In this section:
Hierarchy of materials
Materials re-used from the house
Salvage materials
Salvaged materials in the Yellow House
The salvage kitchen
Vented cool cabinet
Sink
Timber
Timber in the Yellow House
Paints and finishes
Flooring
Lighting

Applying the Principles of Ecodesign we developed the following hierarchy for materials. Within the constraints of our budget and the needs of the project we tried to select materials from as high on this list as possible.

BEST	Re-use waste materials from the building project
^	Salvage material from friends and local skips
^	Salvage materials delivered from local salvage yards
^	Eco-materials from reputable environmental suppliers
^	Certified materials from general suppliers
^	Low energy low impact materials from general suppliers
^	High energy materials that can be easily recycled
WORST	Generic cheap materials with high energy and high environmental impacts from standard suppliers

MATERIALS: MATERIALS RE-USED FROM THE HOUSE
Demolition materials can be readily stacked on site and reused as necessary. Even if you have no personal use for them, it is worth trying to find someone else who can use take them. Salvage yards may accept them in part exchange for new salvage.

The walls we demolished were mostly of cinder block construction and not good enough to re-use. Timber from the demolition and laminated chipboard from the old kitchen cupboards were stacked in the back garden and used for patching up holes and shelving. Whatever was left was sawn up and used for firewood in the sold fuel burner. We kept all offcuts of insulation for re-insulating the fridge and freezer.

The doors of a built in closet in the front bedroom were moved to front a new closet in the back bedroom. The offcuts from the loft doors on the mezzanine were used to panel the bath. The old copper hot water tank was reused for the grey water holding tank. Radiators were either reused or sent to the scrap yard along with the old boiler, waste copper piping and scrap lead from the roof.

MATERIALS: SALVAGE MATERIALS
The best environmental option would have been to use nothing but salvaged materials. The problem is that salvage materials are variable in quality and size, threatening the structural integrity of the building and posing potential problems with building control. Although they are often far cheaper (or free if scavenged) potential savings can quickly be offset by greatly increased labour costs in making them useable. Clearly there is a trade off between the use of salvage, the structural needs and energy efficiency of a building, and cost.

If your budget is low and you have access to transport and building waste, there is no reason why salvage could not meet most material needs.

Load bearing construction materials are the hardest to find from salvaged sources. Concrete blocks are so cheap that no one bothers to save or reuse them, and they are usually destroyed in demolition. The only realistic option for reusing concrete blocks is to remove them personally from a nearby demolition. However, the insulation performance of standard concrete blocks is so low, that it is often best to buy new solar blocks. Steel beams have a very high level of embodied energy and so there is a strong environmental argument for trying to find a suitable steel joist from a scrap yard. Unfortunately they are usually made to measure and are hard to find as scrap.

Bricks are easier to reuse and easier to find in salvage yards. In our case we only used one run of salvaged bricks under the rear windows, but could have sourced a full wall if necessary.

Timber, roofing and flooring are by far the easiest materials to find as salvage. Most salvage yards have plentiful supplies.

MATERIALS: SALVAGED MATERIALS IN THE YELLOW HOUSE
In Oxford the council does not allow people to scavenge on the municipal tip, and we had no transport for materials. Our option for salvaged materials was therefore limited to arranging deliveries from established salvage yards, the occasional find in nearby skips, and reusing materials from the house itself.

The first step was to make contact with all local salvage yards. We called up all local salvage yards listed in Yellow Pages under Architectural Antiques, Salvage and Reclamation, and Builders Merchants. We also contacted Salvo, a national association of salvage specialists who provided a list of local yards.

We visited five local yards and listed their supplies and prices before deciding on suppliers. It was worth visiting several as it soon became clear that each yard specialised in different products targeted at different markets- thus one yard might be very strong on flooring, another on timber, and another on fittings.

One huge piece of toughened tinted glass from an old patio door was used for the sun porch roof. All three sinks and one toilet were from local salvage yards- the sink in the bathroom was originally from a local mental hospital. Most light fitting were also from salvage or junk shops, and all the kitchen cabinets were bought from local junk shops.

MATERIALS: THE SALVAGE KITCHEN
The kitchen is the best room on the house to realise huge savings from using salvaged furniture. Furniture made before 1960 is also far far better made than laminated particle board kitchens. They look OK in the showroom, but they age rapidly and the hinges invariable weaken and fall off. They are also extremely expensive.

Our solid oak fitted kitchen was built within a total budget of £1,000. It would have been even less if we had used DIY joinery - but this is an area where it’s worth paying a pro. Over a period of three months we accumulated pale oak cabinets from local junk stores. For £110 we bought two chests of drawers, a desk, a kitchen sideboard, and a double doored cupboard. The pieces were chosen to have similar styling (they all date from the late 1940s and early 1950s) similar proportions, good hinges and joints and a high quality of workmanship.

