Smokin - or not!

After a few weeks of mild weather post-stove installation we're now well into winter and it's freezing outside. Now that I've had a few weeks playing with the stove I can safely say I've got it sussed.

Initially I was a bit dissapointed with the 'airwash' that is supposed to keep the glass clean so that you can enjoy watching the flames gently washing over the wood. After the first couple of weeks use we (or rather C!) had to clean the glass to remove soot etc. Not what I'd hoped for. I put this down to wood that hasn't been well seasoned and hoped it would sort itself out in time. Heat output wasn't as great as I'd hoped (didn't feel anywhere near the rated 5 kW) either.

Over the last two weeks things have improved, and it seems it's all down to how you control the fire. Initially I was putting smaller logs on and feeding 'a little and often' as it says in the stove manual. This seems to result in the stove never getting up to really high temperature and therefore optimum efficiency and 'clean' burn. However, I've discovered by trial and error that if you build up a decent bed of hot embers you can then put huge logs onto the stove - this not only means that it only needs attention every hour or so, but it also burns very hot and efficiently. So much so the airwash is now working fabulously and is removing soot that had previously built up on the glass.

What is also really satisfying is seeing how efficient the stove is in 'reburning' the smoke that a conventional open fire chucks out to atmosphere - only a wisp of smoke comes out from the chimney when the stove is running flat out so it looks more like the vapour you see coming out of a boiler flue than a wood fire.

All in all a great result and it's keeping the house lovely and warm - C has even muttered about it being too hot at times!

woodburning

It feels like we're making progress! On thursday we took delivery of our shiny new woodburning stove, and more to the point it was fully installed and up and running by the end of the day. I baulked at a DIY installation so got Chipping Sodbury builders to install it, and they did a very good job.

The stove is a Riva Cube, a contemporay design and not one of the twee 'cottagey' designs that a lot of manufacturer's seem to be selling. At 5 kW capacity (presuambly that's subject to optimum wood, namely 18 month old hardwood?) it's ample for what we need to boost the heat from the inefficient central heating. Once it turns really cold it'll be interesting to see how it performs and how much of the rest of the house it can heat.

Meanwhile I'll sort out the log supply to ensure we're only burning the best dry wood as I don't want the stove filling with soot or tar as ol' smokey joe at Millsteads did thanks to all the pine Mum & Dad used to burn on it.

More little visitors...

If you were reading the blog back in March you'll recall the little visitors to the compost heap. Well, we've more this time, and they're definitely the ones I didn't want, namely rats, and this time they're in the woodshed. We've also seen mice near the house but they are less of a problem.

We've got hold of a mouse and rat trap to see if we can do DIY pest control, and since Monday (once we'd got some cheese) we've been pretty sucessful. So far the slightly gruesome tally is:

Mousetrap 4 (two mice caught, one mouse caught and the trap flipped into the adjacent pond which confused me for a while, and another mouse was sniffing around the trap when a sparrowhawk swooped down and despatched it 3 feet away from the living room window where we were sitting. Shame I didn't have the camera to hand).
Rattrap 1 (one rat caught but not much was left after his friends dined out at his expense, yuk!).

There are still signs of at least one rat left in the woodshed so may have to revert to plan B and get the professionals in.....

Stove

It's been slow progress with the house over the last month with our thoughts being elsewhere.
However, we've just placed the order for a wood-burning stove. The existing fireplace in the lounge is incredibly inefficient. An open fire is typically 30% efficient, but with a wood burning stove this should leap up to 80-90% due to the double-burn effect of firing at higher temperatures. Coupled with the fact that airflow through the room will be massively reduced, thanks to the sealed flue, this should make for a much cosier winter.

And as we'll be burning home-grown wood on the stove (not a lump of coal in sight) it should make for an efficient and sustainable heat source. The biomass boiler will have to wait but this is a good start.

All I need to do now is get the new hearth installed then we can look forward to getting the stove before the end of the month.

Good news amidst the bad

Blogging isn't a priority at the moment - my Dad died last week so this is far from important. But I now know that he did keep uptodate with what I was writing.

