So, will it have been worth it?

So you're sitting there, in your old house, knowing the paint is going to be dry in the new one pretty soon, so it doesn't matter that it's getting colder and that the guy who filled up the kerosene cans didn't put the lid on properly, and it spilt on the floor of the car, because soon you're never going to need any more kerosene.

You've already let the kids switch on the electric toilet seat warmer, and if it gets much colder you may actually plug it in. It's not going to be on for long though.

Then you read this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/pooran-desai-interview-green-buildings

And you start to wonder, again, whether the extra mile was worth the few inches more of energy efficiency. The point of the article is that the difference between a high energy performance and very high energy performance building is not so great, but lifestyles will make a huge difference. So if you're eating strawberries flown in from India, your eco house isn't really going to be so eco. Riding a bicycle to work may not help your carbon credentials if your burning fat from an avocado from Mexico.

So what does the design of buildings actually do to change the way people live?  

Or maybe this is just the nature of the media to find different opinions, and highly energy efficient buildings really are worth it; there are just other things to worry about too.

I still wonder how much the new house is just going to be a very stable environment, immune to the massive temperature swings outside, and what we're getting is comfort, rather than ecology. I worry that the lifetime carbon costs have been spent and then some in the construction.

There certainly are several fronts to fight on when we're trying to come to terms with a population doubling in a couple of decades.

So, going to back to the idea of a house that doesn't consume energy, at least symbolically this is a challenge to the consumerist aesthetic.

You can't make an omelette without using a few hundred kilojoules of thermal energy.  

19th December

We have a completion date, and the good news is that it's before Christmas. Also, looking on the bright side, as it's a few pay days later than expected, and all being well I'll be getting a bonus this year, I can reduce the amount I need to borrow from the bank. I won't dwell on the fact that we were expecting to be in the new house last Christmas, and I'll try not to worry too much if this date slips a bit. 

I got a copy of the building schedule, and it's very exciting. As of 23rd November, the tiler has started tiling away, planned to finish at the end of the month. The kitchen is going in on the last two days of November. The wallpapering is finished, and the door frames all have at least undercoats on, but the wall painting will start from 1st December, until 8th. Not every room has tiles, so I'm sure the painters and tilers would have been able to work simultaneously. Perhaps they don't get on with each other.

Also, it seems the building trade in Matsumoto is incredibly busy at the moment and it's been difficult to get all the subcontractors lined up. This is probably a combination of projects delayed when the earthquake hit up north back in March, that are now all going ahead, and rebuilding work from the earthquake that hit Matsumoto in June and dislodged a lot of tiles. This is what it did to a wall in our house, although I don't think the landlord has added it to anybody's list of things to do.

When the paint is up on 8th December, the electricians and plumbers come in. Actually, the schedule says it's possible for the electricians and plumbers to work any time from 24th November, but they better be careful not to upset the tiler as he doesn't seem to like people walking around on his tiles.

They take down the inside scaffolding on 10th December. They put it up a couple of weeks ago for no obvious reason, then took it down a couple of days ago so the tilers can tile the ground floor. The heating engineers are coming to fix up the heat pump and the underfloor heating.

The bannister rail is going on the stairs on 15th December, then they can start cleaning inside the house. The tatami mats are going down in our Japanese room on 19th December.

This is the plan inside the house. 

Simultaneously to the tiles going down and the paint going up inside, the external wall is being clad. When we were planning the house, the options for the external finish were ready-made sidings, or a constructed and mortared wall. Apparently sidings can be much cheaper, however quality and durability are issues. I'm amused every time I see a house with red-brick imitation sidings, coming as I do from an area where brick houses are liable to be stone clad. I was assured that by the time you find sidings that look nice, the cost is about the same as building the wall, although it seems to be a very involved process. First there are gara ita, strips of wood on top of the ventilation gap. Then goes a waterproof sheet of asphalt, on top of this goes chicken mesh, then the wall finish is pasted onto that, undercoat, middle coat and then overcoat. The gara ita have been up for a month or two in most places, although the problem areas have just been fixed and fitted. The rest of it has been given until 10th December.  They could have it all finished in a couple of days, or they could be working right up to the end. If it were ready-made sidings, I imagine the whole process could have have taken a couple of days. There may also be advantages with ready-made sidings, for example in insulation performance. I imagine if they are weathered and worn, it's easy to replace them.

