the daydream fund challenge thread

rhiwfield

Alfie, sounds fun! The boring thing is that most of the UK's housing stock that people will be living in in the future is already built. Grand Designs is fun, especially Ben's house in the woods and the hexagonal (?) house on stilts built by the master carpenter and his Japanese partner, but someone used the term eco-bling and I agree with that about most GD houses. If its not eco bling its ego bling. For most of us the challenge is to take an existing inefficient house and ornamental garden and turn that into an energy saving, productive and comfortable home

As for figs thats one fruit I've never really liked, so I'll happily leave that out of my planting.

With frosts around the corner I'm going to try putting leaf beet plants in the spent buckets and moving them into the cold greenhouse as winter greens for the hens. Cant see the toms lasting much longer but theyve been great this year.

Oh and got DW to the graduation yesterday, wheeled her back out before the principals closing speech to avoid the leaving crush, especially as her operated leg was stuck out like a masochistic trip hazard

Davesnave

rhiwfield wrote: »

For most of us the challenge is to take an existing inefficient house and ornamental garden and turn that into an energy saving, productive and comfortable home

With frosts around the corner I'm going to try putting leaf beet plants in the spent buckets and moving them into the cold greenhouse as winter greens for the hens.

Oh and got DW to the graduation yesterday:)

Glad you both made it.

Frosts were here some time ago, and back again this morning. My agenda today is also to take the redundant tom containers into the old polytunnel and fill them up with new leaf beet plants, winter lettuce etc....though I'm not saying that the hens will get all of them!

'Eco bling' is a great phrase and I agree that GD often has little to offer the majority of us with thinner wallets. I'd be much more interested in a structured series of programmes focused on the transformation of 'ordinary' houses, as you suggest. Maybe that's something NGOs or, heaven help us, the government itself could usefully sponsor, as it could act as a reference resource and, ultimately, do much more good than their other acts of proselytizing. They could pick ten different styles of house, like suburban semi, rural cottage, detached bungalow etc and use case studies....maybe even without the manufactured drama that's supposed to keep us watching through the ad breaks!

We'll be briefing our architect very fully, though what we do here will, ultimately, rest on restricted finance... and what we can get past the planners.

choille

Actually my OH is a a designer of houses - that is what he does for a living. It seems that we are the only ones that don't have a house & that can get frustrating:-(

The Scottish building regs are getting pretty tight & complicated but in the main, insulation is a sensible thing & cost effective. Solar gain by having South facing windows is also pretty sensible too.

There is a house just built along the road & it's covered in bling - £8,000 worth of solar panels. This house is for one person - where is the sense in that?

I really love that rhiwfield Ego-bling. I'm going to use that if I may.

All new houses are going to have to have solar panels. Some people are making a fortune off this trend & often they are made in China & brought here - how green is that? We have hydro power in the Highlands - is that not green enough.

Wood burners are great if you have a cheap, or preferably free source of wood.

alfie_1

choille wrote: »

Actually my OH is a a designer of houses - that is what he does for a living. It seems that we are the only ones that don't have a house & that can get frustrating:-(

The Scottish building regs are getting pretty tight & complicated but in the main, insulation is a sensible thing & cost effective. Solar gain by having South facing windows is also pretty sensible too.

There is a house just built along the road & it's covered in bling - £8,000 worth of solar panels. This house is for one person - where is the sense in that?

I really love that rhiwfield Ego-bling. I'm going to use that if I may.

All new houses are going to have to have solar panels. Some people are making a fortune off this trend & often they are made in China & brought here - how green is that? We have hydro power in the Highlands - is that not green enough.

Wood burners are great if you have a cheap, or preferably free source of wood.

if you have a sawmill near to you go and collect bags of sawdust. if you have/can make/or buy a brick size mould, you then soak the sawdust lightly and squish in the mould. when packed down and moisture is out, remove , stack in the green house with just a sheet of newspaper to seperate and they are great as logs! obviously you may need a few starter "real" logs to get fire going. its great fun and it doesnt cost a penny only time. here we can get pallets for free and well worth buying a hand held circular saw to demolish them!! offer to remove local neighbours over hanging branches and keep the wood.[again an empty green house is ideal for storage as speeds up "seasoning". also some suppliers of woodstoves remove the old ones and then sell them off cheap. may need a bit of rewelding or fire bricks but a lot cheaper.

choille

Yes Alfie that is a good idea however I personally have access to free wood outside my doorstep.

I remember a log maker thing that people would use to make logs from newspapers - I saw one in a charity shop but didn't buy it as I don't need one. I wonder if they were any good.

lostinrates

We're going for some eco bling, but only where it makes sense for us. e.g. we wouldn't replace a functioning septic tank, but we need something, so a sewage treatment centre makes sense, and we had to sort out the slurry, so reed beds etc make sense too. when this boiler, who is obliging ATM gives out we'll be looking at a ground or air source pump....with oil prices going up! I'd consider one of those schemes where you give roof space to a solar panel company and can use the electricity free during the day...wouldn't make sense for lots of people, but I can use day time electricity so would make sense for us.

choille

Hi - yes I think that's sensible as most on here are & do try & do things that make financial sense.

Our neighbours are struggling with an old system (oil ) and the price of the stuff is getting harder for them to afford.
I think more comapnies are coming on board with some of the greener technologies - so hopefully they will become more affordable.

lostinrates

Well, I forgot to say that we did some fencing to day. Hand driving posts and reusing old wood for rails. TBH it looks less like smart post and rail than it does pallets precariously lined up. Not sure what I think about that. (It had to be foor rails for the dogs and any sheep, but it wuld have looked better as three rail).

I think we're going to opt for hazel for that bit of hedging. Our crop of six nuts could do with some increasing, don't you think, lol. I might put a rose through it, or even a few hollies, of which we have none and which is always welcome for Christmas wreaths etc. Then I can make a wreath ring from cut hazel and decorate it from the adjacent holly, which is a nice idea.

rhiwfield

Choille, I used to have one of those log makers that used papier mache, trouble was the logs wouldnt dry out, might be ok in an African dry season! I see that a later version is to use dry paper compressed but, tbh, that seems a waste of time, We use rolled, knotted paper in place of kindling. FWIW we have solar panels and it seems there are very few UK manufacturers of panels or inverters. Sharp (Wrexham) make panels but they are mostly exported and were not available when we installed. Although that made us largely self sufficient for electricity the key thing was that we had first tackled consumption before we installed home generation

Davesnave, agree with your program idea! We considered how much moving house would cost in legal, estate agent and removal fees and how much it would cost to improve our existing house. Not for you but others might be surprised when they do the sums.

Satisfying day, spreading compost on the beds scheduled for spuds nx year. But I've been remiss on weed clearance, looks like 7 years hard work ahead

choille

I have hazel trees ( Which I was told were an ancient woodland indicator) but this is what I don't understand - I have never seen nuts on them. I am getting them regening - so obviously they must have them but I don't understand where the nuts are!