Ecological renovation

Ovino is the reflection of our concerns for natural products, we sometimes receive questions about our house, we try here to answer them...

In 2012, we started a major renovation of an old farmhouse. It's a bit of fate that pushed us to start a renovation, but in the end it's not so bad, giving a second life to a building and avoiding having to move tons of materials for a new construction with the associated environmental impact.

One of the difficulties encountered was the lack of expertise available to combine two constraints: concern for using natural materials and having high energy performance. What is the situation today, no idea but in 2011-2012, the only recourse was to document oneself, reading a dozen or so books helped guide the project in the right direction.

From the beginning, we thought about using natural materials to avoid as much as possible the embodied energy required for the production and transport of materials. This is why all our walls are made on wooden structures, with wood fiber insulation. The panels are made of fermacell (gypsum and recycled paper), more ecological than gyproc and providing more thermal inertia.

In terms of finishing, we used clay for most rooms, with lime for the bathroom. Clay has the advantage of helping to regulate humidity, of providing thermal inertia, of being easy to implement, while having a very, very low liability for the planet, a product that is hardly transformed and coming from not far away, Claytech being located in Germany not far from Dusseldorf.

As far as energy production is concerned, we have installed a heat pump with a water-water exchanger (80m borehole).

The distribution of the heating is done in the floors on the ground floor and in the walls for the first floor. This ensures thermal comfort that is much appreciated in winter, we are enveloped by the warmth of the walls.

The ventilation of the house was provided by a double flow VMC.

The windows are PVC, it's not great, but what about exotic wood? Yes PVC can be recycled, but with our insulating polyurethane screed on the ground floor, this is the element for which we did not find a satisfactory natural alternative, and yes we did not have want to paint our chassis regularly.

In the end, we have a very comfortable house, which consumes very little energy, and even, with the solar panels, we produce more than we consume.

Still have questions, want to borrow a book? Let's talk about it over a glass of wine...