Category Archives: building

How to heat a barn conversion

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We are in a good position to think about these things as we are starting from scratch, so much easier than retrofitting a place.

We always knew wood had to be in the mix somewhere for the heating as we planted 300 trees to coppice when we arrived. The plan is to heat the downstairs with underfloor heating using a wood burner with a back boiler. A solar water panel will also be in the mix.

The hot water will then be stored in a large well insulated tank which will provide us with both hot water and heating.

Now we are just scratching our heads over the size of woodburner. We don’t want to find ourselves with one too small and be struggling. Equally we don’t want one so large that it will see us running out into the snow to cool off.

There  is just so much to take into account. We have super insulation, it will be a well sealed building with no drafts, it’s south facing with protection from the north.

Decisions, decisions.

Beautiful stones and the next winter

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The building continues its upward progress. It does feel like the pressure is on to get the roof on now with winter in the sidelines. We are a little way off this at the moment as the old part of building needs to be sorted before we can think roofs.

In the new part the stonework on the gable end is going up nicely and that will stabilise the block work wall. They have just put in a course of flatter stones above the sun room to facilitate the sun room roof which will come out and house our solar water panels. When we look at this and think what the original plans were like we breathe a huge sigh of relief that we put this sun room in.  The only natural light coming into that lounge area would have been from a glass window in an east facing door. It would have been dim and dingy whereas now we will have a bright and airy room.

We are also getting ready for another winter in the yurt. This includes the tweaking of the yurt, replacement of the covers and stacking up of the wood nearby.

The materials in the build so far

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After all the trials and tribulations of the last couple of years I thought I’d better do a bit of an update on the house.

We are continuing to try and be as eco friendly as possible. Most of our materials are either reused our recycled. Although we have used blocks to rebuild the structure the blocks are made of ash collected from power stations. The blocks are great in that they have air bubbles in them providing excellent insulation. We had looked at a variety of options but even though the products were pretty kosher they required a lot of concrete.

All of the stone has come from the original barn and the rebuilt areas look amazing. We have used the bricks which came out of the barn as coins around the windows and doors. They are looking rather splendid.

We are now looking at roofing materials, all of them are pretty pricey. Cambrian slates are made from pulverised slate which is reconstituted, they use a horrid system at the end worth plastic, but they are more reasonable than reused Welsh slates. Such a quandary!

So decisions are our daily bread and butter.