Shelves

There's something very satisfying about putting up shelves. We have moved a few shelf racks from the old house, carefully considering rooms sizes and layouts and deciding where they go. Two are still outside but their destiny is more or less sealed. 

Within the house there are several places where adjustable shelf racks have been installed. Two metal strips run up and down each side of the space, and they even have numbers on each square hole in them so you can make sure the shelves are level. It's usually impossible to see the numbers, unless you're at exactly the right angle, but it's a nice idea. 

During our extensive planning of the the house, we both wanted fixed shelves, but for different reasons. For my wife, fixed shelves mean that you don't have to look at the metal strips or the pegs they hold, and they are more aesthetically pleasing. For me, fixed shelves mean that you cannot adjust them, which is a good thing, because you will never have to adjust them.

So we got movable shelves, and I've spent hours now moving them up and down, standing back, getting a second opinion finding they are not quite the right size for what we want to put on them, and then moving them up or down a little.

And having a marvellous time doing it. 

Eco Babble - Talking to the Alps

The Alps Language Service Association invited me to talk to them, which I used as an opportunity to spout Eco Babble.

Here are brief contents of the talk, which veered seemlessly between Physics lesson, ecological call to arms, and rant about the woeful state of Japanese building. It seemed to engage and captivate the audience of a dozen or so Japanese men and women in varying stages of middle age.

The talk was on Boxing day, the day after Christmas day, in case you didn't know, and they asked me about that first. I told them that for me Christmas was not at all Christian, and asked them what fir trees and reindeer had to do with Israel. Also I told them how it wasn't even Jesus's birthday; that had just been a ploy by the Christian church to suppress and subsume pagan worship of the winter solstice, and celebration of the sun coming back. This actually began to get onto the topic. 

Eco logical or nomic

The bigger TV you get, the more eco points you get. It should be the other way round!

Stick "ECO" on something, and people will pay more for it, and you'll make more money.

Exponential growth of fossil fuel consumption

The vicious circle of increased efficiency, leading to increased consumption, leading to more money coming in, leading to improvements in efficiency. This is counter intuitive, but the record with coal is that improvements in efficiency, rather than reducing consumption, exponentially increase it. Has our economics moved on?

Engineering

Among my studies were electronics, thermodynamics and finite element analysis. Not particularly useful in language teaching, but they have been very helpful in building my house. 

Traditional Japanese building

Much better than modern Japanese building at stopping overheating in the summer. But what about winter?

I talked about a new paradigm in building

We need to stop using fossil fuels

Insulation materials are available

Ventilation systems are available

Better window technology is available

At this point I had to persuade them that the standards in Japan are very low, and though there may be some houses with some insulation now, it is not a lot. 

Common confusions

I talked about heat and temperature. Outside it was five below freezing, but there was a lot of heat, as it was still over 200 degrees above absolute zero. 

Energy efficiency or energy use. I told them about my car, which is one of the most environmentally friendly cars in town as I hardly ever use it. It has terrible mileage though

"It's good for the environment"

Almost nothing humans do is good for the environment. Some things are just less bad. 

Insulation.

People often think that things either insulate or don't. In fact some things just insulate better. 

Passive house

This is an answer and a goal in building a house. It constitutes: 

Very high insulation, including windows;

Very airtight, so it needs a  ventilation system;

A heat exchange ventilation system, so you don't loose all the heat in the exhaust air;

Maximised solar gain, so the windows are on the south

In Japanese this is often called「無暖房住宅」(mudan-jutaku: non-heating house)

The idea in Europe was that with these criteria met, central heating is not necessary, as the appliances and bodies int the house are enough, or the incoming air can be given extra heat within the ventilation system. Central heating has been standard in Europe, although they are now trying to get away from it. In Japan, on the other hand, it is a recent development that progressive builders and up-market buyers are installing.

Good insulator

Thicker is better

No gaps!

I showed them the pictures of the heat sink and the part of the window frame. Most of them guessed which was which, but it was quite difficult, which was my point. 

I asked what the best insulator in the room was. One of them correctly identified that it was air. I found out later he had a PhD in biophysics. 

Eco points!

The house did get lots of Eco points, it was 200% of their low energy standard, at 0.92 W/m²K (watts per square metre of floor space per degree difference with the outside temperature). A figure which I need to check.

