Adventures in France

I occasionally need to travel for business purposes, almost always outside of the UK. The usual means of travel is by plane. It’s quick, relatively convenient and usually the cheapest way to travel.

I don’t mind the travel as such but I am ever conscious of the carbon costs of flying and only do so when really necessary. When I do travel, I try to select the most direct routes to minimise the air miles. None of this stops me feeling a little guilty about the travel.

Last week I was in France at my company’s main development site and flew to Lyon airport. All was going well until I arrived at Lyon to fly back home and then I realised that traveling on Friday 13th was not such a good idea.

The fundamental problem was that my passport was not in my bag. I emptied my bags twice searching for it, phoned the hotel, went back and checked the hire car, phoned the office to ask the security guard to check the meeting rooms and checked lost property at the airport. No sign of my passport, or the leather wallet it usually resides in.

The airlines won’t let you board a flight into the UK without a passport under any circumstances, so I had to find another route.

It was “suggested” that there was a vague chance I could get on the Eurostar at Paris without a passport. Apparently they have consular staff at the terminal and sometimes they can help find a way to get home.

My only other option was to visit one of the British consulate offices in Marseille or Paris to get temporary paperwork, neither of which would be open until Monday morning. While Marseille may have been a nice place to spend the weekend I opted for Paris which allowed the possibility of either option.

Lyon Saint-Exupery airport has an associated train station which serves the TGV line to Paris, and for only €69 for around 300 miles it is great value. The train has two levels of seating, a bit like a double decker bus, is fast (up to 186mph and covering the distance in just 2 hours), comfortable and very popular with only a handful of empty seats.

For the bulk of the journey you’d be forgiven for thinking that France was almost entirely farms and woodland with just a few small villages. While this isn’t quite the case, it is much less densely populated than the UK and the route avoids passing through other cities. In fact it’s only once you get to the outskirts of Paris that you start to see any signs of a large city.

On arriving in Paris, a quick journey on the RER D got me across to Gare de Nord where Eurostar are based. At the ticket office they sent me to see a representative near check in, who would check if UK immigration would let me through or not. In fact that’s where we get to the fundamental difference between Eurostar and any other form of transport to the UK mainland.

Airlines that carry someone to the UK without proper documentation have to pay to fly them back to their point of origin and, I believe, are fined. This makes them very reluctant to carry someone without a passport.

However, for some reason that I can’t be bothered to research, the UK border control is in Paris, just 10 feet from the French border control. Which means that if UK immigration don’t let you through then it is a 10 foot walk and they’ve already got your money for the ticket, so they have little to lose.

At UK immigration I was taken to one side and asked to fill out a lost passport form while a supervisor went to check their database to see if I was who I say I am. Duly satisfied, they ushered me through and it was on to security control.

Bags had to be screened and I had to walk through a metal detector but it was not as strict as at an airport. No need to remove liquids, food, laptops or shoes and was quite quick as a result.

A quick jog to the train and I found the correct carriage/seat on the second attempt. When I booked, only business class was available, so it was a decent wide seat and I shared a 4-seat bay and table with a lady and her two young boys – both similar age to our children. They were tired but generally very well behaved.

Apart from business class, and the provision of a reasonable quality hot meal, the train was a little better than a normal UK intercity. While It was nowhere near as good as the TGV though, it did the job and a few hours later and I was in St Pancras station, where the Piccadilly line slowly took me to Heathrow to be able to pick up my car. Two hours later I was home in time to kiss the kids goodnight.

Overall, the journey was a couple of hours longer than an equivalent journey by plane taking into account all the security and check in times, with more changes and carrying of luggage. It felt much more relaxing though and I suspect the carbon footprint was much lower, with most of the power coming from nuclear. I can only wonder how much more use would be made of our railways if they were at the higher quality and lower price of the TGV.

Of course, the UK is generally much more densely populated than France and the idea of a non-stop 300 mile journey is unthinkable. As a result any fast railway system would either have limited value or would never get up to speed before having to slow down again for the next stop.

So it probably wouldn’t work here, but it was a great adventure. I’ll try not to repeat it though.

ECOBuild: PassivHaus Doors

PassivHaus sets high standards for the performance of windows and there are a number of suppliers that can supply products that are either certified or whose performance is good enough for PassivHaus.

Strangely this has not been the case for doors. PassivHaus doors are notoriously expensive, often several thousands of pounds (including frames and threshold), but not for any obviously good reason. You can get a PassivHaus standard window, configured as a door, from the same manufacturers for a fraction of the price (we plan to use one for our utility). I completely fail to understand why doors are so much more expensive.

