Disclaimer!

It has come to our attention that 'Valley Gate' has religious connotations. For those of you who have arrived here expecting an allegory on the Gates of Jerusalem, you are going to be sorely disappointed! 'Valley Gate' is the name of the house and the association derives from the name of our road. Valley Farm is just down the road......

Monday 26 December 2011

Happy Xmas from Valley Gate

Happy Xmas from Valley Gate.  In contrast to last year, it was a mild, overcast, damp day.  In the morning we went for a long walk around Caneston Woods before coming home to start cooking at 1.00pm.

The obligatory nut roast (Delia page 298) had been made the night before along with pears poached in red wine.  The potatoes, swede, brussels sprouts, onion and garlic were all from the garden.

The nut roast didn't quite set and turned out more like a pile of stuffing but was still delicious.   Home made Xmas Pudding to Mum's vegetarian recipe followed but also turned out a bit loose.  The meal was finished off with a large slab of Colston Bassett Stilton cheese.

The Cats enjoyed more traditional festive fare thanks to a few turkey necks from Andrew Rees.

We then took it in turns to fall asleep in front of the TV.

We hope you enjoy the pictures of the day on Picasa

Friday 23 December 2011

Stoned

After two winters of paddling through a sea of mud, we finally decided to get the yard stoned.  This will be a particularly welcome improvement for Kim's clients who needed wellies to get from their cars to the treatment room.

The underlying soils are impermeable so when it rains hard the yard turns into a river draining out through the gate to a gully in the road.   The plan was therefore to scrape off all the loose soil and stone and shape the formation will a fall towards the gate to prevent ponding.  The yard was then to be surfaced with 2" to 3" of single sized stone to allow it drain down to the formation.

This was going to be a major civil engineering operation so we employed Peter Thomas and his JCB for the job.  (Peter had previously helped extend the duct to the treatment room, see previous post on the installation of the first half...).

Peter carefully shaped the formation and the stone and soil was stockpiled out of sight for another day...  Next a layer of geotextile fabric was laid to stop future weed growth and stop the stone sinking into the underlying soil.

We thought that 16 tonnes of stone would probably be enough which arrived in a very large truck from G D Harries.  This covered about half the yard so another truck was ordered.  This proved ample and we now have a small surplus for other projects.  

For the first few times it rained hard we were out watching the runoff emerge through the base of the stone onto the road like a small spring (as planned!).  Now we have to sort out the path to the house where the paving stones across the grass turn into a series of puddles.








Thursday 22 December 2011

Blinded by the light

The Feed-in Tariff (FiT) available for Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels was almost too good to be true at 43.3p/kWh.  The projected rate of return over 25 years provided a very strong incentive to invest and at the same time make a positive contribution to reducing our reliance on polluting energy sources.

We had obtained a quotation early in 2012 for a 4kW array but didn't follow it up.   However, a  reduction in the FiT was planned in April 2012 so we decided in early November to get on and do something about it.

We got Good Life in Narberth to confirm their quote which had reduced a fair bit so we paid the deposit and were told there was probably a 2 to 3 week lead in time.  A few days later, half awake on a Saturday morning listening to the news on Radio 4, I heard a breaking story that the Government had decided to consult on reducing the FiT to 21p/kWh for any installations completed after 12 December and worse still, if the installation was on a house that did nor achieve an energy rating of C or better, the FiT would be reduced to 9p/kWh.  Given the age and construction of the house, it would be virtually impossible to achieve a rating of C and this would make PV panels unviable.   The reason given was that the take up of PV panels had exceeded expectations (surely a good thing?) and the scheme was running out of money.  Everyone was expecting some adjustment to the FiT as the cost of the panels had come down, perhaps to 34p/kWh but not, for the vast majority of people in older homes, to 9p/kWh. Incidentally, the consultation doesn't end until 23 December....

In a mild state of panic, I rang Good Life at 9.00am to be told that the installations would be completed strictly in the order of the deposits they had received and we were 6th on the list, so not to panic!  True to their word the rails to support the panels were installed on the roof of the barn a few days later.  They started at 7am and it was so cold they had to go and buy gloves to handle the scaffold poles.  A week or so later they were back early on a Sunday morning to install the panels and inverter.

Luckily, we had a new consumer panel installed in the workshop when part of it was converted into Kim's treatment room so wiring it all up was relatively straight forward.

The installation was registered by Good Life in a matter of hours allowing us to secure the higher 43.3p rate with two weeks to spare.  Others have not been so lucky, although the High Court has now ruled that imposing a cut off before the end of the consultation period is unlawful.  It remains to be seen the impact this change in policy will have on the solar industry and the country's progress in meeting it's carbon reduction targets. So much for the Government's Green credentials...

We are now generating our own electricity, although not in any significant quantities unless the sun comes out!  Thanks to Good Life who did an excellent job and have been working flat out to get as many installations completed before the deadline.

Saturday 17 December 2011

Life begins at...

In June I reached (another) milestone and hit the big 5-0.  To celebrate we had a few friends and family round for a party.

Great Aunt Maggie had a bit of a dilemma having come over from Canada for Wimbledon only to get tickets on the day of the party.  Family won out in the end.

Our friend John decided to cycle from Kent (well to Paddington and then from Swansea) and arrived soaked to the skin from the constant near torrential rain.  I hope it was worth it...

