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We started out with a determination to avoid having a skip - everything should be reused, freecycled or recycled - but we had to give in at the beginning of June and get a skip, but the company we used promised that at least 70% of the contents would be recycled. We still didn't feel happy about this, but we were under a lot of time pressure on the project and had to clear out a load of unusable timber, plastic and other mostly recyclable materials quickly. |
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We'd been looking for a suitable container to collect rainwater for some time - buying a purpose made one would cost several hundred pounds - and one of our builders told us that someone in Camber had a 1000 litre plastic tank in their front garden, it turned out to be unwanted and £30 made it ours. |
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On the 7th the Gledhill Torrent Solar thermal store arrived, and with some effort we go it up into the roof space. It was pretty heavy, but smaller than expected - but this created some concern about just how much insulation it had. It seemed small for a 450 litre store, and appeared to have only 50mm of insulation rather than the 100mm we'd expected. |
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On the 9th the Solar Technologies team, led by Simon Bonfield, arrived to install the solar thermal panels and connect the solar loop to the thermal store. A lot of headscratching for a while, it seemed the three panels just wouldn't fit in the space left on the roof beside the solar PV panels, but with some juggling and a bit of tricky tile work by the Rysons team they were squeezed in. |
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While all the messing about with the solar panels was going on the new triple glazed windows and doors arrived from Latvia. We'd been warned that a fork lift truck would be needed to unload them, but there was no way we had the spce for that, so it was a case of manhandling them off one at a time. The largest unit took 9 of us to get it off the truck, including the Solar Technologies guys who realised we were desperate and helped out. Apologies to everyone except Chris Tom and John, these are the only photos we have of this epic effort. |
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One of the things that had been worrying us was finding a heating engineer who could integrate the thermal store, the solar and the log burner. This problem was solved by Chris, who brought in Michael Rennells - another Mick - who set to work with his son Sam. Mick is a highly experienced heating engineer who is now focussing a lot of effort into being able to install and integrate complex renewable energy systems. |
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A moment we had been waiting for - getting the old uPVC windows out and the new triple glazed timber ones in. It had taken us a long time to find a supplier of the right quality, at the right price and with the flexibility to make custom sizes, but we are very happy with the units from Greensteps - despite the problems getting them unloaded! |
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This is June's photo to prove that we don't work all the time,and the weather was pretty good too. |
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In the last week of June Dave and the Rysons team started on the insulation and weatherboarding to the first floor. We decicded to compromise on the amount of insulation - 25mm of Ecotherm rather than 50mm - because we didn't want to create too much of an overhang between the first and ground floors, but together with the cavity wall insulation and the triple glazed windows we hope that the overall heat loss performance of the first floor bedrooms will be good enough to avoid the need for radiators. |
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