Finally, at long last, we ordered our new windows for Westacre.
It took us months to get it right. This is the single largest expense for our eco-renovation project, and we had to try different compromises between energy efficiency, cost, and aesthetics.
We got quotes from several high-end window companies. We were after windows that would give us a Uw value of 0.8 or lower. And we knew we would have to pay for the privilege of having well insulated windows.
Our experience with the different companies was variable, but we ended up with a few likely contenders, including Uniwin, based in Scotland, and Russell Timbertech, who had competitive prices.
A local company, Spectrum, based just 20 minutes’ drive from here, sells and installs Internorm windows. They were friendly and helpful from the start and prompt in their replies to our e-mails. So although they didn’t give us the cheapest quote, we decided to go for known product quality and support a local business.
With Spectrum’s help, we went through a number of permutations in our requirements.
At first, we thought we wouldn’t be able to afford aluminium clad wooden windows and we were looking at alu-clad uPVC. But with the discounts Spectrum was offering at the time, the price difference wasn’t that great, and we decided to go for the wood after all. This gives us a better insulated window with a Uw value in the region of 0.7.
We also considered the final look of the renovated house. Having looked at houses of roughly the style and age we are trying to emulate, we noticed that many of them have white casements inside black frames. They look very smart and trying to copy that look would help us get the Edwardian period feel we’re after.
Turns out, though, that opening windows are quite a lot more expensive than fixed ones. All those moving parts do add to the cost. To remain somewhere near our budget, we had to minimise the number of opening windows in our order. And if our windows didn’t open, we couldn’t have them in two colours.
The final order we placed with Spectrum is for all white windows at the front of the house, and dark grey for the side and the back. They will be aluminium clad wooden windows, that will give us great insulation and, hopefully, a good looking house.
We are expecting delivery and installation towards the end of November.
The nights are drawing in. The weather has cooled significantly, and along with an abundant harvest of fruit, the first colours are appearing on the trees. Autumn Equinox is upon us.
Just yesterday, the Westacre project rounded an important corner. We paid a deposit for new windows. It has taken us a long time to work out a compromise between what we wanted and what we were prepared to spend, but we’re happy with the outcome.
Trouble is that every other aspect of Westacre’s insulation depends on the windows being installed: everything else connects to them. And Winter is coming. Hopefully, we’ll at least have better windows by the time it gets cold.
With the help of some friends, I have been working hard on the video content of the Ritual Toolkit course. It is all looking very beautiful, and I can’t wait to share it with you. The launch date very much depends on when Alex can write the software for us to get it to you.
On 22 September, the Sun slips from the sign of Virgo into Libra, marking the Autumn Equinox. It is a brief moment of suspension between the light and the dark. In this newsletter, you will find a meditation for that time.
On 28 September, a remarkable event is taking place in Glastonbury. Have you heard the Warrior’s Call? More below.
May this Autumn bless you with
Hilde
## In this issue
– Suspended: a meditation for the Autumn Equinox
– The Warrior’s Call
– Ways to stay in touch with Westacre
## Suspended: a meditation for the Autumn Equinox
The days have been slowly getting shorter since the Summer Solstice. At first, the change only took seconds off each day. Now, close to the Equinox, each day is four minutes shorter than the last. The nights draw in fast.
Very briefly, in the rush of change, the night is equal to the day, dark balanced with light. The Equinox. A brief moment of perfect poise before we fall into growing darkness.
As an opportunity to experience that moment of stillness, I offer this meditation.
Go to your place of meditation. Take your time to settle into a comfortable position. Take a few breaths and become aware of your body. Allow it to relax into the floor or the chair you are sitting on. Let go of the tensions of the day.
Close your eyes, and find yourself standing in front of a beautiful old apple tree. Its old, bent branches reach up to the sky, and its canopy is filled with hundreds of blushing fruit. See, feel and sense that tree. Speak your greeting.
Feel the edge of the tree’s field of energy. Enter its space respectfully. Walk up to its trunk and sit down against it. Take some time to just lean against the tree, to feel its presence.
When you feel settled and relaxed, allow roots to grow down among the roots of the tree. Let it show you how to be rooted. Rest in the solid Earth.
Now let your consciousness rise up into the trunk of the tree. Become aware of its upright strength. There is no boundary between your body and that of the tree. Feel strong and solid.
With an out-breath, let your consciousness stretch into the tree’s branches. Reach up into its smallest twigs, into the sky.
Become aware of the tree’s leaves, touched by sunshine and wind.
Feel the fruit of the apple tree. This year’s harvest is plentiful. Many fruits are growing and ripening on this tree. Feel their fullness, their lush fruitiness.
