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A few more finishing touches

Crofter

Entry posted by Crofter

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With the 2019 season now here, I've spent the last couple of weekends doing a bit of tarting up around the outside of the wee house. Little things that you don't think really matter, but the end result looks far more 'finished'.

I was never very sure how to complete the gable ends of the house- whether to box them in or not- but eventually decided to kill two birds with one stone and use the space for a log store. I think it looks pretty good, and it's tempting to do the same on every side of the house, although those elevations do see a lot more wind and rain.

My current obsession with processing my log pile is all down to a fantastic book I was given: 'Norwegian Wood- chopping, stacking, and drying wood the Scandinavian way'. Highly recommended, and an absorbing read even if you never intend to ever light a fire.

 

The other bit of work has been to create a gravel path around the side of the house, and so properly edge the gravel area underneath the house. The only downside of all this work is that it makes the lumpy lawn look even worse than it did before :D

 

SAM_1616.JPG

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Thedreamer

Yes, looks great

 

We have the same book, once done looking forward to chopping and stacking logs.

 

From an energy point of view, how has the house performed over the winter?

 

 

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Crofter
6 hours ago, Thedreamer said:

Yes, looks great

 

We have the same book, once done looking forward to chopping and stacking logs.

 

From an energy point of view, how has the house performed over the winter?

 

 

 

Well it was only inhabited for a few stays over winter (Christmas, New Year, and a couple of weekends in February) so I can't really make a fair comment.

The only form of background heating that was left on was that the water tank- which is within the heated envelope- got a boost overnight for either half an hour or a whole hour during the coldest spells of weather.

This was enough to elevate the temperature to a few degrees above ambient- I think the coldest I ever saw was around 7degC. Thanks to the MVHR there has been not even a hint of dampness, though. Our own house would never have tolerated getting that cold!

 

When it came to heating the place back up in advance of people arriving, I would put the stove on the morning, or if I was out at work would plug in the electric oil filled radiator. Either one of these was enough to get the house back up to around 20degC  by the time people checked in. I'm afraid I haven't been terrible scientific about measuring the energy input.

 

It's a reasonably efficient building, considerably in excess of BRegs minimum, but quite a long way from passive standard. The exposed underfloor, and the small overall size (which gives a high surface area to volume ratio) count against it. It's also quite hard to justify overly thick walls in a small house, as they eat up a lot of your footprint. My walls are about 330mm total thickness and I wouldn't have wanted to go any thicker.

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Redoctober

Just catching up with the various blogs and saw this. Wow, what a fantastic looking house. You must be well pleased.?

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