To translate this into terms that they could easily relate to, I told them yesterday morning it had been -8°C outside, and it was 14°C inside, and the underfloor heating is not working yet. My old house would have been the same temperature with the heating on.

LEDs

The advantages are: low energy, they don't radiate heat, they're small, long lasting and don't attract insects. They asked why, so I explained that LEDs produce light in the spectrum visible to us, whereas insects are really only interested in animal blood, so they want to see warm bodies with lower frequency infrared vision.

The problems with LEDs are: they can't dim, they have limited colours and they're expensive. Actually the first two are not correct, and the last one will be less and less so, as costs are going down exponentially. 

Solar Power

The advantages are: no fuel, no pollution, no noise, long lasting. The problems are: cost, area and unreliability due to clouds.

Power democracy

I put it in terms of a model of individual ownership of the means of power production, rather then governments and big businesses, who will build a nuclear power station North of Tokyo, and go on holiday in the resorts South of Tokyo. 

I left them with these questions:

Would you live under an oil power station?

Would you live under a hydroelectric power station?

Would you live under a windmill?

Would you live under a solar power station?

NOTE: Units for Q value edited on 20th January. It did say "kWh/m2a" - kilowatt hours per square metre of floor space per year, which is a building performance measurement used by Passive House Institute that depends on the climate, It now says, I hope correctly, W/m2K - watts per square metre of floor space per degree Kelvin, which is a measure of the thermal performance of a building.

Don't even have to dream of one.

Christmas Day, 2011. 

It seems like every Christmas I've spent in Matsumoto has been white.

I'm dreaming of a working internet connection though. Also I keep thinking that we haven't really moved into a warm house and that I'm going to wake up sometime.

We're in!

We moved in on Friday. There is still some stuff left in the last house, and plenty of cleaning and tidying to do there, but we have everything we need in the new house--it's just a case of getting it out of the right box. Since we did the big move on Friday with some help from our friends, and a three-ton removal van and the professionals, we've been back three or four times to get more stuff. I forgot to get the kettle twice times. 

There are still plenty of boxes everywhere, but we're determined to get everything out of them. Rather than rummaging through to find things, we're trying to take things out and put them away as we go along. Now that we have a new home, we're also trying to find a home for all the little things that live in it. The storage space should be ample, but seems to be very quickly filling up.

Already it feels more comfortable than the old house, even though the underfloor heating isn't working yet. They're coming to fix that today, so it should be a couple of degrees warmer. It's now somewhere in the mid teens, which is fine if you're moving around, and we  have an electric carpet under the dining table, and put the air conditioner on. 

When the removal men were in the house, they opened one door on the north side and one on the south side, which very effectively got a through draft of biting winter air. Even then, as soon as you went upstairs it was much warmer. 

There is still a little more work to do on the house, and a few hundred things to write about. 

Lots of bits of paper

I've been chased by a seemingly endless paper train this week.

On Monday, I changed my address to the new house. This is essential to get the electricity connected and claim the grant for adding the solar panels, and to go into a contract with the electricity company to sell them the electricity. 

The system in Japan is such that your address is registered with the local city, town or village authority, so they know where you live, and everyone is kept in their place. Changing your address means a trip to the city hall. The staff there have improved a great deal in the past ten years. They used to treat the citizens as scum who are coming begging to the castle for permission to breathe. Now they call you "o-kyaku-sama", which means customer, and smile and say "o-tsukaresama-deshita", which is a way of saying thank you to someone of a higher status.

 

I only really needed to change my own address, but while I was about it, I changed the address of the whole family. This took a few minutes longer and had the immediate effect of changing Joe, my older son's, school. The new house is only a couple of hundred metres away, but it's in the catchment area for a different school. From the new house the new school is twice the distance of the school he as at now, several of the kids in the immediate neighbourhood go to the nearer school, and it doesn't seem like a good idea to change schools when it's not really necessary. 

To get this common sense to prevail I had to go to the School Education Department of the City Hall, which is in another building, just in front of the castle. I got there on Tuesday, and it only took about half an hour.