Concentrate your consciousness on just one apple. Feel it. Be aware of the stalk that connects it to the tree. Sense its flesh, getting sweeter under the touch of the Sun. Notice its skin, yellow-green and blushing red. Its little crown, where a flower bloomed and died. And five pips at its heart.
Be that apple. Allow yourself to ripen. Allow yourself to sweeten and expand. Become your most fruitful self under the warmth of the Sun. Relax, suspended from the tree.
Rest and be still. Relax and surrender to this moment. Stay there as long as you like.
When you are ready to return, feel the stalk of your apple coming loose from the branch. Suddenly, you drop to the Earth. Take some time to settle there, to become grounded in the Earth.
Reach for the roots of the tree, and your own roots that you put down amongst them. Let your consciousness rise through the roots back into your body.
Feel yourself as separate from the tree. Feel your own integrity, riper and sweeter now. When you are ready, return to your place of meditation.
If you need grounding, eating an apple is a wonderful way to do that now.
## The Warrior’s Call
In the last newsletter, I spoke about my concern about fracking, the controversial practice of fossil fuel extraction that is officially called hydraulic fracturing.
In very real terms, it comes down to using poisoned water to crack open the body of the Earth so that gas or oil can escape.
It just doesn’t sound like a good idea. There is a long list of risks to the local environment. And both the process and burning the fuel obtained will contribute to climate change. We can’t afford either.
Many of us in the Pagan community share these concerns. Many of us have signed petitions and shared their concerns through social media and in conversation. A few have gone to Balcome and participated in direct action.
One Druid decided this threat is so severe that something special needed doing. He dreamt up the idea of doing a ritual on Glastonbury Tor for the protection of the Land. He put a call out on Facebook, hoping to get 50-odd people to join him. He named it the Warrior’s Call.
But word spread. Soon, dozens of people reacted. Hundreds shared the event with their friends. The whole thing expanded way beyond expectations. It got too big for the top of Glastonbury Tor. Satellite rituals will be taking place at the same time across Britain and around the world.
Right now, about 1700 people have said they will be in Glastonbury at noon on 28 September to take part in a public ritual to save Albion from fracking. I will be one of them, and so will many of my friends.
We will raise protective energy that will spread across the Land. A strong shield of power to save the Earth from more damage done by humans.
Never before has such a large group made ritual together for one common purpose. Would you like to be part of this historic event? Answer the Warrior’s Call.
Www.facebook.com/Warriorscall
## Stay in touch and help the Westacre Project
As things are finally happening on the renovation project, you can follow us step by step on Twitter.
Several times a day, Hilde tweets inspiration, news and useful links on environmental issues. Her blog posts and Facebook updates from the Westacre Page are also posted there.
You can find us at twitter.com, as @HildeWestacre
Please follow us there, and retweet anything that appeals to you. This will help us find the people who are interested in the Westacre Project and the Spiritual Centre, so we can inspire them to take their own steps towards connected living.
Our contact details and our presence on social media can be found here:
http://www.westacre.org.uk/contact
I’m having second thoughts about using Polyisocyanurate (PIR) boards for our external wall insulation (EWI). PIR is the best commonly available insulator, so it will enable us to get the most insulation into the limited thickness that we have available. Unfortunately, I’ve just learned that PIR has some problems that may cause it to deteriorate with age. Firstly, it is liable to shrinkage, which means that gaps might open up between the boards. Not only would that compromise thre insulation, but it might show through the render, and spoil the external appearance of our house. Worse, PIR can deteriorate if it gets damp, which is something that is hard to rule out. Finally, the gasses trapped in the foam could leak out over time, further degrading the material’s performance. Is that bound to happen? No. But it’s certainly got me considering alternatives…
Here’s a useful table of common insulators from the Energy Saving Trust.
The most common alternative to PIR is Extruded Polystyrene (EPS). It’s about 30% less efficient, which means our EWI would need to be 150mm thick, rather than the 100mm of PIR that we were planning. It’s generally very stable, so there should be no shrinkage or damp problems, and it’s a bit cheaper too. Also it’s much more environmentally friendly to manufacture EPS, which is a bonus. However, this post on aecb.net contains a report of someone who’s EPS did suffer from shrinkage, so I’m still not 100% confident that’s safe.
The same aecb.net post reports that expanded polystyrene (XPS) boards were totally stable over the same period. XPS is the “normal” white poystyrene that everyone is familiar with as a packaging material. It’s an even worse insulator than EPS, but it it saves me from having to tear down & replace the who EWI in 10-20 years time, perhaps it’s worth it?
