Horsepower, Pedal Power and Willpower - Sustainability is Our Future.

We are leaving our children with some really difficult environmental problems, so it's great to see innovative and original ideas like the following.
 

The pedal-powered Merry-go-round at Guichen's (Brittany) annual Organic Fair

I just chose a handful from our local area but this will be an on-going theme, which I hope will inspire and make you aware that so many people are already working towards a sustainable future for us all.

Horse-drawn Taxi

We loved this idea for an innovative and stylish Park & Ride system. It was used to carry people and their purchases back and forth from the Organic Salon to the car parks. 

 


Low on fuel, even if a little heavier on organic oats, this 'hippomobile' is  symbolic of the shift in organic agriculture back to animal traction and the welcome return of the Heavy Horse to farming.

Also operating before the event is a network for 'covoiturage' (carpool) which allows people going to the Salon to contact others on the same route both to save fuel and also meet others with the same goals and interests.

Pedal-Powered Carousel

 

 

This is both fun and educational because you can see that the children on the ride are equally interested in how the merry-go-round works. They are also playing with real physical materials, in this case sand rather than a virtual scenario in CGI!

As these are probably repeat customers, it's a great idea that every year the theme of the roundabout changes. Last year it was Sue's favourite with another great hands-on natural play environment - straw and papier maché poultry.

Manual Savoir-Faire

 

 

Another great idea for a sustainable future, a group of dedicated people, who pass on their skills in hand tools and workshop practice to the next generation of builders and craftsmen (and women).

A great message too on the group's van!

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."

Confucius 551-479 BC

 

Raw Organic Milk at the Press of a Button

 

The milk in this vending machine is straight from the morning's milking so you can't get much fresher than that. Comments on my Youtube channel have suggested that a cow, a three-legged stool and a tray of glasses would be even simpler but on a pavement in a neat little seaside town I think you'd be pushing it!  

Another great innovation for this year in Normandie is the production of the first ever AOC (Appellation d'origine contrôlée) Camembert  made exclusively from the raw organic milk of the heritage breed; la Vache Normande. This breed, reputed to have been brought to the Normandie coast by the Vikings, is a gentle and beautiful creature, which was completely decimated in the World Wars and brought to the verge of extinction. Now experiencing a welcome comeback mostly through the efforts of organic farmers, we see more and more of them in the fields around our area. See our blog on raw milk and A2 type cows here

 

Aaaaaaawwww!

Gold, silver or Galléco?

 

   

A local currency, which can be exchanged for Euros and used to buy environmentally and ethically responsible local goods. An interesting concept which takes money out of the hands of the too- Big-too-Fail and too-Big-to-Bail.

  

An Alternative Shopping and Social Centre

 

Fed up of all the rubbish in the shops at the mall? Well Guichen's new (under construction) straw bale shopping centre is taking the idea literally. 

One of its first shops will be stocked with all the stuff from the Dump, which can be repurposed and reused by others.

Where we lived in Warwickshire before we came to France, our local Dump financed itself from its own shop containing all the useful stuff removed from its skips. Bad news for all us scavengers but it's good news for the Environment!

Hoping you have found these ideas inspiring, I'll leave you with our film showing some of them in action.

Thanks for dropping by and please feel free to share this article, comment, ask questions and if you'd like to be assured of getting the next post, then sign up to follow this blog.

All the best, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

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DIY Pallet Wood Hen House Chicken Coop Part 4 - Assembly contnued and Finishings

Natural Finish - A piece of buddleia branch trimmed to make way for the Hen House is used to fashion its doorknob.

It's day three of the Assembly of the new Hen House. The chicks have spent their first night in their new home. It's bigger and roomier than their old one, never again will I design or make a hen house which doesn't have space for us to stand upright! I also found that putting a door in both back and front makes for ease of cleaning and is a good way of removing perches and keeping the house aired in hot weather. The house is sited on the far side of the garden and is in the angle of the back wall of a neighbouring longère and the North bocage (raised hedge). In the Winter it receives the sun quite early in the morning, when the rest of the garden is in the shadow of the house, which runs the entire length of the garden, some 50 metres (164 feet). It's  a regular suntrap in the Summer, which is why the fig tree does so well there and the hens, sybarites through and through, love it.

 

Breakfast in front of the New Hen House.  

Raising the Roof

We start the day by putting the gable ends in place. These are temporarily held in position with diagonal supports to the walls, which will be removed once the ridge purlin is in place.

 

Using a straight edge ensures that the wall and gable end are in line so that the ridge purlin brace may be fitted.

