So, the issue of micro generation has been at the back of my mind for some time. The standard arguments about it are that if you are going to have a home generator of some description - solar cells (ridiculously expensive at present), wind turbine or water turbine, you end up with a lot of maintenance and a payback time which is uneconomic (ie the amount of embedded energy needed to create the system will take too long to be made up by the equipment during it’s lifetime). Dedicated enthusiasts and those who have serious amounts of money to invest can create their own personal electricity supply. Read the rest of this entry »
By the beginning of October it was not possible to dry apples in the sun any longer and I didn’t want to buy a small and power-hungry fruit drying machine. We have made cherry compote, but I’m keen to avoid using sugar as the main preservative here because it has to travel so far (food miles) and is not good for our teeth or waistlines. Therefore, the majority of the cherry compote is, rather tellingly, still in the cupboard.
I’ve been doing some research about alternatives and have come across some great information about honey. My interest was sparked by a radio article about honey from the Pyramids still being edible after thousands of years in storage. Eating locally produced honey is said to help build up a resistance to hay fever, and it was used as a preservative since Roman times, long before sugar was available so far from the equator. I tend to use honey to sweeten my current favourite Dilmah Green Tea with Moroccan Mint, as well as breakfast porridge, therefore it made sense to also use it to store apples that could not be dried.
Apples sliced with the kitchen mandolin and layered into the honey worked very well – they have kept their colour (unlike the vodka apples from 2007 which went brown very quickly). The only problem is that we keep eating them… meaning that I can’t judge how long they will keep. They are delicious on porridge (made with water) with a dash of cream – a good, hearty winter breakfast.
The apples and pears that we cut into cubes behaved rather differently – they started to ferment in a very short time, and the liquid bubbled out of the storage jars, slowly spreading a sticky goo around the kitchen. I eventually gave up on these, instead I drained the fruit and put it in with a batch of mulled wine – the result – apple or pear poached in mulled wine has made a very tasty desert to share with guests. The liquid continues to ferment – I’m adding it to tea, but it is beginning to loose it’s sweetness so I’m curious to see how this incidental mead will turn out.
I look forward to experimenting with cherries in honey in 2010.
We have inadvertently stepped through the back of the wardrobe into Narnia. After a brief hailstorm, the snow began to fall… not a flurry as we were expecting, but a blizzard which continued for days, not hours. The temperature dropped suddenly and rapidly… fortunately the day before we’d bought two new fire stoves – one for the bathroom (how nice, to have a bath alongside a wood burning stove) and another for our bedroom. With the old range in the kitchen and giant barrel stove in the upstairs lounge we have been able to keep all the rooms in use at a decent temperature – though the hallway is now down to 12 degrees c.
More worryingly, there are still green leaves on the trees here, and I have heard the sound of migrating birds taking a rest from flight through the blizzarding snow. As with the flooding early in the summer, the locals say that these kinds of weather conditions are seen every 5 years or so in the Czech Republic, but it certainly must wrong foot many species to have winter arrive mid October. I hope this is temporary (we have lots of trees to plant yet, and not enough wood cut by far) however the snow is still falling five days later.
Luckily, as well as chopping wood, we have been insulating in recent weeks. Rosie – a workaway visitor – put her carpentry skills to use by ensuring that all the secondary windows were able to close properly. I also had an idea to use the cheap Ikea Irja curtain poles (29kc) installed directly into the wall* around the windows to hang a secondary layer of curtain (behind the thin, decorative curtains we have in the rooms currently used. As insulating curtains we have used the cheap Ikea single Mysa Gras quilts (69kc) which fit perfectly into the alcove of our Vienna windows. They are lightweight, washable and allow some light through, but substantially thicker than curtain material. We can keep these curtains shut during the longer winter nights, when the temperature outside drops off as soon as the sun goes down. Claire and Emily did a sterling job on Thursday – putting up many more curtain rods so we are now as insulated as we can be until I next visit Ikea for more supplies.
Did I mention the number of pairs of socks the house came with? We have put these to use as insulators of the current (temporary) plumbing system. They look rather like an art installation… I need to think of a good title for it.
Yesterday morning I had to clear a path through the snow to the composting toilet outside… we moved it to the back of the garden because though it was convenient to have it close to the front door, you did feel somewhat exposed when trucks came past the garden. Now we have a fantastic view up the valley… currently a wintery landscape of frost and fir trees, and beautiful white scenes from every window. Definitely not what I was hoping for in mid October.