It was good to see a couple of suppliers at ECOBuild addressing this market and claiming more reasonably priced products.

One company, Russell Timber Technologies, already has a good reputation for value with their range of aluminium clad timber windows, but were displaying a couple of doors with PassivHaus levels of performance. These supposedly achieve thermal performance down to 0.8W/m2.K but there is almost no information on their website or documents to provide any details. They were used in the BRE PassivHaus, so must be reasonable. Both doors on display were finished externally in timber cladding, used a thermally broken threshold and seemed to be of a good quality, although they were a little cagey over the price. Given their pricing on quality 3G windows I expect the price to be reasonable. Liz liked the look of one of the doors (from a photo I took) so I need to follow up to get the pricing and detailed performance specifications.

Another company, Solidoor, have also seen the money to be made from PassivHaus doors and have launched a specific brand, Passivdoor, targeting the market. These combine insulated composite door slabs with a thermally broken frame and achieve the target 0.8W/m2.K that is required for PassivHaus. The composite slabs are aluminium clad, but appear to have a thermoplastic frame. The plastic is a bit of a let down, but it will only be visible when the door is open, which won’t be so much of the time. Again, they were reluctant to talk about a price at the show, simply claiming that they will be better priced than a mainstream European PassivHaus door.

While it’s not clear that we will find a design from either company that we both like (whatever one likes, the other doesn’t regardless of manufacturer) it is good to see some competition in this market. This can only serve to drive down the costs and increase choice.

ECOBuild: Solarator Mobile Solar Generator

Solar electric was everywhere at ECOBuild. Panels, inverters, frames and mounting hardware all featured strongly. There were also solar car shelters and even a solar greenhouse.

Solarator Mobile Generator

However, the most interesting solar product was the Solarator Mobile Solar Generator. This consists of a small trailer containing an inverter and some batteries and a lid that opens up to reveal two large solar panels. The trailer and panels can obviously be arranged to capture the most energy. It captures and can output up to 600W, which is quite a respectable amount of power.

The point of this unit is not for normal markets, but instead where mobility is key. At the serious end this could be emergency and disaster relief and at the frivolous end it could be for festival goers.

I didn’t ask the price but it’s probably not cheap. It is a convenient pre-packaged solution that should just work out of the box. I couldn’t recall the company name and couldn’t find them on the web at all but I wish them the best of luck.

ECOBuild: SolarLux folding sliding door

Our design incorporates a large open plan living/dining/kitchen area on the ground floor. This has three sets of folding-sliding doors opening into both front and rear gardens.

So far, the best solution for these doors has been a SunFold Folding Sliding Doors which, while not PassivHaus, does accommodate reasonably good quality 3G glazing (up to 36mm panel) and aluclad timber frames (although not insulated).

When I last researched the options, the SunFolds were the best trade-off of performance vs cost. However, a new option has appeared – the SolarLux SL97. This is labelled as a product suitable for PassivHaus although it is not actually certified, but which should perform better than the SunFold.

Thermally the SL97 provides two key advantages. The most obvious difference is that the SL97 supports a much thicker glazing unit, up to 46mm, and reaching a Ug value of 0.5W/m2.K. Given the size and number of these windows in our design this is a significant advantage over the SunFold doors. There look to be a range of spacer options available, including some of the best on the market and I’m waiting for confirmation with the Psi values and relevant costs.

The second advantage is that the frames on each individual pane are insulated on the outside, in a similar manner to PassivHaus windows. This provides a significant boost to the U-value of the frame. The main fixed frame around the total opening is not insulated, but the bulk of this will sit behind the external wall insulation anyway so is not a real issue.

I’ve yet to enter the details into PHPP, but I think it will provide a measurable benefit.

Overall the windows have a nice clean finish and seem to be built to a high quality standard. It provides two continuous airtightness strips around the edges of the doors which should perform well.

There is one element of the door that doesn’t appear to be up to the expected quality level. When the end panel is opened on its own there needs to be a catch to prevent the door swinging about in the wind. The SL97 uses a pair of relatively ugly plastic clips at the top of the opening and adjacent doors. SunFold use a nice magnetic bumper, which looks and feels much better. Apparently it is possible to find an alternate, and more elegant option for this latch.

A further advantage is that we can then source most of our glazing (all except the rooflights) from a single supplier, hopefully with more room for negotiation on price.

Initial costings put these windows around 15% more expensive than the SunFold, but I’m waiting for an updated quote with the 48mm glazing option – I can’t see why it should cost much more.

