The French ministry programme PACTE has awarded the project CREBA with a two year subsidy. This will allow us to develop a national resource centre on ‘responsible’ renovation of traditional buildings, built before 1948. The future website will contain the latest publications, guide books, scientific references and reports on sustainable renovation. It will also provide case studies and ‘decision making’ tools for house owners, architects, developers and builders. It will host the French version of the Guidance Wheel developed by the British STBA.

Members of the project consortium are CEREMA in Strasbourg, the School of Architecture in Toulouse, Arts et Metiers in Paris, Maisons Paysannes, and the heritage organisation Sites et Cites remarquables.

The official announcement of the project was made at the European Biennale of Urban Heritage, the 4th of November, during the symposium on Historic Town Centres in Cahors.

We took a bit of a winter break after more than a year of renovation. It’s now only a matter of painting and finishing, to get the front of the house ready. For the interior daub walls we use natural lime wash, with alum salt to stop it flaking and a bit of clay pigment for colouring. For the interior windows and doors we use linseed oil, or eco paints (Aquamarijn and Biopin) and hard oils for the staircases and pine floors. The fitted kitchen is made of solid birch panelling (not on photo yet).

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Kitchen before decorating

Hall way and downstairs toilet

Timber frame in bedroom

Pine staircase to attic

Facade with new white coat and freshly painted windows and shutters (blue)

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As you can see on the photo above, the work on the front of the house has progressed tremendously in the last half year. October last year the local manufacturer Consola replaced all doors and windows with new double glazed ones made from local chestnut. This spring the whole roof and all walls and floors were insulated, mostly with Isocell cellulose (22 cm for the roof, 14 cm for the walls) and perlite and cork for the floors (6 cm). The cellulose insulation comes from a nearby factory in Beziers in l’Herault which uses locally recycled newspapers. As a former environmental journalist it suits me well to have our walls filled with the scraps of the old Languedoc papers Midi-Libre and l’Independant (photo), especially since we were able to inject them behind intelligent and breathable membranes.

Recycled newspapers waiting to be turned into cellulose insulation at Isocell factory in Beziers

The whole building envelope is now very well insulated and made airtight with Intello Plus vapour barriers of Pro Clima, who sell you a whole kit with different tapes, glues and a hefty instruction manual. Not to our surprise it was a lot of preparation to make the ‘compartments’ and put up the membranes before having the cellulose blown in. One wall was too humid and had to be insulated with Amorim cork boards (2 x 4 cm overlapping). Another wall, which is partly sunk into the ground and suffers from rising damp, was insulated with cork chips behind impermeable plasterboard. Indoor walls that adjoin the neighbors’ were insulated acoustically with 10 cm of cellulose and a double layer of plasterboard.

Joel from Eco-Logis blowing in the cellulose insulation

The perlite-crete floor in the big living kitchen was poured onto OSB waterproof boards (19 mm). Unfortunately the massive, old oak floor beams which carried the four-inch dirt floor laid with terracotta tiles were too warped to be leveled. We replaced them with new untreated Douglas-fir floor joists from the local sawmill that gets its wood from the nearby Black Mountains. The old oak beams were sold to a builder in the nearby village of Lautrec, which paid for the new floor (see photos).

Old oak floor beams

Old oak floor beams leaving the house

Douglas fir floor joists

After the summer I’ll post some more pictures and a description of the new kitchen, the staircases and the tiled floors. It’s coming along…