PowerSwitch

Hello everyone. I'm UE's other half, and he's encouraging me to stop lurking and start asking, so here goes.
I have a whole bunch of questions that are sort of half formed and half researched, so please bear with me.

All being well, this summer we are moving to an old farmhouse in West Wales, with 5 acres of land that's previously been used for grazing horses. It also has a large barn, a small polytunnel, a neglected pond/stream system, and possibly a hidden spring. The sewage goes to a polygon septic tank, whatever that means. The property is in decent nick, but the horsey people who have lived there for the past 10 years obviously don't have collapse on their radar, so it's not yet prepped in that regard, and the energy rating is E. We are a family of 3, our power consumption is modest, but - ahem - some of us are quite addicted to hot baths.

Questions:
Solar panels - part of the roof does face south, but it's quite small. How many do we need? Are we better on or off grid?
Banking the solar power - in Geoff's previous thread (how to convert a rayburn), there was a mention of a thermal store, lithium batteries, and another kind of battery that requires more care. I'd be grateful of any more info, opinions, sources, around this.
Using the solar power - what, realistically, do we expect the solar power to deliver?
Heating - as per Geoff's thread, there's currently an oil-powered Rayburn, and people had various opinions about whether to convert, retain, or replace this. There was a mention of installing a La Nordica stove with back boiler, and banking the heat into the thermal store mentioned above. Would be interested in any more info on this.
Insulation - we know the basics, eg insulate the loft, nice thick curtains on the already double-glazed windows. But do we try to insulate the walls? Internal or external? We're not sure when the house was built but it's pre 20th century for sure. Will extra insulation make it damp?
Getting the work done - we will need professionals to help with all the above - any recommendations? (West Wales.)

Then there's the more fun stuff - growing food, getting chickens, composting toilets, maybe setting up some kind of very small glampsite for some extra income / family accommodation. Settling an English child into a Welsh school - luckily she's 4, so if all goes to plan she should start her school career there rather than having to change. It's a difference between three classes per year in a huge school here, and two years to a class in a tiny school there.

And... I've lived my whole life in terraced houses on the south coast. I'm used to hearing the neighbours cough and argue, relying on them in emergencies, popping next door for a cuppa, and having a supermarket a 5 minute walk away. I'm so excited and grateful for the peace, space and privacy that we've never had before - and more importantly, the chance to build a safer future - but also just slightly scared that I don't know how to be, socialise, parent, exist, in a rural space.

All thoughts, pointers, ideas and reality checks welcome!

Welcome, and best wishes for the future.

An interesting first post containing many enquiries. You might do well to re-post some enquiries one at a time in the relevant areas. Attempting to answer them in THIS thread could result in a rambling and hard to follow thread in which many different things are discussed.

Again, Welcome.

Good luck with your adventure.

I think with 5 acres you could put solar PV on the ground but then the chance of someone stealing them will increase.

I can't speak for how the locals will accept you or how your 4 year old will get on in school but I think at 4 children will adapt to anything and in about 2 years you will have your own mini Welsh language interpreter. I have an obvious Welsh surname but no ancestry from Wales for at least 4 generations but the last time I was there in about 1995 I was greeted like a long lost son. They even said I 'looked' Welsh.

I would say 5 acres will give you enough wood that will give you enough hot baths. Solar thermal heating wont hurt though.

adam2 wrote: ↑14 Mar 2022, 10:48 Welcome, and best wishes for the future.

An interesting first post containing many enquiries. You might do well to re-post some enquiries one at a time in the relevant areas. Attempting to answer them in THIS thread could result in a rambling and hard to follow thread in which many different things are discussed.

Again, Welcome.

Thank you - that's what I was wondering, but it was putting me off posting. Geoff said just get it all out and go from there! As I get more used to the forum maybe I will do that.

BritDownUnder wrote: ↑14 Mar 2022, 11:50 Good luck with your adventure.

I think with 5 acres you could put solar PV on the ground but then the chance of someone stealing them will increase.

Absolutely guaranteed to be stolen, and advertising that there might be other stuff worth nicking because the owners are a bit naive.

There is a barn we could use to put more panels on, but the roof faces east-west.

If you're on Facebook, look up Compost Toilets Ireland. There are about 160 of us in that private group and some are in Wales!

You can ask any questions there and get user feedback with photos. We've been running compost toilets in our rural location since 2008 and finally settled down on an easy-to-run system which gives great compost, all of which of course helps with our veg growing. My main aim was to make it easy—in old age—to manage. Good luck.

There was a thread here that Renewable Candy started years ago called "Compost Toilets - should we, could we?" or something similar. I couldn't find it on a quick search.

