Hi from Skye

[DavidWright]

A quickly edited version of my original eBuild first post...

I'm not self-building, at least not from scratch! I am however gradually "greening" our 1970 block cavity wall, suspended floor, bungalow on Skye.

The house was originally a self-build of sorts, based on a standard "department" plan (IIRC it's a "No. 5", though I've never found an official reference). One of the guys involved in building it says that horizontals were judged by a half-empty bottle and verticals with a wet rope (& it's pretty windy round here) and I'm pretty sure he's only half joking!

I've no relevant training, but I'm a "practical" sort and experience with trades over the years has led me towards the "if I take my time & do the research I stand a better chance of getting what I want, how I want, if I do it my self" attitude for most things...

We are "all electric", with the fancy local "Total Heating Total Control" economy tariff (All the heating is on separate circuits & it's nothing like E7). When we arrived there was no fixed heating (& the house was built without a chimney). We expected to fit an oil or LPG wet system, but one of the plumbers asked "Have you considered electric"? As we had a clean sheet & were going to be doing a full re-wire anyway, we "considered electric" & it was the way we chose to go. Doesn't suit everyone, but it suits us. It may help that I'm the sort who's happy to be continually tweaking settings (& have the house so full of sensors & logging I can tell you the temp in every room, under the floor, in the loft...).

Over the years since we decided to "green" the place and the way we use it we've reduced non-heating consumption by well over 50% (we average 5-6kWh/day usage - rather less for import thanks to the 4kWp of PV on the roof. We have an export meter, so we can properly assess usage). On the heating side we are down to around 5kWh/day/HDD12 in winter. We get a lot of passive solar gain (even at 57N). We added a big solar space (aka conservatory - unheated , of course) to the WSW facing front a couple of years ago. That worked out so well we then added a similar one to the "back". As I write this (May 2016) the day time mean is still only around 10C or less, but as it's bright we don't need any heating.
 

[Stones]

Welcome aboard the good ship buildhub!  Good to see you.

[Guest Alphonsox]

Welcome back