Re-using non matching furniture runs the risk of turning into a complete dogs dinner rather than a unified design. The way to avoid this is to follow four rules:

1. select furniture of similar wood, colour and design- (go for simplicity). Small differences in colour can be overcome by stripping all the furniture back to the original wood (a good idea anyway) and restaining with a unifying colour.

2. try to reproduce the stepped profile of normal kitchen counters. The countertop, usually 90cm deep should project 5cm beyond the cabinets below. The cabinets in turn should project a further 5cm beyond a kick strip along the bottom.

3. unify the design with a new counter top. We splashed out on two lengths of solid beech worktop from Ikea: the cheapest (and environmentally most acceptable) source.

4. take detailed measurements and draw up careful plans. George actually built a scale model kitchen out of cardboard and tried out different permutations of the cabinets.

MATERIALS: VENTED COOL CABINET
We wanted a cooler space, such as a pantry for storing bottled foods and ingredients, but only had limited space. The cupboard under the stairs in the living room had already been converted into cool vented storage for wine, preserves and a root store for vegetables. In the kitchen we continued with the pantry theme with a vented cool cabinet. Any cabinet against an external wall can be turned into a cool cabinet by knocking an adjustable vent through the back to the outside air. Like any kitchen vent, this must fitted with a fine grill to keep out insects. The door of a cool cabinet should be tight fitting or fitted with a draught strip, or it could become a major source of heat loss. The wall must be on a cool or sheltered side of the house Ð a sun exposed south facing wall would not do and would make the cabinet baking hot in summer.

We love the style of old shop displays and, after much hunting, found a huge tripled doored glass fronted display cabinet from a local junk yard for £30. We hung it on the only external wall in the kitchen- it sides the corridor between the houses and is cool all year round. We knocked a hole through the wall at the back covered by a standard adjustable vent cover. During winter this is scarcely open- during summer we open it wide.

MATERIALS: SINK
We were looking for Belfast sinks at local salvage yards, which can still be found for £40 or so, but finally settled for a slightly chipped French double porcelain sink from a local salvage yard. Bill mounted this on a frame of 2" x 4" pine and fitted doors underneath from one of the old cabinets. The only new items in the kitchen were the worktops and a set of good taps for the sink. For less than £1000 we had built a large solid oak and mahogany kitchen. Hoorah for salvage!

MATERIALS: TIMBER
In environmental terms, the best timber is undoubtedly salvage, followed by timber from a local well managed forest. Beyond this, the best source is temperate timber (such as pine, oak, beech, cherry) certified as coming from a well managed source by the Forest Stewardship Council. Timber carrying the FSC logo is carried by most large timber yards and DIY chains, in particular B&Q. Although there is intense debate among ecologists about whether FSC standards are good enough, they are undoubtedly leagues better than exist in most large scale timber operations. New tropical timber (such as Mahogany, Meranti, Ramin, South East Asian Plywood, Teak) has an unacceptably high environmental and social impact and should be avoided- even if it is FSC certified. The only exception to this is rubber wood which is an agricultural by-product that used to be burnt.

Be especially wary of plywood. All plywood is problematic, and it is still not possible to buy FSC plywood. Most plywood is from Malaysia and Indonesia and is distinguished by a reddish colour and flecky or rippled grain. Logging is the leading cause of destruction of ancient rainforests in these countries and these timbers should always be avoided. If you cannot use salvaged plywood, use temperate plywood, which has clearly striped grain.

The only exception to this is rubber wood which is an agricultural by-product that used to be burnt. The bed is made from rubber wood frame and the futon is organic cotton. Unlike normal matresses, futons are fully biodegradable- the old futon has mulched down nicely in the front garden flowerbeds.

MATERIALS: TIMBER IN THE YELLOW HOUSE
Most of the timber used in the renovation was salvaged. The mezzanine floor was Victorian sarking boarding (originally laid across the rafters behind a tiled roof). This salvaged sarking boarding was used for its original purpose on the extension roof. The stairs to the mezzanine were made from re-sawn oak salvaged from French barns, which we felt inspired to use as soon as we laid eyes on it. The bathroom and utility room doors were also salvage, and all the doors in the house were stripped and rehung.

The doors on the mezzanine leading into the loft space were FSC certified. They were standard sized doors cut down to fit. The offcuts were used to panel the bath. It was hard to find FSC certified timber for the doors to the garden and the new windows, so we settled for UK plantation pine.