When I got back home on Tuesday, I found out how many other papers and which variety I needed, not just for the electricity and application for the solar grant, but also for getting the house in my name, which needs to be done before the bank will start the mortgage. I needed a four Juminhyo (certificates of residence) and three inkan shomeisho (certificates of registration of seal - and I mean a stamp with my name on rather than the aquatic mammal with a ball on its nose). To further complicate things, as I'm not Japanese, they won't give me a Juminhyo but a certificate of alien registration. "Ju" means reside, which I do, "hyo" means chart, which it is, so it must be that I'm not a "min". 

I have a card for my inkan shomeisho, and there is a machine at the City Hall which I learnt will also print out Juminhyo (or their alien equivalent). I got all these papers on Wednesday morning, and handed them to the appropriate people.

Everything is set for them to hand over the keys this evening. At home there is still an alarming number of empty boxes, still flat in piles and not yet box-shaped, and a lot of crap is still on shelves and in cupboards.

We've got to move

The removal man came around yesterday for an estimate. As we're close we'll try and do some of it ourselves, with a little help from our friends, but it's going to be much easier to leave the big stuff to the professionals. Like many things in Japan there is a well-developed system for moving that will run smoothly and painlessly. The man was young and polite, wearing a suit and tie and holding a clipboard and calculator. He went around the house looking at what we've got and then totted it up on his check sheet. He gave us a 40-page A4 brochure that is both a showcase of their service, with reassuring pictures of their smiling, uniformed staff, shoes off and socks clean, and a manual for the mover. On the back it says "We care you", but I don't want to point out their omission. Prepositions have nothing to do with moving house. 

When he left he gave us fifty boxes. Small ones for heavy things and big ones for light things. They have special boxes for wardrobes with hangers in, but we'll do the clothes ourselves and don't need any of those. Each box has a label where you can write the contents, and circle where the box is coming from in the old house and where it is going to in the new house, not just the floor and the room, but which part of the room. There is red tape to put on boxes of fragile things, and yellow tape for others. In the booklet there is a page of numbered and coloured stickers to put on the video and stereo cables and sockets, and presumably they will put everything in place and plug it in for you if you ask nicely. 

After a few minutes going through the checksheet with his calculator, we came to the negotiation. He said we'd get away with a short two-ton truck for just taking the essential big things--the fridge, washing machine, desks, table and chairs. If we wanted to get everything in one truck we'd need a four tonner. We decided on a three-ton truck, and will start first thing in the morning moving stuff ourselves, and may well have some left over until the following day.

It's not that any of us are particularly acquisitive, but we've accumulated a fair amount of crap over the past eleven years living in this house. Now's the chance to look through and get rid of what we don't need, but also we're not very good at throwing things out. Maybe that's part of not being acquisitive. With clothes I partly blame it on being a second child with a close older brother, and only ever getting hand-me-downs. The only time I can remember getting new clothes is when we were all dressed up in the same outfits. Perhaps it's the other way round, and the cause is my own sartorial ambivalence, but I'm not interested in clothes and don't like to wear new things, and feel obliged to keep everything. 

This may also be inherited from parents who were brought up during the war and rationing, when everything was precious and valuable and needed looking after. In these times of profligate consumerism, mountains of garbage and energy crises, it's difficult to argue with respecting anything for the intrinsic value of its resources and the time and energy that have gone into making it and bringing into your home.

And perhaps my Yorkshire roots have something to do with this. I'll not say that people from Yorkshire are mean, but they have a word, "thoil", that means to be able to financially afford something but not able to justify spending money on it. So it's going to be a busy week as I can neither thoil getting all our stuff moved by the professionals, nor throwing out anything that there's even a slim chance we'll use some time.  

So what does it look like?

A lot of people have been asking, for the past year or two, what the house is going to look like. And they're talking about the colour and finish of the exterior walls.

Now we're in the lucky position of being able to tell them. To be honest, it hasn't been my highest concern, and I've usually just said "white", then added "ish".

Structurally speaking, the outside of the wall is made up of strips of wood, covered with a layer of tar sheet, then chicken mesh, then some kind of cement, then another piece of state-of-the-art mesh that will inhibit cracks, and then plaster on top. Sorry for all the technical terms and trade names.

The choice with the top layer was between painters and plasterers. The painters use spray guns and are cheaper, while the plasters do it by hand and cost a little more. We were all set to get the painters with their spray guns, but in the end they were all very busy, so we were lucky enough to get plasterers. 

