Kevin McCloud s trade secrets
Mimi, a mother of two, took sedums and flowers from their plot of land near Headcorn in Kent and planted all four and half thousand specimens by hand. The living roof will change colour through the year, from red to green and, when in flower, will be purple.
She is using tpatagonia jacket better sweaterhe roof to root the building , observes McCloud. He nods, appreciatively: I m quite staggered by this.
It is the first day of filming a new project for his series Grand Designs. There are no cranes lowering steel joists into place and no builders shaking their heads in dismay. There is no house: just a plot, the plans, and some little plpatagonia store sale venturaants in a polytunnel.
Today is about meeting the d Costas for the first time, understanding the couple s vision and imagining the potential of the house they are going to build. There is a gentle buzz of anticipation.
I wouldn t do this job if I didn t get excited, says Kevin. When Grand Designs was first broadcast on Channel 4 in 1999, it quickly became television gold. The producers were soon receiving 10 applications a day from eager self builders who wanted to appear (although many were a waste of time , a production assistant tells me: extending the kitchen does not a Grand Design make).
To date, McCloud and the team patagonia better sweater women's mediumhave followed the fortunes of 97 ambitious projects: from a seashelpatagonia black hole messenger reviewl shaped house in Devon, to a former violin factory in London; from Gothic to sugar cube Modernist, earth sheltered to sliding glass roofed houses. The eighth series pulled in up to 5.4 million viewers.
The draw? I have heard it described as porn for the middle classes , but Kevin McCloud disputes this. It s not just middle class!
He recalls an encounter on a rough Sheffield estate when a gang approached him and his camera crew. Grand Designs, eh? grunted one burly fellow. I love that programme!
Architectural porn, however, he can understand. Building your own home is about desire, fantasy. But it s achievable, anyone can do it.
Last year 35,000 self build houses went up in the UK, according to the Self Build Alliance. It remains a niche market in this country, unlike Germany where it is the norm. Yet the popularity of self build is growing all the time.
Good plots, bungalows to bulldoze and barns to convert are hotly fought over, and many frustrated builpatagonia hats for big headsders look to France or even Bulgaria to fulfil their dream. Where once a cheap timberframed kit used to suffice, Grand Designs has given Britain a taste for the airy, open plan, wood and glass German or Scandinavian models.
The individual stories which make up each episode of Grand Designs have made the self build bug rather infectious. Even the production crew are not immune. Inspired by Ben Law s house in the woods from 2003 (also McCloud s favourite), today s director Clare Fisher is building a holiday cottage on the Isle of Skye.
Madeleine, a production assistant, plans to buy a wreck in the southwest of France and do it up. You ll be doing it too, Clare tells me. I fpatagonia hats for big heads0ear she may bepatagonia hats for big heads3 right if I hang around on set much longer. But back to the d Costas, whose story will appear on screen next year. In the three years they have spent planning their project, Mimi has become a mine of selfbuild knowledge and she is the project manager.
Most women on Grand Designs are, says Kevin.
Entirely self taught, Mimi has an astonishing grasp of 21st century building techniques, planning regulations and eco innovations such as ground source heat pumps. She can rattle off the thermal value of the high specification Belgian glazing they have chosen (the first of its kind to be used in a UK home).
This is the Grand Designs effect: turning a couple in a bungalow into pioneers of self build. Without giving away too many secrpatagonia hats for big heads1ets of their design, they plan to demolish their existing bungalow and build a modern, family house using prefabricated modules made in Germany. The structure will be clad in wood with large expanses of glass, which will blend into the surrounding meadow that is edged with oak trees.
Every house we ever lived in never suited us, explains Andre, a health service worker, we wanted to do something different, innovative.
So why was their project picked out to feature on the show? I always ask who the architect is, says Kevin. When he discovered the d Costas were employing Nick Eldridge of Eldridge Smerin, a Stirling prize shortlisted firm, he was sold.
Kevin pores over the blueprints and is duly convinced by the plan s relative simplicity. But in true McCloud fashion he throws in a cliffhanger: I m just wondering what could possibly go wrong?
After nearly 100 shows, the 48 year old presenter knows what he s talking about. Budgets always go over (his tip is to calculate cost per square metre) and build times rarely come in on schedule. The d Costas construction timetable is a breakneck 16 weeks.
It s going to take longer, says Kevin. I ll tell you now, it might go to 20. In his experience, pressured highspeed builds always slow down: You are bringing a lot of trade onto the site at the same time and that can drift.
Next month Kevin will be able to put his money where his mouth is when he builds a house in just six days. Under the scrutiny of the public and the Channel 4 cameras, The House that Kevin Built will go up outside the Grand Designs Live exhibition at London s ExCel centre.
For this one off house McCloud is teaming up with RIBA award winning architect Duncan Baker Brown patagonia everlong review 1999and guest presenters such as Naomi Cleaver and Phil Spencer. Expect a stylish yet sustainable little number, showcasing his favourite materials and techniques, such apatagonia fleece vest cheaps rammed earth walls, sheep s wool insulation and timber cladding.
I m going to have to cock it up, aren t I? he laughs, when I ask: But Kevin, what could possibly go wrong?
Later this year, McCloud is doing it for real. For thpatagonia guide jacket galaxye first time he is turning his hand to building 150 200 houses on two sustainable community sites in Swindon, Wiltshire. His company, HAB Housing (which stands for Happiness, Architecture, Beauty), interviewed 50 architectural practispatagonia guide jacket varsityes before choosing three.
Television cameras will fpatagonia guide jacket zarailm the whole build process for a programme about urban regeneration. The houses are to be designed to provide for change , says Kevin. For instance, he says, why not build new houses with potential for loft extensions already in place?
Planners of future eco towpatagonia hats for big heads2ns would be wise to take notes: the Swindon schemes will also adopt car sharing and foodsharing practices. Indeed, sharing is a favourite subject of Kevin s: he is devoting a chapter to it in his book on sustainability.
As one would expect, he lives a carbon neutral existence in Somerset. He has just forked out a lot of money for a biomass boiler, but with rising fuel costs, reckons it should pay or itself in 10 years.
Although he has converted his old Land Rover to run on vegetable oil and a Saab to run on bio ethanol ( the whole of Sweden is going bio ethanol by 2020, he says), his preferred method of transport is the train.