For reasons of safety we needed to buy new materials for major load bearing beams. Where possible we used timber. For the new load bearing beam in the bedroom we ordered Glu-lam, a composite timber made from plantation offcuts. Although it is not certified, the environmental impact is far lower than for steel (and it is cheaper too). We found it so attractive that we stained it and made it into a feature.

For reasons of space and speed we used steel beams in the kitchen and for further reinforcement in the attic. It was an unfortunate compromise, but with building control breathing down our necks demanding needless additional reinforcement we could not afford further delays.

At the back of the mezzanine we needed three low access doors for the remaining loft space. We tried to find suitably sized salvage doors, but in the end found it easier to buy cheap standard size pine doors from a local timber yard. They were FSC accredited. We cut them down to size and used the offcuts to panel the bath.

MATERIALS: PAINTS AND FINISHINGS
There are numerous environmental and health benefits for using the specialist environmental paints. For us, one of the strongest arguments for environmental paints was that they don’t seal the wall like normal paints, but allow moisture to pass through so the plaster can breathe. We decided that the house would have a simple modern white colour scheme. None of the white ecopaints contain Titanium Oxide which makes glaring white paints, so all are pleasantly muted. We used Aquamarijn Maril eco-paint (which smelled good enough to eat) bought from Construction Resources.

Eco-paints donÕt offer much range of colours and we used conventional emulsion paint for a few brightly coloured walls.

MATERIALS: FLOORING
Wall-to-wall carpets are a major health problem in the home. They emit chemicals for years from the fibres and formaldehyde glues. They are also the main habitat for dustmites. Dust mite allergy is extremely common (George has it) and directly associated with the rapid increase in asthma among children. Only baby Elsa's room has carpet. Elsewhere in the house the floors are the bare boards which were sanded and then sealed with water soluble low odour polyurothane seal on the floors. It is a standard non-eco product, available from any paint or DIY store, but has the benefit of being extremely hard wearing. We also have rugs which can be removed to wash or beat.

In the kitchen and extension we found that the best products for cost, environmental impact, and ease of purchase were those old favourites- lino and cork. Lino is made from two agricultural products jute and linseed oil. In the end we opted for cork because it was cheaper and because there is an urgent need to support the market for cork. Ecologically important Mediterranean cork forests are threatened with clearance because of the rapid increase in the use of plastic stoppers for wine bottles. Two added bonuses- as a material cork performs as well as any standard industrial insulation of the same thickness, and it is a far softer surface for falling glass, crockery, babies etc.. It is worth shopping around as there is a very wide divergence in thickness, appearance and quality between different brands of cork tile.

MATERIALS: LIGHTING
The first strategy was to try to use natural light as much as possible. We placed two large Velux skylights were fitted in the mezzanine and two medium sized Velux skylights in the upper roof of the extension. The light shaft below them was flared to encourage light down into the kitchen. We placed two glass tiles in the roof behind the mezzanine to allow some light into the storage space.

We placed glass blocks in the walls of the new internal rooms: one row along the wall of the bathroom facing the bright front bedroom and two rows in the wall of the downstairs toilet facing the skylit extension. In addition a toughened glass skylight was installed at the back of the bathroom to bring light down from the mezzanine. The skylight was tucked under the old chimney breast and angled to prevent anyone from standing on it. During the night the skylight and glass bricks "borrowed" electric light from the adjoining rooms. Much of the time it was not necessary to turn on the bathroom or toilet lights at all.

The second strategy was to install low energy light fixtures throughout. All pendant lights were fitted with standard low energy bulbs. We spent a lot of time trying to find spotlight fittings which would accept low energy bulbs. There are many commercial fittings for recessed lighting that accept low energy bulbs but they require a depth of 20cm or more, far more than the 10cm depth of most domestic ceilings. Erco manufacture attractive commercial track spotlighting that uses standard low energy bulbs under the brand name Domotec. However, at nearly £90 per spot it was far too expensive.

In the end we found it was cheaper to go for standard spots and pay more for specialist bulbs. General Electric manufacture a low energy Genura bulb to the same size as the standard large mirror backed R80 bulb but using 80% less electricity. At £20 each the bulbs are more expensive than other low energy bulbs, but perform well and pay for themselves in electricity savings. Unfortunately, there is an ethical compromise in buying from General Electric, a major arms manufacturer and owner of US media. There is a cheaper but poorer quality make, Omicron, who also manufacture similar bulbs that replace the less bright R64 spot bulbs.

By using a standard sized bulb we could economise on the light fittings- we bought Ilumina track lighting at trade price from a local wholesaler. Light fittings can be inordinately expensive but canny shopping produced more bargains. We recessed two water resistant bulkhead lights from Wykes at £3.50 behind the skylight to light the bath. All other light fittings were second hand including two large acorn fittings that had been removed from a 1960s John Lewis for £10 each at a salvage yard.