Time flies

It's nearing the end of Jan 2012 already and I've realised I've not posted to this blog for a few months. Not that we've been short of news, after all the block paviour drive is now complete making the front of Hillside look like a normal house at last and not a building site.

And whilst we've made a point of taking it slightly easier during December and the start of 2012, we've still found time to fit the Utility room sink, cupboards and recycled worktop.

With the list of building related jobs getting shorter at last we are now starting to focus on the niceties: pictures, additional furniture etc. You never know, summer 2012 may be when we finally get to fully relax and enjoy the fruits of our labour. Which reminds me, must check the seed packets and plan what fruit & veg we're growing this year...

Recycled drive

Whilst we were in the middle of the build a friend's parents had a new patio laid to replace their old one. When we heard that they had several hundred old block paviours to get rid of as a result we were quick to offer them a home. More than two years later the block paviours that have taken up valuable space in our garage are finally going to be used to form our drive. All being well this'll happen this weekend once we've installed the drainage, levelled the sub base and put down a layer of sharp sand.

There are still plenty of things on the To-do list at Hillside, but laying the drive is the last major hard-landscaping work at the front of the house, making it look complete and getting rid of the last area of mud that we've lived with since we moved back two years ago!

A year of solar heating

The unseasonably good weather at Hillside over the past few days, with clear blue skies from dawn to dusk and temperatures around 25C, is a very pleasant suprise. Along with giving us a welcome last taste of summer that wasn't very forthcoming in July and August, it means we can eke some more use out of the solar hot water system.

2011 has been our first full year of using solar hot water. Whilst we'll get a few more good days from the unexpected sunshine, we've now had most of the useful sunshine for the year so now is a good time to review how the system has performed.

This year has seen us generate around 2,200 kwhs of hot water from the sun, and we expect it to reach 2,500 before the year is out. If we had used gas to generate the same amount of hot water it would have cost us approximately £92 on a typical tariff. However, we don't have gas in the village so would have to use either electricity, oil or wood pellets. The equivalent costs for these would be £315, £145 or £130 respectively. As wood pellets are our fuel source we'll use that in our calculations.

Our Navitron, self-installed, 30 tube solar thermal system cost just over £1,000 excluding the twin coil hot water cylinder which we bought separately. If you bought the complete kit from Navitron it'd set you back £1,600.

So, using the figures calculated above and the cost of the complete kit, a simple payback calculation shows the solar thermal system will pay for itself in 12 years. I must admit I'm slightly disappointed by this as I thought it'd be less. However, you could take the view that before the renovation project we would've been using oil, and we had to replace the cylinder anyway so the true payback is £1000/£145, and is a much more satisfying 6.9 years.

Even the 12 year payback period shows that the system will easily pay for itself in it's 20+ year lifetime. So we can rest in the knowledge that the solar thermal system is not only cutting our CO2 emissions, it's also saving us money in the long-term.

910 bottles lying in a wall....

Okay, so we slightly underestimated how much time it'd take to fill the gabions. Not only was this due to the amount of time to collect all the bottles we needed, but also it proved to be a labour intensive and fiddle job getting the bottles and stone facing to look exactly how we want. Lobbing random rocks in would've been quicker and easier but wasn't the aesthetic we wanted, or the materials we planned on using.


So the combination of 15 baskets, 910 bottles (beer, wine & champagne), 23 tonnes recycled aggregate, several tonnes of builders rubble, 2 tonnes of recalimed local stone and plenty of hard labour have resulted in our final section of retaining wall.




We're really pleased with the result, but won't be rushing to build anymore! And the local wildlife must like it as we've already spotted a Death's Head Hawk Moth caterpillar setting up home in one of the many crevices.

Filling

We've started filling the baskets - looking good so far but it looks like we'll need more materials.

Baskets

In addition to levelling the garden, as much as possible, the contractor will also be digging out a car parking space alongside our garage. As with the courtyard, this area adjoins the garden which is at a level 2m higher, so a retaining structure needs to be built.

At the start of the project our architect and structural engineer assumed we would be extending the concrete retaining wall to do this, but cost and our desire to avoid using too much new concrete and steel meant we haven't. Instead we'll be using baskets.

Not just any old baskets - but gabions, more usually seen retaining slopes alongside motorway cuttings, although they have sneaked into contemporary RHS Chelsea designs in the last few years. As we need 16 of them, each holding around 1 cubic meter of material, we'll need plenty of fill. We've already amassed a collection of stone, old bricks and pebbles but this won't get us very far so we need more material to act as the structural bulk and to face the front of the baskets.

Pinching an idea from Chelsea (which is suitably apt as we keep finding bottles in the garden that were buried by previous residents of Hillside before refuse collections existed) we'll be using a combination of beer and wine bottles to face some of the gabions. Thankfully we know somebody who owns a pub so won't have to empty all the bottles ourselves! As for the bulk fill, we'll be using old concrete from demolished buildings, the perfect use for recycled aggregate where it won't be seen.

Clover

Well the quotes are in, and we've decided to go with the cheapest and not to proceed with the contractor who was advocating the extensive use of roundup. Numerous 'net searches have given us reasons to doubt the 'safe' claims made to us. The downside is that we'll have plenty of weeding to do.

The contractor is booked in to come and level the garden in just over a week so we're now investigating where to buy grass seed, and what type we should buy. We don't want a bowling green so are more than happy to go for an economy 'lawn' - after all we just want a green flat area! It turns out that the most environmentally friendly option, due to inherent drought resistance and nitrogen fixing properties, is to go for a clover lawn. Not just clover, but ryegrass with clover mixed in. As the current Hillside has several large patches of clover that are lush and green whilst the grass is looking disticntly brown, we can vouch for this being true.

So, just the small matter of calculating how many kg of seed we need before we get it ordered.