Self-Build Lab
See how a house works
Learn how a well-built home stays warm in winter, cool in summer and fresh all year round, and why the choices made at design stage keep paying off for decades. Change the weather, move the controls and watch the house respond. Each lab has a short guided tour and a written version with the detail.
- AirAbout 8 minutes
MVHR: swap the air, keep the heat
Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery in a two-storey house. Change the weather, run a shower, open up the unit and watch fresh air arrive warm.
Open the lab - FabricAbout 8 minutes
Airtightness: where the air gets in
A blower door pulls a new house down to 50 Pa and the air comes in at every break in its red airtight line. Bring each gap up as a large cutaway detail, seal it and watch the test result fall.
Open the lab - FabricAbout 8 minutes
Thermal bridges: find where the heat leaks
A museum exhibit of a two-storey slice of a house, roof and all, cut open between a frosty garden and two warm rooms. Make the night colder and the room damper, swap poor details for good ones and watch where mould grows.
Open the lab - FabricAbout 10 minutes
Sound insulation: what stops the noise next door
Swap walls in an acoustics test suite, leave a gap, fill the cavity with wool, play voices or music and listen to what gets through. Then start the tapping machine and float a floor.
Open the lab - FabricAbout 9 minutes
Overheating and Part O: shade the glass, cool the night
A bedroom and living space behind a big glazed wall, through five hot July days. Turn the house to the sun, size and shade the glass, open up at night and check it against Part O.
Open the lab - HeatAbout 12 minutes
Air source heat pump: heat from cold air
A heat pump's outdoor unit opened up like a museum exhibit: seven experiments follow heat from cold outside air round the refrigerant loop and into the radiators, the floor and the hot water.
Open the lab - PowerAbout 12 minutes
Solar panels and a battery: follow the sunshine
A museum bench you can work: six experiments follow sunlight from the sky through a panel, an inverter and a battery to the kettle and the grid.
Open the lab - WaterAbout 12 minutes
Heating and hot water: where the heat goes
A museum bench you can work: a gas boiler and a heat pump on a turntable, the heating circuit, an unvented cylinder cut in half and its safety kit, in six experiments.
Open the lab - WaterAbout 12 minutes
Off-mains drainage: where the flush goes
No sewer? Flush a house into a septic tank or a treatment plant cut in half, test the soil, size the drainage field and keep it clear of the stream and the well, in seven experiments.
Open the lab