Crofter

I think a raised patio would be a bigger project than the house has been! There's a total of about 3 cube of concrete in the whole house. I guess a massive raised patio would be one more thing to stop it blowing away...

Done. SWMBO always said the only thing I did well was taking the p out of things.

More food for thought, thanks. I think I can work out the safety aspect. As viewed in the sketch, only the RHS half of the door opens, so the ballustrade that runs behind the shorter section of seating sticking out from the wall should be close enough to use as a handrail, with your left hand. Would need to replace the top wire with an actual wooden rail (maybe I need to do that all the way round actually). Not averse to making the decking a wee bit 'deeper' i.e. project out from the house a couple of feet more, especially if I drop it down by a second step. I'll spend a couple of minutes on Sketchup and come back with a MkII...

Glad it worked out, keep us posted with your project

Thanks all. That first draft has a 300mm drop because that is the thickness of the floor buildup of the house. But no reason not to drop further, except that it might complicate things slightly in terms of structure. Ballustrade will probably be my old 5mm stainless steel rigging wire from my boat, it's just lying around looking for a job. Will need some new end terminals but the non-yacht grade stuff is quite cheap. Glass would be nice but from the little research I've done looks too expensive.

I've got an 8ft wide tilt/slide door on the front of the house, which currently opens a metre above the ground- obviously not ideal! This is due to the house sitting on piers above a sloping site. The plan is to have some sort of decking out here, where you can enjoy the view over the loch. I'd like it to lead around the side as well so that I can put a bench for people to sit with some shelter from the wind. I've searched Google images for decking ideas but most decking projects are far bigger than I had in mind, and would look pretty silly next to such a small house. A really big deck would also dominate the view out of the window. And with the sloping site, the further the deck extends from the front of the house, the taller the legs supporting it will have to be. I've thrown together a crude sketch of one possible design. The decking is 300mm lower than the floor of the house, so the step at the door is actually where you sit. This helps keep the pier height to 1072mm and also makes it easier to drop down meet the garden at the side of the house. Have given no thought yet to how I actually put it together... the winder stairs at the corner are easy in Sketchup but I suspect a little tricky in the real world Is it too small? Is the integrated seating a daft idea? What would *you* do??

So is it better for me to pay four times as much to heat my house electrically, burning coal hundreds of miles away and losing energy in transmission, rather than burn locally sourced wood in a DEFRA approved stove?

Yes bit of a rant I admit. Just wanting to counter the starting point that use of wood burners should be cut down, penalised, etc. I don't deny that there is a problem in more densely populated places, but I would not support any kind of action that failed to recognise the geographical differences.

I'm paying 5% VAT on my lorry load on wood. To be honest I don't see any problem with using it as a fuel. We don't really get 'calm days' here, and my nearest neighbour to leeward is about five miles away. Plenty people burn peat or coal which I believe are considerably worse for air quality- based on what I see and smell coming out their chimneys. In my 76% efficiency log stove, the fuel works out at 2p/kWh which massively undercuts my other heating option, direct electric, at more than four times that price, even on cheap rate. No mains gas option up here, obviously. By contrast, the wood is grown here on the island so me buying it actually saves it being trucked hundreds of miles somewhere else. In an ideal world, I would live in a better insulated, draught-proofed home with low energy consumption. But I don't.

My tiny wee house is planned to have a single ring circuit plus of course the kitchen stuff, shower, etc. Intruiged now about radial circuits- I will of course get proper advice on this but talking very roughly, could I put the bedroom and lounge on the same radial (total of six double sockets) and then the two or three kitchen sockets on their own radial (that's where any high current stuff like kettles would be going). Just looking for ballpark yes /no. Assuming 2.5mm T&E, running in a service void, not within insulation.

Interesting. I take it the downside of 'too hot' is that parts of the stove may warp or even burn through? My understanding of the chemistry involved is that a hotter burn gasifies all of the volatiles and burns them off. A colder burn sends these energy rich compounds up the chimney, or leaves them as ash. Bad for efficiency, bad for your chimney. The instructions with my newest stove say that it must not spend prolonged periods burning at under 400 degrees- the temperature at which creosote/tar will combust. They specifically do not reccomend overnight burning at a low heat, which is something that I would agree with, for any stove.

