We have let the contract to the Phase 1 build to HD9 Construction – a local construction company based in Shepley. HD9 Construction have completed a number of projects similar to ours, so they were a good choice for us. More information on HD9 Construction and their projects will be found here.
With any luck the building work will commence before the end of the month which means that the Phase 1 build should complete at the end of July. Exciting times!
Yesterday was a terrible day, weatherwise. It rained for most of the day – according to my weather station around 10% of the rainfall that has fallen this year so far, fell yesterday. It stopped (briefly) around 2pm. This gave me an opportunity to pick up some exterior plywood to make up new covers for the manholes on the septic tank.
The existing manholes covers were made of wood and pretty rotten. The one manhole cover protects a drop of around 11ft! This is where the water from the septic target drains into the bottom field. The hole is made up of reinforced concrete rings, but there aren’t any leg irons (metal foot hoops used for climbing out), so if you fell in, it would be difficult to get out. The new covers are made of 18mm exterior ply, so should last a bit longer than the existing covers. A coat of primer and gloss paint will also help.
Given the state of the existing wooden manhole covers, I have put some temporary fencing around the area.
This is the final tank in the system and this is where the waste water drains away into the bottom field. It is around 11ft deep!
All done. But it was a real slog. Don’t know why, maybe it was the showery weather. Zep and I had to retreat to the pickup a couple of times when the weather took a turn for the worse. Zep had more sense and stayed in his bed in the cab, even when the rain stopped.
Most of the bricks from the outbuilding are now down in the orchard ready to go into the base of the dry stone wall. However, I cleaned up a few more and have stacked these on the base of the lean-to. I am not sure what these are going to be used for, but there are enough already in the orchard.
The old store-room appears to have flagstones on the floor. A number of them appear to be broken – some no doubt happened when we took down the brick walls, but many of them look like they have been broken for some time. I have removed one of them and they appear to have been laid directly onto an ash floor (which was the standard approach at the time). I will take up a couple of the broken ones this week and have a go with the metal detector. Anything that is under the floor has probably been there for a couple of hundred years.
The bases of the three toilets are now exposed. They appear to have been built with a smooth cement concave floor. There were hinged wooden doors at the back of each of the toilets. I can only imagine that the doors were used to scoop out the contents. Yuck!
Just the base of the store-room and the toilet block left. There is one large upright stone left that is too big for me to move on my own.
One of the flagstones was broken – it probably got damaged when we took down the brick wall – so I have removed it. As expected, it is laid directly onto an ash base – the standard approach in the old days.
No idea how these toilets were meant to work, but with a wooden hinged door at the back, I can only guess that this was used to scoop out the contents. Yuck!
This large Avery weight was on the roof. 56lb is a standard weight for potato bags (in the old days anyway!). It is heavy!
The situation with the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is a little confusing. Mainly because the details will not be finalised until this Summer (when exactly, who knows!). If you are interested, you can sign up for email alerts on the Dept of Energy and Climate Change here for details once they are released.
The principle is pretty straightforward – for ground source heat pumps the incentive is between 12.5-17.3p/kWh for each kWh of energy produced by the heat pump. The incentives are different for other forms of heat pumps. The rates will be confirmed when the RHI is finalised later on this year. The incentive is payable over a 7 year period.
There are some criteria attached to receiving the payments, so do make sure that you have a good look at the material that is currently available. You will also need to ensure that your installation is fully certified. Most reputable heat pump suppliers/installers will handle the certification for you.
So what is the bottom line for us? Well, we know the annual kWh as this was calculated when the suppliers worked out the sizing of the heat pump. From the calculations, it looks as if our installation will produced around 15,000kWh per year. At the higher rate, the RHI would be around £2,500 per year. So over a 7 year period, this is equivalent of £17,500. This almost covers the cost of the installation in the first place.
You will find more information here…….
UK Government website
https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/increasing-the-use-of-low-carbon-technologies/supporting-pages/renewable-heat-incentive-rhi
Energy savings trust
http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generating-energy/Getting-money-back/Renewable-Heat-Incentive-RHI
I rang them to get some more information on RHI and they couldn’t tell me anything more that what was on their website. Maybe things will improve once the details are finalised.
Heat pumps work on the same principle as fridges and freezers – but in reverse. They cool a refrigerator to a low temperature and then circulate it through a set of coils that are either buried in the ground (ground source heat pump) or have a fan that circulates air over them (air source heat pump). The refrigerant warms up, picking up the heat from either the ground or the air. The heat is then extracted from the refrigerant and the cycle starts again. The heat from the refrigerant is used to drive a central heating system as well as domestic hot water.
Ground source heat pumps tend to be more effective (as the ground temperature does not vary as much as the air temperature), but they tend to be more expensive as they need coils to be buried in the ground.
Because of the way these pumps work, you need to put energy in (to reduce the temperature of the refrigerant), but you get energy back from the ground/air. For every unit of energy put in, ground source heat pumps will generate 3-5 units of energy. This ratio is called “Coefficient of performance” (COP) and you will find it quoted on most of the ground source heat pumps on the market. For example, for the NIBE F1345 unit that we are considering has a COP of 4.79.
