin palace, but the principle that you could knock down your home and replace it with something more

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-91530522989225763262009-11-20T12:44:00.002Z2009-11-20T12:47:21.994Z

Blimey. I am ever so slightly flabbergasted by the response to my last blog post on mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. I thought it was rather obscure and just a little boring, but thus far I’ve had ten responses and just about everybody disagrees with me. And what’s more, they all seem so anguished. Can it be that this is actually a very critical topic, and that what we are confronting

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-67114410898018469542009-11-16T20:41:00.000Z2009-11-16T20:42:53.143Z

An interesting letter in last week’s Building from Tim Gough who has a CV as wide as a Passivhaus wall.In it, he berates the Zero Carbon Hub for being no such thing. They are courting compromise in asking for the mandatory use of mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) to be ditched. They say here that is a step too far for a temperate climate like the UK. Problem is that without MVHR,

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-18488128879941239032009-10-14T13:25:00.000+01:002009-10-14T13:26:08.827+01:00

This is cool. Although I no longer share Audacity’s build at all costs line of thinking, and I seem to have dropped off Ian Abley’s Xmas card list, I like the way they have put this together, and I love the way it shows up just how silly the planning system has become. It proves that if you give a bureaucracy enough rope, it will eventually strangle itself, whilst merely drowning the rest of us

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-57296209043885268462009-10-14T09:03:00.002+01:002009-10-14T09:10:47.633+01:00

I last wrote about Everest double glazing in June 07, and I was just a tad disparaging. The piece got some interesting feedback including one comment from someone who sounded suspiciously like an Everest salesman. Last night in the gym I found an interesting article in Monday’s Telegraph, profiling Simon Jarman who is the MD of Everest. OK, I know I shouldn’t have been reading papers in the gym,

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-14161067912619537212009-10-07T08:33:00.000+01:002009-10-07T08:34:45.851+01:00

I can’t be alone in thinking that Dear George has been eating one too many psilocybin mushrooms, gathered from his Welsh hillside rambles. He writes with vigour and great expertise about a wide range of environmental topics, and usually his perceptions are spot on. But every now and then, he blows it big time and throws up a horror show of prejudice and ignorance. It’s a bit like discovering a

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-16957646891619704792009-09-29T12:59:00.002+01:002009-09-29T13:04:53.773+01:00

Today sees the launch of a pro-housebuilding lobby document called Mind The Gap. It’s authors are David Pretty, once MD at Barratt, and Paul Hackett, acting head of the Smith Institute, a left leaning think tank set up in honour of John Smith.It’s a concise 30 page review of the UK housing scene, well thought out and covering most of the topical areas for discussion. Including a paragraph

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-81923404234646980652009-09-21T11:43:00.003+01:002009-09-21T13:46:59.726+01:00

Last week I made it across to Birmingham's Think Tank to take part in the launch event of the UK SIPS Association. SIPS as a building system has been around in the UK for nearly ten years and elsewhere, notably the States, for much longer. However, nowhere has it ever taken off and become mainstream and if you've wanted to build in SIPS you have had to deal with one of a small number of

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-11810849483247232502009-08-25T09:53:00.003+01:002009-08-26T07:03:51.515+01:00

Back in June when I visited the BRE Onsite exhibition, I saw not one, but three examples of Green or Living Walls on display. Having never seen one before anywhere, I was immediately suspicious. Here are some of the photos I took.For those remaining in blissful ignorance, a living wall is an upmarket version of a trellis with clematis or honeysuckle growing over it. Instead of a few slats of

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-66581917652835442202009-08-21T12:42:00.000+01:002009-08-21T12:43:05.526+01:00

Rumours in the City have it that Barratt will soon be coming cap in hand with a rights issue. It wants to be baled out of its debt mountain. If it happens, then expect a flurry of activity from the other quoted housebuilders who, with the notable exception of Berkeley, all seem to be sinking in debt that they can’t service. They are all waiting on an upturn in the housing market to enable them to

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-44863345923953353042009-08-11T10:46:00.002+01:002009-08-11T11:27:33.029+01:00

News that CABE has found that new homes are too small will come as a surprise to no one at all. We’ve long known that the UK builds the smallest new homes in Europe. As there are no minimum space standards set out in the building regs or the planning conditions, why on Earth would we expect anything else? And unlike the terraced homes that the Victorians built (which were also too small), there

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-6836001065372672332009-07-13T08:13:00.004+01:002009-07-13T08:16:04.048+01:00

I watched Prince Charles’s Dimbleby lecture last Thursday. In it, he argued that economic growth had hit the buffers and that the future lay in sustainable development. Nothing new there; it’s standard green thinking. However, it seems to have hit a raw nerve in the rest of the Establishment. Yesterday, the Times carried reports from “senior Whitehall sources” saying basically that the Prince was

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-91793235752288523892009-06-30T15:34:00.001+01:002009-06-30T15:38:31.418+01:00