When I talk about the choice having been between sidings or a constructed wall, the choice wasn't really ours. As usual, the architect told us what he thought we should do, which was what he wanted to do, and he poured disdain and mistrust upon the sidings.

Next on the schedule, on 12th, the ventilation and insulation engineers come back to fix the vents on the outside. They may fix the inside vents too, which are currently holes in the wall, and there are a couple of places where the ducts run through a painted room, so they need fixing in place. Hopefully they'll be insulated the exhaust duct inside the house too.

Not sure when the final airtightness test is going to be, but that's the same people.

The shutters are to be fitted on 12th December, which should be interesting. These are for the upstairs south facing windows, to keep some of that summer sun out. They're electric. The shutters have a wire coming out of the back, which should go through the wall into the house, where the switches are. The walls need to be airtight, and the wires need to be sealed from the outside, which of course will be covered by the shutters when they are installed. This is another one of those riddles that builders must answer.

They're going to rearrange the outside scaffolding on 14th December, as most of the external work will have finished. The balcony will start going up on 15th, at least if we have decided how it is going to be made. It'll be painted and railing added to it on 17th, then the scaffolding for that will come down 19th. The screen doors will also be fitted on that last day, although to be honest I don't think we're going to be needing them until next summer. They're doing the drainpipes then, too.

The prospect of moving, a spectre that has haunted us for a while, is rapidly moving in. We have over a decade of crap in the house to sort through, and conflicting interests of not buying anything new that we don't need, and getting rid of what we can rather than bringing it into the new house. 

Things I may always look at and just shake my head. Part one.

Doctors bury their mistakes, gardeners dig them up, and architects plasterers wait for the painters to come and paint them over. But if you're building a house, then you're going to live in your mistakes, or with them, or looking at them every day.

I have often regretted my words, and in fact I've also regretted my silence a few times. The upstairs ceiling is a case of both. Part of the plan for being able to breathe in the house while maintaining high thermal efficiency is the ventilation system. Air comes in at the top of the middle of the East wall, goes through the heat exchanger and is sent through ducts around the house. It returns through another set of ducts, goes back through the heat exchanger to ensure that the we're not losing too much heat in the winter, or gaining too much in the summer, then air leaves the house on the high north wall. It took a lot of time and mental gymnastics to work out where these ducts should all go, to ensure all parts of the house would have suitable amounts of air flowing through, and we wouldn't have ducts in the way to trip over or bang our heads on. The final plan had two ducts running across the upstairs south ceiling, from the machine room at the east to the west wall in the master bedroom. The south ceiling has two beams running east-west, one a third of the way up, above the edge of the corridor and the south edge of the master bedroom, another two thirds of the way up, in the middle of the master bedroom and above the stairs. The ducts were to go above the higher beam, covered by a bit of ceiling coming horizontally away from the sloping ceiling, then heading up vertically to meet it again. 

Two ducts were necessary along this bit of ceiling, one delivering fresh air to the master bedroom and to the downstairs room, and the other extracting old air from the kids' room, the loft in the back of the master bedroom and the geta bako (shoe cupboard) in the genkan. So, this bit of ceiling seemed like it would be rather large.

I had the idea of leaving one of the ducts along the higher beam, but sending the other duct along the lower beam. This would have had a more balanced effect on the ceiling, so that rather than one boxy protrusion around half a metre wide, and another beam-sized protrusion a quarter of that, there would be two protrusions, both around 30 cm wide, rather like wide beams. I discussed this a little with the site foreman and architect, and then made the mistake of suggesting it directly to the man in charge of the ducting. The result was that, rather than one of the ducts ending up along the lower beam, it moved to the other side of the higher beam. 

"You don't want it to go along that beam. It'll look strange." They said. 

And I believed them.

They probably just thought that it was too much trouble changing it, or perhaps wondered what on earth was I doing putting these stupid ducts in the house anyway, rather than allowing in real fresh air, bracing or stifling depending on the season. And if I did want these ducts, then surely I'd be happy for them to create a massive ripple on the ceiling. Or perhaps they were more concerned about the other hundred items on the list of things to do.

