Welcome to Greenwood. It's nearly weather-tight and there has been huge progress. We were feeling rather overwhelmed by it all and then the stair plans arrived and blew our minds entirely; in a good way, I hasten to add. We've been repeating what we want until it has felt like a mantra and suddenly, there it is, realised in 3-D and colour. There will be a steel frame set up and from this will be hung the inner end of the oak treads. They won't touch the outer curve and will appear to float. The steelwork wil be concealed within a plastered wall. It is exactly what we'd planned and will be fabricated by a firm in Barnstaple.
Building sites are always bewildering and cluttered. This will eventually be a generous, oak -floored gallery opening out from the entrance lobby. It will have a glass balustrade, giving a view down into the living room. The glass will run along to the top of the stairwell, too, shown guarded by a steel fence, to the right. The view southwards, from the sliding door to the balcony should be spectacular as well. And the correct door slides open, the one on the left, not the one opening into the void!
This photo also shows the conjunction of roof structures that exercised us so mightily just a few weeks ago. It'll be fine.
First fix electrics are well under way and here the kitchen wiring is being planned in detail. So many decisoions to make just for this one area.
Slating is nearing completion and the fixings for the solar photovoltaic panels are in place. This will generate about 1.8Kwh in daylight hours and will provide most of our electricity needs. We'll put more panels on the south-facing pitch of the garage we intend to build once the house is finished. We could put more, free-standing ones on the slope below the house, but we'll see whether we need them and also, what technological developments arrive in the next few years. At the moment, we both rather fancy a helical wind-generator, such as the one on the new Colston Hall extension in Bristol.
A rather more prosaic and traditional energy technology here. We've always intended to have a woodburner and because the house is so well insulated, we won't need any supplementary heating. In the beginning, we'd planned under-floor heating; a warm water system, heated by a ground source heat-pump. However, the mechanical engineer convinced us that this would be uneccessary, so we spent the money on photovoltaics instead. And as anyone who's ever used a log fire knows, you are warmed twice at least, in the cutting and carting the logs, before they reach the fire. Yeah, right. Me. I'm inclined to pay someone else to do that bit. We'll build a wood-store in a sunny spot against the north-west boundary hedge.
And here is just some of the insulation material, stacked on the scaffolding and waiting to be tucked under the roofing felt, which will be boarded on the inside. This scaffolding is near the apex of the double-height living room and will stay in place until the painting is finished
I only noticed that this picture appears twice one I'd finished writing this post and I'm not confident that I can remove it without the whole thing disappearing.
And here is just some of the insulation material, stacked on the scaffolding and waiting to be tucked under the roofing felt, which will be boarded on the inside. This scaffolding is near the apex of the double-height living room and will stay in place until the painting is finished
I only noticed that this picture appears twice one I'd finished writing this post and I'm not confident that I can remove it without the whole thing disappearing.