The House is now beginning to take shape with both the gable ends in place. We are now ready to fit the ridge purlin.   

The ridge purlin is measured and cut to length once the gable ends are in place.  

The ridge purlin is screwed to the inside face of the gable end apex. Screw holes are drilled through the gable end frame prior to fitting the purlin in place.

Once the purlin is in place, the braces can be fitted to each end of the Hen House. These braces are designed to take the roof load off the screws securing the purlin to the gable end. The roof load is thus borne by the side walls and floor. 

Once the ridge purlin and brace have been screwed together, the temporary diagonal supports may be removed.

 

Furring strips are now fitted to the ridge purlin. 

The roof is now ready for the panels to be fitted.

The panels are screwed to the walls and gable ends from the inside and from the outside to attach the ridge purlin.

  

The most expensive part of the Hen House, a good quality tarpaulin, can now  be fitted.

The surplus material is trimmed off and battens cut from pallet wood are used to fix the tarpaulin to the underside of the roof panels.

The open sides of the pallet base are sealed with planking, nailed to the wooden blocks.

The decoration with découpage is made from paper napkins.

The building inspector calls to assess the job. He's a white-laced buff crested and bearded Polish, one of three brothers who are joint heads of this house.







If you want to see our Polish chickens in action:

There is another post here, which shows how I used butt joints to construct the roof panels of pallet wood too. This makes the house even cheaper for those of you who don't have left-over or recuperated tongue & groove cladding.

Thanks for dropping by and please feel free to share this article, comment, ask questions and if you'd like to be assured of getting the next post, then sign up to follow this blog.

All the best, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

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Renovating the Tiny House - A detailed look at sourcing and using lime/hemp & lime/linen mortars for wall-covering and insulation.

The Cream of the Crop: Lovely Linen and Lime.

Understanding the material

Like all organic matter linen and hemp react to their environment so although there are some indications as to the quantities used to make up plaster, there are no actual hard and fast rules. When making up your mortar consideration should be made for several factors.

The moisture content in the air on the day you are using the plaster.

The air temperature both inside and outside.

The movement of air both inside and out.

The particular batch of linen/hemp (I have never found two the same).

The grade of linen/hemp used. (see paragraph below)

The grade and type of lime used. (see below)

If you think this sounds complicated, it isn't. It is something you get to know instinctively the more you work with natural materials. If I can make an analogy, I might think of eggs. Most people, who don't keep hens, think that eggs come in uniform sizes, they don't, they just get graded that way commercially but on average a standard egg weighs 65g. Therefore in our case when we use our bantam eggs we weigh the eggs.

As a general rule these are the measurements we use:

For Hemp:
6kg lime
1kg hemp
6 litres water
Coverage about 1m² at approx 2cm thickness on an uneven wall

For Linen:
6kg lime
1kg linen
6 litres water
Coverage between 0.7 - 0.75m² at approx 1.5cm thickness on an uneven wall

Grades of fibres - Going green without getting into the Red

You can find ecological wall covering, which is not designated as such, sold at a much cheaper price than that at a special Ecological Builders' Merchants. For example, the hemp we used was actually organic hemp mulch, sold mainly for organic horticulture. The linen was  baled and sold for using in horse boxes. Our house is an old vernacular 18th Century farm and these grades of finish suit it. If you are thinking about your budget and using these materials in a less rural setting, then you can still economise by just using the finer grade of these materials as a final coat. As with most things it pays to shop around. The price of ecological materials is ever changing, as more farmers grow organic linen and hemp and as more people buy and use it, the price will begin to drop. In France the production of hemp is limited at the moment and thus the price, other than in mulch-grade, remains stable. However, when you consider that this is a one-off wall covering and that it is doing the double job of decoration and insulation and that above all it is giving you a healthy environment in which to live, it is worth paying the additional costs. Additionally if you are living in an old house, it overcomes the problem of what to do with the walls, which are often uneven and constructed of misshapen and unattractive stone. Furthermore, these stones were never meant to be seen but were yearly covered with a new coat of limewash. Houses like ours only ever had one window, a permanently lit fire, little through-draft and were kept even warmer by the sheer volume of life, both animal and human living within.

Lime

As already stated this house is of a vernacular rural nature and the 'roughcast' wall surface suits it admirably. We were doubly happy about this as neither of us wanted to use quicklime, which is dangerous stuff and makes a beautiful plaster, which keeps elastic for days and allows for the realisation of a smooth finish between batches. It was also used in the fine plastering on Church and manor walls to provide a surface ready for decoration with fresco. There is no reason not to use it if you feel confident about it but just be aware that it burns. 