So now we have something that is likely to make people think, "What the f..." And I'll have to explain that the ventilation ducts are behind there, or tell them the tale I have just told, or pretend the reason is to accommodate the down-light, because we can't put anything through the vapour barrier just under the plaster board on the ceiling, or I'll have to make up a more elaborate story.

Or perhaps they won't notice. I mean, nobody looks at ceilings, do they?

Or perhaps they will just politely say nothing, and I will have no opportunity for elaborate story making.

But I will notice. And I may always wonder why I didn't dig my feet in and tell them what I wanted. 

Of course it may look better when the paint is on. 

Or it may look worse. 

Spot the deliberate mistake.

Here is our heat exchange ventilation system. Can you spot the deliberate mistake? Just to help you work out what's going on, the four ducts coming out of the top are, from the right, clean air supply from outside, return air from the house, clean air supply to the house, exhaust air going outside. Can you see what's strange?

The supply air splits straight after leaving the heat exchanger, then goes through two soundproofers. This should make the house a bit quieter. The clean air supply duct is insulated. That's why it's thicker.

The exhaust air duct is not insulated. That is the problem.

I know it makes some kind of sense to insulate the pipe coming in, because that's bringing in cold air from outside, but as it's a heat exchanger, the heat from the return air is largely transferred to the supply air, so by the time it goes out through the exhaust air duct, it's going to be close to the temperature of clean air supply from outside, and close to the actual outside temperature. So it needs insulation every bit as much as the insulated duct does. Perhaps there is some rational reason why there is no insulation there.

Not too late for the punctual thermal bridge - The North side revisited

One good thing about having a 12 month delay in a building project is that it gives you plenty of opportunities to reconsider previous decisions. You spend hours, days and weeks thinking about things, then come back to them months later with a fresh opinion. Then you try to remember why and how you came to the decision in the first place. 

There are always many ways of doing things, and often there is something radical that you've never seen in a house before. There is usually a good reason why it has never been seen, either that there is a flaw in the idea, or the conservative nature of builders and architects. Materials and science have moved a great deal in the past few decades, but building sensibility still goes back hundreds of years. A lot of dimensions can be calculated, rather than guessed by eye or by rules of thumb, and this could reveal extra possibilities, or if the architect doing the calculations is semi-numerate, it could further restrict the possibilities.

Let me digress into a couple of examples from aeronautics. In the 1940s when Howard Hughes made his eight-engined Spruce Goose, the largest flying boat ever, about the same length as a 747, but with twice the wing area, the science of aerodynamics was young and aircraft design was more of a craft. The wings, scaled up from smaller working designs, were so big you could walk down the inside. A little bit earlier, in the 1920s when airships seemed the only logical alternative to crossing the atlantic by sea, and R100 airship was being designed, they needed to calculate the stresses on each beam and wire of the massive frame that kept the balloon full of hydrogen. They used a computer for this, which at the time was a person with a slide rule and a pad of paper. If they found that any of the wires had negative tension, they would send it all back the designer. 

Back to our little world, at the end of the day, you just have to make a decision, and then stick with that decision, and convince yourself it is the correct one. Then move on, as there are plenty more decisions to make. 

Of course, when the house is built and you start living in it, and those decisions become solid objects, you find out whether you did the right thing or not, and if you want to find out whether it was the right decision, then keep reading. When we do move in, though, after the investment of time and money, there's a high chance that I'm going to consider the house to be close to perfect, and I'll look around, through or away from any problems that there are, and do my best to enjoy the good bits. Human beings are, after all, very flexible animals when it comes to living environments.

It has been very tempting, whenever part of the building comes up that we have not been entirely sure about, to take the full opportunity offered by the questions "are you sure?" or "do you really want to do this?" or "what, exactly, are we supposed to do here?" that the builder asks the architect, luckily in our presence.

