Lesgrandepotato

Photos by lunchtime? You’ll have it sorted by lunchtime. Crack on with it man!

Zoom in on this one, we missed lining up this window with the one above but about 100mm the cheeks were made up in cut block. You can see them peeping behind the expanding metal on the left side

Maybe I’m being thick here but can’t it just be blocked up with lightweight blocks? Cut to suit and fed in. It’s all getting rendered right?

We have a mixture... downstairs is kitchen /living / dining room all open plan. Then utility, guest bed and en-suite and garage as well. Upstairs has 3 beds, family bath and a lounge.

Thinking about it, that’s exactly how our internal heated log store is working. We have space for a couple of dumpies under the stairs and it’s kept tippy top by being heated and further dried.

This led to our first post move in disaster. We got in for the 22nd Dec, set up the tree, laid out the presents under it and went to bed. Turns out putting chocolates on a heat source....

I don’t think I could go back to Rads after UFH. It’s a fabulous feeling of luxury.

That’s exactly what I do!

The last wooden garage I had was very prone to condensation until I’d dramatically opened up the air flow in it. Which did make it a tad drafty

That’s the plan. Couple of peltons on 75mm flexible mdpe and see how she goes. Feels a worthwhile endeavour and could! half our energy use for space and hot water. It’s not energy neutral but it won’t ruin the location and it seems an easy install.

We do little and often (half a tank) with the oil club when the rate looks ok. We have a 1200l capacity which will pretty much run all year depending how much you trust the watchman gauge. In terms of flow that’s a bit variable, but we have decent head. There is the ruin of a 17th century mill in the back garden and we have an easy 40-60ft drop available. The flow isn’t huge, but come winter there’s no way your going to stand up in it even though it’s only a foot deep or so and three feet wide. Attached picture shows the cotton/corn mill pre ruination in the 1900’s i don’t know how much power it takes to run a cotton mill but I’d hazard its a couple of hundred watts minimum ?

We haven’t done the cavities. Chronic fear of damp ingress given our damp Cumbrian location!

I don’t know. Hence the question. I know we’ve made improvements as we’ve renovated but I have no idea how efficient a modern BR building is. I’d be surprised if we’d passed it based upon the basics we’ve done.

So working it up a bit further. Assuming I can run for 4mths a year. Taking a 1kw unit, that’s 2880 kWh. Its a moderate gain, but not at all dominant. So we probably need to look at pair of 1kw units. That’s circa 5.5k which based upon current back of a fag packet calcs would be of interest.

All good points, we ordered 500l as we were at 50% on the gauge. It’s a 1200 l tank and it’s now 9/10ths full.

We do have smart heating control and not insignificant sized thermal store to get the best out of the boiler. But as you say it’s hardly passivehouse specs, hence wanting to know if the figures could be about right.

Ok ok, the house is heated to 19 degrees on the stats. It’s been renovated but only to a basic level of insulation. We have 60internal celotex, triple glazed windows and 500mm of earth wool in the loft. That’s a start but it’s not a huge difference from stock.

I’ve been tracking (loosely) our oil usage to get a feel for what our energy demand is, the idea being to supplement the oil with a pico hydro rig over the winter months when the beck is flowing well. So, it’s April. I’ve just filled up with 500l of oil. Our last fill up was late Nov/ early Dec I reckon that means we’ve used 600l of oil in that period. So that would suggest an annual usage I’d say about 1200l. I think a litre of oil contains 11kwh of energy? Assuming say an 85% system efficiency. That would suggest I’ve used 13200kwh * .85 of heating energy for the year. So about 11000kwh. The house is an updated 70s build circa 2500sqft + internal garage unheated. Do those figures sound about right?

Its for precisely this reason that in periods of heavy weather I cling film all the bowls over. #paranoia

Any chance of a floor plan so we have more vicarious building thrills while trying to solve?

Is the site flat? We need to know where that datum comes from. A 12” slope could find you the space you need.

I can’t take all the credit for ours, it was driven by finding a structural engineer who was up for solving the problem creatively. We ended up with a step in the landing but it’s a worthy compromise

You can play with this internally without really anyone noticing. We converted an existing building so the internal height was set. With the room sizes downstairs we wanted more height (room is 10 * 4m) then double height. We wanted to feel high, so we went to 2200mm on the French doors, and 2350 on the front doors. The height here is 2480. The upstairs lounge is 8 * 4 so we wanted to keep a decent height this is 2400. The bedrooms / bathrooms are all around 2340 or so. They all feel right, but I wouldn’t put a big room with a low ceiling. We also focused on taking out all downstands to give an illusion of height, and further to this deleted all the ceiling roses to again drive this illusion.

Is it not just a little paint line over the joints? That’s what I’m doing on this with the adjustable suspension parts

I don’t see why it can’t be ducted out to there. But an additional 180sqm is significant and you might find its easier to have two smaller installations? If not it might all be a bit commercial spec?