There are various grades of hydraulic lime which are available and we found NHL 3.5 both easily obtainable and fit for purpose.

 

Preparation

In order to maximize the coverage of expensive linen or hemp lime mixture,  a lot can be saved by preparing the wall. This is also necessary for making a good solid surface for the plaster to adhere to. We firstly removed any loose materials between the stones of the Tiny House walls. This farm was built with clay and stone, clay being a very good natural insulation and mortar. We then pointed the joints with a lime mortar, made up of: six of sand to one of lime. We also rebuilt any of the areas which had lost stone, again thinking of costs, every bit helps!

Mixing and using the hemp or linen and lime plaster

Once we got used to the mix we used a cement mixer to make large batches of plaster but at the beginning we just mixed in a trug. Mix ingredients in this order: measured quantity of lime, slowly add water, mix in hemp or linen, leave to repose for approximately 10 minutes.

 

Just a small amount I mixed as a demonstration. Note the use of thick protective gloves, as even hydrated lime is extremely aggressive to the skin. When removing lime from the bag, we also wore eye protection and a mask. We also wore the same protective gear when using the cement mixer as it is easy to inhale lime dust at the beginning of the mix and get splashed by lime before the hemp or linen are thoroughly mixed together.

         Hard hats useful for low doors!      

For getting the plaster onto the wall you can simply use your hands, or alternatively a plasterer's float. To create the natural textured finish and also to retain the maximum insulation do not over-work the medium once it is on the wall. Hemp plaster needs more initial pressure to get it to adhere to the wall and is therefore much harder to work with than linen.

The walls of the Tiny House finished. Any lines where the different days' work shows can be smoothed down with a wire brush. For this reason never work to a straight edge because otherwise it is much more difficult to hide the join. This is the one drawback of using hydrated lime, it has a much quicker drying time than aerated and on a hot day can be drying as you work!

A final word about straw

When we first started thinking about renovating the main house we decided to start with what we had available. This was a large volume of straw, which had been left by the previous owner. Using a converted electric lawnmower, we cut the straw into short lengths and mixed it into the lime. Even after the first application on the North interior wall of the Kitchen (all we could get done before the onset of that Winter), we noticed an enormous difference in the warmth of the room. So if you can get hold of a suitable chopping machine and have access to organic straw, which at the moment here in France is 1 Euro a bale, it could make a very cheap and viable alternative to the above.

These plasters should not just be considered as purely wall insulation. Sue laid these floor tiles onto a 'raft' of linen and lime mixture, which in turn, we had laid on top of a gravel foundation. This insulated the floor and stopped the problem we had had with condensation forming on the previous concrete floor in the Summer. 


Renovation on our house is on-going, here is a film on some recent lime mortar pointing I did up on the workshop. Up being the operative word...



Thanks for dropping by and if you enjoyed this article, please fell free to share it and do ask if you need any further information.


All the best,
Andy

© Andy Colley 2013

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Moving off the Grid - Part Two - Heat Pumps

This will be part of an on-going series  on how and why people choose their source of energy.

Heat Pumps

Heat pumps move ‘heat’ from one point to another. Refrigerators are the most common example of a heat pump system. In our context we are looking at a system that takes heat  energy from a lower temperature body and by mechanical means extracts the heat energy which is then released at a higher temperature. The power  necessary to  enable this is usually electrical and one would normally expect to use 1kW of electrical power to produce 3kW of heat energy. Mostly the source for the heat pump is either the ground or the air but if available in sufficient quantity, water.

  

Practical and beautiful - one of the two lakes on the property.

 The Lady of the Lake – 35 years of heat pumps

Some necessary maintenance - cleaning the exchanger.

Anne-Marie and Jean-Louis have always used heat pumps as their principal source of energy. Their first system was installed when they lived in a riverside property, where they had the right of use not only of the section of river which fronted their property but also an ancient lavoir (communal laundry). This latter gave them ample place in which to accommodate the exchanger. Thirty-five years ago this type of system was so new here in France that the technician who installed the pump didn’t actually have either the belief in, nor knowledge of, the system, just the technical competence to do the work. Anne-Marie and Jean-Louis were so pleased with the system that when they moved, some twenty years ago, to their present home they decided to go with the system again, this time with Jean-Louis building the exchanger himself. Their present system was built from scratch, as they had managed to find a beautiful piece of land with two lakes and a small dwelling, thus giving them scope to build their new home around its heating system. This is perhaps one of the drawbacks with this form of heating in that it is best installed in a newbuild as it requires pipes to be laid within the flooring. However, it is possible to retrofit the system, if one can break through the flooring or use a system of wall-mounted radiators. For Anne-Marie and Jean-Louis, who mostly worked from or at home it has been the perfect solution. The house is kept at a constant  ambient 19°C, except in the bathrooms where additional piping adds to the heating capacity and give a temperature of 23°C.