To calculate the size of heat pump required, you need to provide the size of the rooms, the use of the rooms (bedrooms tend to be cooler than other rooms) and insulation levels. Where you live in the UK will also affect the amount of energy that these pumps will be able to extract. You don’t need to worry about all of this as the ground source heat pump suppliers will do the calculations for you.
The calculations for our property indicate that we need a pump capable of generating around 22Kw. The nearest size heat pump is 24Kw. This is fairly large heat pump and unfortunately this requires a 3 phase electricity supply as the load is too great for a single phase supply (which is the “normal” electricity supply in most domestic properties). I have had to get a quote from our electricity power supplier (Northern Power Grid) for installing a 3 phase supply. I will cover this elsewhere on the blog.
Heat pumps are not cheap. A ground source heat pump tends to be more expensive that air source, if only because of the coils that need to be buried into the ground. A 24Kw unit is going to be around £10K and all the additional bits and pieces will roughly double that cost. However, there is some good news as there is a Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) available from the Government. RHI is intended to encourage people to install renewable heat sources and from the calculations that I have done, I suspect that the RHI will cover the cost of the ground source heat pump over a 7 year period. I will cover RHI in more detail elsewhere on this blog.
One of the issues with modern buildings that are well insulated is air circulation. There is a simple answer – open a window. The only problem with this approach is that the heat from inside the building escapes with the air.
The solution is to install a heat recovery system that extracts the heat from the air in the building and uses this heat to warm up the incoming fresh air. The system relies on a set of ducts to each of the rooms. The level of air circulation can be varied room by room (for example, increased in bathrooms and kitchen). One of the other advantages of a heat recovery is that it reduces internal condensation – even in shower rooms.
Usually, the ducting for the extraction and fresh air is installed in the loft space. This may cause us an issue as there is no loft space in the new design building – the roof space is left opened up to reveal the king-post truss.
The cost appears to be around £6,000 for the kit and the installation.
Villavent are one of the biggest vendors and you will find a useful video here on Youtube.
Almost there. The timber from the roof was cut up using a chainsaw and went on the bonfire (together with odd ends of timber left in the store room).
The brick partitions were demolished using a sledgehammer – we will use the bricks in the foundations of the dry stone wall in the orchard. We moved them using the pickup.
The brick partitions between the old toilet stalls still to be removed.
Just an odd few bricks left!
Made some good progress today, despite the rain. It always helps with two of us working together.
All of the facing stones have been “robbed out”, cleaned of any mortar and neatly stacked for later use (whatever that might be!).
Easily removed using a tow rope tied to the pickup truck. We will use the chainsaw on this tomorrow.
Latterly these stalls had been used for storing coal, but original these were the outside toilets for the three cottages. There was a trap door at the back of the building and I can only imagine that this was used to “scoop” out the contents. Yuck!
These are all of the facing stones from the lean-to. The bricks we will use in the foundation of the dry stone wall in the orchard.
The weather forecast today wasn’t brilliant. Unfortunately, it was accurate. It rained most of the morning, although that didn’t stop me from working outside until about lunchtime. However, by 2pm the rain had eased and the demolition work re-commenced- brick by brick, the lean-to was taken apart.
At the start of day 2
Almost removed all of the sandstone blocks. I have removed all of the mortar as I took the walls down. The stone has been stacked in the field for use elsewhere.
At the one end of the property is a lean-to. It houses an old store-room and three outside toilets – one for each of the cottages. Since numbers 9 and 10 were knocked together in the mid 1970’s, I can only assume that these toilets went out of use around then. Both of the remaining properties had inside bathrooms from this point.
We removed the stone slates from the roof when we re-roofed the outbuildings back in March (was it really that long ago?).
It is a single skin building constructed using sandstone blocks. These are now very weathered as is the mortar that holds them together. It is a fairly easy (if not time-consuming) job to take it apart – block by block – cleaning off the old mortar as I go. The stones are then put onto the pickup and stacked at the edge of the top field. I am not sure what we are going to do with this stone, but there is a small wall to be built as part of the garden. The stone is very soft and I suspect that it is only really usable in a garden wall.
The rain arrives about 2pm. I work on for a couple of hours and yesterday’s sunhat keeps off the rain today. There is probably a couple of more days here to completely demolish the lean-to and move all of the debris.
Still, not bad for day 1.
By standing on the back of the pickup it is possible to reach the top of the wall. The mortar is very weathered and it only takes a gentle tap to loosen each of the stones.
The lean-to is taken down stone-by-stone. Each of the stone is cleaned and then stacked in the back of the pickup.
The room with the blue barrel looks like it was used as a store room. There are three old toilet cubicles on the right. I suspect that these haven’t been used since the 1970’s. Most recently, it looks as if they have been used to store coal.
Rain stopped play about 4pm, but the lean-to is half demolished.
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