On Thursday, Five had a trip to Brighton, sadly no lashings of ginger beer. Glorious weather and good company were two of the compensations. We met Robin Hillier at the station, Robin was the architect on the Hedgehog and Diggers selfbuild projects (you can check out the Hedgehog episode on the first series of Grand Designs on Youtube), both projects are Walter Segal timber frame houses and were built by Housing Co-ops in partnership with Housing Associations.
First Hedgehog, a row of 10 houses clad with fir and larch with lovely verandas and big south facing windows to make the most of the solar gain- and the magnificent views. Painted all different colours they sit comfortably in their communal garden space(it felt very welcoming and friendly with no fences), mostly at the front(which is actually the back) and the ends of the row. The planting has grown up around the perimeter so that the residents aren't looking out of their windows into the windows of their neighbours down the hill(as planned- although there was apparently a local woman who said she was going to burn them all down!!) A level path at the front, with wooden platforms leading off to the front doors provides wheelchair access and runs directly from two covered parking spaces. We were allowed to look around one of the houses, which was wonderful,lovely high sloping ceilings- also the interior walls can be placed where you want them as the frame and posts are load bearing. Very versatile, you can weight and shape your space to suit your needs.
It was also very interesting to hear from Robin about what he learned from the project- where not to put untreated, fast growing softwood for example-oops.There were also problems with the roof liners, leading to some leakage, the contractors didn't know how to fit them properly! -oops. That said it seemed that as the residents had built the houses and the houses were built simply that it was quite easy for them to maintain and repair them themselves.
We heard about the problems they had with the Housing Association, which included pulling £60,000 of funding at the last minute- they had to reinstate it later, due to the project going over budget by .....£60,000!
Then it was off to Diggers, 9 houses this time again with a communal garden, this time the houses were around the edge of the plot and the garden was in the centre, the houses are faced with glassene(probably not how it's spelled) cement board and look, as Vic(a resident/selfbuilder) said, a bit mock tudor. The lovely Vic gave us coffee, chatted and answered questions and then let us have a lookaround his one bedroom house. According to Vic the soundproofing of the houses is very good, he also said that some of their houses had had small areas of rot in the wood, some of which he attributed to elements of the design, some of it to do with the fact that it was a lot more sheltered, in Hedgehog, for example, the wind dries the wood out after rain as it's at the top of a hill. Like at Hedgehog, Vic seemed to repair and maintain the house himself- with skills he had already or had learned on the build. It was also interesting to hear that during the build, the selfbuiders were doing the wiring with skill and care, though at a slower pace than was acceptable to the housing association, so contractors were brought in and did a slapdash job - no problems with the bit that Vic and co did, problems with the work the contractors did, apparently this happened with other jobs on the build(he did say- I've forgotten). After this it was back in to the centre of Brighton to drop off Robin(lovely of him to give all that time and attention to us, I was completely fascinated and picked up a lot of useful information- thanks Robin.) and go for something to eat at the Cowley club(social centre co-op and member of Radical Routes), another long and thought provoking discussion about legal stuctures for our co-ops and then a leisurely, meandering stroll back to the train station. The icing on the cake; Kathy taught us to whistle- finger style, always wanted to be able to do that! The skilling up continues. x
No comments:
Post a Comment