Planet Savers blog

We are deeply grateful to all our friends for helping us move into our new home. Bobbie and I were extremely glazed by the end of it and your help was invaluable and much appreciated. With four of us opening up all the boxes marked ‘books’ and throwing them at the empty book shelves, we soon had some room to move around in.

Pat, who has been converting our bathroom into a shower room, was kind enough to make sure our water softener was installed and got us serviceable just as the removal guys arrived:>) We needed to install the water softener before we can set up use the solar panel as we are in a hard water area. We chose one from Harvey as it does not need any electricity to work. They are pricey but Pat was able to get us a much better deal on it than the manufacturers offered over the phone.

Pat has bought my concept into being. I call it contemporary cottage style! A modern shower room with mid height wainscoating which conceals the cystern and pipework and gives extra cupboard space. He did all the plumbing and electrical work as well as the carpentry and tiling. He also fitted out solar tube. I don’t think there is anything Pat won’t turn his had to, which is just as well, as there is some work in the garden I might need him for…! His website is still in the making but I don’t think he’ll mind if I mention it here: PatGlavin.co.uk

…and, once the Solartube was connected, there was! Pat has now installed the tube in the bathroom. It’s fab:>) You can look out of the window and it looks grey outside, but the tube is catching all the light there is and pumping it into the room and it looks really bright. It’s brilliant, really!

I’m looking forward to seeing what it does with a full moon…

We don’t really have a garden as such. It’s more of a meadow. This is extremely good news for me because, in the grand scheme of things, I was going to plant a wild life garden.

When we bought the place, the previous owners said, “Don’t cut the grass until you have seen all the violets and  primroses”. But it didn’t stop there. These were replaced by the purple selfheal and pale blue forget-me-nots. Now we have a blanket of blue speedwell with white oxeye daisies and wild strawberries. Of course, there are buttercups, dandelions and daises. Then there is yellow hop trefoil and magenta clover and… other things for which I do not yet know the names. Cutting some of the more grassy areas the air is suddenly filled with the scent of wild garlic or thyme or organo.

As a result of all this natural beauty, the place is alive with bees and butterflies of all shapes and sizes. And two of the nest boxes have residents. A pair of great tits and a pair of blue tits are very busy cleaning up any bugs, maggots, and greenfly that may be affecting the plants. We also have regular visits from crows, magpies and jackdaws which helps keep the slug and snail population under control, ably helped by robins.

It’s all a joy to behold. Most of all, there is peace here. Watching nature do its own thing, being what it is without any help from me. We are on the edge of the wild and it’s beautiful.

I opened the front door and there was my Mother holding a spider plant. “This is for you,” she said.

It turned out that she had heard/seen a programme where they were discussing the use of formaldehyde in practically everything we have in our homes.

Having plants in the house is the best way to counteract the effect. I found this article rather informative: Plants for Clean Air inside Buildings

Yes, I’m still laying them.

I didn’t manage to finish over Easter. In all there will be 309 tiles and I have 90 still to do. You can tell by the numbers game that I am now at the stage where the laying of one more tile is cause for rejoicing! My knees are begging for this to be over (yes, I am wearing kneepads).

At first, I was utterly pedantic about them being totally flat in all directions and everything was going swimmingly until I realised that the cement was getting thicker and there was a slight slope upwards. This I tried to rectify with a slight slope back down again and that’s where everything started to get complicated coz you’ve got to join tiles on to the redirection and they have to be level with each other as well.

It may seem like a three dimensional job: lines straight in two directions and levelness (we’ll leave time out for the moment) but the reality is that you are looking at it from far more than three angles. Levelness left and right is one thing, but there is the diagonal as well. And then you’d better check that, although it is flat as far as the level is concerned, is the tile level on its own or have you got a dip in one corner which doesn’t show up with the level. You need to check this in all three directions as well. So for every tile there is about nine checks to make.

Then I realised that as I tamped in the next tile, the previous one was shifting a bit and all the checks had to start again…

That’s when it happened!

I got the answer, or rather, I heard the voice in my head, “Luke, Luke, use the Force, Luke.”

“What?”

“Use the Force!”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I figure that if the likes of one as eminent as Obi-Wan should take time out from managing the Universe and traing the future generation of Jedi, then it would be churlish of me not to listen!

I stared at the tiles before me and moved away the spirit level, yes, I thought, I can do this. I laid the cement with feeling, place the tiles and tamped them in running my fingers along the edge with its neighbour. Tamp, tamp. I could feel it coming into place. Then the next, then a row of four. Yes, it felt good. Tamp, tamp. This is it! I’m getting it. I checked with the level – it was pretty close! The level showed which tile was slightly dipped or raised but, on the whole, it was a lot better than I’d expected!

It speeded up my laying time, anyway. And, as my friend Sally said, “You’re going for rustic, aren’t you? Who ever heard of a rustic floor being completely flat?” I’m happy to go along with that.

Mind you, if Obi-Wan turned up he’d take one look and say, “Hmm…, you’re not Luke, are you.”

The delay in posting news on our attempts at eco-converting is not a sign that work has stopped. On the contrary it is quite the opposite!

I’m spending the Easter break on my knees surrounded by quarry tiles. I wanted to lay them in the kitchen around the sink area but Pat had trouble finding them locally. Some kind of shortage. Anyway, I found a good deal on the web at  Walls and Floors. They arrived next day.