Yes I'm aware of the dangers of keeping wood too close to the stove... it does make a huge difference though if you can get the moisture meter to read less than 10%. Suffice to say I would never leave it unattended. The increased efficiency is remarkable... I have sometimes pondered some sort of Heath-Robinson contraption where you suspend a basket of wood above the stove, on a counterweight, and once the water has been baked out of the wood it would swing out of the way. Somehow I don't think I would get it past SWMBO...

Thanks for the words of wisdom re stoves but I think I'm doing fine. My first stove was an Aarow which was OK... when I moved house I shopped around a bit more and ended up getting a Charnwood. Massive improvement, the airwash feeds via tubes in the top of the stove and the preheated air does a far better job of keeping the glass clear. The new house has a Burley stove rated at 89% efficiency. I cannot wait to get it fired up, it has been designed by someone who really understands the principles of how a fire should work (i.e. get it hot, keep it hot, nothing up the chimney except CO2 and H2O, ideally). I also bake all my firewood on a rack above the stove, so it is already hot and dry when I throw it in. Obviously this needs a bit of an eye kept on it, especially when wood has resin pockets in it. The smell lingers...

It is literally that or nowt. I'm not sure if you've been to the north west of Scotland but big spruce plantations are all we've got. Well I guess I could burn peat instead

Haven't got them yet but judging by what I see stacked up locally, they are full grown conifers so something like 30-45cm diameter. I'd better make sure the lorry puts them in the right spot, I'm not shifting 24t of wood in anything other than very small pieces! (by the way, my BOTE calculation suggests that this load will keep my little stove burning continuously at full chat for about a year and a half).

Tbh, as Dave says, I'm not going to be lifting these logs anywhere due to the size- so probably no need for a bench. I could start out with the splitting axe, until I get an idea of how knotty the wood is and can choose an appropriate splitting machine.

Good call on the electric chainsaw- somehow seems less daunting even though logically it's every bit as dangerous, perhaps more so since there is a 230v cable to chop through or trip up on But that's psychology for you. I've got a decent splitting axe, it was my FiL's, who has upgraded to a very nice hydraulic splitter. I learned how to swing one working on farms in NZ. Satisfying for sure, but you feel it for a few days afterwards. Think I may pony up for a cheap splitter but will check out reviews etc. The logs will be stacked quite close to my house so I need to work out how and where to have my processing area. The new house will have a large, dry, space underneath that I can fill with split logs- should swallow a few tonnes.

Looking at getting a full load of logs for firewood, I think they are delivered in 3m lengths, so will need chopped into rounds and then split. Interestingly I work out the cost as 1.5p/kWh or 2p once stove efficiency is taken into account. Considerably better than the electric storage heaters I am currently using! In the spirit of starting as I mean to go on, I think I will need to invest in some machinery for processing. Somehow I think the novelty of chainsaw + axe will wear thin after a couple of winters. And chainsaws freak me out a bit anyway. So wondering if anybody has any experience of a log saw, e.g. http://www.screwfix.com/p/scheppach-hs410-405mm-swivel-log-saw-2-2kw/3014k Followed by a hydraulic splitter- how much do I need to spend here? I see they start at around £150. Cheers

Interesting... but I presume any facilities blocks would still need PP and a building warrant? And normal requirements apply for road access? So only really of use to someone who has an existing road access into a field, and is looking to attract people who are happy to be, erm, self contained when it comes to their ablutions.

That's a heck of a price for a fencepost though. To be honest a decent wooden post can last 20 years or more, although it all depends on the quality of the wood, the treatment, and how wet the ground is. Is there any room to brace the fence? That would help it stand up to the winds.

Is there something stopping him from being able to dig a hole? Concrete is not scary, you can use postcrete if you really want.

Can't say definitively, but all the ones I've looked at show through-wall mounting, with a straight duct run. There may be condensate drain issues if you were to mount the unit in the ceiling with a bend in the duct.

Erm, no, sarking is pressure treated softwood. Well I suppose you might have found it made of larch but that would be rather unusual! Tbh it might outlast the locally grown larch that I've used...

Just make sure the duct size is compatible with the sort of unit you are likely to install... shouldn't be a big problem though. Bigger ducts tend to be quieter, by the way.

Cedar? Very posh... I thought you were using sarking boards?