Finally, there are ways to reduce some of the risks with PIR. For example, if you use two layers of boards, with the joints staggered, then any shrinkage does not compromise the insulating layer. Also, most of the shrinkage happens shortly after manufacture, so the boards can be “aged” before use, so that most of the shrinkage has already happened before it’s fixed to the wall. Of course, those strategies would both make the project more expensive and more labour intensive.
Right now, I’m leaning towards EPS. But I need to do more reading around.
There are other harvests, too. Westacre’s spiritual centre has sown the seed of its first e-mail course and gained a over 70 subscribers. That includes you – thank you!
The renovation project is still in its infancy, but we have gathered a lot of knowledge in the last few weeks. It will give us confidence as we make potentially pricey decisions.
The main course of this Westacre Newsletter is a Lughnasadh meditation. Enjoy the ripening of the season, and let it help you consider your own harvests.
Blessings of the ripening apples,
Hilde
## In this issue
– Meditation with the Summer Sun
– Featured link
– Stay in touch and help the Westacre Project
## Meditation with the Summer Sun
As always, this meditation is best done outside. Choose a spot in the sunshine or in dappled shade – be sensible about what your skin can take). If your meditation time is at night or it happens to be raining, choose a quiet spot indoors and let your imagination provide the sunshine.
Settle down in a comfortable upright position. Turn your attention to your breath, without trying to alter it at all. Just notice your breath as it is at this moment.
With each out breath, allow your body to relax. Let your weight settle into the lower half of your body. Feel the places where your body touches the Earth.
As you relax more deeply, allow roots to grow from the base of your spine. Let them comfortably spread into the soil beneath you.
Feel the life force of the Earth as it is this day. Its green abundance is all around you. Feel the Earth’s power to sustain this riot of life.
Let the power of the Earth flow up through your body. Let it nourish and replenish every cell in your body.
When you feel strongly connected with the Earth, let branches grow from the top of your head, from your shoulders, into the air around you. Relax out into the air, stretching your branches into the sunlit sky as widely as feels comfortable.
Take your awareness along your branches into the smallest twigs. Feel how buds are growing there. Bring your full awareness into one of those tight buds.
As a bud on the twig of a tree, let the sunshine warm you. Feel how the light of the sun makes you swell and loosen.
Breathe easily, as you open, stretching delicate petals into the light of the sun. Radiate with flower beauty.
Take some time being a flower in spring. Enjoy being open and receptive. Allow life to happen to you.
After a while, you begin to feel old and tired. Your petals gently loosen and drop to the Earth.
But as the sun shines on you, more warmly now, you feel yourself swell. Feel how you are growing into a tiny green fruit.
Feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. Feel how it ripens you to your fullness. Take as much time as you like to ripen in the sunshine.
Feel what it is like to be a ripening fruit under the radiant sun. Allow yourself to soften, to sweeten, to grow. Surrender to the warm sunshine.
When you feel ready, draw your awareness back from the fruit into the branches of the tree.
Slowly travel back to the trunk, and feel your own body sitting in meditation.
Let your awareness sink into your roots, into the good Earth. Stay there until you feel settled and completely at home in your body.
Write or draw in your notebook about the sensation of ripening in the sun. Have something to eat and drink and return to your day.
## Featured link
Rachel W. Cole
Rachel is an American life coach with a unique angle on teaching people, and women in particular, about self-love. She speaks of seeking fulfilment in life in terms of what we hunger for and how we feed ourselves. Through this metaphor, she encourages us to listen to our body’s urges and desires, and to find ways to feed our starving souls.
The other day, her post about using terms of endearment for ourselves, struck a chord with me:
http://rachelwcole.com/2013/07/16/terms-of-endearment/
## Stay in touch and help the Westacre Project
As we work on renovating our 1930s semi, we aim to share our new-found knowledge about ecorenovation and energy saving retrofits. If we can inspire just a few more people to modify their houses to save on fossil fuels, we can benefit the Earth and all living beings.
Roughly every week, the Westacre blog publishes a new article about an aspect of our renovation project. So far, we have covered topics like the choices we are making about insulation materials, the aesthetics of our renovation project, and tips on removing a wasps’ nest from your working area. Check out http://www.westacre.org.uk/category/project/
All these posts are publicised on social media, including Twitter. You can stay up to date by following @HildeWestacre.
You can do a lot to help us spread the word. Follow Hilde on Twitter and strike up a conversation. Retweet anything you find remotely interesting. This will help us a lot to grow our audience and inspire more people to lower their carbon emissions for the good of all beings.
Our contact details and our presence on social media can be found here:
http://www.westacre.org.uk/contact