I suspect that, had we not started to get heavily involved with the builder, insisting that we are involved in any meetings with architect, and if I hadn't been visiting the building site, with a camera, pretty much every day, things would have been very different. For a start, we probably would have moved in a few months ago. All the questions that we see being asked, as the builders scratch their heads over the architect's drawings, would have been worked out in some haphazard fashion, filled with builders guessing what the architect meant and hoping for the best, and the architect demanding constructions based on his own prejudices, either forbidding materials that he doesn't like, or using them indiscriminately because we had the nerve to ask him to use them. A lot of the time, I suspect the architect would have just presented it as a concept in pencil on paper, and left it to them to work out how to make it. Almost none of the time would he have been thinking about what we really want.

So, anyway, when it came to the roof over the front door, we were able to change the plan. 

The plan had been to have a sloping, transparent roof over the two doors on the north side of the house. The front door is to the west of the north wall, then there are seven steps up to the entrance to the este room. With the doors being at different heights and there being windows and glass doors, it seemed like a good idea to have a transparent roof, at an angle.

It seemed to me a very bad idea to puncture the thermal envelope, but according to the architect, this was just too difficult to do without puncturing the wall with beams, although in a couple of days the carpenter seems to have managed to remove the protruding beams, and construct a new roof. Evidently moving hammers, saws and three-metre lengths of wood is more difficult than moving pencils, erasers and the computer mouse.

It had always seemed to me a good idea to have a transparent roof, as this will let in more light, but when it came to it, the architect had no idea how this was going to be done, and the ideas he had all sounded like they would look terrible. One big issue with the roof is that it is likely, at some point, to be subjected to falling bits of ice from the roof above. These could actually be quite large and serious as the roof is highly insulated, so the heat escaping from the house is not going to have a very good melting effect. Also there is a bit of wall sticking up from the north roof to the higher south roof, so the top part of the roof will be in permanent shade for half the year. And the north roof has quite a shallow slope, so snow is likely to stay there for a while, going through a melting-freezing cycle and getting harder and harder. Anything transparent is not going to be as strong as a solid roof, and liable to be damaged by such falling ice. Then there are fire regulations, which need a whole new post to cover both their simplicity and the extent to which they are interpreted and ignored.

Picasa ate my albums - Blogger beware

I've been using Picasa to store my thousands of photos of the house and put them into scores of albums, and it did something rather annoying the other day.

I moved my computer from its summer residence in the cool north room of the house, to it's winter residence at the desk in the dining room, which is much more pleasant and cheaper to heat as the north room plummets through chilly to frigid. This was a move I had hoped not to have to make, but I digress.

I keep my photos on a terabyte external hard drive connected by USB to my antique laptop. The USB connection was a little bit loose, and I think for this reason, and because I was running Picasa while it was connecting and disconnecting, it removed a whole load of photos from a whole load of albums. I assume it was connected to the disconnection, although it may have been due to some other Picasan quirk. The original photos are kept in a series of folders on the hard drive. I start to make a new folder after about three or four thousand photos, because it just gets too unwieldy for my antique computer to handle. Of course the photos should all be in one folder, and I should be using tags with them, but that's another story. In fact that's what I really got Picasa to do, because it can add tags to the photos, such as captions and locations, and it can put them in any number of albums, easily including the same photo in several albums, which the old file and directory system can't do so well, without either cluttering up the disk with duplicate photos, or causing the trouble of having to add links.

The other thing Picasa can do is to upload and sync the albums on your computer to your webalbums. This is really useful except for two things. First is that the sync only goes one way. If you change albums on your computer, the changes will be reflected online. However, if you change albums online, the next time you switch on your computer bound Picasa, it will revert all the changes to the version there. Because of this, if or when it starts eating the photos from your computer albums, it fairly soon starts to eat the same photos from your web albums. It did this until I realised and switched Picasa off line.

Curiously, Picasa didn't take all my photos out of the albums; it left photos from the most recent folder (August 2011 to present) and just ignored photos from the older albums (8th June to August 2011, and up to 8th June). The only rationale for choosing to ignore these albums could be that I had set it to always look for photos in the most recent album, but only look for photos once in the older albums. This seemed logical as the older albums were not going to change, and Picasa had no need to keep scanning them, but with hindsight, and if you use Picasa be warned, and if you develop Picasa, pull your finger out: Either set the album to scan always or never. Setting Picasa to scan a folder once is a foolish option, and may mark the path to misery.

