Description
If you’re here, you probably know that building homes in a more sustainable and independent way is not just increasingly popular, but also grows more and more vital every year. It’s a growth industry with viable prospects and a widespread culture of positivity.
The skills you will develop here can be applied in a multitude of ways. Maybe you’re looking at building your own house? Maybe a career change? Or maybe just because you’re passionate about the application of heritage methods in a modern context. Maybe you can’t commit to a full-time residential build course and want to dip your toe?
Whatever your motivation, you will gain an industry-leading education to build from. And build upon.
What will I be learning?
This course is a classroom based course with theoretical and practical sessions within it.
Classroom Sessions
Introductions
Introducing the Hartwyn tutors and the Hartwyn build philosophies. We’ll look at some previous Hartwyn projects and introduce the group to identify specific educational needs.
Planning and Building Control
What you need to know about submitting a planning application and the steps involved to obtain building control.
Foundations
What function do we need a foundation to perform and different ways we can achieve this.
Materials
A tour of commonly used natural materials, what their properties are and how we can utilise them in a high performance, healthy, natural home.
Design
How we can design and detail our buildings to maximise the environmental benefits and save money. Looking at elements such as: air tightness, thermal mass, thermal envelope, thermal bridging, indoor air quality and passive solar.
Plaster
What makes up a successful plaster – looking at the individual components of plaster and what effect altering each of them can have.
Tools
Which tools to buy, which to rent and brand advice
Finances
What should a budget look like? what should be included? and how to prioritise your specifications. We also look at the practical financial management of a build.
Builders and subcontractors
Which contractors will you need? How to get the right person for the job and what you need to know to manage them, including a section on contracts and warranties.
Open session
A final session to wrap up all we have covered and a chance to ask any remaining questions.
Practical Sessions
Site Layouts
An introduction to reading and interpreting plans and transferring them to a building site.
Foundations
Get hands on with some foundation types, how to create a budget, car tyre foundation and how to set up and lay a brick or stone foundation.
Framing
We’ll cover the basics of dimensioned timber framing specific to natural building, including framing for straw bale insulation, framing internal walls with natural insulation and how to create shuttering for hempcrete or light straw clay.
Insulation
A chance to learn the nuances of installing some natural insulations. Including how to resize, notch and compress straw bale insulation. You’ll also experience insulating with wool, woodfibre, foamglas and hempcrete.
Plastering
Testing your site soil to see if it’s suitable for plaster and working through the stages involved in plastering with clay, from wall prep up to finish plaster.
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- Clay plaster tests
