Last week we had cavity wall insulation installed. It's well worth anyone doing, as there's grants available in the UK (some people even get it completely free!), and even if there weren't it would pay for itself in heating costs within a couple of years. Make sure you get it done by a reputable installer though - ask your local council who they use. Our installers turned up early morning, and unloaded bales of insulation material:
These are fed into a machine in the back of the installers' van, which shreds the material...
and blows it down a hose into the wall:
Before filling the walls the installers drilled a couple of holes with a core drill and put in vents. One is required to let air in for the wood stove we're having installed shortly, and the other is to provide ventilation for the place where I'm planning to install a lead-acid battery to connect to solar panels for off-grid electricity.
We've also had our new water cylinder arrive, which has two coils in it - one for the wood stove's boiler, and another for solar water heating, which will also be coming soon. For now though, it's just sitting in a bedroom waiting for the plumber...
Mike
Related posts:
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Eco-refurbishment - cavity wall insulation
Friday, 14 November 2008
Water, water everywhere
Sorry for the lack of posts in the past couple of weeks - I'm working full time for a short period while work is busy, so not getting up to the wood very much. Only one more week though, and then the coppicing gets going again.
We had a lot of rain on Monday, and the streams are flowing in the wood again now. Tracy popped up on Tuesday and took some pictures. First though, the river outside our house also got pretty high:
Our winter stream in the wood starts at our border with Dome Wood, and flows into the cant we cut last winter.
On the way it flows under a root plate of a windblown birch - the trees were removed last winter, but we used a log to prop the root plate up, as we though it was an interesting feature. 
The stream then meanders through the wood, passing just below our shelter.
After which it goes down a mini-waterfall into the culvert under the main ride:
And comes out the other side.
After this it carries on through the wood and eventually onto the wayleave, where most of it goes into a drainage ditch, although the track is still pretty wet:
Here;'s a short video, first of the stream in Sweep Wood (which my parents own, and borders ours), and then of the stream at the culvert in our own wood:
Autumn is well and truly here now. The leaves are almost all brown on the oaks and the coppice regrowth, and have gone completely from the more mature coppice.
We're up at the wood briefly tomorrow to collect some firewood, weather permitting, and off to visit a friend's wood on Sunday.
Mike