If only we knew the results of our actions before we took them!

So with reference to the speedy and helpful Picasa help forum, www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa and one piece of sound advice that didn't work, and a piece of less sound advice that did work, the problem was kind of solved.

The first piece of advice led me to the folder where Picasa keeps its album info, in files called "PAL". No pal of mine though. There were several folders with dates from each backup, so it was straightforward enough to copy the full albums from an older backup into the latest folder, and hope that Picasa would use these, and put my photos back in my albums.

Picasa did not, though. Trying all the different combinations and reboots, and even changing the database id number in each file were to no avail. I took the more drastic advice of another writer on the help forum, and deleted the database, so Picasa had to build a new one. When I then resurrected the album data from an older folder, all the albums came back in their former glory. Everything was fine except, and I was worried this would happen, Picasa now ignored all the albums it had made online before, and proceeded to make another 86 webalbums, with identical names, and usually the same collection of photos. Of course the URLs for them are different, so now I have the old albums full of partial collections of photos that are pointed to by my blog, and the new albums to which I will be able to continue adding new photos of the house, containing forthcoming details such as paint, wallpaper and floors.

So instead of writing about it, I should really be going through the albums and blog posts, and fixing all the dead links, so that normal service may resume.

South side, revisited

To the south of the house, we have a lovely terrace. Actually, it's a slab of concrete covered in scaffolding and deteriorating kenaf board at the moment, but it will soon be a lovely, tiled, terrace, where we can sit out in the sun, or snow.

We need some shade for the downstairs windows, and we need a bit of a balcony upstairs, to hang out washing or futons, or clean windows, so the plan is for a balcony running the whole length of the south wall, sticking about 60 cm out from the house. With some care, it should be possible to get this the right height so there is around 45 degrees from the edge of the balcony to the top of the window, and it will let in every drop of direct winter sunlight until the end of February, and around 60 degrees from the edge of the balcony to the bottom of the window, so it will keep out all the summer sun from the end of April. Upstairs we have shutters that will allow some variation.

This is basic passive solar design, and not really rocket science.
We also would rather not have pillars sticking up in the middle of the terrace, which is in front of the middle window and the kitchen window. This means that some kind of beam needs to cross a span of around 5 metres, with minimal thickness. The idea in the final plan was to put up six pillars around the terrace, one in each corner, and one in the middle next to the bit of wall between the two windows, and another opposite that on the south side of the terrace.

These were all made of wood, and there seemed to be a lot of it. Although I've been demanding a 45 degree line to demarcate no-building zone up and away from the window, the actual results from the Passive House software on how obstacles will reduce incoming sunlight are more subtle.

The best estimate at the moment is that all the windows in the house will lose 2,400 kWh per annum, but they will gain 5,400 kWh in solar gain, so the windows are bringing in 3,000 kWh net, over the winter heating period. In very rough financial terms, we could call this 30,000 yen per annum, if we budget 10 yen for each kWh. This is the thermal output of the windows if we look at them as a heater. Of course windows in Japanese houses usually only work as heaters in the summer, and in the winter they are very effective coolers. They also work as dehumidifiers, turning humidity into condensation on the inside of the glass, and on the frames.

Of course we also got the windows to provide natural light, and to give us a view. Looking at the simple cost benefit of insulation, it would make a lot more sense to have no windows, and use electric light inside, but we don't want to live in a cave.

The house next door to the south, that I've estimated to be five metres tall and 16 metres away, will apparently reduce the amount of heat coming in by almost 300 kWh per annum.  So the house next door has already taken away 10% of this total. 3000 yen per annum.

The amount of heat coming in changes with each adjustment of the windows in or out of the wall, and depending on what we do to each side, above, and to a greater extent in front of them. The passive house software estimates 5% of heat will be lost because the windows are not clean all the time.

I'm assuming that above the ground floor windows, there is a balcony 600 mm higher, sticking out 600 mm. If this comes down by 10 mm, we lose 16 kWh per annum. If, instead, it sticks out another 10 mm from the house, we lose 42 kWh per annum. Only 160 yen or 420 yen per year.