*The curtain pole goes in via a parallel parking type manoeuvre. We cut the metal curtain pole to 3cm longer than the gap, then on the left hand side of the window, with a masonry drill bit the same diameter as the poles, drilled a hole 3cm deep angled towards the corner of the wall on the right, then again in the same spot, parallel with the glass, and a 1cm hole on the opposite side.
So at last, last month, we finally caught up with (what passes for) civilisation. We had our new (second hand) Whirlpool washing machine and a shower attached to the boiler in the bathroom. It felt really great. For a glorious moment… then I got electrocuted by the tap on the shower – (luckily before I’d started running the water). The washing machine had blown up and taken out the boiler with it – leaving the taps and shower live. At least it was me, rather than a visitor who got the shock.
The problem was that a plug in the bathroom (which was part of the old wiring) had been wired the wrong way – reminiscent of the copper wire that had been used to bypass the fuse system (which we discovered in the early days). Luckily nobody died either time – but it does leave the lingering impression that the house had been booby trapped.
So, yet again we are without hot water and a washing machine. When the weather is good we’re fine as we have the solar showers and bath outside. The repair cost for the boiler was greater than the cost of the boiler itself – so we’ve ordered a new boiler with three inputs – meaning that we can heat the tank from a back boiler on a stove, from a solar system input as well as a backup in the form of electricity. That’ll be arriving next week, and the Whirlpool washing machine has been repaired – they phoned us to ask us what the maximum we were prepared to pay for the repair would be – then they charged us this amount. Our cheap second hand washing machine has stopped being.
Still… we hope to rejoin the 20th century again this week.
Have you ever noticed that if you get commercial washing powder on wet skin you get a slimy feeling that’s impossible to wash off? It’s not hard to guess that the clever chemicals that make your whites whiter than white ain’t great for just about anything else in the natural world. If your clothing is not covered in cooking oil, mud, tomato sauce and grass stains etc. – ie you are over the age of 12, and continent, you don’t really need high temperatures and harsh chemicals do you?
As all the water we use at Novy Mlyn is taken out of the ground and (eventually) returns to the ground, we don’t use any harmful cleaning chemicals in the house. Instead we’ve researched the alternatives (and use vinegar a lot).
After fixing the drainage from the house last week, we installed our (second hand, energy rating:A, Whirlpool) washing machine. We decided to order soap nuts as these are a natural product which will not contain the vile chemicals of commercial detergents – we ordered these from a seller on Ebay and so we needed to wait for a few days for them to arrive… too long to wait for our first wash so we researched a traditional washing soap recipe – a 100g bar of soap finely grated, a 50g packet of (inexpensive) bicarbonate of soda and a teaspoon of borax – makes enough ‘powder’ for several loads of washing. This worked well with the longer 40 degree cycles, but the soap remained undissolved on the 30 minute quick wash cycle.
Currently the washing machine drains into the bath. I was quite shocked with the amount of water used – 40 litres even with the 30 minute cycle, therefore we are reusing the water by draining it into the mop bucket to wash floors and flush the toilet.
So, we collected a kilo of soap nuts from the post office today – it cost 13.50 GBP including postage. They are waxy shells about the same size as marbles and a kilo looks like a lot. They smell peculiar… the instructions I’ve read say that your clothing won’t smell peculiar after washing – we’ll see later today. You use 4-6 of them for four washes, so a kilo should last the year… as long as we’re not left smelling odd! One inconvenience is that you have to pre-treat them if you are planning to use a 30 degree cycle – they need warmer water in order to activate the soapiness.
I pre soaked the 6 shells in a cup of boiling water for about 5 minutes, and put the water into the washing liquid compartment of the washing machine and the shells in the little cloth bag in the main drum with the washing. The washing is now on the line – the sunlight itself acts as a natural antibacterial and bleaching agent.
Once you have used the soap nut shells 4-6 times you stick them on the compost heap. All back to nature and with clean clothes to boot.
It chucking it down. Raining cats and dogs (or raining wheelbarrows as they say in Czech). Oh the irony of our relationship with water.
On Saturday we were forced to change the drainage system for the water leaving the house. After we had bought rods for the drain, the neighbour told us that the pipe was actually broken about two feet from where the drain entered the ground. Why? A question which remains unanswered.
Instead we are feeding the water round to the (lower) front of the house (through the cellar). On Sunday I started digging in the reed bed filtration system. This is a set of troughs which will contain various special plants which use various things found in grey water from houses as nutrients (grey water is not contaminated with sewage – which has to be separately treated for safety reasons). I’m just waiting for the list of species required. Luckily there is an institute of botany specialising in aquatic plants in nearby Třeboň, so I will be able to see which of these are native to the Czech Republic and available locally.