The constant temperature allows Anne-Marie to grow a whole range of orchids and succulents. A great and avid gardener she uses the heating system to its full advantage when growing some of the many difficult members of these plant families.

This brings us to another consideration with heat pumps, in that they require volumetric calculations for the designs and costings of the whole installation. This could add to the costs of start up, in that you may need to engage a professional to undertake such a study. However, some of the companies selling and installing heat pumps also include a feasibility study within the package – it pays to shop around. All in all this sort of system requires a physical mass, whether a body of water or area of land in which to install the exchanger and a significant initial outlay in time, money and possibly inconvenience for start-up. Anne-Marie and Jean-Louis found and then preserved a beautiful natural environment, which is home to a wide variety of rare and beautiful wildlife. The little grebe, frogs and moorhen paddle about the water lily pads oblivious to the system beneath.

It is also to be considered that the system they have heats a very large volume of living space. Anne-Marie’s original intent was to run a Bed and Breakfast, so their heat pump actually provides a constant 19°C and 23°C in six bedrooms and bathrooms respectively, as the system was also installed in the floorspaces on the upper floors. According to Jean-Louis many people opt for a system which heats just the lower floor and uses radiators above.

The Layout

The lake is some 50m from the house, the feed and return pipes to the exchanger were buried in a trench. Jean-Louis made the 3m x 1m exchanger himself, the tubes arranged in two layers to give a total exchanger area of 6m².



From left to right;-  150l hot water tank, heat pump for heating and hot water and heat pump for heating only.

 





There are two heat pumps in their system the first solely for heating the second for heating and hot water. Recirculating pumps deliver the anti-freeze laden water from the heat exchanger in the lake to the heat pump where some of its heat energy is absorbed prior to returning to the exchanger. The heat from the heat pump is then used to warm the water in the hot water tank, the system from then on being similar to any conventional wet  central heating system. Central heating pumps move the heated water around the matrix of underfloor pipes throughout the house. In the bathrooms the pipes are laid closer together to provide the elevated temperatures required (9cm apart as opposed to 14cm for the rest of the house). The floors act as massive heat sinks, if there is no heating supplied to the system for a 24 hr period, the temperature of the floor drops by only 1°C. The heat pump system is programmed to only run from midnight to 7a.m. thus taking advantage of the lower rate tariff. The financial implication of this is that their total energy bill for this whole house (floor area of 200m²) amounts to 1 350 Euros per annum.

The circulation pumps supplying the water from the exchanger in the lake. A well spaced out system like this is essential for ease of access in case of maintenance.

 
Upstairs feed manifold supplies heating water to the bedrooms and bathrooms. A similar arrangement exists for the ground floor.

Advantages

Reliable heating system furnishing comfortable temperatures throughout a large house.

Low maintenance costs.

No fuel storage necessary.

High level of reliability – few moving parts, no exposure to weather.

Long life expectancy

No pollution provided the integrity of the source loop (heat exchanger in lake) is not compromised.

Disadvantages

Initial capital costs high.

Underfloor installation work is messy in a retro-fit operation.

Electricity supply needed to make system work. Hence you have to have a backup source if there is a possibility of outages and you are still on the grid.
For example, in 1999 the hurricane we had here took down pylons with a resulting 7 day power outage.

Any leak in the heat exchanger will lead to system failure but also to contamination of the water source or land, although use of ecological anti-freeze reduces risk.

Repairs to heat pump requires specialist know-how.

Care has to be taken to ensure no corrosion to pipes and fittings arises from the water in the heating side of  the system.  Jean-Louis has had to change the fittings in the hot water feed manifold to stainless steel due to the acidity of the potable water. He also cites chemical attack from the concrete has caused further deterioration in some fittings.

Jean-Louis and Anne-Marie are so sure that this system is the right one for them that having put their house on the market they have already chosen their new house with a heat pump system as the prime consideration.



 
A heating system which takes full advantage of the landscape  but which has no visible presence within it.    

All the best and thanks for dropping by. Please feel free to share this article, comment and/or ask questions.

Cheers, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

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