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...!

I had a vision...

Ever since I was a teenager and the whole "green" movement really kicked off in the UK, I've been at least vaguely environmentally aware. I've even got a green Blue Peter badge to prove it! However as you move out of your idealistic teens and enter the real world, such thoughts quickly vanish... Certainly in my case they vanished for around 15 years, 5 house moves over 650 miles of glorious British countryside (or smelly noisy wasteland if you count Slough...), 4 jobs, and 9 cars. As I've gone on, I've perhaps grown less and less satidfied with my life as I've moved further and further away from my lifes ambitions...

Until last year, when in a magnificent show of defiance (or stupidity?), I said stuff it! I applied for and got a job I knew backwards for a company I believed in which resulted in a 160 mile move with my wife and dog, a large pay cut (and a complete career change and pay cut for my wife!), selling our house of 10 years in the height of a housing slump, and leaving all our established friends for a new life! We did of course move to one of the most picturesque parts of the country - sunny Devon. I had worked for this company in a previous incarnation, and we both had friends around here so it wasn't a complete wrench thankfully!

Having rented an 1830's Devon Cob house when we moved down here during the height of winter, we became very aware of how horribly expensive the house was to run, and of the increasing cost of both gas and electricity. I was again becoming more and more environmentally aware, but this time from the much more practical point of view of wanting to save as much money as possible rather than just an idealistic notion of wanting to "save the planet"

So we've spent the last 6 months trying to find the perfect house. The housing crash seems to have passed Devon by, but we did eventually find such a house in the most unlikely of guises! Not a period thatched cottage in a quaint village or a victorian townhouse by the sea, but a 1960's chalet style house slap bang in the middle of Oldfolksville in a nice market town in East Devon! We think we've reduced the average age of the residents in the street by 20 years...! However this house had so much scope, a large garden, and the most fantastic panoramic views all the way to Dartmoor! It was also rated C/D on the Home Information Pack - a document most likely ignored by most, but one that seems to have become increasinly important in my drive to save money!

The HIP recommendations are a good basis to start from, and a good basis on which to start a blog! My aim is to make this house energy efficient as inexpensively as I can! I don't have a big budget, I'm not handy, I have no knowledge of green or energy efficient technology - I'll hopefully pick all that up as I go along. I have a lot of preconceptions - many of which will be wrong! However I want to share my experiences as I go through what I expect to be a long and difficult journey, and I hope that if people do read this, that they contribute their own experienes and advice which may help me (and others) through what should hopefully be worthwhile endeavour!