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Wood pellets (& Solar part II).
Its not easy undertaking major works here at this time of year and if our winter of renewable energy starts to sound like a comedy of errors can we please attribute that to our limited budget, time constraints and environmental difficulties rather than slapdash project management, festive distractions and a penchant for 1950s machinery.
Phase 1 of phase 2 was the fuel store for the new wood pellet boiler. We had to lay a 3×3 metre concrete slab for a hopper that will contain 8 tons of wood pellets, then dig a trench to the house for the vacuum transfer. Sounds simple, except that pouring concrete below 4 degrees isn’t recommended and it was nigh on minus 5, the concrete truck is too wide for the gates and mixing 5 tons of concrete by hand would have been ridiculous. Oh, and the Land Rover was out of MOT and we don’t own a sensible trailer. Cue major head scratching and more delays.
Enter big Jack, ace dry stone waller, armed with with a pick up and a borrowed trailer and enough humour, experience and resourcefulness to pick the concrete up from the plant (in 4 runs), slide it down a tin chute into the shuttering, tamp it down nice and flat (in the dark) and improvise a shelter we could heat so it would go off. Bingo. Phase 1 complete. Phase 2 happens in January when the old oil boiler gets ripped out, no doubt in the middle of some biblical weather situation.
There is a second chapter to the solar saga which may constitute something of a record. We were always cutting it fine by taking on our installation on the Sunday of the deadline but we confidently came down from the roof with just the paperwork left to scan and submit. Then at 9pm the scanner we were using gave up and by the time we had driven to and fro along a very icy B970 to get another one, then sorted and rescanned everything page by page, we finally hit send with 24 minutes to spare.
Phew again.
Solar.
Inshriach has a huge flat roof ideally suited to solar power and part of our winter renewables drive was a scheme to reduce our hefty electricity consumption. Then a month ago the government announced it would halve the tariff available and the entire solar buying world went hell bent on catching the higher rate. That rate expires tonight and for the last fortnight there has been only a thin veneer of calm across Inshriach. On Friday we hauled 32 paving slabs up to the roof, yesterday we installed new circuit breakers and the inverters and early this afternoon 32 solar panels and lots of aluminium framing turned up courtesy of our friends at Enviko. By 5 o clock tonight (Sunday) it was pitch dark and being 3 floors up on an icy roof scattered with paving slabs, frames, skylights and the equivalent of 16 flat screen TVs was decidedly hairy but we got it all up there and now, with only 5 hours before the deadline, we just need to send in the paperwork and come back tomorrow to connect it up and point it at the sun.
Down the hill we decided that the farm ought to be solar powered as well so we installed another inverter and meter in the barn. The other 16 panels will be spread across existing farm buildings over the next few days and the 4kw they provide should cover all the power demands of the farmyard, the workshops and the yurters shower and be the foundation for a sustainable barn conversion which we are going to take on when funds allow.
Phew.
Winter greens.
This is a few weeks late in publishing but as the weather draws in so the Bothy Project nears completion. It has all its windows and all its lining and a reclaimed ash floor and mezzanine. Iain has lodged its measurements with a furniture maker and we are trying to work out what size of stove will best suit the varied purposes and seasons the building will experience.
Back in civilisation we have decided that from here on in we wont rent out the big house between the start of November (the week before the Backwoods Bonfire) and the end of January. That way we have time to make the improvements we had planned, admittedly in the freezing cold, plus we get to relax and enjoy the house for a while and then we have a New Years party (which is becoming something of an institution).
Regular readers will have noticed a few loose ends in this blog, jobs started and left unfinished and potentially interesting threads that seem to have been left hanging. Besides the weddings, parties, filming and holidays we have been really busy this year and so the game shed and the barn and the gutters will now have to wait until next year. Now, threatened by winter, darkness and Christmas, we have a short and dangerous window of home improvements in which to turn our attentions towards the house.
Inshriach is a big place and a lot of people have passed this way over the last few years so there is a decorative rejig afoot. It has also proved a fearsomely hungry house to run and with such consumption come financial, environmental and, without wanting to go too far into it, political responsibilities. Over the next few weeks, alongside some nice curtains, there are some very drastic decisions taking place as we try to tie up our biggest, most expensive and most exciting loose end.
Inshriach is going green (finally, only this time in the snow).
The Backwoods Bonfire Party.
Last weekend we let it all hang out with our second Backwoods Bonfire party. This time we were lucky enough to hang onto Paul Millards beautiful 42 ft yurt, the scene of 3 weddings at Inshriach this year, and to persuade John Langan (who got married in it here back in May) to put in a final gig before he disappears to India for 6 months.
We warmed up in the yurt with our old friends Ord Ban, again wedding veterans in these here parts, and copious measures of mulled cider.
Then it was up to the Backwoods stage and once again I have to thank the old stagers from times even before the Insider, Dom, Ben, Captain Bob, Piers and Ali who brought a van from Derbyshire full of PA and good chat. Jimmy, Jonah, Greg the Absinthe and everyone else who mucked in, again, it couldn’t be done without you. Under the watchful eye of team Backwoods – Ross, Polly, Gordy and co – it went off with a bang. John played a stormer of a set in the woods, then fireworks, then our old favourites Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers kicking brassiness out into the night and Gojar on the decks till the end. It was a line up of old friends and an absolutely excellent party.
Going Green.
