Our builders’ first week back in the new year! And even though we only had a few people on site, they kept very busy, prepping the site for some upcoming big jobs.
On our garage/communal area barn, we’re due to roof this (including solar tiles again) next week. Our builders managed to get the coping stones on the gable ends on Friday, having dodged the storm and rain throughout the week. John has been painting the fascia boards before the scaffolding comes down – annoyingly though because of the rain and cold, some of the paint keeps flaking off and he’s had to sand it off and redo it at least three times now… We’re also still waiting for National Grid to approve our solar tile install – there’s a risk they might limit how much power we can generate, which seems entirely ridiculous! They can also limit what we can export, which makes more sense given that despite paying to have the line upgraded, it’s still only a single-phase line and can only accept a certain amount of power. We’ve been working with the solar tile manufacturer this week to see whether installing fewer tiles would be more cost-effective for us, but we’re at the point now where the cost of any delays to the overall build would likely be greater than the extra expense of installing a few too many tiles. Plus if National Grid did decide to limit our install, it would only have an impact in the sunniest months of the year, the tiles would still be generating power throughout Autumn and Winter…
We have a February deadline to get our heat pumps installed, driven by the Ofgem heat pump incentive scheme (you have 3 months from approval date to get the system installed and up and running). Because we’re tight on space in our one-bed and three-bed barns, we’re building small outbuildings to house the hot water cylinder and equipment. One of the heat pumps will be wall-mounted, but the other two need to stand on a concrete plinth which also needs to be made. Of course you can’t build any of these in the rain – and December and January have been very wet months so far. Our builders managed to make a start on one of the outbuildings before Christmas – and this week they added the roof and wall insulation, and have boarded the inside.
And we have a front door on our one-bed barn too! Both front doors have only been primed and still need to be properly painted, but again we need to wait for a dry and slightly warmer day before we can finish these off… It looks lovely though having both doors in place.
This week we also had ‘sign-off’ from the tanking manufacturer for the issues caused by our first pre-Xmas flood. Because the water went above the level of the tanking, it caused some water to collect under the floor but within the building structure in the eggbox-like insulation, and our builders were concerned that this could cause issues further down the line. They’d cut out parts of the floor in the kitchen to assess the impact (avoiding the underfloor heating), but now the situation has been accepted, they’ve filled these in again now – making it much easier to move around the room without holes to fall into!
We’ve spent most evenings and all weekend painting in our new house. This is on the critical path now – the electricians are waiting for us to finish before they come in and install everything. They need the platform to install the lights in the vaulted ceilings, which can only be done before the kitchen is installed as there won’t be enough space for it otherwise. At the moment all the power in the barns is being run off the farmhouse – the electricians will also need to bring the shippon supply into the new house and fit the fuse board rather than running everything off a temporary supply. So this week we focused on getting the first coats of proper paint on the kitchen ceiling and in the ‘service cupboard’ (i.e., an airing cupboard that has the underfloor heating and heat pump equipment in, that we’ll also use for general storage). It’s been pretty difficult to paint the ceiling at height and get an even line against the green wall paint – some touching up was required afterwards!
We used our spare time to clean, sand and treat a couple more beams (you should see the amount of filth that comes off them…) and prime the lounge roof and the corridor walls. With the beams, we had originally planned to apply a thin coat of clear varnish but a test patch showed the wood went dark, and we decided we prefer the lighter ‘raw’ colour of the wood now it’s been sanded. Only four more beams to go….
We do need to start getting on top of the garden and this year’s vegetable crop – we’ve totally neglected the garden for the last few months and you can tell as we’ve not weeded or chopped anything back, and we have so many dead branches to clear in the wood. We managed to find time to plant our onions out this weekend (only a couple of months late) – we’ve planted just over 200 this year as we’re hoping to have enough to use in next season’s chutney – plus we always lose a few to the mice! We need to work out a planting plan that rotates the crops between beds – but this requires sitting down and working out what went where over the last 2 years, and what worked well and what didn’t. Which all feels a bit too much after long days of working and then painting. Maybe next week…
Ley Farm Cottages 
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