Live webchat with Kevin 'Grand Designs' McCloud, Tuesday 23 July, 8.30 to 9.30pm

[RachelMumsnet]

We're delighted that Kevin McCloud is visiting Mumsnet HQ for another webchat on Tuesday 23 July at 8.30pm. He joined us for a webchat back in June 2011 when he talked to about (amongst other things) Grand Designs, solar panels and dealing with bats in the attic.

This time Kevin will be joining us to tell us about his latest ventures with his company Hab Housing. As well as continuing to build beautiful sustainable homes across the UK, they are also developing a new arm that will let him guide, coax and aid people as they build their own dream home. Kevin wants to explain why he's put out a call to the masses for crowd funding investment to grow his company, Hab Housing, rather than via traditional routes.

Join Kevin to quiz him about his latest ventures, get his advice on home improvements and ask him about your favourite Grand Design on Tuesday at 8.30pm. If you're unable to make it, post a question in advance to this thread.

[LadyMilfordHaven]

i am pleased. Strangely Scandewigian houses aren't all Ikea style- are quite folksy.

its a big mis sell

[Spirael]

Hi Kevin! I was lucky enough to meet you at Grand Designs Live after getting tickets from your last Mumsnet visit. :)

We hope to get back to Grand Designs Live in the next few years - it was a fantastic day out with lots of interesting and useful exhibits. I highly recommend it to anyone else considering going!

Is your favourite biscuit still "Poor Man's Banoffee", banana on chocolate digestive with a cup of coffee, or have your tastes changed at all?

[KevinMcCloud]

@FayTality

Hi Kevin,

Yet another GD fan reporting in here. My all time favourite was the ski chalet in Les Gets - it's on my fantasy list of places to stay.

We are just about to start building an extension to our 1900s house - a full width extension that will link the kitchen and dining room, and create a living space with doors on to the patio.

My question is whether it is practical to consider trying to salvage some of the materials from the back of the existing house - for example, we have stock bricks that will be removed, and also a sash bay window to the current dining room. In an ideal world we would sell these, but even if they have no value, I would like to know if we can or should look to salvage them.

Thanks,
Fay

Every tiny item salvaged and reused in a building rethreads the history of the place back into itself. Especially if you can see said item. I'm a big fan of trying to salvage and reuse as much as possible because it's appropriate for the story of a place and it's pretty green as well.

[LatinForTelly]

Hi Kevin,

We were lucky enough to live in a GD house for a few months. It was a modest 4 bed family house, built when the projects weren't overly grand.

The house did seem great (and you loved it on the telly); handsome, intelligently thought-out, and economical.

Trouble was, it didn't really work as a family house for a number of reasons, notably noise, ventilation and lots of hazardous drops.

I agree with whoever said a house is a machine for living in, so on that criterion, for me, the house didn't work.

Just wondering what you thought really. Has a design failed if the house isn't fit for general purpose (don't want to out self but there are pointers that other people feel the same).

Or is it a design success if it works very well for its first owners?

[KevinMcCloud]

@BillStickersIsInnocent

Hi Kevin,

Would you ever consider filming an ex LA development? I know they're not the prettiest houses, but they can be a more affordable option in expensive areas, and tend to be built well with proper spacial consideration indoors and out. We're coming to the end of an extension project that's a little bit special as it's using external insulation to improve thermal efficiency. Lots of people must be developing this part of the housing stock, but it never seems to get coverage. Would love to hear your thoughts.

I'd be really interested. I've seen some extraordinary conversions and remodelling projects of local authority housing and they sure as hell would make a good GD. We're always on the lookout for good stories so do write in to the C4 website if you know of a compelling example that is coming up.

[KevinMcCloud]

@ArtisanLentilWeaver

Thank you! Had a look at the HabHousing website and will invest.
Good luck with the project.

ArtisanLentilWeaver, bless you!

[KevinMcCloud]

@lalalonglegs

Hi Kevin - another long-time Grand Designs fan here and it's become a multi-generational thing, my 9yo daughter is obsessed by it now as well. Occasionally we watch old episodes on More4 and you get very excited about things such as underfloor heating and, memorably in one episode, an electric screwdriver. Does it make you slightly depressed that the projects that are featured now are so unattainable and have become so, I'm trying to think of a polite way of saying it but can't, bloated and excessive? Budgets seem a very secondary consideration for many of the participants - would you prefer to have simpler, less grand designs which are more personal or does the nature of the beast (and land prices) mean that it's become something of a millionaires' hobby?

llll

Hello ? I can?t fully agree with you. Yes, in every series we do feature one very expensive project; several under £500,000 and at least one good value self-build. In fact, my favourite (surpassing Ben Law?s £26,000 home in the woods) is the modern timber building on the Isle of Skye built for Indie and Rebecca in the last series, on which they spent around £150,000. Grand Designs is first and foremost about the vision, not about the budget. And you?ll be pleased to hear that as part of the series coming up this autumn (it starts early Sept) we are revisiting the modest three-bedroom chalet bungalow built by Jerry Tate in Woodbridge for his client. Also, this affordability question is exactly why I set up my company, Hab. Our fundamental aim is to apply the high design and environmental values exemplified by the best projects on Grand Designs to affordable homes. We've spent the last six years building low-cost housing which is designed by the UK's most brilliant architects. Our next venture is to look at ways to make the process of building, or part building, your own home less risky and more affordable. The aim is indeed to challenge that very perceived wisdom that building your own home is a millionaires' hobby and prove that - if managed properly - it can actually be a means of helping people to get on the housing ladder or to end up with a home that they otherwise couldn't afford. We are looking at sites where we can put in great landscaping and public realm, and then offer for sale anything from a serviced ground slab, to a building shell, to a house with scope for the customer to add their own touches at the end.