A bigger problem is that the horizontal part of the frame on the south side of the terrace was going to obstruct the sun's rays coming into the house. Around 80 kWh for a 120 mm beam, and 160 kWh for a 240 mm beam. That's 1,600 yen per annum. Over 5%.

So, we're getting rid of the pillars at the south of the terrace, and the wooden frame, and I was thinking about putting a frame of square-section steel on top of six wooden pillars. If it's steel, it should be able to span the five metres above the terrace without needing to be too thick. I was trying to work out the deflection, and it looks like a 150x150 mm beam will only move about a centimetre if I stand in the middle (one Mark is about 125 Newtons). As there are going to be two beams, the frame will move a bit less than this, and should feel solid enough. And anyway, the main job is to provide shade in the summer, and being able to walk along it is a bit of a bonus.
This sounds to be a non-starter though. A steel frame is going to be really heavy, and would need a crane to get it in place. Now that there's a house next door, that would probably mean a big crane to lift it over the whole building. Steel is a lot more expensive than wood, too.
After a little discussion it seems possible to loose the south side pillars and use a bracket from the pillar in the middle of the north side so we don't need a pillar in the middle of the terrace. The beam at the south may be a little thicker, but the effect on solar gain is at least five times less than the beams and pillars at the south sides. It should also cost less.
Another compounding issue is that we want to be able to get some shade over the terrace, probably for most of the summer. If we have some kind of permanent frame, it would be easy to hook up some fabric shading over it. If there is just a balcony, we could get some something like a shop awning that could be extended and retracted more freely, although this could be more expensive and may put a lot of torque on the balcony.

Also, I was wondering about growing vines up the frame, maybe kiwi fruit, which would produce shady leaves in the summer, and just leave branches in the winter. Of course the bare branches would still reduce the thermal gain, and this seems to contradict everything I've said above.
I do like kiwi fruit though. Apparently they have six times the vitamin C of oranges.

Security

It always seems to be a very safe country. Bicycle locks here would not last five minutes in the UK, but this is ridiculous. Not only does this guy seem to be using an extension lead for a bicycle lock, he isn't even using it!

Or maybe it's an electric bicycle with the motor built into the bottom bracket and batteries within the frames, and the extension is used to charge it.

I'm not sure to what extent the safety of Japan is a myth and a cliche, but we frequently leave the door of our old house unlocked, and even if it were locked, anyone who wanted to could very easily get in. In over ten years I don't think anyone ever has. The new house, with continental European technology on doors and windows is, by comparison, a fortress. We noticed a wire sticking out of the frame of the front door, and knowing it had something to do with remote unlocking were wondering whether we could hook it up to the door bell. It took us a long time to work out that this was not actually affecting the lock at all; just undoing the plate on the wall so the door could open when it's on the latch. European front doors generally open inwards, and usually have no handle on the outide, just a keyhole. Our door opens outwards, and has a handle, so triggering the plate on the wall to open is not going to help us a great deal, unless we have a visitor who doesn't know how a door handle works.

A random assortment of websites

I've been a bit busy recently, so here is a rather feeble post made up of a selection of links to other low energy houses, that you may be interested in. If not, don't click the links!

Zero energy house

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201106110161.html

A passive house in the US, and some tips that apply to all buildings, new or rennovated.

http://www.proudgreenhome.com/article/184246/Lessons-from-a-passive-house

Here's a self-build passive house in Wicklow, Ireland. Yes, you can do it on your own! They have some problems with suppliers and contractors too though!

http://passivebuild.blogspot.com/2011/02/progress-update-7-feb.html

Here's a blog about passive house building in the pacific North West.

http://www.rootdesignbuild.com/blog/

Net zero energy house

http://www.proudgreenhome.com/article/181951/Building-an-affordable-net-zero-energy-home

This is an interesting repository of building parts and designs. It gives scores for different options like this:

Thermal Control	4
Durability	3
Buildability	2
Cost	3
Material Use	3
Total	15

http://www.buildingscience.com

Info on low energy and new low energy standards in Japan

http://www.house-support.net/seinou/kaikou-dann.htm

Somebody else in Japan getting a container of Pazen windows:

http://ta-k.blog.ocn.ne.jp/blog/2011/05/post_593c.html

And now for something completely different:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039719/Simon-Dale-How-I-built-hobbit-house-Wales-just-3-000.html

Looks great and low budget, low impact during building, but a couple of obvious questions are:
What impact is there on the environment from people leaving cities and going to live in the woods?
Where's the toilet and bathroom?
This is certainly part of the solution though, and good luck to the lad!

