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A COUPLE who built an eco-friendly home say they are ahead of the times.
Dan and Jessica Catlin say it is designed to be energy-efficient while offering the healthiest possible living standards.
It is what’s known as a Passive House, or Passivhaus, which is a German concept of building that is designed to use minimal energy.
This method of building homes is becoming increasingly popular in Europe and also in Canada, where large housing developments have been built using the same method.
Mr and Mrs Catlin’s three-storey three/four-bedroom property is fitted with an advanced air filtration system, special insulation and triple-pane windows to make it airtight.
This protects them and their children, Harry, 14, who attends Gillotts School, and Emmie, six, who goes to Peppard primary, from poor air outdoors and allows a constant, comfortable temperature inside.
The couple bought the plot of land in Park Corner, Nettlebed, for £300,000 in March 2020 and they were determined to build a sustainable home there.
Mr Catlin said: “A developer would have tried to build three or four houses but the owner of the land wanted to sell to someone like us. They liked what we were proposing to do. Once we had the land we needed to get planning permission to replace what was there, which was a storage barn, although it was more like a cow shed.”
South Oxfordshire District Council, the planning authority, had wanted the Catlins to utilise the existing barn and so they had to persuade chiefs that the development would be sympathetic to its surroundings.
Mr Catlin said: “It took me four visits to the council to finally get them to agree. The biggest problem they had was the volume of the storage barn. If we had built it to the same specifications, we would have ended up with a two-up, two-down house.
“In the end I was able to convince them that I wanted to improve on it and they agreed as long as it was a brick house and it suited the street scene.
“Once we had confirmation that we could build something from scratch I started researching what we could do. Knowing that we wanted something sustainable I came across the Green Building Store which sold Passive House products and had consultations on how to build one.
“As I read more about it you can see how it compares to more traditional building methods. We have a bigger cavity wall and the insulation in it reduces heat loss and deflects cool air from coming in. The outside doesn’t really touch the inside as the insulation in the floor joins the wall insulation and that joins the roof insulation so it’s like we’re living in a cardboard box. That’s how it’s insulated; we effectively create a blanket that wraps all the way around.
“The whole house has to be as airtight as you can get it and the reason for that is you are then not losing any heat. For example, if you have a shower, you turn on an extractor fan, which takes the steam through a hole in the wall or into the roof and you have to pay to heat the water for the shower, maybe more than once in a day.
“Here, we have a mechanical ventilation system running around the whole house that takes the hot air, purifies it and pumps out filtered fresh air into each room which keeps a regular temperature of about 20C in every room all year round.
“This means there is no chance of getting mould or having condensation on the inside of windows. Clothes also get dried quickly when hung up inside. We have no gas, no oil, we run the house using electricity and we have solar panels to help with the cost. We are a bit ahead of the times.
“In order to be Passive House accredited you need a minimum of six solar panels but we bought two more, as we had the space for them, which gave us an ‘A’ energy status.”
Mr Catlin, who runs his own building firm which celebrates its 10th anniversary next year, did all the work himself, with help from his family.
The first thing he did was to knock down the barn and start the excavations. He had to dig down further than you would for a traditional home to allow for the insulation.
Mr Catlin said: “We had huge scaffolding put up throughout the whole building so we stopped it from getting wet. We built from the inside out so we could get the feel of the rooms as we went along.
“When building the walls up you would run the insulation on the outside of the blocks and then lay the bricks on to that one by one which is tough as you only get one go at it. It took me three months to lay all the bricks.
“The house has pushed me to my limits because of the directions given by Passive House in order to meet the strict guidelines. For example, you could do the bordering around a window in an hour or so on a traditional house but for this one it takes at least twice as long.”
To meet the Passive House guidelines the property must be so airtight as to allow a maximum of 0.6 air changes per hour at 50 Pascals pressure (ACH50) and inspectors come and check once it is built.
Mr Catlin achieved 0.3 air changes per hour which he puts down to various “tweaks” that he made during the building process, which lasted about 18 months.
It has three bedrooms with en-suites in the main house and the master has a bath in the same room as the bed. There is a kitchen/diner and downstairs toilet but the study and living room are not finished yet.
They also plan to build a fourth bedroom for guests above the garage, once the door gets delivered.
The family moved in a week before Christmas last year and cooked a turkey on the barbecue because at the time the kitchen wasn’t ready.
With the house fully complete, they have already been able to notice the benefits.
Mrs Catlin, who works in the family business, said: “There are no cold spots. In a more traditional home you might feel a little chill in front of a window, you can sit anywhere here and feel comfortable. It’s also very quiet where the windows are triple-glazed and they are like fridge doors.”
Mr Catlin added: “We had a friend round for dinner and he said he could see cars out of the window but he couldn’t hear a thing. That’s because of all the insulation. Harry can have his music on upstairs and you wouldn’t be able to hear it downstairs, either so everyone can do their own thing. With no noise and the constant temperature we and the kids have never slept better.”
Mr Catlin has taken a bit of a break over the summer as he wanted to support his son, who rows in the J14 squad for Henley Rowing Club, but aims to get the house finished by Christmas.
He said: “I’ve had a bit of a break over the last two months but before that I was working most evenings and weekends. For the first three months of the build I was here every Saturday and Sunday and after work I would be here from 4pm to 9pm.
“We want to be finished properly for Christmas this year. As soon as the garage door is in I can clear out the living room and study and then work on those rooms.”
Mr and Mrs Catlin say people look blank when they explain the type of house they have built but think the concept will end up taking off in the UK.
Mr Catlin said: “It is expensive to build a house like ours from scratch. It cost about £250,000 but where I did the building work myself, we saved on costs, but you can see where the money has gone in the fabric of the building. The idea is, with the money you are saving on energy, you get to see some of that money back while receiving the health benefits.”
This is not the first property the couple has worked on. After meeting on a night out at the former Sports Bar in Hart Street, Henley, the first house they got together was in Mount View, Henley. They then went about extending their home to meet the needs of their growing family.
Mr Catlin “When we moved in it was a two-up, two-down house and when we finished it had three bedrooms with a new family bathroom. I increased the size by about 45 per cent.”
At the end of 2018 they decided to move on and got a job as caretakers of Rotherfield Greys village hall, which came with its own cottage.
Mr Catlin said: “We were interviewed for the job and were successful. I guess they thought it may be useful to have a builder in the village so when we got the job.”
Mrs Catlin said: “After we sold the house we took our estate agent, Philip Booth, out for breakfast as a thank-you and he told us about the plot of land which we went on to buy. It was too soon for us to think about it but, when we started to get itchy feet, we contacted him again and it was still available. We loved our cottage in Greys but it wasn’t ours, we knew we wouldn’t stay there forever.
“As soon as we pulled on to the drive here in Nettlebed it felt like home, even though we were faced with a cowshed. We just got the feeling and we knew that, since we got the planning permission it would be our forever home.”
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