[KevinMcCloud]

@Solo

Hi again Kevin! welcome back :)

In 2011, you advised me on loft insulation (my loft is quite low and I didn't/don't want to lose the space for storage etc. I just wondered what you think of Celotex to insulate the roof (between the rafters)? I've just recently found out about it and am considering using it. Do you think it's worth doing? better than nothing at all? It'll definitely be a DIY job for me too.

Thank you!!!

Hello Solo ? it?s definitely worth doing! Payback on this sort of work is almost immediate, with cash savings in your pocket after about a year?s bill savings. You need to make sure you?re insulating very the underside of the rafters as well as between them, as otherwise heat will seep through gaps, and even through the rafters themselves. As to Celotex, it has impressive insulating abilities, but we (at my company Hab) err towards natural materials like wool, cork, hemp, recycled newspaper, etc. You can infill between the rafters with such earthly bibelots. You just need to make sure that you don?t compromise the ventilation in the roof space in doing this. Best to consult a surveyor if you?re not sure. If in doubt and you want to do it yourself, the easiest solution is just to insulate the floor rather than inside the rafters. Here are several patented systems out there that could help with this.

[KevinMcCloud]

@VelvetStrider

Do you get to spend much time at your cabin that you built in the woods? What aspects of it are you most pleased with and what do you wish you'd done differently?

Yep,. I spent two nights in it last week. And will be doing so again next week. This is on account of the fact that it is now moored on its wheels at a caravan park on the north Somerset coast where we're filming series 2 of the SHED - On Holiday. The series goes out early September alongside the new series of Grand Designs. I'll tweet when I know the exact dates.

[KevinMcCloud]

@LifeofPo

Did the guy in the woods get in a huff when you decided the house in Skye was your new favourite?

No, he got in a Huf

[LadyMilfordHaven]

ha! po you got POWNED

[KevinMcCloud]

@RealAleandOpenFires

What do you think of people, who buy period properties and then gut them?

Personally, I think that buildings of any age, if they have charm, derive that charm from a thousand tiny details and if you remove them you remove the reason for buying it in the first place.
There a few principles ? one of them is that works to an old building ought to be reversible and I believe that adding to a building - changing it ? is like adding a chapter to a book. But you mustn?t bowdlerize the story such that the narrative no longer makes sense.
But it isn?t always clear-cut. The state of the property may be such that it?s irrecoverable to its original level of delight. Unfortunately, sometimes to save and revivify these nuggets of our housing landscape radical approaches are necessary. We?re refurbishing an old Victorian hospital building on our development in Stroud and are experiencing in real time the tough choices.
 

[LadyMilfordHaven]

oh i hate the original features fascists

plastic windows all the way, man

[LadyMilfordHaven]

@lifeofpo

get with it grandma

[KevinMcCloud]

@LatinForTelly

Hi Kevin,

We were lucky enough to live in a GD house for a few months. It was a modest 4 bed family house, built when the projects weren't overly grand.

The house did seem great (and you loved it on the telly); handsome, intelligently thought-out, and economical.

Trouble was, it didn't really work as a family house for a number of reasons, notably noise, ventilation and lots of hazardous drops.

I agree with whoever said a house is a machine for living in, so on that criterion, for me, the house didn't work.

Just wondering what you thought really. Has a design failed if the house isn't fit for general purpose (don't want to out self but there are pointers that other people feel the same).

Or is it a design success if it works very well for its first owners?

Firstly, I'd fiercely defend the series for continuing to champion modest projects. The channel may not use them in its advertising but every series of GD has a scattering of accessible, beautiful, small projects; it's just that, of course, they're less memorable than the ridiculous, overblown ones.

Secondly, I'd say that any project has to serve the people that commissioned it and buildings are about time and people and place. There is absolutely no guarantee that a house build for one person will be built for another - we film bespoke projects that fit like a bespoke suit sometimes. I would, however, judge a developer-built home as unfit for purpose if it only suited one household in its lifetime.

[KevinMcCloud]

@FluffDragon

Hi Kevin, my question is, what's YOUR house like?!

It?s old; and I?ve retrofitted quite a lot of green technologies to it. It was build in the 16th century out of the stone and the oak from the fields around it ? so I suppose that makes it something of a Jacobean eco-house.

[KevinMcCloud]

@missmartha

Hi there.

Is there such a thing as good taste, and if so, who decides?

I am constantly perplexed by planning decisions. Yes I work in the construction industry.

Nope, there's no such thing as good taste; just taste. Your taste is different to mine, and my taste and my taste is different to mine ten years ago. There's good design, and there is quality in making things and these are recognisable by all of us. But taste is shifting, deceptive and misleading.

As to planning; every planning decision is always going to be very specific and contextual. It is also often going to be personal and influenced by the taste of the planning officer as much by their professional judgement and local planning policy.

[RealAleandOpenFires]

Ty for answering. .

--Will watch old GD episodes later, so I can shout at the people making a right pig's ear of their project.

[Itscoldouthere]

Hi Kevin

So I looked into Solar panels but they are so ugly, I can't put them on my roof where they will be seen.
I saw some solar roof tiles at GD Live much nicer, do you think in 5/10 years people will not want to buy houses with ugly solar panels?

[LatinForTelly]

Fair enough. Thanks for answering

[GentleOtter]

Hello Kevin,

We were lucky enough to meet you at Grand Designs through Mumsnet and thank you for being so lovely to everyone. My children refuse to eat bananas unless they are made into a 'Kevin penguin'.

What was the inspiration behind the HabHousing?