Tag: affordable housing

HPH222 : How easy is it to buy land at Graven Hill? – with Karen Curtin
With the first phase well under way and residents already moving in, Karen Curtin, Managing Director of Graven Hill Village Development Company, talks through the process of finding and buying a plot at Graven Hill.

Interview with Karen Curtin

Karen Curtin has been in post as Managing Director on a permanent basis since July 2017. When we spoke with her predecessor, Philip Singleton, the first plots were being prepared for release and he gave an overview of the opportunities available and the vision for the scheme. Since then the site has been taking shape with plenty of landscaping, infrastructure going in and the first homes already completed and occupied.

The current masterplan is for 1741 units, with 30% being affordable housing. So far they have sold around 100 of their “Golden Brick” self build plots, 50 affordable housing plots and 30 of their custom product.

Inspiration for the Plot Shop came from the Netherlands

While Graven Hill is a pioneering development in the UK, similar schemes exist elsewhere in the world, most noticeably Almere in the Netherlands. Inspiration for the Plot Shop came from there, with the idea being it could be an information hub providing details about the different products available and offering hints and tips about how to build a home.

The Graven Hill Plot Shop is currently based in Bicester, a short drive away from the development. With so much building work going on there it has been important to consider the health and safety implications of members of the public visiting, but they plan to move the shop to the site once it is safe to do so.

Monthly tours to the site are provided so people can get a feel of what it’s about and see the areas that have plots and houses for sale.

At the Plot Shop a floor map shows all of the residential plots that are for sale, colour-coded to indicate the size and whether they are allocated for Golden Brick or custom projects. The map shows the plot locations (with some locations having different design flexibilities in terms of getting planning compliance within 28 days), notional house types with the number of bedrooms possible, the size of the plot and the maximum gross internal area.

The sales team are able to tell you what the foundation type is for any given plot and provide a land price, but not advise how much the Golden Brick will actually cost. Until they know what the building design will be they won’t have the structural calculations to know how much it will cost to support the structure. Not knowing the Golden Brick price on reservation can be challenging for buyers, but the team are working on a product where they can offer a combined price for land, Golden Brick and superstructure.

Golden Bricks are sold as serviced pieces of land

Often an expensive element of building from scratch can be connecting the utilities to the site. At Graven Hill the services are delivered to the edge of the boundary where they can be brought into the property as required. Also included in the purchase of the land is the foundation for the design, the warranty and insurances, with the added benefit of having no VAT to pay.

In order to streamline the planning process, purchasers are provided with a Plot Passport which lists the freedoms and constraints of the plot design. If the design is compliant, planning permission can be guaranteed within 28 days. Projects which don’t fulfill the Plot Passport criteria are allocated a Delivery Liaison Manager to offer advice and navigate the process through the reserved matters route.

A beautiful village community of like-minded people

Key to the success of the development is making a community where people want to live. The site has areas of mature woodland which are being retained along with plenty of green open spaces.

On the village green will be a pub and there will be a school opening in 2020/21. There will be a retail area which might have a supermarket, coffee shop, health provision and smaller offices, and in Phase 2 there will be a million square feet of commercial space made available.

Customers need to be fully educated about how the process works

Part of the job of the sales team at the Plot Shop is to ensure that customers are fully educated about the process before making the purchase. They usually work with purchasers for around four to eight weeks getting them ready to be able to buy a Golden Brick plot. This will include making sure they are financially qualified and have engaged with suppliers to fully know what they’re doing, how much it’s going to cost, and the timescales in which things take place.

Timescales are of great importance

Once a plot has been reserved a purchaser has seven months to get to the position where they can exchange, then four to eight weeks before the foundation is delivered, and a further two years to complete the build.

The timescales are important to ensure that people aren’t continually living amongst building sites, with plots only being released in phases to ensure projects are moving along at a similar pace.

“The important thing for me is that I want people to come and live on Graven Hill and know that whilst they are like-minded people building their own houses, wanting to live on a unique community such as Graven Hill, there is a point where you want to be able to sit in your garden, have a glass of wine, look at the hillside and not see cranes and not hear people doing brickwork or landscaping work. So, that importance for me is about bringing that phasing on at the right space and time.”

Experience from Phase 1 will feed into Phase 2 design

When it comes to delivering Phase 2, careful consideration will be given as to what has sold well and been most popular in Phase 1. So far the plots that have sold best have been the larger plots and also the one and two bedroom plots, with the three bedroom ones being a bit slower to go. Everything learnt from the pioneers, Phase 1A and 1B, will feed into probably delivering an altered masterplan for Phase 2.

Financial advice is available

Like other developers, all of the finished products are eligible for the Help to Buy scheme. Karen says they are also lobbying the government to consider a Help to Build fund for people wanting to build their own house.

Graven Hill have been working with BuildStore to make sure there’s a lender panel available there, along with independent financial consultants who can give advice. BuildStore also oversee the financial qualification process. This checks that if you’re a cash buyer you have the money to go forward with the transaction, or if you need to get a mortgage then you have to have a decision in principle, to ensure you have the funds to not only buy the land and the Golden Brick, but also complete the build.