Now, I’m not the world’s most experienced layer of tiles… my only previous experience was our patio. But it didn’t take me long to work out that 150mm square tiles needs just as much care and attention in the laying as larger tiles used for, say, a patio. So for the same amount of work, I’m laying a quarter of the area. Hmm… they do look nice though :>)

While Pat’s away, we also have a bathroom to decorate ready for him to come back and finish everything. Finishing everything involves installing a water softener, necessary for the Solar Twin solar panel which also has to get installed. Whilst on the roof, the two Solar Tubes for the kitchen and bathroom need to be fitted as well. Then there’s the underfloor heating and tiling to do so I’ll be keeping him busy for a bit!

By the time all that is done, I’m hoping that the LED lighting system will arrive. I got in touch with Creative Lighting who were at Eco-Build. I really liked the stand and the lights were very impressive. They lit the stand beautifully. My experience with LEDs thus far has not really produced enough light for direct replacements of the halogen bulbs in the ceiling so I was glad to be able to chat with Shabir at Creative Lighting about the kind of bulbs I would need. LED lighting is a whole science of its own. There are so many variations depending on the kind of spread and intensity you need as well as colour. So I was very grateful to have Shabir’s time working it out for me. More on that later.

In the mean time I’m going to look for something to rub on my knees so they keep going for a few more days.

One of the fab things about taking on a new garden is that you don’t know what is in it. So the Spring is full of surprises. March gave us a slope covered in violets and the promise of rhubbarb. The violets have now been replaced with a mass of primulas in all shades, along with the indigo coloured self-heal and forget-me-nots. Its an absolute picture and very popular with the bees, I’m glad to say.

We have a lot of bumbles, some seem to be residents, and we have been visited by honey bees as well. I’ve bought a WBC hive which is ready to assemble should a swarm decide to hang in one of our trees. If not, I shall have to buy a nucleus next year.

I’m also trying a bit of an experiment with potatoes. I didn’t have time to prepare a bed, so I put the seed potatoes into a few cardboard boxes, covered them with compost and just plonked them on the ground to do as they pleased. I’ve seen at least six poke through so I’ll just keep covering them with compost and look forward some fresh picked spuds later in the year. With any luck, they will have done some prep work on my potential veg plot as well.

As mentioned on March 3rd, I have been trying to find out why insects keel over when they cross my new carpet.

Talking to my Mother about it she said, “Well, they have to treat carpets with insecticide or they might get eaten by moths and bugs in the warehouse.”

Doh! It all sounded rather obvious when she said that. However, it made me wonder how this affected pets who tend to spend a lot of time with their noses much nearer the floor than us. This thought led me to find many warnings about caged birds and air quality.

I then discovered an interesting debate about carpets, vocs (volatile organic compounds) and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).

Some say carpets harbour dirt and bugs which we then breath in, others say carpets actually trap dirt and bugs thus protecting us. I found this article on The Effects of Carpet on Indoor Air Quality rather informative.

We have a very small bathroom and decided that it was more appropriate as a shower room. This would also cut down on the amount of water we use for washing. A very good idea since we are metered and we will be heating the water with our solar panel.

The bathroom does not get much light so I want to put in a light tube. We need one in the kitchen as well because part of it is a walk through area that is not well lit. It makes sense to me to have the night time lighting as part of the same feature so I have asked Pat, who is doing a lot of the work for us (more about Pat when his website is up and running), to come up with a way of fitting led lights around the tube. I’m looking forward to seeing what he comes up with.

Exciting day on Wednesday. Bobbie and I went up to Earl’s Court for the Ecobuild exhibition. I’ve been sizing up the solar panels and had come down in favour of Solar Twin.

The reason is that their system includes a PV cell which generates the electricity you need to run the pump, so the system is completely self contained. They are also a UK company and the system is designed to work with UK weather. It helped that they also offered a big discount at the show for the DIY installation! So, I placed the order.

It was great having the exhibition to look around and see working examples of all the stuff I have been staring at on websites. PV cells were the other thing I wanted more information on. There are so many out there and I didn’t know how to start looking.

We saw all shapes and sizes from panels that fit on to the roof through to those designed to fit into the tiling. There were some that were designed to look like slate tiles, you had trouble telling them apart. Ideal if you need to get around conservation restrictions. However, the larger panels will probably be the right way for us. We are going to need an area for our cars which is under cover. Bobbie had the brainwave of using this roof space for the PV cells.

They need a roof slant of 15 to 30 degrees so we will need to bear this in mind when we come to design the roof. That’s on hold for the time being. I need to work out whether I want a 1KW, 2KW or 3KW system. This is based, obviously, on the amout of energy we actually need.

We also looked at options on rainwater harvesting. I’m looking forward to digging out a pit to put one of those huge storage tanks underground. First, I need to find out how much water we are likely to be able to store based on roof size. All good fun.

There was loads to see at the show, so it was well worth a visit. Some of the stands were aimed at the commercial and public sector but many were happy to chat about sustainability.

One stand looked beautifully lit and it turned out that they were promoting LED lighting. The light they generated was so different from all the others, it felt much more natural, I really liked it.

The stand Bobbie and I really loved was about wood. Wood framed buildings. They are so scrummy. I really must get around to designing my garden shed…