I'll get back to updating the blog in due course, in the meantime the good news is that we've just had planning approval for the extension. Dad would've liked to know this; it's a real shame he won't be around to see what we do.

Nuts!

Realise I haven't posted for ages - life has been hectic and an unexpected foreign trip with work hasn't helped. It also involved my first ever long haul flight, so am in a quandry with offsetting the CO2 impact of that....

As for the nuts...we've got loads of hazel trees as hedging in the garden and I've just realised that they're full of fruit (or should I say nuts?!). Keen to use anything that nature bestows upon us I'm now on the lookout for recipes using hazel nuts, and more importantly how are they best stored? Ideas more than welcome. If not maybe I'll have to setup a stall by the road selling nuts to passers by as some of the other locals are doing with their surplus fruit (didn't do this with our plums as they've suffered from the wet summer and are rotting on the trees).

The apple tree is also laden with fruit - will have to work out if it's an eater or cooker...

Water Use

This is the first house we've lived in with a water meter. Unfortunately the external meter housing hasn't got a lid so we've not been able to read the meter since we moved in as it's always full of water (irony knows no bounds here!). This obviously doesn't stop Bristol Water as they issued us our first bill today.

Since 21st December we've used a seemingly vast 31 cubic metres of mains water. We try to be very careful with the amount of water we use doing all the things we're supposed to do like; not running water when brushing teeth, taking showers not baths, only using the dishwasher/washing machine when full (plus they're A rated with the lowest water consumption we could find) etc. So even without knowing how much water we've used in the last months I'd hoped we were below average. Our pleasantly low bill implies this is the case but I've done some research to check.

31 cubic metres over six months equates to 170 litres per day for the two of us, so 85 litres per person per day. Ofwat (see link below) state an average consumption of 148 l/p/d in the UK for 2005/6 with an average consumption in our region of 154 l/p/d. 55% of average consumption isn't bad eh!?

I guess the wet summer has helped as we've not been doing much watering of the garden, but even so it's great to see we're well below average. Okay, so I'm out a work 5 days a week using water elsewhere (presumably the Ofwat figures for households are regardless of whether the occupants are at work/school etc during the day) but even so I think we're doing well. It'll be interesting to see how our consumption changes with the planned extension and rainwater harvesting.

http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/aptrix/ofwat/publish.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/leakage_05-06.pdf/$FILE/leakage_05-06.pdf

Stream

Way back at the end of last year, before we'd sorted out our 'net connection (therefore pre-blog), and after a very wet December we were introduced to the first of several water problems with Hillside. The most dramatic was the stream that appeared from nowhere after hours of torrential rain and was captured for all to see by our post-Christmas visitors on http://www.knowles22fd.plus.com/. Although slightly less impressive, the rainwater pipe in the 'utility' area that blocked and backed up, spewing water jets into the house, was slightly more of a drama! While I was hacksawing the pipe to release the pressure and enable the drain to be rodded through, Cathy was 3 feet away in the kitchen mixing cakes for the visitors due the next day!

After the fantastic weather in April we thought we'd seen the back of excessive rain and saturated ground until the winter. By then we should've been able to sort out the broken land drain that appears to be the cause of the stream. But no, the record breaking rainfall in June has caused the stream to appear at least once over the last few days, albeit when I've been at work. Thankfully the dam I built in January and a small ditch I dug have helped to ensure the water (when it appears) doesn't flow towards the house.

If the water flow was consistent it'd be good to make use of it to generate power via a water wheel, but I think it's too unpredictable for this. Instead I'll maybe just have to make the most of capturing it for re-use in the garden and as a good supply of water for a wildlife pond or two.

Refusal

It's official. We had advance warning 10 days ago that the Planning Dept were going to refuse our planning application to extend the cottage. Now the official refusal has been issued. Their 'rationale' is that the massing is too great and out of character with the original house. No mention is made of the huge 1990s house next door that dwarfs Hillside, or the array of other huge houses and garages (most of dubious architectural merit) that stretch down the road from us. Do I sound bitter?

However, there is a way forward. We've managed to speak to the Planning Officer and undertand (even if we don't agree) with his concern about the size of the side extension. The other amendments we want to make don't seem to be an issue. So we are now working with our Architect to find a way to get the bedroom extension we want whilst fitting in with the size limitations that the Planners will accept.