The other disadvantage is that Liz has seen the SunFold doors and approved them. She hasn’t yet seen the SolarLux windows. However, our glazing supplier will be getting sample windows into their showroom over the coming weeks so we should be able to go along for a viewing.

ECOBuild: Light at the speed of sound

While there were plenty of boring low energy lighting systems on show at ECOBuild, one company’s stand shone brightly – TP24. The number of lights on display was extensive, with fittings in many different shapes and styles – I’m pretty sure there’ll be something to most people’s tastes in their catalogue.

However, I found a stunning light fitting for our young son, although he might be a bit old for it by the time it gets installed. This took the form of a fighter jet, formed from chrome and Perspex, where the “engines” accept cylindrical LED bulbs. The fitting including bulbs comes in at a little under £160 plus VAT, which is reasonable.

These bulbs use 60 LED chips to provide around 300 lumens of light for just 3.5W, providing an impressive efficiency of around 80lm/W. They use the GU10 fitting and seem relatively cheap at around £8 each. They seem so new that they don’t even feature on the company’s website!

They’re not dimmable which is a shame, but some of their fittings support a clever switching to allow individual bulbs to be turned off. I’m not sure if the Wellington is one of them.

ECOBuild: ISO-Chemie ISO-Bloco

One of the big challenges with PassivHaus is the airtightness target. This is very aggressive at 0.6 air changes per hour and needs good design of the airtightness barrier and careful attention to detail during the actual build. Based on what I’ve heard it’s almost as if many builders actively try to get things wrong, so any solution that makes it harder for the builder to get it wrong is valuable.

Even if it is tough to ensure the building is built airtight, it is even tougher to make sure that the measures put in place for airtightness are robust and will stand the test of time. The house is intended to last for many years and if it becomes more leaky over its life then it will increase the heating demand and defeat part of the original objective of building a PassivHaus.

It was interesting to see a product for the airtightness sealing of windows into the structure that is both trivial to install and that should prove resilient to any structural movement over time.

The product, ISO-Bloco, is from a company called ISO-Chemie.

It consists of a resilient foam with one end covered in a thin plastic membrane and a wide adhesive strip on one side. The product comes on a roll where it is compressed and only a few millimetres thick. The adhesive is used to stick the product to a window frame before insertion into an opening with the plastic membrane on the outside edge. The window is then mechanically fixed into the opening, with a small gap on all sides. Over a period of a couple of hours the foam expands to nearly an inch thick and forms a compressive seal against the structure, with the membrane forming the airtight seal. The foam is resilient and will compress and expand to ensure the gap is filled with sufficient pressure if either window or structure moves.

In theory it sounds like a great product and from the demo it certainly seems easy and foolproof to install. However, I have a couple of concerns. The product seems entirely dependent on the integrity of the plastic membrane. While it is easy to apply to the window without damage, I wonder how robust it is when large and heavy windows are being installed with the occasional knock on the structure of the building. Even a small hole can have a significant effect on the air tightness. I also wonder how long the foam will retain its resilience. I’m sure we’ve all seen aged foam that becomes hard and brittle, and this product needs to remain resilient for 40 years or more because once it’s installed there’s no way to check or replace it. That’s a tough ask.

ECOBuild: Redland Extreme WattBike Challenge

I’ve been a long time user of the Concept 2 Ergometer rowing machine, racking up several million metres over the last 10 years (or more), with a memorable run of 500,000m withing a 6-month period for Sport Relief. However, it hasn’t seen much use for several years, mainly since the kids were born and I’ve rarely managed to make the time to use it.

Redland Extreme WattBike Challenge

It was interesting to see a development of the basic concepts of this machine into an exercise bike – the WattBike – and the use of two of these machines as a marketing gimmick on the Monier-Redland stand at ECOBuild. Of course, I had to have a go. When I was at my strongest at cycling, commuting 15 miles a day, I’d have found the relatively short 750m race easy. In reality I started off strong, but had set the resistance too high (I usually have the rowing machine at the maximum setting) and faded fast. I pushed on to the end, but lost my race. It was still a respectable performance – faster than many others, but nowhere near the fastest time. Given my lack of endurance exercise for some time, I’m pretty pleased with the result.

The problem with the Rowing Machine is that I tend to focus mainly on my upper body strength and don’t push so hard on the legs. The WattBike would help counteract this. First I need to get the house done, then make the time to get back on the rowing machine regularly. Perhaps after this I could consider a WattBike, but keeping up with my son on our real bikes is likely to be enough exercise.