Health and safety on site has been one of the biggest challenges

On a traditional site, members of the public are kept away until the houses are ready and can be moved into. With houses here working to different schedules and owners being responsible for their own plots, there has had to be a very strong health and safety presence.

“It’s one of the most important things to me because in order for a site like this to work, everybody’s got to comply. That’s from wearing PPE to driving around the site at the right speed limits, making sure they book their deliveries because what we don’t want is three or four cranes on site at the same time.”

More whistles and bells on the houses!

Karen explains that with the saved equity from self building and cutting out the developer, rather than focussing on it being 20% cheaper, people often end up using that money to pay for premium finishes as they intend to live there longer than they might have done on a traditionally built site.

Register with Right to Build

Local authorities are required to research demand and maintain a list of people wanting self build plots in their area, and make plots available. Karen encourages people to register their interest in self build with their local authority to make sure that enough land is being made available to meet demand.

Find out more

Visit the website of Graven Hill

Follow Graven Hill on Twitter

Find out more about the Right to Build register

Transcript

Download a transcript of the interview with Karen Curtin.

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August 15, 2018
HPH132 : What is modular design and how does it work? – with Peter Schneider
Peter Schneider explains how modular homes are built, and why they are an ideal replacement for traditional manufactured mobile homes.

Interview with Peter Schneider

Peter Schneider is a senior consultant at Efficiency Vermont and the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC), a non-profit organisation which aims to reduce the long term and immediate costs of energy.

6 years ago he began looking to achieve the Passivhaus standard in modular homes built at a local factory.

Modular homes can be made from single or multiple boxes

They work with 16ft wide modules of varying lengths and have an exterior thermal envelope which houses the insulation, air barrier and weather barrier siding.

Multiple boxes on the same floor level are typically connected by an uninsulated wall with interior door openings, or just open spaces to move from one box to the next.

For boxes that fit on top of one another, there is a ceiling and floor system that connect together which provides rigidity when transporting and lifting the modular homes into place.

The boxes are built in a factory and transported on a flatbed trailer and delivered to the site where they are lifted by crane and set onto a foundation. The boxes are then moved together, fastened, fixed to the foundation and to themselves.

A series of detailing with regards to airtightness, the weather barrier, and the siding needs to be done on site, but typically the houses can be delivered, installed and made airtight and weathertight within a single day.

More complicated forms will have cost implications

Designs aren’t limited to four sided boxes but in order to take advantage of the modular build process with regard to cost and performance they generally do use the simple geometry of putting boxes together.

Peter says that any forms can be built with this system, but there are cost advantages to getting as much built in the factory as possible as it will minimise the amount of work needed on site, which is typically where extra costs will occur.

“The simpler the number of boxes, the less work that needs to be done on site, the better cost optimised the modular approach is.”

Modular homes traditionally have a stigma of not being as good quality as custom houses built on site

This is something the industry is working to change and Peter believes that builders, home owners and architects are beginning to see the value of working with modular manufacturers.

A benefit of factory building is that they are being made within a climate controlled environment, and aren’t susceptible to the problems of delays and trying to keep materials and equipment protected from weather on site. This results in a faster build process, and with a very close eye on attention to detail in a lot of factories, is producing homes which Peter says are exceeding the quality, creativity and performance of custom built houses on site.

The width is restricted by transport legislation

Rules vary according to State, but in Vermont the maximum width allowed to travel down the road is 16ft. Length can be unlimited with homes typically being delivered of around 70ft length, which incorporating the truck means a full length of around 100ft. There may however be limitations in transporting something of that size when it comes to corners and inclines, so the route from the factory may determine the length that can be delivered.

With a 16ft width restriction it wouldn’t make sense to choose an 18ft or 20ft model, as the cost implications would mean that you wouldn’t be taking advantage of the modular construction.

Because of the stresses of transport and being lifted by crane, there can be structural implications to modular homes, where certain things that might work well on houses built on site, therefore wouldn’t be applicable to modular.

As well as potential width and geometry limitations, an area that could be compromised is the attention to detail on site. There must be clarity with the user manual and instructions from the factory to ensure that the boxes are tied together properly, the airtight and weathertight barriers are installed correctly and in the way that the factory intended. Something more factories are doing is sending their own crews to finish the homes on site, ensuring everything is done the way they intended, and even warrantying the houses themselves and providing any follow up maintenance.

Modular homes can be an answer to an affordable home shortage

Historically, affordable housing has been concerned with initial cost price. However, lower cost homes tend to come with the drawbacks of worse insulation, poor windows, doors and airtightness. These aspects of lower cost construction result in higher maintenance costs and rising energy prices, making it difficult for lower income residents to build wealth. Additionally these types of homes can even depreciate in value.

These types of homes traditionally have been manufactured mobile homes. They’re delivered and remain on a steel chassis and while they may be very low cost up front, the poor air quality, ventilation, product choices and energy usage are costly to the residents.

