Recovering, rethinking, redesigning, rescheduling

OK, we’ve had a complete change of plan, and the schedule has gone to pot. We were going to miss the window for building anyway (straw bale walls need 3 months to settle before the first frosts) due to Ali’s illness, and now that he’s recovered we’ve been having a rethink about the design.
Because [...]

2009 plans

I pledge that I will quote myself on this post at the end of the year, if only to scare myself into keeping somewhat on track!
Here are our project plans for 2009:
January: Clear more land, especially the dreaded brambles, including their roots. Tolkien had brambles in his Mordor, and I understand perfectly well [...]

The latest tangled mess

Tracey Emin, eat your heart out:

Following on from this post, the above is the latest heap of field junk to have been liberated from our field. Most of it is green plastic-coated wire fencing, which we assume was used to contain the rabbits and chickens that were once farmed here. There will have been [...]

Studying and thinking

The bad weather has definitely kept me out of the field, these past few days, but we have been using the time to study and think more about the first build in Spring.
I think it’s probably going to end up being quite similar in size and style to Simon Dale’s hobbit-type house. You can [...]

A highly technical plan (NOT!) and some more grass. And some books. Maybe.

Here’s our latest, highly untechnical layout plan for the field, cobbled together by Tom and me on a whiteboard during a conversation yesterday about what might end up going where.

We’re working on the bit to the left up until next summer. The fluffy cloud shape in the middle of that section is the tree [...]

Lessons learned, decisions made and lots still to decide

Lesson number one: When clearing land, do not simply pull out all the top growth of a big area, then expect to be able to go back and only have the roots to deal with. Because by the time you get back to the beginning, the top growth will be right back where you started [...]

Rain stops play

On the plus side, it fills up the water butt (which I drained the last drop from yesterday) but on the minus side, this driving rain makes working in the field difficult, so we’ve downed tools for now. We’ve had educational, domestic and social activities to attend to as well, so the timing has worked [...]

Update

There’s not much happening for us at the moment on the off-grid front. We’re focusing our money and energy on trying to get the house ready to be sold and we’re painfully aware that the housing market is in steep decline, so it might not sell and we have to be ready with Plan B: [...]

Advancing carefully, sweeping up as we go

Question: how can we find out what the average windspeeds have been for the past 20 years? We want to try to plot the pattern, to help us decide whether it’s a crazy idea to build up here in the field. We went out there today though and it was calm and very peaceful. Today, [...]

Here’s where the new house will go

If we get the planning permission, it will go here:
 
This picture is looking from the east, towards the west. But the position of the site is such that the house will mainly look out over the view in the valley to the north-west. We’re hoping to be able to take advantage of that view with [...]