… and I can’t understand why.
I was working quite relentlessly all day without a pause, except for lunch. I’m rather disappointed with what I accomplished (or didn’t accomplish, as the case may be.
I have about half of the studding on the walls of the house. This is to create the air gap for the insulation I’ll be fitting. I was hoping to have at least three walls studded and the insulation fitted today.
But the place isn’t half going to be insulated – Terry thinks too much and maybe he’s right – but I shan’t be worrying about the cold. Even in my little room I noticed in the winter that putting the light and the computer on raised the temperature by a degree or so. It’ll do more than that in here.
And talking of heat, Bill came up with a nifty idea. I’m trying to find a cheap small pot-bellied wood stove for my room. But everything is too big and too expensive seeing as it’s just for a temporary measure. Bill suggests an “insert” – what the French put in their open fires – supported on bricks and connected up to the flue in the wall. I’d rather have a pot-bellied stove but there might be some mileage in Bill’s idea if I can’t source a stove.
And work is not going to progress very much this week. Terry needs a hand on Thursday and there’s Liz’s vegan chocolate cake involved, and tomorrow afternoon Marianne the local tourist guide and author who used to live in Alsager and who taught in the school across the road from where I lived in Crewe (you’ve no idea how small the world is) is giving a walk around La Cellette and the abandoned railway line.
In other news, at the Anglo-French group tonight someone asked the question that if you could drive between the UK and the mainland, on which side of the road would you drive. The answer is of course easy. Going towards the UK you would drive on the left to help you become accustomed to the English method and coming from the UK to Europe you would drive on the right in order to become accustomed to European methods.
Simple, isn’t it?
Your fire could be interesting. I suggest instead of having a pot-bellied stove, you just use a calor gas heater. Calor gas is quite cheap. The last time I checked (in 1990) it was about seven quid a cylinder.
Alternatively, if you put the stove downstairs and put some pipes in, under the floor after filtering the smoke out, you could have underfloor heating. Personally, I’d go for Calor for the moment.
I have a bottled gas heater that I use in my little room. And a bottle costs … er … €24.95 (the equivalent of £1,000,000,000 in today’s money) and lasts for a fortnight on the lowest setting, whereas wood is free. I’ve nearly 2 hectares of it.
I’ve lots of long-term plans for heating but for that I have to wait for the house to be finished.
You need to snuggle up to Flossy then. Her warm fleece will keep you toasty.
My suggestion is to bulit a concrete block casing around your insert so that they act as a heat sink when your small fire heats the blocks in an evening and they slowly radiate the heat into the room during the night. You culd also look at means to create a heat exchange between your flue and the water source for your shower room. It would save energy and presumably money in the long run.
That’s an interesting idea. If I could find some old electric storage heaters I could extract the refractory bricks for that.
When I finally finish the house I have a wood-burning oven that I’ll be fitting in the living room. That will heat the living room and I’ll put a “Canadian Trap” in the floor above so that the bedroom will receive some heat. It’s part of the plan to coil some microbore tubing around the flue and pump water through it to be heated.
Great minds…
Fools …
Could use the old method – heat bricks and then carry them upstairs wrapped in towels :d
Not recommended. Hot water bottles work better!
Hot water bottles leak. Bricks don’t.
Well if you will stick sharp things in them…
I never use hot water bottles because they always spring leaks after a year or so – some when they’re brand new too. A burst hot water bottle in the bed is not nice. Now a nice, warm, housebrick wrapped in a towel is another thing altogether – much nicer!