Sustainable Energy Saving House Plans - Designing your 'Green Dream' Home

Welcome to the Timbertecs House & Building Design zone

Timbertecs is committed to providing you with an exceptional range of planning, plan drawing and designer services from initial concept design stages right through to completion of your energy saving timber frame building project.

Whether you want an individual sustainably ‘green’ eco house, or floor plans and elevation drawings for a complete environmentally friendly ‘Code for Sustainable Homes’ housing development of truly sustainable energy saving eco-homes, you can’t do better than instruct TimberTecs to take care of it all for you.

DIY Design

- How to Design your Own Home

There are many modestly priced software packages for designing houses and other simple buildings that you can buy on the high street or over the Internet. These can make designing your ‘Green Dream’ development relatively simple – providing you are willing to spend what can be a significant amount of time learning how to use them.

You can use them for a room in the roof loft conversion, or home extension, as well as a complete new build project. Many packages offer 3D views to help you illustrate what you want your dream home, extension or renovations, to look like when built and occupied.

However, using simple ‘Pencil and Paper’ might be quicker and easier!

If the idea of learning CAD (computer aided design) is daunting, try simply sketching your project with good, old-fashioned ‘pencil and paper’. By visiting "How to Design Your Dream Home" TimberTecs will give you all the guidelines needed to give you a heads up start on how best to go about this.

Your Guide to Design - a Starting Point
If you are considering designing your home from scratch, or making alterations to any of our standard home designs, please keep in mind this information. If you use this guide to help you create a VERY rough preliminary sketch or doodle, this will provide us with a starting point to help us better understand your thoughts and house design ideas .

When you are satisfied that your sketches fully convey just what you want, for a relatively small cost TimberTecs can turn these into ‘submission ready’ detailed design drawings for you to apply for both planning permission and building regulation approval. Rather than worry and sweat about complying with all the rules and regulations, let TimberTecs take the strain.

Extensions and Conversions

- Drawings & Plans for Barns and Penthouses

Don’t forget, TimberTecs is equally happy dealing with the floor plans, elevations and other architectural design considerations for your extension or conversion project, including room in the roof loft conversions, stable or barn conversions and renovations.

This also includes helping you get planning permission for ‘FREE’ land by building upwards and adding another floor to any building as a ‘Penthouse’ development. Whether it is residential, commercial or retail, houses, flats, offices or industrial, TimberTecs’ UK nationwide services are available to help you from the beginning to the end of your development project.

- Designing and Planning for ‘Location, Location, Location’

National Parks, Conservation Areas, Tree Protection Orders, awkward neighbours, objections, Heritage sites, Listed Buildings – you name it and TimberTecs can probably find a planning solution for you. Talking to us sooner rather than later could save you time, money, and frustration. TimberTecs your local building design and planning service, wherever you are in the UK (also France, Spain, Cyprus, etc.)

Energy Efficient Buildings

- Eco Home Designs & Energy Saving Trust

We are highly experienced in eco homes design and other energy efficient buildings, and have over ten years commercial experience as designers of ‘green’ sustainable eco houses and other sustainable structures.

To help you understand the environmental footprint of your project and some of the other things we now have to take into consideration in designing your new building – whether it be a new home, a development of houses, or any other structure – visit the Energy Saving Trust’s website.

This non-profit making organisation’s site is designed to help everyone save energy in their homes, to help you fight climate change, reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from your house, and save money into the bargain. You will discover how to calculate your carbon footprint (frightening!), understand Smart Meters, and make big cuts in your energy bills.

German PassiveHaus Standards

The German term 'PassivHaus' (Passive House) is a specific standard of residential building construction that provides excellent conditions of comfort in summer and winter. Passivhaus principles can also be applied to public, industrial and commercial structures.

Houses built to PassivHaus standards:

• Deliver world leading energy efficiency in construction
• Use a step by step method of designing and building a house
• Deliver very low running costs by using whole house ventilation and efficient components
• Are sustainable, comfortable and extremely healthy to live in

Typically a PassivHaus achieves energy savings of around 90% compared with existing homes.

- Energy Performance Certificates, ‘Passiv Haus’ & Climate Change

Please remember that in order to secure long lasting, low cost, heat savings in any building, it must be architecturally designed with full regard to the site and ground conditions, plot and building orientation, passive and solar gain projections, airtightness, optimum levels of insulation in floors, roofs and walls (including windows), ventilation and heat recovery (HRV), and the sustainability specifications of all materials.

Also that all buildings now have to be designed with respect to their SAP ratings and the target and actual energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) output levels all resulting in acceptable Energy Performance Certificates (EPC’s).

All our architectural designs and plan drawing services deliver exceptional attention to detail on every project to help get your designs EPC certified in the most cost effective and easiest way possible. This includes addressing the needs of PassivHaus (Passive House) Standards to help you ensure that your new building will do your bit to address Global Climate Change.

Standard House Plans

- for Developers, House Builders and Self-Builders

The TimberTecs team have produced standard plans for houses to help you get planning permission quickly. These are available online and, because these are standard designs, we are able to keep the costs really low.

Planning Permission Made Easy

- How to Obtain Planning Permissions

We know how frustratingly difficult, time consuming and costly it can be to get all the permissions necessary for your development to go ahead and offer a range of planning application services to help you obtain planning permission.

Please refer to our Planning Application section to find out how our planning application advisors can help you in getting planning permission in the most easy and straightforward way possible.

Customised and Bespoke Designs

However, we understand that if you are planning to design your own home, our standard plans may not be quite what you're looking for. Therefore we offer customisation and bespoke designer services for new homes and other buildings.

Bring your house plan sketches, or new home plan ideas that you have obtained from one or more books of plans to us and we will turn them into your practical, build-able ‘Ideal Home’.

We can produce all of your house plans needed to get your project moving easily and quickly. As noted above, this includes advice in getting planning permission. Whatever type of building you have in mind, we can plan it, design it, draw it and get planning and building regulation permission for it for you. .

Our team of architectrual designers and architectural technologists / technicians are on hand to assist with your professional or self build house or other building design project.

Drawing Up Your Plans

We have been involved in house designing for many years and have a team of designers on hand to assist with your sustainable, energy saving home, or other self build house design project.

Whether you want to go for a higher energy saving building specification, like the German and Austrian Passivhaus Standard, or whether you prefer to aim of one of the UK Code for Sustainable Homes levels (these now replace the UK Eco Homes standards)

Architectural Services

- House and Floor Plan Production

We have an idea of our house plan layout, what do we do next?

Send us your rough floor plans and elevations if you have sketched them out, together with any other information, for example: plot width, plot depth, land slopes, and surrounding properties, and photo's of the site and, or buildings on it, that you may have. We can produce professional dimensioned, scaled and affordable house plans from just £245 (+VAT).

Only @ timbertecs Ltd - The Professional Choice

For helpful ideas on how to go about sketching up the floor plans and elevations for your new home or other building, see our Guide to DIY Building Design

More Standard House plans coming soon

Including: Sustainable home plans, energy saving home plans, extension plans, room in roof & loft extension plans, eco house plans, eco house designs, eco house specifications, eco home plans, energy saving house plans, low energy house plans, sustainable house plans, sustainable house designs, sustainable building designs and much more

Free Consultations

- for House, Home and other Building Design

If you have land and are looking to build, Timbertecs is offering you a FREE House Design Consultation where our home design team will sit down with you and help make your dream home become a reality. There is no obligation to buy, all we ask is for a fully refundable £10 deposit to hold your consultancy space.