Today we dug up the drive way into the property as there was no drainage under it, meaning that a stream of water would pool in front of the house in heavy rain. Minutes after Mike, Dad and John put down their spades, the heavy rain started and we were able to see how effective it was.
Now the valley has flooded and it’s still raining – there have been deaths due to the floods in other areas of the Czech Republic and this water will now be headed down to lower ground. I went and checked on our neighbouring horses, who were not happy about the thunder and lightening, but able to stand on a bank out of the way of the water.
Our visitor from workaway.info helped me construct a ‘goat’ today – ie a wooden frame on which we can hang the solar showers over the stone fish pond (drained). We have moved the old bath over to the back of the garden, by the pond, so that when we have multiple guests (such as the twenty cyclists who are coming to camp in a couple of weeks) we can heat water in the bath – it has a black cover and gets hot in the sun, which can then be used to fill the solar bag showers. This seems like a distant dream right now… with this torrential rain.
(British children’s rhyme: It’s raining, it’s pouring. The old man is snoring, he went to bed and bumped his head and couldn’t get up in the morning).
The drainage out of Novy Mlyn stopped working soon after we started using the inside toilet fully. Last year I converted it into a liquid only loo (partly due to our lack of info about the complete system, and also because all available water for flushing it was rainwater carried by bucket – so best to keep things simple). It worked well for number ones, though it was a delicate issue having to explain the procedure to visitors – we politely request you poo in the garden please. Soon after we reconnected the water in the spring, we decided to use it as a proper – no holds barred type of toilet and almost immediately the drainage failed and we discovered the loo was emptying out of the top of a pipe near the back porch. Unpleasant and disappointing.
Husband had a poke about and said it was blocked solid. A firm of plumbers visited last weekend and offered us a quote for a new system – I wasn’t at the house at the time or I would have insisted they try to rod the thing – but they didn’t. “If you want a job done properly you have to do it yourself” is a saying I hate in respect of the prospect of sorting out a blocked toilet. But, as a last resort I decided to have a look for myself. Armed with a long stick with a nail stuck through it, I was able to retrieve a pair of trousers, a sheet and a t-shirt from the part of the drain before the bend. The neighbour looked on, with a cross expression which I cannot fathom. The drain is not unblocked – but there may be other items of clothing etc round the corner – for which we need more specialist equipment than a stick with a nail through it.
Why would someone want to sabotage our toilet? Is it the kind of thing one goes to the police about? I don’t feel angry… like when the barns collapsed within an hour of our first visit to our new home, I feel that we’ve coped with far worse than that in recent years. Anyway, I made use of the bath in the garden after this vastly unpleasant task. We can’t use the bath inside because of the lack of drainage, but I can’t imagine a better place to have a long soak than a solar heated roll top bath in the sun.
For May, it’s surprisingly warm. We spent today working outside as much as possible. But on a really hot day, water is essential. Our swimming pond is still at the stage of pre-construction, so we have to find other means to ends…
The drainage from the house has stopped, and so we’re back to using the outhouse while we get the necessary permit to fit a new water treatment system (envi pur is a company originating from our local town). The problem is that, if our 18 months waiting for a permit for our well is anything to go by, it could be a very long time before we have the right paperwork. I have contacted Envi Pur to see if they have a turnkey solution – ie they handle all that as well as fitting the system – however I’ve had no response to my email written in halting (or perhaps failing) Czech.
Our neighbour said that there has never been a water treatment system at the house (though we did wonder if he’d simply diverted it – as he did with the water supply). It’s horrible that even the bath and sink cannot be used in the bathroom for the time being – the water drains straight out of the top of a pipe by the back porch. JD, our builder, thinks that this could have been deliberately blocked – just to inconvenience us.
JD gave us a cast iron bath a few months ago when he was refurbishing the bathroom in his cottage. He has a place on a hill about 7 miles away – with fantastic views. JD is the hoarder I aspire to be… nothing is ever wasted. He decided that what we needed was a free standing cast iron bath. What could I do but agree. Though it was in a bit of a state, like everything in my life it was nothing that a bit of elbow grease and Hammerite couldn’t right.
Due to the dire drainage situation we decided to set the bath up in the garden. Today we positioned it in the middle of the lawn where it would get the sun all day, filled it with water, covered it with clear plastic sheet and waited.
