Blog posts by catherined

Work starts on the main walls

The house is starting to look quite cosy now as the insulation is being fixed on to the main walls of the house. A mesh is then fitted onto the outside of the insulation to provide a key for the render.

One of the challenges is fitting the fairly solid and rigid insulation around all the things on the walls. The outside light needed to be removed and the insulation fitted around the cable. The gas meter is on an outside wall so will need to be insulated around. The flue for the gas boiler needs to be extended to accommodate the extra depth of the insulation and then have the insulation fitted around it.

Posted on July 09, 2008 at 2:23 p.m.

Tags: flue,  insulation,  solid walls 

The lower insulation is applied

The brickwork below the damp-proof course has now been insulated with Foamglas and a membrane is being fitted on top to form a barrier between this and the rest of the insulation above.

Repairs have been made to the brickwork, an extra wooden frame has  been added around the window ready for the insulation and the large gaps between the windows and the wall, revealed when the render was removed, have been filled. I presume these gaps are from when the double glazing was fitted around 7 years ago,

Posted on July 07, 2008 at 9:05 p.m.

Tags: damp proofing,  Ecohouse,  insulation,  solid walls 

Our woodburning stove

While we wait for progress on the outside of our house here’s some info about our stove. Our wood-burning stove was installed earlier this year, in March (just before Easter).

Why burn wood?

Burning wood is carbon neutral as it gives out carbon dioxide that it absorbed when growing.

This is especially the case as we’re hoping to be able to run it from local waste wood – this would otherwise have been left to rot or burned on a bonfire so we’re releasing that CO2 for a  good use in heating our home instead of wasting it.

 

Waste wood

Our waste wood is made up of branches pruned/pollarded from local trees and (non-treated) packaging and off-cuts. A good example of this is that our new cooker was delivered in a protective pine framework. This has now been carefully saved to keep us warm in the winter (it’s currently living in the greenhouse!)

We also collected quite a few logs from the grounds of our church when they were pollarded which, together with the prunings from our rather overgrown garden, may see us through the winter.

Why have a stove?

The wood burner is extremely efficient. Burning wood in an open grate, as we did previously, is incredibly wasteful. Not only does around 80% of the heat disappear up the chimney when you’re using it, but other heat from the room (e.g. from the central heating) is sucked up the chimney too. Modern stoves should be over 70% efficient – meaning that 70% of the heat that they give out stays in the room.

Which stove?

We chose the Clearview Pioneer in the end. It wasn’t actually our first choice but as we’re not very knowledgeable about the installation of these sorts of things, we wanted to get a company that would both supply and install the stove. We also wanted a stove with low emissions (the particulate sort) that could be used in a smokeless zone.

http://www.clearviewstoves.com/pioneer400.htm

 

The result:

We’re really impressed with the stove. It feels really amazing to have a heat control on a fire. The special wheel restricts the air flow when you want the fire to burn more slowly. Also, it lights far more easily than an open fire because the draught from the chimney is being channelled up through the grate.

This little stove can just about heat our whole house – the layout of our house make this possible as most of the rooms just lead into one another and when the room gets really hot, we can open the door to send the heat straight upstairs. We did a 40 hour energy blackout at Easter and managed to survive without the central heating. The second day it seemed much harder – we wondered why until we looked outside and saw the snow. It probably wouldn’t have been a problem even then if we had had a reasonable stock of dry wood!

Next winter should be easier as our insulation will keep the house cosier for longer with less fuel.

. . . . . .

 

We’re not getting rid of the gas central heating. We’re planning to use it in the mornings (timers are very useful); sometimes in the evenings (especially when we’re really busy/tired/unwell). I’ll report back on how the first winter goes…

 

But this still leaves one problem – what shall we do with the old garden incinerator?

Perhaps we can use it to grow potatoes now???!!

 

Posted on July 07, 2008 at 2:24 p.m.

Tags: Ecohouse,  insulation,  stove,  sustainable energy,  waste,  wood fuel 

The insulation arrives

A large lorry carrying the insulation arrived at 9am this morning. The renovation process has been delayed a little whilst the repairs to the structure of the house are done, so it will be a little while before the insulation is attached to the walls of the house.

The insulation is Ecotherm rigid insulation boards. This isn't the most environmentally friendly of materials itself but the carbon savings from the increased insulation will more than make up for this. Also, it is necessary for the insulation to not stick out beyond the reach of the roof tiles if we want to keep the costs affordable.

http://www.ecotherm.co.uk/

Posted on June 30, 2008 at 12:35 p.m.

Tags: Ecotherm,  insulation,  solid walls 

External Insulation

More energy is lost through the walls of an ordinary (uninsulated) house than any other part of the house (35%) This surprised me - I thought it would be the roof that was worst! If we wanted to make our house into an ecohouse we needed to do something about this.

As our house was built in the 1920s it has solid walls (seemingly like most of the houses in Oxford) so cavity wall insulation is not an option. The outside walls of the house are rendered and the render was in a pretty bad way meaning we could take the chance to replace the render and insulate the external walls at the same time. Because the house was already rendered, there was no need for planning permission.

The work is being carried out by Oxford EcoBuild

The first stage was to remove the existing render and this took just over 2 days. In fact it was so fast we had to rush out on the second day to take some photos whilst there was still some render left to photograph! It's really interesting to see the house with the red bricks - it looks really nice but it's not at all energy efficient that way!

The next stage will be to repair and seal the brickwork and make good any structural problems before adding the insulation.

Posted on June 26, 2008 at 10:21 p.m.

Tags: insulation,  solid walls