World of more

A big writhing knot of froggy love. Spring has arrived.

Last night, whilst eating dinner, the security light outside the kitchen tripped on to cast a glare over the back garden.  Nibbling delicately from the bird feeder was a pair of muntjack deer, which explains why the seed in that feeder had dropped so quickly.  Islay is now worried for the vegetables she has (not yet) planted. Since the last update, we’ve had a couple more contractors round, and I’m starting to get my head around what we want. Our friendly local plumber Ian came around for a half hour look-see.  That turned into an hour and a half long discussion with me about options and the like.  He confirmed what we already knew - that the boiler and heat pump was very old - and added some more subjects for discussion.  We’re now hoping to get from him a quote for replacing the current oil boiler with a) a new oil boiler, albeit a much more efficient one, or b) an air source heat pump.  The latter sounds pretty interesting, with an approx £6k cost for the device, we...

The fridge. Kneel before its awe inspiring glory

We always knew Walnut Tree House would be cold and/or expensive to heat.  That much was clear from the EPC we got pre-purchase which suggested it might cost a mind-melting £4k a year in oil and electricity.  Having had to top up the oil tank a mere four weeks after 500 litres went in there, I can now believe it. Ula’s room aside the house is quite warm.  The Aga does a good, if expensive and almost certainly inefficient, job of heating the kitchen, and our room, sandwiched between under eaves storage, lounge and Ula’s room remains plenty warm enough. The main problem is that there is almost no insulation anywhere in the house.  Most of the walls are timber framed with a coat of render on the outside, plasterboard on the inside and only air, fraying electric cables and escaping heat in between.  Add to that a boiler that we believe is older than Islay and you can see why burning fivers to keep warm might be more cost effective than the current arrangements. But, we’ve p...

This blog seems to be little more than a list of works completed to date, but I’m going to keep it up so we’ve some way of looking back and seeing what we’ve accomplished. In that spirit, here’s what’s gone on since last week: We got an Aga engineer out to service the cast iron bad-boy.  According to him the smell of oil is not unusual, it’s just that our valvework is stored in a kitchen cupboard rather than just tucked away around the back.  Other than that it’s in rude health, and that’ll be £90 for the privilege.  Googling after his visit I found out it consumes 40l of oil a week .  A WEEK.  It’s a middle-class lifestyle affectation and, much as Islay’s enjoying it and I quite like its warmth on a cold day, I’m going to start plotting its downfall soon enough. Islay played host to many contractors.  We got two quotes for plastering the media room (£110 and £630.  I think they’ve offered different things).  A quot...