inshriach

Phase 2 (or is it phase 5) of our winter of renewables is now underway with the wood fired boiler. The slab for the hopper went in before Christmas but the blocks had to wait until everyone left and we had a day that was warm enough. True to form it was fully dark before it was finished and the morning revealed blockwork only a mother could love.

Then we needed a trench to the house through which a vacuum transfer system will draw the pellets, up the bank, past a tree, shallow at the hopper and at the house and deep where it crests the bank. This again was all good until I hit the foundations of the house that sat here before Inshriach, a Victorian farmhouse then known as South Kinrara. 5 foot of beautifully dressed stone were firmly mortared in my path. The trench got wider and wider as the blocks gradually worked free. Just outside the foundations I hit a seam of earthenware and old bottles, builders rubbish perhaps. I think I broke some with the spade before realising there were intact bits, then I came over all Tony Robinson, fished out these lovely little pots and chiseled the last bits of wall out of the way.

Next week we decommission the old boiler and strip the tanks, then have a mad rush to get the rest installed in time for the first booking.

Due to cancellation the weekends of the 10th and the 17th March are now available in the newly wood fired and solar powered Inshriach House. Long weekends for either of those dates can be yours for £1500, Thursday to Monday.

It might even look like this, in which case the solar panels definitely wont work.

It happens earlier each year, the inevitable moment when the monster we call the Insider Festival starts demanding our organising attentions. This year is the year of the Olympiad and you can catch The Backwoods Sporting Societys Olympic rundown over on the Insider 2012 blog or you can get up to speed with plans over on the Insider Facebook page or sign up at the Olympiad event page.

This year the Insider is the 15th to the 17th June and once again we are weaving together a line up of Scotlands finest musical talent, only this year, if we are lucky, we may have as many as none of the countrys finest sporting celebrities.

Bring it on sportspeoples.

Thoroughly refreshed by the traditional highland New Year of wholesome behaviour, fresh air and long walks (ahem) we have hit the ground running in January.

At number 5 in the January DIY rundown are the new garage doors, they were stuck shut and all broken hinges before hogmanay and they now swing free and boast shutlines a BMW would be proud of.

Coming in at 4 is the back on the cottage woodshed. The roof lifted some time around hurricane Bawbag and the entire back wall fell out. Big thanks to Jack for helping lift the whole thing straight and to Dave for spotting someone disposing of a wriggly tin building and bringing it round before it even hit the floor of the skip.

Number 3 is all about the electrics, I wont include a picture of the new plug sockets in the utility room and the office because that would be too dull for words.

At number 2 we have fine Scottish kilowatts. The last of the solar panels have made it onto the roof of the barn and the garage so the farmyard is now a net exporter of energy (so long as nobody puts the lights on or takes a shower). The house (pictured) has been up and running a while but it was the winter solstice when we put them up, the sun barely gets above the chimneys this time of year, then it snowed, then the inverter tripped and we didnt notice so they have generated a total of £5.

And in top spot, move over Lawrence Llewellen Bowen, the house is getting a make over. So far that extends to transforming the big drawing room into a big pile of furniture in the hall and new curtains in the little drawing room and the housekeepers room but by February eagle eyed viewers will notice new pelmets and curtain rails here and there, painted soffits outside the house, new hinges on the oven, new light fittings in the library and a host of other small but tastefully implemented improvements.

These are filling the time nicely as the wood fired boiler has been delayed by a fortnight, leaving us, as seems to be the case with all renewable projects, starting work dangerously close to our first booking of the year.

A few weeks back we hosted another Balvenie Whisky tasting, this time up in the house and attended by the UK, global and French brand ambassadors and local friends of the distillery. We had some tunes courtesy of Charlie McKerron and finished up the night in indulgent style sat in front of the fire supping drams of their new Tun 1401 edition with chasers of 21 year old Portwood.

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.

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.

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).