Slightly disillusioned...

Its been a while.... things have been progressing very slowly, and costs have been escalating to a point where we've had to scale back on the ambition somewhat! Oh, and christmas... and skiing.... and hobbies... :cP

We've (obviously!) had a little disagreement with our structural engineer regarding the supporting "non-supporting" wall, however this has been resolved with the installation of an RSJ - its only taken 2 months...! I should explain how this has happend.... On originally viewing the house, there were some fairly substantial cracks on some of the internal walls, however the previous owners had commissioned a structural survery showing that these walls were non-supporting, and the cracks were therefore superficial. We had to commission another report on buying the house, and asked about removing one of the walls completely. We were told it was OK, so thats what we did.... Only to find a supporting beam on top of the removed wall.... Doh! I think it was a fairly easy mistake for the engineer to make, and he has put it right, but it has set us back somewhat....

The biggest problem is that this has held up any work on the ground floor - such as plastering, laying the floor, unpacking, etc.... so we've effectively been living out of boxes in what will be the study! We're hoping a plasterer can start next week, which will mean we're finally able to start making the house ours! Effectively we've been living in a building site since August.

The first floor bathroom has also had a few problems with wrong parts being delivered again and again! I think its driven the plumber mad...! However the room fabric is now complete, and we just need the shower tray to be laid, bath levelled, sink installed, room plastered, tiled, electrics installed, and then the shower fitted...! Not much huh? We're also going to try to self-install a glass brick shower screen - for which the glass bricks arrived this morning.

So maybe - just maybe - there is light at the end of the tunnel.

With regards to the environmentally friendly stuff... well...

Using sheeps wool seems to have gone out the window for the moment, and we've resorted to using recycled glass fibre wool instead (at only £6 for 2 large rools of it from B&Q it would have been silly not to, particularly with our increasinly tight budget) , but we have fairly effectively insulated the loft space. We've also floored it using insulated floorboards from B&Q, so hopefully we've effectively added another 200mm on top of the 150-200mm that was already there. We now need to figure out the best way of insulating the eves.

The plan for a solar collector system has also had to be put on hold, but we have had a 210l solar twin coil cylinder installed! This has been heavily subsidised by the plumbing company due to the number of errors they made in supplying one that would fit where we were originally installing it. Its now installed in the bathroom which is not ideal - it does take up a fair bit of space, and required a redesign. However we got a lot more for our money than we would ever have expected!

I'm going to come back to the solar collector thing in a later topic - there is so much conflicting information and belief out there!

So why am I disillusioned? Well... It seems that to save money, and to try to be as environmentally conscious as possible, you've got to have money to spend on such things - They're not cheap! They're not particularly well subsidised either - except perhaps - currently - basic rolled fibre insulation (and only because the energy companies have been forced to subsidise it!). Thats all very well for insulating your loft, but what about walls, eves, floors, etc?

Insulation is of course the most cost effective thing you can do to save money, and is really a precursor to installing such things as solar, heat source, etc. Perhaps the companies who provide solar or ground source should be providing free complete insulation as standard - then they could start to justify their hugely inflated prices

I'm also disillusioned by the disinformation, and the way well known companies try to exploit their potential customers. Maybe thats just to be expected of door-to-door sales though?

However its not something I'm going to give up on! I just need money...!