After a day of pottering, rather than hard graft, with a bit of flopping about in the sun thrown in for good measure, just as the heat was getting unbearable, I was able to sink into our luxuruiously long & deep bath, containing water warmed by the sun. We had a good old splash about (we being Misha -2.3- and I) and after lay in the hammock strung between the apple trees to dry off. Absolutely the best bathtime ever.
I thought that we’d have a big celebration when we got water… so many of my sentences began with ‘when we have water, I’ll…’. But, to my own surprise, it doesn’t feel like such a big deal. And why? because we learnt to live without it.
The water supply to Nový Mlýn was cut off by our neighbour. When he built his house, he simply disconnected the supply from Nový Mlýn and diverted it to his new home. Our lawyer told us that it was a cheap and simple task to get a new well put in, so we went ahead with the purchase anyway. It took us 15 months to get the necessary paperwork to install a new well from our local council. The bore hole cost a bomb. Luckily, we had a lot of help with the necessary manual work (such as the metre deep trench to take water to the house).
So, now we have a tap installed on the outside of Nový Mlýn. With clean and plentifully available water. No more filling up the barrel and transporting it from town. No more plastic bottles. No more dependence on rainwater – which inconveniently freezes in the winter.
According to a UN report in 2000, half of the World’s population live without access to clean water. Our experience over the last 15 months has given us a little insight into how the other half live. Those who have water on tap in the west use it wantonly. It is not a precious resource & because it is provided at a flat cost for most people, no penalty for leaving the tap on while you brush your teeth or flushing drinking water literally down the pan.
So, here’s what we learnt:
Rainwater is really useful: flushing toilets, pre cleaning dishes, for all household cleaning tasks. If you’re not going to lick it, then does it need to be drinking water quality?
We used drinking water for personal hygiene, drinking & rinsing dishes.
Heat. A can of water is kept by the kitchen sink for washing dishes. You don’t need to heat water to wash dishes most of the time, the problem is that when it comes out of the cold tap it is normally as cold as the ground – ie about 10 degrees C. Raise this to room temperature and it’s good to go. Try it. As a result for our future hot water supply we will divert the water supply into the attic to preheat it before it goes into the boiler. That’ll save us a good 15 degrees heating costs in the summer (when the back boilers aren’t functioning).
We have a composting toilet outside as well as a liquid only loo inside. We reduced the quantity of water needed to flush the toilet by putting rocks in the bowl. This also served as a visual reminder for visitors of the rock bog. Two litres instead of five makes a huge difference if you have to go fill up buckets with rainwater to flush. I’m really not keen on the idea of ‘mellow yellow’ – it’s not so mellow when you’re female. You have to flush it away before you go so you don’t get splashback. We will hook up the toilets to a rainwater tank in the attic when we get the guttering replaced.
In the bathroom we had the following: baby wipes (which were washed out and used for domestic cleaning & insulation at a later date) , an alcohol hand gel (for more paranoid visitors), liquid soap and a mister (a water spray with a pump to add pressure). The mister allows you to wash your hands etc very easily with a very small amount of water which you can turn on and off.
Solar water heating – those inexpensive 20 litre bags, with the shower attachment are surprisingly effective. I don’t know why solar water heaters are so expensive. We are putting double glazed windows in the south side of our roof & will use this light to heat water before it goes into the boiler.
Our next step will be to get the water inside… then we will be working on the first new bathroom – the accessible shower room.
So… last night the rain started. Why, when it has been dry and sunny for months on end, does the bad weather start as soon work on our roof begins.
We’re still without water – the pump went back to the shop (an hour drive away), but the owner of the shop is on holiday until next week – and back next tuesday. They found the fault with the pump, but can’t replace it without the say so of the shop owner. Can I just clarify – this is a brand new pump, which was faulty when we bought it, and under Czech law the businesss owner can take their sweet time fixing the problem. Leaving us without water yet again. So… we now have a team of 6+ roofers on premises, with no supply of clean water.
Last night we managed to feed our 5 guests – and find an extra bed. The accommodation is basic: two rooms with two beds, two chairs & two lamps, but we also have a sofa bed in the kitchen and one further upstairs room. Everyone ate. We coped with washing up afterwards. Given the water situation, things are okay. We thought that they would be here during the week and travelling back home at weekends, but they are working through the weekends for the next few weeks.
This morning they started work at 5.30 because the van arrived with the scaffolding. I wonder what hours they’ll work? It’s now 7.30 and I’ve already been out taking some last minute ‘before’ photos of the roof:
