Otter Cottage gets solar hot water

Ian has put the solar hot water panels onto Otter cottage...





...the last of our self catering accommodation to get them. These ones should really cook – being on a south facing roof. All we need now is the sunshine. Poor Ian must have wondered whether it was all worth it as he worked alternately on the roof with rain dripping down his neck and in the loft with tar dust falling in his hair!

We rushed it through because guests who had booked Beech and Nuthatch lodges also wanted the cottage – a bit party get together.

The system came from Navitron again. Ian says they've made some improvements. The new pumping station was much easier to fit than the old one and the clips on the actual tubes were better too.

See our other posts on installing solar:
Energy monitoring put to good use
DIY tips for installing solar panels
Energy saving switches for the lodges

Buying local brings us local benefits

Once again we’re seeing the value of buying local...





...Ian is working on the floor for the new eco lodge.

First step was to get rid of the old floor and non-structural block walls. We were going to break up the concrete and re-use it in gabions to build a bank and reinforce the front of the building (waste not want not!). But Martin Bragg, our local (and reliable ... and well-priced...) digger driver had a better idea - scrape up a temporary bund, build the bank with the recycled concrete, then cover over with earth. Thanks Martin, that saved a few pounds on difficult-to-fill wire gabions, gave us the structure we needed, and created a much better feature.

Next task was to source the aggregate for the floor. The first lot came from Jewsons in Okehampton (11 miles), but it arrived in a huge delivery truck that buckled the edge of the concrete drive and barely manoeuvred through the gate. So when we realised a local builders merchant, AMP building supplies, was based at Winkleigh’s old WWII airfield, that seemed much more sensible. Phil turned up in a much smaller vehicle, and instead of having to set up a business account, with credit references etc, he just said ‘I’ll leave the tab open if you’ll be wanting some more'.

And once that was done, we needed some custom-made steel ‘shoes’ to keep the existing wooden posts inside the building from penetrating the damp course (see picture). Sounds complicated. But luckily, Chris Hodgson’s engineering workshop in nearby Hollocombe was more than willing to help, even tidying up Ian’s sketched drawings before they went for fabrication.

It's surprising what's available on your doorstep when you look! It's good for us, and it's good for the local economy too - these are the people we meet 'down the pub' and in the village, and that make Winkleigh a thriving community.

Impressive U values for the eco lodge floor

Ian has finished calculating the thermal insulation value (the U value) for the floor of the new eco lodge.




The U value measures the overall ability of a wall/roof/floor to prevent heat loss. It’s measured in Watts per square metre per degree Kelvin (W/m2.k) and takes into account all the thermal conductivity (k values) of the components of the structure, as well as other factors that affect how heat is lost from the building. Until recently, building regulations required floors to have a U value of 0.7 or below. That’s now been brought down to 0.22 W/m2.k. So how do we fare?

Well, it's not quite finished yet, as the picture shows, but here's the plan. The floor will be high-proportion recycled aggregate, then 150mm insulation (Kingspan, for it's exceptional insulation value, which we think outweighs it's only light-green manufacturing process - well they have been trying at least), then another 150mm of concrete made of 70% ash cement and recycled aggregate. Because it’s above the insulation, this layer becomes part of the thermal mass of the building, acting as a heat store to help regulate temperature. On top of that we’ll be putting down larch floor boards sourced locally (8 miles) from Mike Moser’s oak woodland restoration project.

Overall, that will give us a U value of 0.11 W/m2.k – twice as good as the 2010 building regulations.