You'd be right to question why we want to extend a house if we're doing an eco-renovation, as after all small efficient houses have the smallest carbon footprint. But this place isn't efficient as it stands. And our lifestyle is such that we'd like more space - okay, so we don't need more but isn't life full of such contradictions?

Nesting

Our wooden shed is destined for destruction at some time in the to not too distant future - it's badly rotten with plenty of gaps to let the wind and rain in. For the moment it's okay as an impromptu woodshed but not much more.

I was suprised to find a bundle of leaves on a shelf at the back of the shed last weekend. Closer inspection revealed it to be a very messy bird's nest with three eggs in it, which turn out to be those of a Robin.


When I looked in the shed today it appears as if the Robin is now sitting on the nest, but I didn't look too closely as I didn't want to disturb her(?).

Meanwhile, I also had a look in the nestbox in one of the hazel trees at the back of the garden and found several tiny Blue Tits - so it looks like there's plenty of nesting going which is great to see as we want to encourage the wildlife.

As for the rabbits - they get bolder every day and might prove to be the exception...

Carbon Footprint

My employer is developing a carbon footprinting tool for business and as a result I spent all day Monday in a meeting trying to work out how best we could deliver this. This got me thinking that it was about time I worked out my footprint. There are various websites that make it easy to work out your individual carbon footprint - I opted for the BP calculator which is a little over simplistic but is a good starting point. It reckons my footprint is 8 tonnes of CO2 per year - sounds a lot but this is 'lower than UK average'.

The questions it asks did remind me of some of the areas of my lifestyle that could do with improvement to reduce CO2 emissions - car travel is the major one but it's difficult to reduce that when I live 8 miles from the office. I can take some comfort in the fact that whilst our car isn't the most fuel efficient, it is 7 years old and we have no plans to change it yet, so we're making best use of it's embedded energy (the energy used to manufacture it, which in many cases far exceeds the energy used by something during it's existence).

There's probably a better carbon footprinting tool than the BP one (if you find it let me know), which didn't take into account shopping habits (local, box schemes, home grown veg etc) and other CO2 reducing measures. Hopefully BP and others will improve the quality of such resources over time, as we all become more aware of the impact of CO2 emissions.

If you want to do something now to reduce your CO2 emissions how about installing CO2 Saver http://co2saver.snap.com/index.php to reduce the power consumption of your PC?

Planning

At last, after weeks of deliberation with our Architect, we've finally got our planning application submitted. In addition to renovating Hillside we also want to extend and rebuild the existing 'summer room' which is suffering from damp, dry rot and dodgy electrics.

So the plans have been finalised and submitted. It took a while, for various reasons and not least the challenge of building on a hill. We've tried to minimise the amount of excavation required whilst at the same time designing something that can be constructed from timber frame. We're also hoping to include rainwater harvesting, ground source heating and solar hot water, all of which are included in the planning application.

It's now time to talk in earnest to builders and timber frame suppliers to see if they want to be involved in our project. With the present construction boom it'll be interesting to see how we get on, and if we can find builders who want to build something that won't be straightforward but will be as sustainable as we can afford to make it.

Herbs

I love spring - the garden at Hillside has erupted into leaf, and it's great to see things appearing that we had no idea were there. Okay so there's no shortage of weeds - mostly thistles, nettles and swathes of Doc leaves, but amongst them there are a few gems giving us an inkling of the garden that was once there...before the goat!

In the absence of a vegetable plot (yet) it's been good to find some edible plants. By the pond there's a big patch of mint which has already been used with (shop bought) new potatoes. What we've also got in abundance, but never eaten before, is wild garlic. We've got loads of it and it looks and smells fabulous. A quick Google has come up with a few ideas of how to use it but if you've ever cooked with it or used it in salads and have a few tips let me know. If you don't know what it looks like here's a pic - the smell is pretty obvious!