Welcome, Eyeswide!

The place to go to see compost toilets of various sorts in action is just up/down the road from your new place in Machynlleth and is the Centre for Alternative Technology. It is well worth a visit for all things Alternative, including solar PV and hot water, drainage systems, insulation and even micro hydro. You can even do a weekend cob building course in July!!

I would, no surprise here, advocate spending as much as you can on external insulation and roof insulation. It will help keep the house warm and dry and spare your backs from continual log splitting for other more productive tasks such as food growing. If you are going to use a lot of wood I, and my daughter especially, would advise getting a log splitter. We have a 16 tonne rated petrol one which we bought second hand which will chew its way through anything we have ever thrown at it. An electric one might be better for the future though especially if you have the PV and inverter capacity to run one. The Machinemart website has a good variety and most of their stuff , I have found, is good quality.

If you don't want a log splitter fix a rubber tyre to your cutting block to hold the wood on the block while to chop it. Fill the tyre with logs and chop around it and it saves continually bending down to pick up split wood. Measure the log lengths that your fires will take and cut wood to that length so that you can fill the fire as much as possible to save on refills. After well over 40 years of burning logs you will be surprised how much time and effort and saw fuel those measures could save you!!

If you are intending putting in double or triple glazing get that done first and then seal the external insulation onto the windows and doors. Take the insulation down into the ground as far as you can, up to a metre, as this will help insulate the floor and give a bit of a thermal store under the house provided the water table and flow isn't too high. Moving water under the house will carry heat away. Make sure that the wall insulation is continuous with the roof insulation to avoid cold bridges.

If you can't afford or don't want Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery, MVHR, over the whole house you can buy wall or window mounted MVHR units for individual rooms so put these in all the wet rooms, kitchen, utility, bathrooms, shower rooms, wc's so that moisture is removed from the house at source. Then have trickle ventilators for low level winter ventilation in all the other rooms.

Then look at PV for power. There is plenty on other threads on this board about this and the various levels and systems to go for. Search through Adam's and clv's posts for knowledgeable advise on this.

If you are going to be vegetable gardening raise your beds and use a no dig system. Good for the production, the soil and again for the back!!

Best of luck in your new venture and "Diolch yn fawr" for your questions. I hope I've got the spelling right there!!

I'm only in the "hobby smallholder" category myself, but I'll throw a few things into the thread as I think of them, in no particular order, you might find something useful, or it might encourage someone to post an improved method.

Chickens vs Ducks. I've found Campbell and Khaki Campbell ducks to produce more, bigger and tastier eggs than any of the various chickens I've kept. No contest. The downside is that they lay them in random places and unless you clip their wings they'll bugger off. Ducks also enjoy eating slugs, and there are plenty of those in Wales. Cockerels will wake you up at 4am. Every day. Drakes don't.

Pigs. Destructive escape artists. If you want to do the decent thing and let them free-range they will cost more in fencing than you get from the meat for at least a couple of years. They are very determined and will exploit any weakness in your fences to get to acorns or apples.

Goats. Lively and interesting, also very smelly and will eat anything, literally anything - privet, wellies, ornamental shrubs, flower pots....

Rats. If you keep livestock you'll have rats too. Get a decent air rifle and shoot them on sight.

Tractor. Small tractors like the Kubota ( https://www.tabdevi.com/kubota-5001-min ... chinery-58) or Mitsubishi are really useful. I have the Mitsubishi 21hp model, with a few home made accessories to fit on the three point hitch - notably an old steel tool safe with lid which will happily carry 10 sacks of animal feed, or chainsaws, or fenceposts etc....anything that I don't want to carry hundreds of yards. I also use two lengths of box section steel which slip over the two arms of the three point hitch to carry a wheelbarrow - sounds daft, but I can't get the tractor right into the stables where my animals live over winter, so I muck out into the wheelbarrow and push the wheelbarrow up onto the two steel sections, then lift the tractor hitch and drive off to wherever I'm putting the muck, a raised bed or compost heap. The wheelbarrow stays in place until I lower the hitch when it sits on the ground and the tractor drives out from under it. Saves a lot of back ache.

That little 21hp tractor will happily run my hay baler too, although it won't run the mower ( I use a 75hp IH784 for that ), but you can always get a contract farmer to cut and bale for you. You might wonder why bother to cut and bale hay, it's a great way to concentrate organic matter and build a small area of very fertile land, hay rots down into lovely rich compost. You can also grow directly into the hay bale, but I haven't tried it yet. https://fillyourplate.org/blog/hay-bale-gardens/ You'll want to cut before seeds form.

kenneal - lagger wrote: ↑14 Mar 2022, 15:59
If you are going to be vegetable gardening raise your beds and use a no dig system. Good for the production, the soil and again for the back!!