This is a good thing, by all accounts, as plaster is more resistant to cracks and lasts longer. And we seem to have got the best plasters in the area.

As well as the state-of-the-art mesh just under the top layer of plaster, this was the first time they had worked on top of plastic brackets. There is 100 mm of insulation outside the structural frame of the house, and the insulator wanted to use plastic brackets to keep the insulation in place and mount the wooden frame for the external wall. Being a lot smaller than any kind of wooden structure, the plastic brackets improve the thermal performance. Hopefully they were all put on correctly and will be strong enough so it all holds in place! 

The other choice to all this is ready-made sidings, which I can't help feeling would have been cheaper and quicker. If we had used highly insulating sidings, it may have contributed to the thermal performance of the house, and possibly saved some headaches or costs somewhere else. Also sidings would presumably be relatively easy to replace after they have absorbed a few years of weather.

Also, I'm sure there is some way of having double wall layers, with an air gap in the middle fitted into the ventilation circuit in some way. The idea is a little vague though.

Anyway, now you can see what the house looks like from the outside, and it's white. ish.

It's been snowing

As I mentioned before there was a fair bit of discussion about what paint we were going to use, and how it was going to be applied. I think the most likely choices were Clay Paint and Chaff Wall. Both are eco products, whatever exactly that means. Clay Paint is imported from Europe, and made from natural ingredients, whatever exactly that means.

Chaff Wall is made in Japan, from scallop shells. I've always loved scallops, although I don't think that was too major a factor in our decision. In the end they used a spray gun rather than rollers, which ends up using more paint, although takes less time, so I think made no difference to the price. I can steel feel the smell of the paint in my nostrils, and a lot of the windows in the house were covered in condensation from it, but it was a bit like walking around just after it has snowed, when everything is pristine and beautiful. The electrician can start putting the fittings in now, and hot and cold water pipes can all be connected, and we should be in at the end of next week.

Skirting boards and tiles

The floors are all in now, except the genkan and the bit outside the front door. Not sure when they're doing that.

Downstairs is all tiled, which looks great. 

A while ago we noticed, quite by chance, that they were going to use tiles at the bottom of the walls rather than wooden skirting boards. Tiles going up the walls is a good idea in a bathroom or outside, where water is being used, but it's not really necessary or aesthetically pleasing for a living room, where wooden skirting boards seem to me obvious. We managed to fix that.

Also we realised, in time, that they had been planning to put the kitchen units in first, then tile around them, as if they were laying a carpet. We managed to fix this problem too, so the whole floor is tiled, except under the pieces of furniture that look like pieces of furniture on the west wall, and under the back of the tatami room. At least if we, or whoever, wants to move the kitchen around in a few years time, they won't need to re-tile the whole floor. 

We also noticed that the skirting boards went on first, and the tiles went down after them. It seemed to me more logical to put the tiles down first, then use the skirting boards to cover up the gap and any unevenness along the edge between tile and wall, but apparently they don't do that here. To me, and perhaps also practitioners of western building, that is the function of the skirting board. The site foreman told me that the problem with doing that is that the skirting boards shrink, so if you put them on top of the tiles, a gap will form underneath them. The skirting board, apparently, is to protect the wall from being damaged when you're using the vacuum cleaner. 

Of course if we hadn't noticed that they were going to use tiles until later, and we had been able to stop them in time, we may have ended up with wooden skirting boards going on later.

 

I don't wish to say that one view is right and the other is wrong, but it's interesting to see these different perspectives, and a good idea to be aware of these issues when building between cultures.

A composition

Composting seems to be a good idea in general. My dad was always a keen composter and we grew up with a couple of the classic square frame designs made from interlocking planks that would grow up as we emptied lawn mowings and things into it, and the other one would shrink as compost was used around the garden. We were all trained, so that if ever we ate melon, we had to cut up the skins into small peices so they would break down more quickly. We took turns taking out the compost bin from the kitchen.  

At one point I was going to do an A-level project harnessing the energy of compost to make hot water. I think it was going to use a heat pump, although I ended up dropping that A-level in favour of more academic ones so I could get into a university engineering degree. A tragedy.

If you're living in an apartment it may not be very practical to compost your kitchen waste, but with a garden, producing it's own variety of foliage and requiring fertilization, composting seems like a good idea in our specific case too. Although over seven different kinds of rubbish are collected here, and burnable rubbish is used at an efficient incinerator that heats a swimming pool and spa, composting seems more sensible than putting garden waste into plastic bags to be driven away by a truck.

The garden behind the new house was getting a bit overgrown with weeds, so it seemed like a good idea to start composting now, so that when we start our garden in earnest next spring we'll have something to help our plants grow.

The first composter I made was an old bin with a broken bottom. I sawed the bottom off, and drilled holes every ten centimetres or so up the sides. This filled up very quickly and the pile of weeds next to it began to grow, so a larger scale solution was necessary.

I decided on a hexagonal version of the classic interlocking plank design. I'm sure there were many reasons for this, but I'm not entirely sure of a good reason. Perhaps you can think of one.

The hexagon has a slightly larger ratio of area to circumference than a square. This means that for a given amount of materials, you get a larger volume of compost. Nature's solution--the circle--has the highest possible ratio, which is why so many things are cylindrical or spherical. As well as being the most efficient use of materials, the corresponding lower surface area to volume means that round things end up with lower heat loss. This may be a factor in compost heap design as the heat they generate speeds up the work of the bacteria.

The difference between squares and hexagons is pretty tiny, barely significant in fact, at less than 10%. 

Ignoring the widths of the walls, the ratio of unit area to circumference for a square is 1/4, or 0.25; 

for a hexagon it is 1/2√(2√3), around 0.27;

for a circle it is  1/2√pi, around 0.28.

And all the materials I used were offcuts and discarded packaging materials from the house, so didn't cost me anything. The only materials I did buy, in fact, were screws, and the hexagon uses more of these than the square. Also the hexagon involves more work as each layer has six, rather than four components, each needing work on each end. The work itself is also more complicated for the hexagon, involving angles of 60 degrees rather than right angles.

So the hexagon, while theoretical a more efficient shape in terms of material use, in fact cost more in terms of materials, and took more work of a more complicated nature to make. 

But time is free if you're having fun. 

The hexagon may be a little more stable than the square, and there's something aesthetically pleasing about the hexagonal shape. 

You can see how each part was constructed below. One of the major revelations for me was the power of power tools. I started off with a hand saw, and a hammer and nails. The carpenter let me borrow his power saw at one point, which he set to cut fixed lengths with ends at 60 degrees. This was quicker and easier. In view of the strange angle at the ends, the nails were not working so well, and on the carpenter's advice I started using screws. I also used my electric drill with a screwdriver bit. I've never done any serious amounts of woodwork, and only ever used a regular screwdriver, but the difference in speed was amazing.  

The place looks like a building site!

Building a house is something that everyone thinks they can do. And in fact everyone can do, if they can get their hands on enough materials, time and money. Shelter has been part of the human thing for tens of thousands of years. It may be that part of the problem is the fact that anybody can do it, which means that standards are not so high.

People have the idea of our distant ancestors having lived in caves, but most of them probably never did. We just think of them as cavemen because a lot of their bones and artifacts were found in caves. They ended up there and were preserved, while the ones in the forest or on the plains were not. Ancient cave paintings survive because the sunlight has not dimmed them. That doesn't mean people didn't paint on animal skins or bits of wood, or on the walls outside caves.

They have been making structures to keep the rain or sun off for at least half a million years. The oldest yet discovered was in Japan. Older, in fact than modern humans.

Although stone buildings have been popular in the UK since Tudor times, when they started using all the trees to make ships for the navy, most people for most of the human condition have made shelters of wood and mud. These structures, although we should call them permanent, have probably been somewhere in the process of being constructed or falling to pieces throughout most of their lives. We are very aware of the consumerist age and the abundance of stuff, but I'm sure dwellings have always been partially filled with things that need throwing away or that people shouldn't have acquired in the first place. Although I suspect there have always been a few people who live in permanent tidiness, I think they are, and have always been a minority. Our idea of normality is somewhat fictitious. The snapshots that make up our picture of the world are only taken when we feel it's worth getting the camera out.

There are different extents to which structures are windproof, waterproof, winterproof and summerproof. Windproofing and waterproofing seem the most basic, although our old house fairly rattles around when the wind is blowing outside, and for a while rain was pouring in through the kitchen wall. In terms of summerproof, this old house is better than many modern Japanese houses, with extended eaves and opening windows towards the prevailing wind. 

For a long time winterproofing has meant the ability to build a fire inside, and airtightness has been a decidedly bad idea. I think zero-carbon buildings in temperate climates have a very short history as window technology is critical. 

This really is the beginning of a new age. 

And now, in colour

We're going through the magical experience of seeing the plans really turning into a house. The black and white two-dimensional drawings had appeared in three dimensions, and now the drab colours of raw wood and plasterboard are being transformed by paint and wallpaper.

The choices have been involved and traumatic, but the results so far look great. We have now chosen every wall and every door, except the ones for the cupboards in the bedroom. We need to give a final answer on those tomorrow. 

Most of the walls are going to use a material called "Chaff Wall" which is made from scallop shells. Another option was a product from Europe called "Clay Paint". Both are Eco products which contain natural products, allow the wall to breathe, and absorb rather than emit harmful and unpleasant odours. Chaff wall also absorbs and releases moisture, helping to stabilise humidity within the house, and apparently works as an insulator, although this may be negligible compared to the 230 millimetres of insulation beyond it. 

The most important considerations are probably to allow any formaldehyde in the wood or other materials to escape, and to let moisture pass in or out of the wall, so that we don't get any condensation build up anywhere. 

Of course colour and texture are also important, and at first I was keen to get off-white, although none of the off-whites looked very nice, so we just went for White. Chaff wall looked nicer than Clay paint, and being a local product, it is used more widely so the painters will handle it. If we'd chosen Clay paint, the builders would have had to buy the paint, then get painters to use it, and they'd be lumbered with any left over.

Another choice we had to make was whether the paint should be applied by roller or spray gun. At first we were told that spray guns use about 50,000 yen more paint, so will cost us more. We began trying to choose from tiny samples, on which the spray finish looked much better than the rougher roller finish.  Once we ordered a colour, the painters made bigger samples for us, around 50 cm square, and the roller-finished one looked really good. We then spoke to the painter, who was also impressed by how good the samples looked and how difficult it would be to make the wall look like that as the roller needs to leave the wall at some point, where there will be some kind of a line. Small bits of wall would probably be no problem, although the ceiling, 10 metres across, may be more of a challenge, and he seemed to much prefer the idea of a spray gun. He was encouraged to tell his boss this, so that we won't have to pay too much extra for the paint, in view of the fact that we're making the job easier.

So when it comes to cupboards in the bedroom, which cover the bottom part of the west wall and the north wall, beyond which is the closet, I'm inclined to go for something dark, as there will be several metres of white wall above them, and on the whole of the east side of the room. We'll have to wait for tomorrow to see what the decision is.

A door that opens

Here's another little tale in the saga of the imported windows.

Actually it's a door, but I think as far as the construction goes it's a window, and anyway we got all our external doors and windows from the same place. This is the entrance to the upstairs room and we were hoping, actually expecting, that it would be able to open to about 90 degrees. 

Once again, it's difficult for me to decide whose fault it was, so I hold everyone responsible.

In terms of construction, the door has a strip of wood sticking out around 5 centimetres on the outside across the bottom. This seems like a great idea for keeping rain off the bottom of the door. Unfortunately, when the door opens, the strip of wood is in line with the edge of the door frame. This looks fine at first, but normally, the outer finish of the wall overlaps the door frame, to stop weather getting in through the edge. 

It looked fine at first, opening to 90 degrees, but when the wooden finish went around the edge of the door frame, the door stopped opening beyond around 60 degrees. Not ideal. 

I was most annoyed with the architect, who has been scornful of these windows since we suggested using something from outside Japan, and has been trying hard to find fault with them, and rubbing his hands with glee every time something has gone wrong. The windows arrived a year ago, and were installed into the house four months ago, and he only noticed this problem last week, when the carpenter pointed it out.

It would have been possible to change the wall construction and finish, for example putting the indent diagonally, but clearly the window was not suitable for normal construction, in which the wall finish overlaps the window frame to cover the gap.

The solution was to cut the corner off the wooden strip, so it now opens pretty close to 90 degrees. The wooden strip is not structural (I hope!) so this should not be be a problem. It may even be painted to match the rest of the door, or get a rubber stopper on as that is what hits the frame now when the door opens