Withington Co-operative Eco-house - neighbours

Laundry

Robert — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:24:41 +0000

Today I took the plunge and ordered an ISE Drying Cabinet which is the best - if expensive - clothes dying solution that I could find. Clothes drying is a major source of moisture, which in an eco-house won't be able to escape, so hanging up clothes within habitable rooms won't be allowed - hence the need for the drying cabinet. This is something like a modern-day version of an airing cupboard, with moisture from the clothes taken out via a duct to outside air.

Like all the other large and/or novel elements of the design, I'm taking the approach of buying things in sooner rather than later, as physically having the items helps understand what's required to make them work as intended, and avoid "gotchas". With the drying cabinet, the manual isn't clear on how long a load of clothes will take to dry, so we're going to set it up at my house initially, to see how it performs; there's also a height issue, as the basement ceiling is only 2m high, and we need to be careful with door lintel heights etc, that we can actually get the unit in!

In other news, the Velux windows are now ordered, roof work is ongoing. Also got an email from the neighbour, so we're now in dialogue via email.

This weekend I'm going to visit Redfield Community - a housing co-operative that's been going 35 years.

Starting work on the roof

Robert — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:47:03 +0000

The builders have started work on the roof today. Straight away we've found out that we aren't going to be able to salvage as many slates as expected. Apart from that, it's so far, so good.

I finalised the Velux window specification, including adapting the internal studwork slightly to accommodate the 1m2 smoke vent window. I took the rainwater header tank to the house and went through the design of the tank cupboard etc with the builders, in the space.

The MVHR units arrived - physically, smaller than I was expecting (even though I knew the dimensions!). I'm still to figure out and then order the ductwork. I've pretty much settled on siting the top floor bathroom unit in the to-be-formed plant cupboard.

Meeting electrician and fire alarm guy on-site next Saturday (6 July).

Spoke to the letting agent for the house next door, having had no contact from the owner after the initial phonecall; he was similarly disinterested, and suggested I email the landlord once more (which I duly did).

I was considering a very impressive 1.5 litre vacuum flush toilet called Propelair, which I'd seen at Ecobuild. The downside, apart from cost, is that they only currently do a concealed cistern version - but if we are going ahead with the smaller top floor bathroom, a concealed cistern could be used. However, when I spoke to Propelair, they didn't seem to have a distribution channel set up, and the guy on the phone was quite short with me when I pointed out that neither accepting credit card payments nor offering credit yourselves was not conducive to getting business! Seemed like a startup company (apparently the toilet was only launched at this year's Ecobuild), and although I really like their idea, I was reminded of the risk of buying immature technology, and of buying from a startup company, who could easily go bust/discontinue the product/etc (I was told last weekend at Old Hall that they had to decommission their solar hot water collector because the company had gone bust and they couldn't get necessary parts).

Getting ready for the main contractors to start

Robert — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:31:37 +0000

Yesterday I spent some time at the house just generally clearing up and readying the place for the builders to start work on Monday.

One thing I did was to set up a temporary sink with hot water supply in the rear basement room:

Temporary sink, for use during the course of the building work

The sink, wood, mirror and water heater were all reused - I only had to buy the pipe and fittings (this was the first time I'd used "Speedfit", and they certainly don't call it that for nothing!). I'm quite pleased with the end result.

I met one of the builders briefly yesterday - he dropped off a copy of their insurance documentation, though when I subsequently reviewed it I realised that one of the pages was missing.

Last night and today I've been looking in more detail at the ventilation - "design approach" piece to follow. I hadn't realised that flexible ducting was frowned upon, and with this option out of the window, positioning of the MVHR units and incorporating the ducts into the building work will be come a lot more involved.

Revised quote for windows now in - still not quite right, but close. We should be in a position to officially order the windows, UdiReco insulation, sprinkler system and rainwater system by Wednesday of next week.

I tried calling the owner of the house next door again; went to voicemail, so left another message.

And for some downtime, I'm going to visit Old Hall community this weekend.

Rainwater harvesting, and neighbours

Robert — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:49:57 +0000

The rainwater harvesting system we're going to use is from rainwaterharvesting.co.uk - they sell a complete system, in kit form. Because the tank is shared with the fire sprinkler system, I thought it would be a good idea to get it on-site ASAP, if possible. So I've been thinking about how to achieve this, given the road closure going on with the United Utilities works (The tank we'll be using measures 2.4m x 2.4m x 1m approx).

At the moment, UU have the side road (which gives us access to the rear garden) closed during the daytime, but then they open it to (small) vehicles before they finish work each evening. This is going to change in two weeks' time. So I came up with a slightly convoluted but workable plan: hire a 3.5t flatbed from Salford Van Hire, drive down to Peterborough, get the rainwaterharvesting.co.uk people to load the tank onto the vehicle, drive back to Manchester (by which time it would be after 5:30pm so UU would have finished work), and have a bunch of people ready to offload it into the garden (then return the van next morning). After making quite a few phone calls to confirm availability of both the tank and the vehicle, costings, ordering procedures, etc, I came to the conclusion that whilst I could get it in to the garden, this would be pointless unless we could get all the displaced earth out of the garden - and that we didn't have enough time to also achieve that, before the 24/7 road closure comes into force.

So we'll have to stick to Plan A: wait until the roadworks are finished before putting the tank in. I need to tell the sprinkler people about this; they sent through a CAD file following Wednesday's meeting, mostly OK but a couple of points to raise with them, which I'll have to do on Monday now.

I'm very eager to ensure that we have good communication, and good relationships with the neighbours. Both the adjoining houses are rented. I already know the owner of one of them, but yesterday I managed to speak to the other one on the phone for the first time. He seemed rather concerned, so there will be more work to be done to put his mind at rest. In particular, there are some Leylandii trees in the garden that we are going to get rid of, and what gets done about the boundary (ie do we build a wall, plant a hedge, etc) will need some careful negotiation. He promised to have a word with his tenants, and then we'd speak again next week.

Fortunately for this project, my time is not being charged for - but in other circumstances such time would have to be paid for, yet the above aren't things you can "see" in the finished result. I had no idea when I started that my time would be needed for these kinds of things - certainly something to bear in mind for future projects.

Going to see the window supplier on Monday morning, which I'm quite excited about.

Withington Co-operative Eco-house - neighbours

Laundry

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Starting work on the roof

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Getting ready for the main contractors to start

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Rainwater harvesting, and neighbours

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