One of the more intriguing questions I got asked at the Sandown Park Homebuilding & Renovating show last weekend was “How do we go about ensuring our planning permission doesn’t run out.”The couple asking me were from nearby Sutton and they seemed fairly knowledgeable about the topic and had heard that: • planning permission doesn’t last forever• unless you make a start on the building works, in

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-31389267820503447502009-06-23T17:02:00.003+01:002009-06-23T17:07:54.109+01:00

Lolli, my favourite Icelandic plumber, has pointed out that my section in the Bible on heated towel rails needs updating. He’s right. The mere ten lines I devote to the topic is very 1990s in both content and pricing.It’s somewhat amazing to reflect on just what has happened to the towel rail market. It’s exploded. And at the same time, its sort of disappeared. Back in the 1980s, a heated towel

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-56493158614986616652009-06-22T10:52:00.006+01:002009-06-22T11:09:34.202+01:00

Homelessness. It’s not a topic I have ever written about before. It’s off my radar and I don’t know much about it. But I was fascinated to read an article in yesterday’s Express by Ross Clark saying that the available statistics show that homelessness is a problem that seems to be going away. Who’d have thought it?So I checked the CLG website and there are statistics around that show that

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-2907221384767167822009-06-19T09:24:00.002+01:002009-06-19T09:28:46.649+01:00

The highlight of last week’s AECB conference in Oxford was Wolfgang Feist, Mr PassivHaus, who held forth over a 60 minute lecture and four 90 minute seminars on all aspects of the PassivHaus standard. He is a remarkable performer: for one thing, he really knows his stuff and he is able to explain in great detail just why the standard, which he is largely responsible for, is designed the way it is

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-71898357388176217652009-06-16T09:53:00.001+01:002009-06-16T09:55:12.438+01:00

I must say I am enjoying this spat. For all the nice noises the Prince has made about architects recently, and for all the RIBA’s welcoming the Prince back into their midst, fundamentally they loathe each other and the Chelsea Barracks affair has brought it all out in the open.Rogers sounds just so piqued. He asks rhetorically: “Are we going to have royalty dictating to us modern art? Are we

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-71718816034529019852009-06-09T15:09:00.003+01:002009-06-09T15:17:00.723+01:00

Plastering is the cheapest way of providing good internal wall and ceiling coverings. There are different systems of ‘plastering’ but they all come within spitting distance of £12-£15 per sq m in price. There are alternatives which can be used when you know exactly what you want – exposed brickwork, timber linings – but they are considerably more expensive than a plastered finish and are normally

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-44104298339377496572009-06-08T12:06:00.005+01:002009-06-08T17:03:00.721+01:00

The latest cabinet reshuffle has seen yet another housing minister installed. This time it’s John Healey, someone I had never heard of before. I am struggling to remember the holders of this ill-feted post: in reverse order it seems to be Margaret Beckett, Caroline Flint, Yvette Cooper (all within the past two or three years) and before that…..I can’t remember. Or maybe I never knew. The point is

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-52889640912331033442009-06-04T11:52:00.002+01:002009-06-04T11:54:35.352+01:00

I came across one new product at BRE’s Onsite 09 event, which was a new type of energy saving glass being marketed by Pilkington. It’s made in Japan, by Nippon Glass, owners of Pilks, and it consists of a two panes of glass separated by a vacuum gap of just 0.2mm. In this country, it’s being aimed fairly and squarely at the listed building/Georgian sash window market, because you get a very good

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-23450570655611973342009-06-02T19:45:00.003+01:002009-06-02T19:55:11.637+01:00

I spent the day at the BRE in Watford attending their Insite 09 exhibition. I went today (Tuesday) because there was a conference on the Existing Stock and, in particular, how to reduce the carbon emissions created by it. This is a debate I want to be part of.As I pulled up at the entrance gate, I was handed a leaflet explaining where I should park. It told me I wasn’t allowed to do more than

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-76831679879353219522009-05-20T08:36:00.004+01:002009-05-20T08:37:48.077+01:00

We were hearing a lot about peak oil last summer when the oil price went to $147 a barrel. Since when, of course, the price has fallen through the floor, back down to 2005 levels, and, lo and behold, stories about peak oil have dropped off the radar.But the issue refuses to go away and at least one serious commentator, Steven Koppits, suggests that we may have already passed the peak oil moment

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14798090.post-76692446678214396802009-05-19T09:15:00.003+01:002009-05-19T09:36:03.096+01:00

Graham Norwood is a prolific and well known property journalist who has produced a book about the state of the housing market which he has subtitled “A Guide for Estate Agents and Developers.”There are no earth shattering revelations here but it provides a useful summary of the events of the past three years. Graham doesn’t like to use the term “Crash” for what has happened to the housing market

Mark Brinkleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03473684038478246288noreply@blogger.com0