Cut the carbon

Heard a very interesting talk from Christian Aid today. A very brief precis is that the effects of global warming will have the most significant impact on those parts of the world who can least afford to deal with it - namely the least developed nations. Global warming will result in increased sea levels in areas like Bangladesh causing 18% of the country to flood, and increased desertification of the sahara regions reducing productive land areas, to name but two effects. For more info visit http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/0702_climate/missingcarbon.pdf

It's very easy to think of how global warming etc effects us, especially after a very warm and wet winter and some of the warmest April days I can remember, but it's good to be reminded of how other parts of the world are already being affected. And when you consider how much of the CO2 is generated in the affluent west (and has been since the industrial revolution) it seems very unfair. About time the UK and the other western nations really started doing something to curb the effects of global warming.

Meanwhile we'll continue to do our bit. Intetesting to note that in the last 3 months we've had our milk delivered by the milkman in glass bottles and we've collected a box full of plastic bottles from other things. Prior to that we were buying milk in plastic cartons and were filling the box every couple of weeks, so it's good to see that plastic consumption has reduced. Must try harder though!

St Fagans

Along with the obligatory timber moving sessions over the long weekend (but at least most of the wood has now been moved up the hill), we managed to have a day out at St Fagans near Cardiff, otherwise known as the National Museum of Welsh Life. It's a 100 acre site based around a grand 16th century house where old buildings have been collected from all over Wales and re-erected.

I was pleasantly suprised at how interesting it all was, and recommend it as a good day out. One of the old tudor 'cruck' farmhouses was inhabited (for a few days) by a Tudor re-enactment group which gave it a more realistic edge.

So what's 'green' about St Fagans? - the drive there and back certainly wasn't. We went to look at the House of the Future, a 2001 eco-build to see if it inspired us or gave us any fresh ideas. Whilst it was interesting, and good to see timber cladding that had weathered nicely along with other construction details, there was nothing amazing about the house. Okay, so it's 6 years old and maybe it goes to show that our research over the last 3 years has informed us well about 'green' buildings. What suprised me though was the extent of south facing glazing - 2001 wasn't that long ago that we didn't know about global warming, was it? It was a pleasantly warm April day and as a result of the solar gain it was very warm inside the house. Surely it must therefore suffer massively from summer overheating, as anyone with a south-facing conservatory will know - a serious design flaw.

Easter Bunny

Over the last few weeks I've regularly seen a rabbit in the garden, but Cathy reckoned I was hallucinating as she never saw it. Finally, and just in time for Easter, I managed to grab the camera (& Cathy!) before the bunny hopped off into the undergrowth. Not the greatest picture but at least it proves I wasn't imagining things...


As I've now sown lettuce seeds indoors, and they've germinated, this does raise the question of how do I protect them when I plant them out. The only pests we used to have to deal with were slugs & snails, and planting our veg in pots helped limit their access and therefore the damage. I'm not sure that rabbits will be so easily deterred. Plus, with all our space I was hoping to plant lettuce and other veg out in the garden. The answer is probably a raised bed with some form of netting, which I may make a start on this weekend (I did read that somebody else buried chicken wire 3 foot down to stop rabbits burrowing into their veg patch - hope I don't have to do that!).

Just incase you were wondering - I've finally sorted out the compost heap. It's been relocated and placed onto wire netting. Todate there's no sign of anybody (bunnies, rats or anything else) trying to get in. A neighbours' cat has also taken a liking to the garden, lurking around the shed, which is probably a good thing if it deters any rodents!

Scaffold

The scaffold arrived today, a day earlier than expected and a week before we need it. I say we, but it's going to be our roofer who uses it.

There are several loose and damaged roof tiles along with bodged repairs on both eaves (using playpit sand!) that have cracked and are allowing the rain in. So we're getting a roofer to replace the tiles and the mortar, this time with the right sand!

It would be great to install solar hot water panels while we've got the scaffold up but that'll have to wait until we've got planning - hopefully the application will go in just after Easter.

H&R Show

We made our annual pilgrimage to the H&R Self-build & Renovation show at the NEC on Friday, and at long last we've got a project to talk about. We tried not to feel too smug as we drifted through the sea of would-be self-builders and renovators as they ambled around the endless stands of shiny building materials, 'instant' houses and 'smart' home gadgets.