Just like a piece of furniture

The TV is probably going on the west wall. Not that it's really any business of the architects or builders where we're going to put our TV. They should just be building a house with various suitable spaces for one to be placed.

Because of the structure and the need to support the upstairs over the large open space downstairs, the west wall has bits of wall sticking out for a bit less than a metre every metre or two along the wall. 

Actually, they're sticking out three shaku. A shaku is a Japanese foot, which is within one percent of an Imperial foot. Apparently the Chinese shaku, known as "chi" has been defined as one third of a metre, while back in 1891 the Japanese shaku was defined as 10/33 m. The Japanese word and character come from the Chinese, probably Cantonese where the pronunciation is now "chek". As is usual with traditional units, the shaku, chek or chi varied widely around the sinosphere. The supporting walls are mostly spaced 6 shaku appart, which is the kan of the building. Actually, in the middle of the house there is only half a kan. Between each of these we have storage place, starting with a shoe cupboard to the right of the entrance at the West of the North wall where there is a genkan. The "kan" of "genkan" is not related to this kan, in case you wondered.

Shoe cupboards, known as geta bako, literarlly "clog boxes", are de rigeur in Japanese houses, as everyone takes their shoes off as they come inside. The genkan has the strange quality of being inside the building, but still outside as people have their shoes on. Especially in rural areas, people will come through the front door into the genkan willy nilly, but only proceed into the house when invited to agaru, or "ascend". This may contribute to the confusion with thermal envelopes and the somewhat alien notion of drawing a line to keep heat inside or outside the building. It's ironic that a culture with such strong concepts of "inside" and "outside" from groups of people to shoes seems to fail to apply this to architecture.

Continuing down the west wall, to our ultimate goal of the furniture in the title, the next kan contains a wardrobe for coats. The geta bako was set in a little bit, as shoes are shorter than coats are wide. Through the door and into the living room, there is another, narrow wardrobe, taking up the extra half kan. This was going to be a cupboard top and bottom with a shelf between, but a wardrobe seemed like a better idea. Perhaps for guests' outer garments, although I suspect it will immediately be full of our own, unless we start getting good at throwing clothes away pretty quickly.

Now firmly in the living room, we have two kans of shelves and store cupboards. The plan has always been to have a low shelf with cupboards beneath it, onto which we can put a TV and other audio visual equipment. As we are not sure exactly where the TV may end up, there is a slot at the back of each shelf, where cables can protrude, and there is a hole in the perpedicular wall between the two kan so that we can connect any equipment wherever it end up. I need to remember to ask for another hole into the next wardrobe, and a hole from there through the ceiling up to where the computer is likely to be.

One complication with this west wall is that it is not at right angles to the north or south wall, and each piece of protruding wall, following the beams that cross the house East to West, is at an angle that is not 90 degrees. This is not such a big problem on the left side, where the angle will be more around 95 degrees, but to the right, the acute angle would cause various problems for the carpenter, and it has been straightened. 

Above the low shelf there are also to be some high shelves that can be varied in height. We found out last week that the rails for these shelves would be in painted walls, but we managed to remedy this and get wooden panels on each side, so the effect will be like pieces of furniture. 

For a while the cupboards at the bottom were going to join in the middle, so the whole thing would have looked like one piece of  furniture, but this may have looked a little strange. The structure has a pillar going from roof to floor, and if this pillar sat on top of opening doors, it would have looked strange, at least to me. It would have seemed like we were trying to hide the structure and disguise it as a piece of furniture. Perhaps I would be the only person who would notice this, but as I'm going to be walking past and looking at it every day, it's a fairly important consideration.

So now we have the desired effect of what appears to be two nice pieces of furniture slotted into the spaces in our wall. In fact looking at the care and craftsmanship that has gone into them, they don't just look like two nice pieces of furniture, they ARE two nice pieces of furniture.