I was looking forward to plaster-boarding and building some cupboards and half walls upstairs, making the house look very different inside, but a weekend Guardian article about heat pumps mentioned that applications for the renewable heat incentive (RHI) would close in March. My plan was to install the flue and stove in the house during next spring’s fair weather, but now it simply can’t wait. I’ll have to do it now. N O W!
Please excuse the acronyms, they are the soup I’m wading through daily – to make my application for the RHI I need an EPC (energy performance certificate) and to get that I need an ‘as built’ airtightness test, not possible until I’ve finished making holes in the airtight structure. The hole in the roof for the flue is the last such penetration.
On Friday I didn’t know this, but felling unwell in the morning took a lateral flow test. I had symptoms of a cold and felt curiously light headed, probably a lack of sleep. The test was negative. In the afternoon I dug out the foam that, almost a year ago, I’d set inside the front door when the screed was poured, so that when it was removed it would leave a well for the door mat. Under constant direct footfall the foam had started to crumble – it was time to get shot of it. Lacking a door mat I refilled the void with a sheet of OSB and a jigsaw of timber offcuts.
We still await our deeds, allegedly with the Registry of Scotland, sent by solicitor in June 2019. Was there something dodgy going on? Did someone else own the land on which we were building (them) a house? Internet research and a couple of phone calls reassured us that the registry is still dealing with our application but has a backlog. Sounds familiar.
Tash’s old friend Elly made a flying visit from London, arriving on Saturday afternoon and leaving at noon today. Immediately before her arrival Tash and I went in search of the farm with five standing stones in the yard. Not to be confused with the farm with four standing stones in the yard. We parked near the old pier, following the shore along a private tarmac drive, past a deserted bungalow with an irrefutably ominous presence and through barbed wire to the main road and a gated track leading up a long clearing between trees.
The house and outbuildings are in various states of decay, roof and floors collapsing. A burn runs twenty metres in a stone-lined culvert beneath one set of stone sheds; had it been a mill? We had limited time and there is much to look at. Within literal spitting distance of the house are the standing stones in a (not quite straight) row, three on one side of the yard wall and two on the other. The effect is extraordinary, who would build a house right beside standing stones?
Despite dereliction the place lacked the oppressive presence of the newer bungalow, which we returned past rather than take a long detour along the busy main road.
Back past the rusting milk churns…
Back past the car…
Between yesterday’s sharp showers I cut and fitted the larch fascia board for the lean-to (entrance and plant room), which the guttering will be fixed to, then started clearing under my workbench in the house. I needed to move it to start laying out the assembled flue in order to work out how, and exactly where, it might fit. The accumulated pile was sorted into four rubble sacks, sawdust, burnable off-cuts (larch) and two bags of (sadly) unburnable treated wood, destined for the dump.
It was several hours before Elly and Tash could help me move the bench. I started to dismantle parts of the woodburning stove to seal the air intake box, wanting to prevent it sucking air from the room and compromising the house’s airtightness. The inlet box is less accessible than that of the workshop’s stove and I thought better of taking it apart. Today I called the company and asked some detailed questions to which the technical department has promised an email response after some research. On a bed of cardboard I assembled the flue and took various measurements which I then marked on the wall. We tried the stove in its proposed angled position as well as flat against the end wall. Angled is definitely best, feeling more open to the whole room. Flat against the wall it feels ‘tided away’ and dead.
Working from the stove in its preferred position it became apparent that the flue, as supplied, would coincide with one of the heavy roof battens; no good. Tomorrow I’ll put the ladder outside against the gable and use the cardboard template I made to show me where the flue can come through the roof avoiding the battens.
It looks certain I’ll need a custom-made length of flue, so tomorrow I’ll make enquiries and hope that neither the delay nor cost will be too painful.
A sustainable house for unsustainable times... 