Talked to some very helpful people about biomass boilers, hemp insulation (nobody panic if there's a fire, man!), solar hot water heaters and huge sliding glazing panels.

Also talked to a couple of possible kitchen suppliers but the elusive 'green' kitchen still seems very difficult to achieve. It seems that the marketplace assumes anybody wanting a solid wood kitchen wants to show off the wood in a country cottagey way - we want a contemporary look whilst using sustainable solid wood. Contemporary tends to mean foil finished (plastic coated) chipboard or MDF. Okay, so these often use offcuts (and loads of glue) to produce the board but they then wrap them in plastic!

Highlight of the day was being able to get out our extension plans and talk to a couple of timber frame manufacturers about them to see if they could give us a budget cost. A small Bristol based firm have suggested that we send them our plans once we've submitted them for planning so they can quote us. Carpenter Oak (look great but maybe a tad expensive) took our plans away to get a price for us, which should be interesting, or scary!

Quite fancy an EcoPod (not the coffin!) -http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/homesearch/latest/s/237/237717_eggheads_amazing_ecopod.html - think it'd look great by the chestnut tree!

Still on the To Do list

Okay, so I didn't sort out the compost heap last weekend - was taken to see England beat the French at Twickenham instead!

Things have slowed down on the renovation front while we try to finalise our extension plans with our Architect. Think we're almost there but some technical issues due to the slope make it more difficult. Hopefully we'll have them sorted by the end of the month and ready to submit for planning.

Meanwhile it's time to think about planting seeds for the summer - we've got some lettuce and rocket, must also get some tomatoes. Not sure how much else to get as the garden should become a building site this summer.

Also spent time today doing non-supermarket shopping. Tried out the great farm shop in Frampton and discovered a farm up the road selling their own Gloucester Old Spot pork - tried their chops tonight. Tasty but not the most tender we've ever had - difficult to beat Millsteads pork (when it was in supply!) or the Chatsworth Farm shop. At least it's not intensively reared, with virtually zero food miles and is not expensive. If only we had some space to rear piggies....

Little visitors

We've had some little visitors...and I don't mean Lucy & Alistair, although they did visit for the first time this weekend.

The unidentified little visitors have found the compost bin, burrowed underneath and are helping themselves to scraps. Not that we put anything particularly tasty in the compost; mostly raw veg peelings, tea bags and coffee grounds. We try not to put anything that's been cooked in to avoid it becoming a tasty feast!

But obviously something likes the food supply and I hope it's not rats! The thought of a small mouse or even a rabbit (have seen them in the garden) raiding the heap is okay, but not a rat.

So yet another job for the weekend - to relocate the compost bin and put it on some of the chicken wire we've found in the shed to stop our new little friends burrowing up into the heap and cut off their free lunch. Hopefully this will work.

Ethical phones?

There's not much you can do with a telephone to make it environmentally sustainable, except make it out of wood I suppose. However, it is possible to choose your telecom provider on the basis of how sustainable and/or ethical their operations are.

As with any company, they use up all manner of resources, from electricity used to power the office lights, to tea bags in the cuppas, to paper in the photocopiers. All of these could be purchased using the most environmentally and/or ethical suppliers, can't they?

Of all the providers available to us for a telephone and broadband contract the one we found that seemed to tick all the right boxes on the ethical/environmental front was the PhoneCoop. http://www.thephone.coop/index.html Okay, so they're not the cheapest (since when was making a stand for others and the planet cheap?!), and they took a while sorting out our phone line as it was a new number, hence the delay in starting this blog. But we're now happy in the knowledge that this is another way that we can purchase an ethical service and reduce our environmental impact.

Renewable power

It would be great to be able to generate our own energy, either via a wind turbine, solar collectors (PV cells) or even a small watermill in the occasional stream! However, any one of these is some way off at the moment.

What we have done though is ensure that the grid-supplied electricity we use is helping to increase the use of renewables (non-polluting and not adding to climate change) for power generation. To do this we buy all our electricity from Ecotricity.