Good attendance from the Dynamos and Aces who generally will do anything for a free drink.

The evening kicked off with a Hog Roast supplied by Andrew Rees and was followed by music from Elephants Gerald from Tenby.  Andrew did confirm that it had been a happy pig but Kim and I stuck to our vegetarian principles.  Those who did partake sang its praises from months.

We had been piling up wood for a bonfire for several months, however, the constant drizzle made it difficult to light.  In the end it was a 16 year old with a box of matches that did the trick.

The 80 or so friends and family kindly brought a 'few' bottles to supplement the kegs of Brains SA and Templeton Wilderbeast.   We are only now finishing the last few bottles and cans off.

Some decided to camp, others slept in the boot of their car....

By contrast the next day was scorching and we enjoyed a few games of cricket with the family once the pressies had been opened.  Once everyone had gone it was just a matter of tidying up!

There are photos of the weekend on Picasa

Thursday 8 December 2011

Heating up

When we moved to Valley Gate we inherited a very old gas boiler run from a 2000 litres LPG gas tank in the back garden.  The first day we moved in the boiler broke down and resulted in a call to Gas Technical Services   who's sticker we found inside the case.  Paul (Smith) arrived in a a matter of hours and got the boiler going commenting that it was probably on it's last legs. The next day the boiler went out because we had run out of gas!  Cue visit from Nigel from Calor to put 1,000 litres in the tank at a cost of £350.00.

When we finally moved in between Xmas and New Year 2009, within days we were snow bound with temperatures regularly plummeting below -5C and started burning gas like it was going out of fashion.  The 1000 litres of LPG ran out by the end of January and we had the tank filled completely.  Trying to keep the house warm with an inefficient boiler just ate the gas and the tank was down to 50% by the end of the winter.  We has spent over £600 in three months on gas keeping the house warm and cooking on the even older gas stove.  We had long-term plans for a more sustainable means of heating the house and generating hot water, however, it became clear that perhaps they needed to be rather shorter term....

We had been researching a system based on a large thermal store with inputs from solar panels and a wood burning stove and a gas boiler for backup.  I had been chatting with Paul about what we were planning to do when he was fixing the boiler and he mentioned a couple of several solar installations he had completed in Pembrokeshire.  We decided that we could not afford to wait for another Winter to change our heating system and so invited Paul to quote for a new system.

The first issue was where to locate the new boiler and thermal store.  Initially we looked at locating it in the guest room above the kitchen, however, the sloping ceiling meant that either we would have to reduce the size of the thermal store, or loose half of the bedroom.  In addition, a future connection to the wood burning stove in the sitting room would have to be pumped.

The project now started to get a life of its own. As the ideal location would be above the sitting room and we had ideas of creating a semi en-suite bathroom from the second rear bedroom, the two projects became one.

There are many thermal stores that cater for solar panels with a gas boiler backup, but finding one that would allow other heat source inputs (wood burning stove) required a bit of research.  Whilst Gas Technical Services are agents for Valliant,  Paul recommended a 280 litre Torrent RE made by Gledhill as the Valliant thermals stores can not accommodate additional heat inputs.

Initially, we only commissioned Paul to install the thermal store and a high efficiency ecoTECH Plus 428 condensing boiler and plumb in the new bathroom.  However, the sale of our house went through and so we included the Vallient solar panels and started to think about wood burning stoves with a back boiler.  We had been looking at the Stratford Eco Boiler SEB20 and by chance came across one on sale whilst sheltering from the torrential rain at the Pembrokeshire County Show.

The whole layout of the bathroom revolved around the space required for the thermal store and largest shower tray we could get away with.  In the end this was a very low profile Bette 1200 by 1000 enamelled steel tray around which a shower enclosure was built.


Work stated by laying a pipe superhighway across the house that included a feed for the future installation of underfloor heating downstairs.  The Thermal store was then plumbed into the gas boiler, underfloor heating circuit, solar panels and wood burning stove leaving only the control systems to be figured out.  This is where the fun started and in the end Paul took all the manuals away and made up a board back in his unit. 


After a few false starts the whole system was up an running.  One thing we noticed the first couple of nights after the system was commissioned was the boiler kept cutting in in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.  After a bit of investigation, we found that the 'frost protection' system required (bizarrely) only for the Spanish market had been left activated as soon as the temperature outside dropped below zero the boiler kicked in the keep the panels warm! We were therefore heating up the lower atmosphere at night for a week until I worked out what was going on.


Over the summer we have lots of free hot water and even on Xmas Day 2010 when the temperature outside was -12C, the solar panels got the water up to 42C


The wood burning stove works very well and looks amazing.  However, any idea I might have had about heating the house by chucking on the odd log now and then was quickly dispelled.  If you want hot water and   the radiators to work then you almost need a full time stoker!


The Calor tank was last filled in October 2010 and is now still 30% full with  most of the gas used when the frost setting kicked in.  We hope it will get us through the rest of the winter as it now would cost well over £1,000 to refill!

Here we go again

...its been a while, but I got distracted by the Narberth Dynamo Cycling Club website and forum which I administer and post as ValleyMan.  ( I wonder if you can guess Kim's alter-ego!).

But a lot has been going on in the last year and I will try to bring everything up to date, but not necessarily in chronological order.  I have still to overcome the writers block experienced last year trying to recount the story of the new heating system that was installed last October and don't want to get stuck again.