Barn Conversion

Somerset

This Artist’s Barn Conversion is now a sustainable 2-bedroom cottage. Behind a traditional barn, the exterior hides an artist’s unusual eco home. The outside of the barn retains its original simplicity with re-used clay roof tiles and re-pointed blue lias stone walls.  A fabricated zinc box gutter hints at the unusual interior to come.  The barn is open plan with original roof trusses and one internal gable wall in exposed blue lias. New conservation roof lights are incorporated to flood the open-plan sitting room with light.  For Somerset Art Weeks 2011, a team of young local artists were asked to decorate the interior with graffiti-like work that can be seen in the photographs. Water-based paint finishes have been used everywhere so as not to give off Volatile Organic Compounds.

During construction, great attention was paid to the clean-up of the site. The ground was cleared of stones, rubble and debris.  Waste was used in the infill of the disused slurry pit. An air source heat pump provides space heating, and hot water and wastewater pass through a reed bed filtration system and eventually discharge clean water into a stream (complying with an Environment Agency licence).