Epi-Blogue 2 of 2 – Converted but are we Saved?

This is the final instalment of this Blog. The basic build took 13 months but the Blog has taken longer. Readers of the first instalments will know that it was over a year after we bought the barn that work was able to begin due to re-design and re-submission for planning permission. We've learnt a huge amount about the building industry and the joys and pitfalls of  converting a 200 year old property. We're still in love with the property and the location and the views (and with each other) despite the stress and expense along the way. Would we do it again? Don't know.

All that remained once the garden walls, patios and driveway were done was internal decorating, landscaping, fencing, weatherboarding on the garage, teething troubles, curtain tracks ... Ho Hum.

The landscaping was less painful than anticipated - more a question of re-instatement as we don't want to make any major changes of level. The guys who did the drive spent a couple of days with their skid-steer Bobcat and smoothed things out in no time. The planting and cultivation is going to take us years, but at least we’ve made a start. We're going to leave most of it to grass over naturally to begin with.  Maybe a bit of wild flower meadow here and there.

 Quagmire

all nice and smooth

 

Weather boarding on the garage is purely cosmetic.
Bare blockwork

 

and boarded over (with a heap of MOT1 in the foreground. Of course you know what MOT1 is, don't you.)

 

Something that wasn't on the original list of projects was Solar Panels. The thinking is that the barn is all electric. Lights, of course, and also cooking, heating, water supply, sewage treatment. Electricity is the only mains service we have on site. (Apart from telephone. Don't get me started on that one ... grr, spit, growl ...) Almost anything you do in the barn causes the electricity meter to spin - even flushing the loo. The sewage treament plant whirrs away all day and all night, and the water supply is driven by, yes, you've guessed it, an electric pump 52 metres down the borehole. So anything we can do to reduce our electricity bill would be good. No?

Well actually, it's not that simple. The UK government has a scheme to encourage people to install solar panels - the feed in tariff. You get paid a over the odds for what you generate plus a bit for what gets fed back into the grid. You can use whatever you generate for "free". (You pay £k's for the kit that generates this "free" electricity. How do you spell "free" again?)

Have you heard of that list of the most useless things in the wold? As well as sky hooks and pots of striped paint there's a solar powered torch. Well, solar panels are a bit like that. They generate loads of kilowatts in the middle of the day when the sun is shining ... and you don't need it. And they generate virtually nothing in the morning and the evening, and in the winter ... when you do need it.
Anyway, despite our reservations, we decided to go for it. Time will tell whether it was a good investment. Here's where we decided to put the panels - we can't put them on the roof because of planning restrictions and we didn't want to stick them right in front of the view out the back.
 

 

they sit on tubs

Sixteen of them, giving a maximum of 4kw production. Any more than that would have exceeded the 'domestic' provision of the feed in tariff scheme.

 

 

Since we're in  the country we decided on simple post and rail fencing. All very rustic. Here are the posts at the back.

And finished fence along the side of the back garden.

At the front, posts going up

There's still a number of rooms to decorate - 9 or so when we moved in. The high bits we had done by a professional decorator while we were away earlier in the year. The bits we could do ourselves, … well … we’re doing ourselves. Getting there.

 

Since moving in we've noticed all sorts of wildlife out of the window. Either in the back garden or in nearby fields.

Mr pheasant, king of the castle, on one of our many heaps of rubble

 

The Collins Book of British Birds says this is a partridge. (Can birds be British? Do they need a passport if they fly across the Channel? And can they emigrate to warmer climes?)

 

There's a family of stoats living in one of our woodpiles. At least, I think it's a stoat. Could be a weasel? I'm told you can weasily tell them apart because they're stoatally different.

 

We have loads of rabbits, but these guys are bigger and boy can they shift. I guess that makes them hares?

And of course we see deer from time to time. Usually first thing in the morning, lolloping across the field at the back.

 

We also had a cow in the garden one day. It had escaped from a field not too far away. Looked out the window at the back and there it was, a couple of metres away. It just stood there looking in and saying to itself  'Well I never! Fancy that. People living in a cowshed. Whatever next?'. We've also seen buzzards flying overhead, a barn owl a few times, not to mention pigeons, rooks and the rest.

Another frequent visitor to the field at the back is Homo Sapiens Metalus Detectorus.

They're an almost exclusively rural species, seldom seen in an urban setting. Referred to by some as Swishers, on account of their habit of swishing a long proboscis, or trunk, back and forth, they have been known to swish for hours on end with no obvious result or purpose. Anthropologists are divided as to the significance of this curious behaviour. Some suggest it is a mating ritual. This would seem to be unlikely due to the fact that female metalus detectoruses are an even rarer breed and never to be seen in the vicinity of a male Swisher. Indeed, this lack of any obvious means of reproduction has resulted in suggestions that the Swisher be placed on an endangered species list. More likely, therefore, is the interpretation that the swishing behaviour is fundamentally territorial. But whether they’re seeking to ward off other Swishers, or all-comers, is unknown. Maybe we’ll never know. Maybe they don’t even know themselves why they do it. Perhaps they just feel driven by an inbuilt, instinctive desire, to go out and swish all day long. You have to admire their dedication to whatever it is they’re doing.

 We’ve been in for a few months, signed off by Building Control, with an address issued by the Local Authority and recognised by Royal Mail. We've got a water supply, albeit still subject to teething troubles - tastes salty from time to time and occasionally a bit yellow in colour. The Ground Source heating seems to be functioning correctly once a couple of issues with the heat pump had been sorted. And Broadband was connected up, with only a minor delay of several months. What more could one want?

So, finally, if you have been, thanks for listening.