The problem of how exactly to provide Westacre with heating and hot water is not an easy one to solve. The main difficulty is that there are many unknowns.
Our first strategy for making the house environmentally friendly and cheap to heat is to insulate it as well as we can. We will be installing high spec windows and external wall insulation.
The trouble is that, once all that is in place, it’s hard to know how much heating we’ll actually need. How much heat will we lose on an average day? We won’t really know until we’ve tried it.
Initially, we thought we would have a wood burner with a back boiler to provide us with most of our heating and hot water. The problem with that is that either
1) you have to light fires in the boiler to get hot water, even if it’s warm in the house, and if we don’t need much heating, the room will soon get too hot.
2) you have to install a sophisticated high efficiency burner that will put 90% of its heat in to the boiler. Trouble with those is that we don’t like the sparse aesthetics of them.
In order to give ourselves the rustic looking wood burner we want, as well as a steady temperature in the house, we need to think of some alternatives.
The current idea is to have more solar hot water panels on the roof, so that most of our hot water and heating comes from that source. And for insurance against many consecutive days without sun, we’ll need a bigger heat store than we originally planned.
Heat stores work like this:
We were originally thinking of having a heat store with a 300 litre capacity. Now we’re considering 1000 litres.
These things are big. I’d even say huge. At 2.1m high and with 1.05m diametre, they take up a lot of space.
So where in the house can we lose one of those?
The thinking continues.
When you are living in the middle of a huge life change, everything seems pretty straightforward. But I can imagine that, from the outside looking in, our madness can be a touch confusing. So here it is, for the sake of clarity.
1. Roger’s bungalow.This will be Roger’s new home. He bought it about a year ago and we started renovating it about 6 months ago.
Roger’s bungalow, aka ‘the bung’.
We could have given it a lick of paint and Roger could have moved in months ago, but Roger wanted some alterations, and once we started taking down partitions, we discovered that quite a lot of things could do with replacement and repairs.
So some walls have come down and new ones have gone in. Alex has completely replaced the water and central heating pipework. The front door and porch have been moved, and French windows added at the back. The place has been completely rewired and replastered by professionals.
Things have taken rather longer than we expected at the bungalow, but it has all been very useful experience. Now we are at the decoration stage at last. We are hoping to move Roger into his new home at the beginning of February.
2. Westacre.This is the house where Alex grew up. It has been Roger’s home for over 40 years. Alex and Hilde bought it about a year ago, and intend to make our home and our life here.
Westacre
While ‘the bung’ is awaiting completion, Westacre is still Roger’s home. Alex and Hilde are staying here as his guests, and everything pretty much still looks like it always did. Once Roger and his belongings move out, Alex and Hilde can start thinking about making it their own.
The first stage will be to turn the big living room into a bedsit apartment, where we will live while we do the big Westacre eco-renovation project.
3. Harrow. This was Alex and Hilde’s home for 17 years. Once we have moved our belongings to Westacre and done some necessary maintenance, we will let this house, hopefully to some nice long term tenants.
Our house in Harrow
About 6 weeks ago, we replaced the original wooden windows with UPVC and double glazing so our tenants can keep their heating bills low.
When the winter weather clears, we will be taking frequent journeys with the TARDIS and its trailer to transport our belongings up the M40, saying our final goodbyes to Harrow.
Right now, we are working towards a 1st February deadline to complete work in the bungalow. We are making good progress, and are hopeful we will make it. We need to
– finish tiling in the shower room and en suite.
– install the last bits of bathroom furniture.
– put down wooden floors in the living room and hall area.
– paint most of the walls.
– lay carpets.
It’s all very satisfying work and we are still enjoying ourselves doing it all. Which is just as well, because once this is finished, we start all over again at Westacre.
Renovating Roger’s bungalow has been great experience for us. We have both attempted things we’ve never done before and we have learned a lot about plastering, tiling, grouting, plumbing and the rest. All useful stuff that we’ll be able to apply directly to the Westacre project.
On the other hand, the bungalow work has taken much, much longer than we ever expected. Now, finally, we are able to see the end of it, as the bungalow slowly starts to look less like a building site and more like a place where someone could live.
This week, we have made great progress. The kitchen is virtually complete, and the rooms are emptying of building materials and bits of furniture. Walls are being painted and shower screens installed.
Alex hiding evidence of Roger’s minor surgery in the new bungalow kitchen.
We have made an estimate of how much longer we think it will take before Roger can move in, and we think we can do it in two more weeks from today. That’s by 1st February. The last big jobs are the en suite and the floors. And quite a bit more paint.
By the end of the month, we won’t have a perfect show bungalow, but we will hopefully have a home for Roger that is liveable-in, with a few touches of DIY yet to do.
Whatever happens, we are now at the very satisfying stage where you can see very clear changes every day. Keep your fingers crossed for us – we need your moral support.
For starters: A Happy New Year to everyone who is reading this. We wish you happiness, prosperity and deep connection in 2013.
We celebrated the New Year with friends in London. As we’re in Harrow, we’re taking the opportunity to do a few things towards letting the house.
Before Christmas, we had the windows replaced. The original wooden windows went, and UPVC double glazingcame.
UPVC windows with a Uw value of 1
We’ve been resisting this for years. We wanted to keep as many original features in the house as we could. But looking after wooden windows requires more time and effort than we had to spare. The result was a set of rotten window sills that couldn’t be saved. So we took the plunge and replaced them.
There are advantages to this. Our tenants will save money on their heating bills – we can feel the difference quite clearly. And that makes the house easier to let. So it’s good for the environment and good for us.
The disadvantage is a piece of history that is gone. Along with many hours of Hilde’s careful painting work over the years.
While the builders have been very, very careful and hardly did any damage at all indoors, they did hack off some of the external render and replaced it. Today, Alex has been whitewashing those new bits of pebble dash on the ground floor.
Tomorrow, we’re going to the local hire shop to get a ladder to reach the pebble dash upstairs. The TARDIS and trailer are at Westacre, so we’re going to have to carry it. Wish us luck – not for the last time this year!
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Have you had double glazing put in? What was your experience? Did it reduce your energy bills? Did it change the character of your house?
Please comment below.