Touchwood homes is a family run company who have been in the construction industry for three generations, building all types of homes. Since the 1990s we realised the construction industry, like all aspects of industry will have to undergo major changes to conserve energy and reduce carbon emissions.

We have our central office in Hertfordshire where our design team work on your bespoke home, and our Passivhaus expert works to ensure the design achieves the requirements of the German low energy design specification. Our houses being pre-cut are quick to install, with a timber frame typically being possible to install within 2-3 weeks. We only build in timber frame, wood being a sustainable building material, and through the use of I beams allows 300mm+ thick walls which we pump solid with insulation. A brick and block building cannot achieve insulation like this, bricks being such poor insulators.

We are passionate about doing all we can to reduce emissions from our sector, the urgency of which was brought home when one of the team studied for an MSc in Climate Change – there is no time to carry on building normal high energy demanding houses, we can now build houses so efficient a heating system is not required, so that is what we must do.

An eco-house is...

• A home that is super insulated.
• A home built with an internal and external air tight layer to minimise
  heat loss through drafts.
• Designed to have minimal cold bridging to ensure very little heat is
  conducted through the structure to outside.
• A home designed to allow solar gain from the south facing aspect to
  heat the house on winter days.
• The above principles ensure very little heating demand is required in
  the house. This small demand should be met by biomass– either logs,
  wood chips or pellets.
• A home that utilises micro-generation where appropriate.
• A home where lighting and appliances are all low energy.

Our homes are all bespoke to suite the client’s design concept, but maintain the underlying theme of low energy design. This means we always think about orientation to maximise the solar gain potential, and pitch the roof such that solar panels and PVs would work well.

To achieve minimal heating demands it is essential to use high specification windows and doors. The windows on our houses meet the German Passivhaus standard so have excellent U values, which minimise heat loss. Using this type of window on the south facing aspect is the best way to optimise the warming from the sun in the winter so minimising the heating requirements of the house.
For the summer months, shading from the sun is required, which can be simply achieved by using a correctly sized roof overhang - the eaves will provide shelter from the high summer sun, as this diagram above demonstrates.

We base our construction on ‘I’ beams for all the main house structural elements, with larger Glulam posts and beams providing extra support where required. A Glulam, also known as glue laminated timber is an engineered product using structurally graded timber laminations. These may be in Redwood, Larch, Douglas Fir or more usually Scandinavian Whitewood.

Each lamination is end-jointed to allow production of beams to any length and size – subject to your structural loadings. Glulam beams create an excellent visual feature in any building – we often have exposed Glulam posts in our builds to create a great feature that shows off the structure of the house.