“We’re not quite 1 out of every 10 homeowners in the country living in a manufactured home, but we’re not far under that. So we have a lot of people living in these manufactured homes and they’re burdened by living in a home that’s losing asset value over time, and a home that’s very hard to build wealth and actually get out of. So we have a lot of residents who will be in these homes 20/30 years until they’re really uninhabitable. “

Instead, Peter says they are looking at life cycle costs and how they can help homeowners and tenants to have better, healthier housing, with an opportunity to reduce maintenance and operation costs, while also helping them build wealth.

“Right now we’re showing that in the lowest income sector, that is sort of our mobile homeowners, we can deliver a home that on a monthly basis is going to cost less than the alternative home that is a manufactured home, mobile home, it’s going to cost less month one. That is its energy plus mortgage cost. And this doesn’t even factor in all the non-energy benefits like the health implications that you have living in a home with poor ventilation and high off-gassing materials.”

Transcript

Download a transcript of the interview with Peter Schneider.

Find out more

Find out more about Vermont Energy Investment Corporation

Visit the website of VerMod

View a VerMod presentation

National Self Build and Renovation Centre Summer Show

Ben Adam-Smith will be speaking at this event on Friday 17th June on the subject of “Behind the scenes of self build”, looking at the lessons he has learned in trying to build a house. Tickets are only free if purchased in advance online.

Even if you can’t make this session it is worth checking out the NSBRC website to see when their next event is happening.

The Hub update

This month we have added another chapter in the Long Barrow Passivhaus story. The house uses an Insulated Concrete Framework construction method, and in this chapter we’re looking in greater depth at it’s pros and cons, the role it plays, and why there’s a lot of steel on this project.

For more information about the group Facebook page, the quarterly progress calls and to see everything else it has to offer, check out The Hub.

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June 8, 2016
Designing and Self Building an Affordable Straw Bale House

We often hear that house affordability is what’s stopping first time buyers from getting onto the property ladder. However could self build deliver more affordable solutions? This case study illustrates that there are savings to be made, although there will also be challenges to overcome.

In fact when Brian Waite was looking to build a house [in the UK] for his retirement it was the plot of land that was so difficult to find: “Plots seem to be cheaper when they’ve got a house on them, which is a crazy situation! So we bought a plot with a house on it, but the house was just that little bit too good to knock down.”

The house that they bought came with planning permission for an extension where the garage was and then a new garage could be built the other side of the driveway. Brian thought it would be a simple matter to have a smaller extension and a slighter bigger garage (i.e. the straw bale house) but the planners didn’t agree.

So their new house is actually not their house but Brian’s office and a smaller scale version of his prototype. It was after converting his former home, a medieval barn in Kent, that Brian had the idea for it.

He liked straw as a material because it was a low cost, sustainable option that would allow him to reach the high levels of insulation he desired (without having to use a synthetic material with a high embodied energy). Brian couldn’t understand why it wasn’t used more often.

After looking at other straw bale houses and not liking them, he decided to design his own!

This may not be a path for everyone but Brian was a structural engineer and this clearly gave him an advantage when it came to working out what he wanted to do: “I just couldn’t stomach load-bearing straw bales because logic tells you that in time they will lose some of their integrity and settle. That means that the roof loads in a normal straw bale house would be transferred straight onto the plaster and render.”

He was keen to keep the design simple and used a bowed timber A-frame, like a medieval cruck.

These single beams can be varied in length and height as required but the whole interior is free of structural restrictions.

Brian reflects on the simplicity of the build by saying that the most expensive piece of equipment on site was a cement mixer. There was no call for a crane either – a £20 hand winch did the job!

“I was 68, 69 when I built it and I did it entirely on my own, except for the lime plastering. If I can do it, definitely a younger person can.”

Brian also devised a system to air the bales and keep moisture content under control. Normally a large eaves overhang would provide the necessary weather protection but he had relocated to Cumbria where the rain is often horizontal!

“I don’t know what size of eaves I would need to protect the walls but in my case the tiles cover every bale so there’s no worry about weather protection on an exposed site, but I also exploit a chimney effect. Because the tiles come down to within a metre of the ground, the air entry is behind the gutter at that level and the exit is about 7m up, so you’ve got a very strong chimney effect that I’ve used to draw air over the exterior of the bales (underneath the tiles and over the exterior of the bales) to wick out any moisture.”

The bales are rendered with lime on both sides.

The bales don’t have to be laid like bricks as they just slot in. Out of 380 bales used Brian only needed to adjust the length of two or three. He also had to work his way around the Cumbrian weather when it came to putting them in. Although originally intended to go in from the outside, he had to devise a way of doing it from inside, which actually worked better in the end.

The cost of this kit would be somewhere around £30,000 (US$50,000) and Brian has registered the design and has patents pending on some elements of it.

He reckons this could be an affordable solution for first-time buyers, although the land would then become the most significant cost. Find out more about Brian Waite via his website.

September 10, 2013