I don't think that is going to work for us. I am expecting the soil to be relatively poor, and compacted, as well as poor-draining. We will need to do quite a bit of work to improve it, and we won't have access to vast amounts of compost. Although there is a very large pile of horse manure on site.

No dig is a nice idea, especially if you start with good soil and you aren't planning on doing it on a very large area.

Insulation. Our main house is clad with 90mm polystyrene insulation, a woven mesh is rendered over the top and then painted. It works well but looks horrible because all the stone features around the windows are now covered. If I was having it done now I would look for a company that could make something that retained the original looks. It cost £14k in 2014. Some slight cracks have appeared in the external render, and some UPVC window sills blew off in recent storms because they were fixed on with cheap silicone rubber which is not good long-term. I'll probably fix them back with sikaflex, I know from my time boatbuilding that it lasts well.

Polytunnel. The polythene will last much longer than the claimed lifespan as long as you keep it nicely tight. It stretches and sags in hot weather, which is the time to tighten it up so that it's tight as a drum in winter when the winds come. Greenhouses are better but polytunnels are cheap.

Chainsaws. Come in different grades, hobby, farmer and pro. I've got "farmer" grade Stihl, which are easy and reliable if a bit heavier and less powerful than the pro range.

Shopping is not so convenient, but that doesn't have to be a problem. We use a Panasonic breadmaker which works really well, and chest freezers by Beko which are rated to work down to very low external temperatures - because they're in an unheated outbuilding. Normal freezers won't work at low temperatures, the Bekos are also supposed to stay at temperature for 24 hours in a power cut. A safety tip if going away - freeze some water into a block and put a stone on top of it, if you see that the stone has sunk through the ice you'll know that your freezer has thawed and re-frozen. If you're planning on raising your own meat a big freezer is essential, you'll be amazed how much space a pig takes up.

Post hole auger. In hindsight, I should have bought a post knocker instead. The auger has been good for planting trees though.

Dentistry. Get you teeth serviced before you come, finding a dentist around here is not easy.

Thanks for your useful replies, Catweazle.

Re: insulation. I have come across numerous sources warning that insulating pre-20th century houses with solid walls just leads to damp problems. The walls were built to be permeable to water. If you insulate the inside of the wall then you get damp problems on the internal wall, and if you insulate the outside then you end up with a saturated wall. Neither sounds good to me!

kenneal - lagger wrote: ↑14 Mar 2022, 15:59
I would, no surprise here, advocate spending as much as you can on external insulation and roof insulation. It will help keep the house warm and dry

What about damp problems caused by trapping water in walls that are no longer permeable?

We've had no damp problems because of the insulation, the only damp part is the cavity wall extension which doesn't have any external insulation, I think that is condensation because the wall is cold.

Raised beds. There is a company near Emlyn which sells reclaimed concrete railway sleepers from the ripped-up railway, they'd make good raised beds. From memory about £25 each, my neighbour had some delivered to stand his shipping container on.

Shipping container. Very useful secure weatherproof storage. 40 footers are cheaper than 20 footers if you can get them up the road. Mark Jukes in Cardigan sells and delivers. He tucked ours neatly behind the big barn with his huge telehandler. Price varies wildly depending on the state of the economy.

Static Caravan. Cheap as chips to buy, expect to pay £250 - £1000 for a decent 10+ year old 38 x 12ft for guest accommodation or AirBnB rental. Delivery from £250.

Panel van or trailer. Must have one or the other for collecting wood, fenceposts, rolls of wire etc..

UndercoverElephant wrote: ↑14 Mar 2022, 19:09 Thanks for your useful replies, Catweazle.

Re: insulation. I have come across numerous sources warning that insulating pre-20th century houses with solid walls just leads to damp problems. The walls were built to be permeable to water. If you insulate the inside of the wall then you get damp problems on the internal wall, and if you insulate the outside then you end up with a saturated wall. Neither sounds good to me!

Maybe this is where the MVHR mentioned by Kenneal comes in?

I am very glad to hear you all are on the way at last and sincerely wish yous the best of luck.

My Kath had very much the same feelings when I dragged her and our two young children off to rural Ireland over 20 years ago.
We are all still here with absolutely no desire to return to England. It is not nirvanna but still hard to beat. We did some of the
things to the house planned and most of them were masterminded by her for which I am eternally grateful.

Don't sweat the details. What you achieve will never be perfect but it will do. Enjoy the adventure. If you hadn't done it you would
have spent the rest of your life wondering what if.

Sorry I am ranting on. Here endeth the sermon.