Some suppliers state that all their power is 'green', which in reality means they buy their power from renewable generators. Whilst their power is generated renewably it doesn't necessarily mean that they are investing in renewables by, for example, building wind farms. Ecotricity, however, are investing in renewable energy to the tune of £7 million this year, and we think they're great as a result!

If you want to read more try this article from the Ecologist http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=428

Landfill guilt

We finally managed to find time, the whole weekend to be precise, to sort out the shed. As it's the size of a single garage it's a huge shed and it had been left full of the previous owners stuff - some very useful (such as a back door and laminate flooring that we've put to good use) and some not so (An exercise treadmill!).

After sorting the contents and retaining what we wanted to keep we then had another eco dilemma - what should we do with the rubbish? It was time for the old goat house bonfire to be lit so any wood and cardboard was burned. Scrap metal was taken to the dump, along with rubble hardcore.

The usual shed supply of old paint pots and odd bottles of coloured liquids were the most difficult to get rid of. We made sure any oil was put in the oil collection at the dump but there seems to be no way of getting rid of unwanted paints etc. Did a check on Google but there are no cummunity paint recycle schemes near us so ended up (rather unsatifactorily) throwing the old paint into the general waste at the dump - we now feel guilty about adding to landfill. Surely there must be a better option...

There are still things to sort (and get rid of) including the treadmill but at least we can safely get in the shed now. Time to get Freecycling.

Green paint

We spent the weekend decorating our bedroom and have tried out 'green' paint - not the colour of course as the room was already a yucky green! After much deliberating, and a visit to the Green Shop near Stroud, we bought Auro 321 for the walls and (white) Green Paint for the ceiling.

Auro 321 is the most eco friendly as it's petro-chemical free and contains no fungicides - but it does contain essential oils! Using the paint was great as it smells nice enough to eat! We also were pleasantly suprised how well it covered the old walls that were in a pretty bad state with flaky old paint/plaster due to condensation problems. Only time will tell how durable it is but the end result looks good.

The Green Paint has also done a good job - it's not quite as green as Auro it does contain some chemicals but we couldn't find the right white in Auro 321. Unlike Auro this is made in the UK so it scores well on paint miles!

As we've paperered a feature wall (with FSC paper of course) we also tried Auro's wallpaper paste - it's fungicide free and has done a good job.

All in all we recommend these alternatives, even if they are more expensive and dificult to track down. They are much more pleasant to use, and should create a much healthier internal and external environment.

Not as green as it looks...

One of our aims is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, but currently Hillside is heated via oil fired central heating. This is stretching the point slightly as the house is pretty thermally inefficient so the heating barely copes and needs supplementing by open fires.

Anyway, getting back to the point, we discovered a couple of weeks ago that the 1000 litre oil tank was only half full, which was a major suprise as we had it filled the day we moved in. There is no way we should've got through that much oil in a month! The smell of oil and obvious signs of leakage around the tank were all we needed to see that we had our own mini-environmental disaster to deal with. There's not much you can do to repair a rusting leaky oil tank - can hardly weld a patch onto it - and hence eco dilemma number 1.

We've been expecting a few eco dilemmas but this one caught us by suprise. Should we replace the tank, knowing that we plan to get rid of oil fired heating in future, and if so should we get another steel tank or a plastic one? As we needed to stop the remaing oil from leaking away, and as our alternative heating options haven't progressed yet it was easy to decide we needed to replace the tank. As for steel versus plastic: steel is more easily recyclable and is not derived from fossil-fuel, Plastic on the other hand will not corrode as quickly.

In the end we decided to go with a second-hand steel tank thus avoiding the use of plastic but also recycling somebody else's cast-off that can be recycled further in future if only for scrap. It's painted bright green but isn't quite what we had in mind when we said we wanted to make Hillside greener...

We're in!

A month ago we got the keys to Hillside Cottage and since then we've started our journey into our environmentally friendly renovation project. We've already done a load of things to the house, and 'garden' but thanks to the delay in getting our net connection up and running (more of that later) this is the first chance I've had to start the blog.

The aim of this blog? - hopefully it'll keep you uptodate with the highs, lows, challenges, rewards and general 'stuff' that we encounter whilst trying to turn a 100 year old cottage into a comfortable and environmentally friendly and ethical home.