I’m going to backpedal through time a bit so as to introduce a series of works we have initiated (to run alongside all the other works we haven’t finished). I will return later with tales from our last wedding of the year and of bonfire night.
For both environmental and financial reasons we have been deliberating on how to update Inshriach and how to wean it off its appetite for oil. Wood boilers, whether fired by pellets, wood chips, logs or waste wood are big business these days so we weighed up our options, put our savings in a pot and plumped for a brand new wood pellet system, a 60kw Nordic Bio Energy boiler, fed by a vacuum system which will draw pellets through a pipe under the drive from an 8 ton hopper on the other side. Two new and efficient tanks will give us the capacity to keep up with endless big baths for wedding parties and we can set the ball rolling for installing central heating upstairs at some point in the future.
So as soon as the wedding was done the first of our outstandingly useful bonfire party crew arrived and the shovels came out, we rented a minidigger and got started on the trench for the vacuum and footings for the hopper. Its going to be a narrow window in the weather before it gets too cold and because of bonfire night, cider and minor operational difficulties we have so far achieved precisely one large hole.
The hopper is eventually going to be disguised as another Edwardian ice house / game shed. The chimney needs lining on the house, the cellar stripped out, new heating pipework needs to join onto the old heating pipework, the big oil tank can then go and the new system will have an electric backup. That still leaves oil for the aga but go in there now when its getting cold outside and its deliciously toasty in the kitchen.
Then there is the matter of generating our power sustainably and true to form it’s all happening at once. We have been planning solar for a while so, again taking advantage of the end of the rental season, a 4kw photo voltaic array is planned for the big house. To top our renewables inventory for the week my old friend Jimmy Whitmore (now a sustainable energy inventor at KraftMaus) stayed around for a few days after bonfire night to chat over some ideas we have been having for a small Hydro Electric generator to power the workshops, alternative fuels we could be running the Inshriach fleet on and suchlike.
I will report back on the various hurdles, installers, contractors, holes, progress and inventions over the next few months, hopefully with better photos.
The Backwoods Bonfire Party.
On the 5th November we are holding a Backwoods Bonfire party. Buses leave from the Old Bridge Inn any time after 5 and cost a tenner, when you get here our old friends the John Langan band will be playing and we have been lucky enough to find ourselves with the same gigantic Red Kite yurt that John got married in earlier this year, in the same spot. Then we head for the woods for a barbeque and mulled cider to hear three time festival champions Woodenbox with a Fistful of fivers, then some fireworks, Gojar on the decks until midnight and all back on the bus in time for last orders. You can read more about it and see if you can share a lift to the pub by looking at the facebook page.
Whats not to like about that?
Effie.
Last week the film circus returned to the Highlands with Emma Thompson’s new period drama feature, Effie, starring Dakota Fanning. Effie tells the story of the affair between the Victorian Art critic John Ruskin’s wife and John Everett Millais and there were plenty of costumes that would have looked quite at home at the Insider. I was tasked with taking Petal the Land Rover out to the west coast, along with a couple of cohorts from Aviemore, where I was detailed to the camera department for the week and given the challenge of not getting stuck, flooded or lost. Here I am executing an inelegant reentry after a river burst its banks and the days set had to be speedily evacuated.
Spoon Carving.
Last weekends spoon carving course was a great success, Wooden Tom did a fine job of making sure everyone kept their fingers and got the basics required to carve a spoon. The 6 folk who came along all left promising to go out and buy themselves axes, knives and gouges. Three of them have booked for the bowl carving course we are running on 15th November (which is already sold out) but more courses can be put together on a pretty ad hoc basis if you have 6 people up for it, and £40 seems very reasonable for a whole day of crafty, carvy and rewarding entertainment.
Resident : 11
Friday was a quickfire run down to Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Academy for the opening night of the Resident : 11 exhibition. The RSA have supported a number of artists through their Residents for Scotland programme. They have a network of predominantly art institute partners across Scotland and contemporary artists get to spend time in research and production in unusual locations. The RSA have partially funded the Bothy Project as part artwork and part miniaturised embodiment of what they are trying to achieve.
After seeing pictures of ourselves and the build plastered across the hallowed walls of the RSA we are coming back to earth by figuring out rainwater harvesting and filtering and we need get our hands on enough larch to clad the gables.
Huts all round.
Last weekend saw another bothy building delegation descend on Inshriach, now the wall cladding is on, the side windows are in, complete with beautiful oak sills and sides, and most of the insulation and lining has gone in. The architectural detail that has gone into the design is starting to tell in the overall proportions, the views through the building, the floor to eaves windows, the custom made, diminutive and beautiful (if probably not very practical) folded gutters and the silvery cladding. It is a traditional bothy with a modernist twist. We are two weeks off the next build party when we hope to have it clad, windowed and watertight. There is a much more extensive blog and photo gallery of the build here on the bothy project website.
Meanwhile, just along the valley at the Lazy Duck in Nethy Bridge, David and Valerie have just finished their fabulous Woodmans hut, living proof that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Their hut is situated on the old woodmans trail that runs through their forest and is mostly built with timber thinned from its immediate surroundings. The hut has great views of the Cairngorms and a veranda out front perfectly suited to Appalacian relaxation. Inside it has a box bed, a stove, oak flooring and a great little kitchen, outside there’s a bush shower, compost loo and fridge (ie a stream). Its very cute and I highly advise getting in to stay there before they realise what a bargain it is or it gets famous and is booked out all the time. 
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