Archive for the ‘Camping with Style’ Category
More rubbish sheds.
Another part of our plan to keep Inshriach sustainable involves taking as much of our firewood as we can from the estate. Last year we reckon around 15 tons was fed into the house and perhaps half of it we chopped and split ourselves. Storage is the problem, laying down the wood in suitable conditions to season properly. With the yurt, the beermoth, the house and two bothies all anticipating pretty strong levels of occupation it was time to get recycling.
The top shed was easy. 5 offcuts of wriggly tin from the tip, 5 pieces of wood, some screws and three half pallets. The bottom one was the result of a pile of used 4 inch posts and 6 more sheets of salvaged tin sitting dangerously close to each other and getting in the way for a few months. I’m not quite sure what to clad it with but something will no doubt appear.
Now we need to go out and chop some logs.
Insider 2012 – The Olympiad.
Bar ironing out a few teething problems with our new renewable system it’s back to business as normal, which means the abnormal business of organising the Insider Olympiad is underway. We have nearly got our heads round yet another permutation of the site layout and our website is about to get up and running (no pun intended).
The Beer Moth hits the press.
The ‘moth has really captured the public imagination. Last week it went in the Sun travel section, this week I’m told it is in Country Life. Conde Nast Traveller featured it first, then over the last month or so it has picked up its petticoats and gone a trampling across the net. Among the many blogs it has popped up on the one I’m most proud of has to be Lloyd Kahn’s . Lloyd wrote the absolutely fabulous books ‘Shelter’ and ‘Home Work’, full of handmade huts, shacks, yurts, treehouses and trucks, books which in no small way inspired the conversion in the first place.
Now the lonely planet want to come to stay and a press agency called up for high res pictures so you can expect to see it out and about some more over the next few months. Right now it’s up on blocks in the farmyard. Once the renewables situation on the big house is under control I’m going to rebuild the brakes and get it running spot on for whatever adventures 2012 may hold.
Once that’s done it will be available to rent again through Canopy and Stars.
Inshriach goes sustainable part II.
The next round of the sustainable circus got underway this week. Unfortunately we discovered that our old cylinder was insulated with Aconite, the sort of asbestos you dont really want to play with. That meant lab tests, a 14 day notification to the HSE, the whole cellar being placed in a negative pressure airlock, acres of plastic sheeting, double bagging, a decontamination unit on the drive, funny suits and high vis jackets, 2 inspections by a third party and another chunky bill. The guys who dealt with it, NJS, were dead professional (and as reasonable as could be expected on our finances), they stuck to their price even when the decon unit froze and the the job overran by a day and now we are sat here with no boiler, no tanks and no heating in preparation for next week, when the new system arrives.
A gigantic meccano set turned up during all this which is to be the new wood pellet hopper. It’s modular so there are dozens of bits of stainless steel and fittings, bags of bolts and mastic, and no instructions. A boysy weekend of head scratching and spannering awaits.
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