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Restoration of a 150 year old Barn.
DamonHD:
Bruce: our house is 76m^2 (~800sqft) heated space, on two floors. It has 5m x 8m ground footprint in a plot about twice that size. In silly London prices our not-very-pretty place has a "market value" of something like US$500k.
Actually our house is pretty much exactly the average UK new-build size, but I've seen multiple people in the UK and US (who should know better) describe our size of building as some kind of torture or even cruelty to our children which makes me rather angry. The compact form does enable me to cover all our energy bills and carbon footprint from solar PV on the roof. Actually, if the family would allow I'd like a "tiny" house, but that ain't gonna happen!
I have been working round the house with IWI (Internal Wall Insulation) of 3cm or 4cm thickness, and have the upstairs north wall to complete.
Rgds
Damon
http://www.superhomes.org.uk/119
http://www.earth.org.uk/superinsulating-our-living-room.html
clockmanFRA:
"Is that fireplace insert a working unit?"
Yes Bruce, every room in this 1870's French house has a working marble fireplace, although only this one is open/register plate clamp on the stainless steel 6 inch flue pipe, the others are boarded up.
10 year old, 65kg of cast Iron Wood Burning stove, French.
Here's a pic of my last year's flue/chimney cleaning mess, before works commenced on the walls. I take out all the baffle plates of the stove for a good clean......
clockmanFRA:
Back to the 'Old Barn'.
540 off, 625mm x 250mm x 200mm, Thermal blocks and 2,200 slates arrived yesterday.
The Original slates, from Brittany, have seen better days, as they easily brake/fracture, but the holding nails have corroded/rust away to nothing.
The slate at the front is a new broken one and comes as 400mm long by 240mm wide, its made up from re-constituted slate and fibre. I like the new type as they are consistent and be easily worked with diamond/tile cutter or drilled on a jig setting.
The other natural slate tiles are the French size and cut. I keep these for patching up and will use this old tiles on the 2 storey Oak Framed double garage, that I must put back up sometime.
Tools and the French way.
Just about all buildings that get a slate roof see the roofers using these stainless steel hooks/crouche that hook on to the roof wood batten and the centre of the tile, and that's all they use.
Me, I use the English way and the French way. Each tile gets 2 copper clout/nails into the tile supporting wood pressure treated batten, and also a stainless steel Crouche. In this day and age if the French do not see a crouche they think the roof is not on properly.......
The Long arm tool is a copper clout ripper, it has a sharp edge on the nose and hook bits. Slide it up under the tile, find the clout/nail and pull hard down or push, and hay presto it cuts the copper clout/nail and out slides the Tile.
The hammer is a roofing hammer long point is for putting a hole in a slate at the right spot for the clout/nail.
clockmanFRA:
Bruce, Here's another shot of one of my roofs with the stainless steel hooks/crouche showing....
Bruce S:
DamonHD;
There is a very large (pun intended) group of communities here in the USA that are into "tiny houses".
I got a chance to look inside one. I don't think it was much over 200sq ft, but very roomy!
A lot has to do with how things are built and placed. What gets me; if I go to an appliance store and ask for "mobile home" sized appliances , they are much more expensive than regular sized stuff >:(. without them being as efficient.
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