Is there anyone else you think I should be speaking to or having had this chat with me that you're suddenly thinking, I think another person that could advise you would be?

Yeah, there's a renewables consultant. If you're looking at any efficient house, before you even put pen to paper, you want to talk to somebody that can give you proper advice about insulation, handling systems, energy efficient systems, whether it's on the electrical, the mechanical side. And you also need to think about the life cycle costing of materials. Now you could buy very, very energy efficient materials, but actually they've taken an awful lot of energy to produce them and they're coming from a broads. There's a lot of shipping, cost, fuel, cost, transportation, that sort of thing. And you've got to work out whether or not you're bothered by that or actually you want to build your house cheaply from locally produced and procurable materials and to make it as energy efficient as possible using those local resources or whether you want to go further afield by more elaborate and more expensive materials, but actually they've taken a lot of oil and a lot of production cost and therefore actually aren't that good for the planet, albeit they're energy efficient. So you need to think about the overall thing, but talking to somebody who can give you proper advice about the whole complex part of energy efficiency in a building, it isn't just to do with insulation, to do how you deal with air, how you heat products, where your energy comes from, those sorts of things. So there is a consultant that we use particularly that's very, very good on that site and I would suggest that that is a very worthwhile visit.

Simon, thank you very much. OK, no problem, tool. Thank you. Houseplanninghelp.com Fantastic. Our first interview, Simon Lewis from RWRmsstrong.co.uk. If you want to go and check out their website, we'll link that into the show notes as well, which are online, houseplanninghelp.com. That's also where I'd really like your feedback, whether it's on the interview, on our first podcast, if you have some questions or areas that you'd like me to explore in future episodes, I really want this to go in the direction that you want it to as well. It's got to be useful for us all. The other thing, I want to start up a feature about your top three tips. This is really only open to you. If you've been through a house renovation yourself or you've done a self build, then I would like to hear from you your top three tips. If you have to sum the whole experience up with three bits of information that you think, well, this will go a long way, then I would like that. So head on to the website houseplanninghelp.com. Just before I go, a big, big thank you that I must do. And it's to my friend, Mike Russell from Music Radio Creative, who has been absolutely fantastic in support to me. This is the first time that my production company has put a podcast live and he has done this before. He's very experienced. So Mike Russell, Music Radio Creative, thank you so much and sorry if I annoyed you for a few weeks. Next time I'll be interviewing an energy efficiency expert, Martin Evans from the Malt House Consultancy. So that'll be next time here on houseplanninghelp.com. Thank you very much for listening and I'd love a review on iTunes. If you can do that, head on there. It'll really improve our visibility. So I'll see you next time. You've been listening to Ben Adam Smith on the path to build a better home.

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