Revisiting Renewables and a weekend mixing work with fun (for a change)

Since we got our planning approval a few weeks ago, we’ve finally been able to look properly at our renewable options and get quotes from potential installers. Everything seems to have gone up significantly in price since we started looking back in December 2020, although equally the current cost of electricity means our savings are higher (not quite by the equivalent amount though!). 

We’re restricted in the external aspects of our design now as we have to stick to the planning permission – even so it’s surprising to see the difference in price between the quotes we’ve received so far. It’s also a bit of a challenge to work out the optimal way for the different technologies to work together (with solar tiles, EV charge points, air source heat pumps, underfloor heating and we’re now considering batteries) – we haven’t managed to find a company who covers everything and can design a full solution for our scenario, and so we’re looking into each technology ourselves. We’re certainly learning a fair bit – it’s a pretty steep learning curve too when many of the companies expect us to know exactly what we want, and use technical jargon when discussing the solutions with us.

Each of our cottages will be set up as individual homes so that we have the option of selling them separately in future – while this means additional upfront cost to have their own power supply and heating systems, we’re hoping in the long run it’ll pay back. Our communal building will be on the same supply as our three bed barn so we don’t need to pay for a separate electricity meter, and our listed cottage will be attached to the main farmhouse as an annex (the two are physically joined by a covered back terrace so it would be difficult to sell them separately anyway). Each building will also have a slightly different set-up for power and heat so we’re going through each one individually to work out which will be powered by solar and which from the grid, and where we might want to install a battery at the same time as the solar. We’re also having to phase the solar tile installs from a cost perspective – however one of our first-to-be-done buildings doesn’t have any roof at present, and we think we have to raise the farmhouse roof to have enough space for insulation, so our current thinking is to install solar on them from the outset. Then our third barn (the three-bed) we can do at a later date as the current roof is adequate, and it’s in our second build phase so won’t have guests staying for the works to disrupt.

We’ve also had a sample of the solar tile sent to us, so we can visualise what our roofs will look like, and share it with the council as part of our planning conditions. We were really surprised – having seen solar tiles at the Homebuilding and Renovation Show in Birmingham back in March where the slate tiles had mini solar panels attached to them, this one is completely different, and just looks like a misty grey tile. While it doesn’t look particularly slate-like, from a distance you’d never know they were actually solar tiles rather than normal grey tiles!

Despite having a huge to-do list, this weekend we had a more varied plan, mixing a couple of half-day trips with garden jobs (just about avoiding the rain). We finally managed to get to Exmouth – having initially planned to go in July – and took the pup on one of the sandy beaches (only dog friendly from October when ‘bathing season’ has finished!) before heading on to look around Exmouth itself. It’s only 50 minutes from our house and while we have various other coastal towns that are closer, it’s always good to be able to give our guests different suggestions – especially one with a dog-friendly fish restaurant too! And then on Sunday morning John took part in a 10k race from Sidford to Sidmouth, giving us the opportunity to look around another little village and add another pub to our ’to visit’ list. Sidmouth tends to get very busy with tourists, and having found Sidford only about 2 miles inland, it would be a great place for visitors to park and walk into Sidmouth rather than tackle the traffic in town.

Top of our list on Sunday afternoon was to clear the rest of the orchard fruit – the recent storms and high winds knocked a lot of the fruit off, so we wanted to take the rest off (it lasts longer if it’s not bruised). Plus it’s time for our medlars to start bletting – we didn’t want to miss this since we had such a poor crop last year. We managed to dodge most of the rain and pick everything, even raking up the leaves and setting aside for leaf mould for next year. A lot of the fruit had been damaged by birds – annoyingly they only tend to peck a small bit before moving onto the next fruit – so we saved what we can and will spend the next week or two freezing or preserving these before they go off. Our apple rack that we bought in our first year is certainly coming into its own now to store the undamaged fruit and buy us some time!