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
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
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
It seemed a no-brainer that when buying new appliances for The Secret Acre’s eco-makeover we would of course only choose from the most energy efficient A+++ rated.
So we were genuinely surprised and disappointed to discover that there is a real lack of affordable A+++ appliances available in the UK. Continue reading
The day of our big move into the smallholding is nigh. Just over a year since we bought The Secret Acre, and after six months of eco-makeover.
So this week we sit among ever increasing piles of packed moving boxes. An alarming reminder of just how much unnecessary stuff you accumulate. The uncomfortable feeling is particularly acute for Emma who moved into the house in Bristol with just a rucksack and no furniture. Now 15 years later we are going to need two large removal vans to shift it all! Continue reading
A mild panic is starting to set in. After getting watertight in July, August has seen the house suddenly starting to look like you could actually live in it again. So much so that in another few weeks we plan to move the rest of our stuff in. Have we even booked a van?!!
At least one thing has stayed the same, finishing as we started with our eco obsession with insulation. Our final lorry load of insulation in August was for the external solid wall insulation to be wrapped around the bungalow’s three remaining original white walls. Continue reading
Here’s my largely inaccurate history of house building.
After all that wattle and daub stuff, someone invented the brick wall. In the 1930s someone else invented the cavity wall, which trapped an insulating layer of air, but was still cold in winter. More recently someone realised injecting the air cavity with an insulating foam was even better.
In the last few years, about 30 year after the rest of Europe, the UK Government finally adopted building regulations to require proper home insulation in the first place! Continue reading
When Procol Harum sang ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ I’m sure they weren’t envisioning the vast range of ‘not quite white’ shades of white paint with which manufacturers bewilder us today.
Now the end is in sight for our smallholding’s eco-makeover the focus firmly on the interior fit out and finishes. We have even set a date to move all our stuff in. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 