The green sedum roof remains one of the highlights of our eco-makeover at The Secret Acre.
Visually striking, it is a daily joy to behold as it changes and evolves across the seasons.
In June and July a profusion of small white and yellow flowers have blossomed in the green, attracting a mass of bees and insects.
Apart from the snagging, The Secret Acre’s eco-makeover feels pretty much truly complete now the external landscaping around the house has been done too.
First up (below) was removing the old tarmac front drive and replacing with a permeable pebble surface, to provide sustainable drainage, and extending it down the sides of the house. Continue reading
It seemed wrong, in the season of goodwill, to title this post ‘Fuck Off George Osbourne’. Although perhaps it would have been understandable given you can argue this is currently the worst period for UK environmental policy in 30 years. Certainly the Tories, unshackled from partnership coalition and driven by the Treasury, are not a pretty sight.
Their well documented proposal for an 89% reduction in the Solar PV ‘Feed In Tariff’ may well effect our own plans for a PV array next year. And today’s ‘climbdown’ in the face of a storm of criticism, to just a 64% cut, will do little to reduce the damage. Boris Johnson is right to be “very concerned” that up to 20,000 jobs could go in the next few months. But ultimately the economics of solar will defeat oil whatever the Tories do now. Just a shame those jobs will have gone to other countries by then, sacrificed on the alter of political ideology. Continue reading
It was with some trepidation recently when Neil from the Severn Wye Energy Agency came round to assess The Secret Acre’s new Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). This was after all the independent validation of our smallholding’s whole eco-makeover!
When we found The Secret Acre in 2013 its EPC stood at a lowly score of 44 (in band E). Continue reading
We’ve banged on a lot this year during the smallholding’s eco makeover about the need to invest in proper insulation, ahead of spending on eco bling.
But it didn’t really strike us until we moved in last month, that this is the first house either of us have ever lived in, that has been fitted out to the modern building regulation standards of energy efficiency introduced in the last decade. Continue reading
One of the great joys and surprises of The Secret Acre’s eco-makeover has been our bespoke recycled kitchen.
From the outset, Emma has been dead set against buying commercial kitchen units. You regularly hear of people spending tens of thousands of pounds on commercial kitchens which all tend to look frankly so cheap and nasty you wonder why they bother. The answer is of course because we are told having a bespoke kitchen made for you is astronomical. Continue reading
It seems hard to believe, but just over six months into the smallholding’s eco-makeover, the excellent builders had stuck to both the timetable and the budget and we were ready to move in.
So after lots of internal finishing in September, and a disappointing lack of readily available Triple A rated energy efficient appliances, we finally booked the removal van for the start of October, worried only by the alarming amount of stuff we had to pack up.
Now safely in, we are starting to work through the inevitably long list of snagging issues, top of which on day one was the alarmingly absent manhole for the bathroom sewer! Continue reading
I can’t remember if a woodburning stove was on our original list of eco-bling for the smallholding’s eco-makeover, but like the range style cooker, it was simply taken as a given.
Of course no-one does woodburning stove style quite like the Scandinavians, and we quickly decided that only a Morso would do for our relatively contemporary extension.
What proved less easy was interpreting the relatively old installation regulations for a modern extension. Continue reading
Our top tip for moving into a newly refurbished home would definitely be to make sure, preferably before you use your new bathroom, that you have remembered to connect it to the sewer!
So it was, 48 hours before we moved in, that we found ourselves at the smallholder’s hovel casually cleaning, snagging and dreaming where our furniture would go. As we gazed around outside the front door I idly remarked that I couldn’t remember when the trench had gone in to connect the new front bathroom to the original sewer running across the front of the property. Continue reading
Finally just over six months into the smallholding’s eco-makeover, the big day arrived for moving in all our unnecessarily large amount of stuff.
A week of unprofessional packing, cleaning up after the builders and writing out an unfeasibly long snagging list, led to a mere four hours of highly professional stuffing it all into the removal van, a near miraculously quick two hours of unloading and a highly commendable lack of any breakages. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 