West Kent Construction

Apart from being a Motorcycle fanatic who lives on a boat, Jerry, our QS is a constant source of fascinating (!) construction related information. Here are a couple of his latest gems.

 

A typical new 2 storey 3 bedroom house with a footprint of 88sqm, built traditionally of brick and block with concrete foundations and slab will use between 300,000 & 400,000 liters of water in its construction - enough to fill about 3.5 London buses.

 

In the early 1600s a popular building technique was that of 'mud and stud'. Archaeologists have traced this method back to the east coast of England around Lincolnshire.

Mud and Stud is the forerunner to modern timber framing studwork - in the 21st century we have replaced the mud that was once packed between the studs and noggins with modern foam insulation boards.

Interestingly the U-value for 'mud' (clay lumps) is around 1.49 W/m2K which is about 7 times less efficient than our modern 'mud' such as a 100mm sheet of Celotex at 0.22 W/m2K.

We may think that modern technology beats old techniques hands down but if a site has the space for this method of construction, straw bales can provide a thermal resistance as high as 0.20 W/m2K or better depending on the finish layers used!