Experiments with sustainable technology in South Bohemia, Czech Republic. A British couple renovating a country house & thinking about our environment.
We had envisaged a celebration of water on Saturday – in true catalogue style – happy smiling people running through sprinklers in the sunshine. By 10.30pm – with the house in darkness, we stopped work. We’d achieved a hole, a tap and a pipe, and with friends and family had grafted all day… with not a drop of a shower to show for it, let alone a sprinkle, or a shower.
We were so close to having water… but the pump is faulty, therefore we spend 8 hours trying to figure out what the problem was – ruling out anything other than a faulty pump. This will be returned to the shop, who may or may not make us wait 30 days for a repair (yes, on something that is newly purchased and faulty, and essential to our water supply – compared with the UK, the Czech customer is always wrong.).
It’s been such a long time the house has been dry… it’s been so limiting.
Today we chose the windows which will go in the south slope of the roof. I would have liked to use Genersys Solar panels – they are made in Slovakia (the former partner of the Czech Republic) however I had the following problems:
The local supplier has not written back (to an email written in Czech by a fluent friend)
The cost
Time (we need an affordable solution now)
Materials (reuse is best as far as I’m concerned)
Instead we will install standard roof windows on the south side of the property, and under these place old radiators, painted black. Water coming into the house is at a constant 10°c. In summer this is far below the ambient temperature. In the six months that the temperature here is above 10°c we will send water up to the roof to travel through a set of old radiators placed under the windows. This will raise the water temperature to 25°+ for much of the summer, even without heat from the sun.
The windows will provide a massive amount of light in the attic – and we had planned to put windows in the roof anyway, and having all the windows in a south facing row will make the job of the roofers much easier. We are planning to add insulation under the attic floor & will monitor summer temperatures. We can always add a reflective film to the windows to cut down the amount of heat entering, or annex & ventilate that part of the roof if it really is too warm… but any additional heat in the winter will be very welcome.
In the winter, we will drain the system as soon as the temperature in the attic falls below 10°c. The reduced hours of light in winter months also means that any type of collectors would be less effective during this time. Happily this coincides with when our wood burning heating system will kick in. We are planning a range cooker in the kitchen with a back boiler to heat water & this will be on the go once temperatures fall in the autumn & winter months.
As well as fitting with the mantra of ‘reuse, recycle’ instead of always buying shiny, new things, our radiator solar collectors have the advantage of being elegant – ie completely hidden from view, as well as very easily accessible for maintenance. The radiators are to be located under 8 Roto windows (wooden frames inside, WITHOUT any special E glass) with dimensions of 740×1400 mm – which will cost the same amount as a single solar water heating panel.
I heard last night that our speedy project manager (8 months) has managed to get our permit to pump water sorted. We were told it would take a month. Recently I have been phoning him every day, and though he has never taken the call, this seems to have done the trick.
Unhinged bureaucracy has left us waterless since we bought Novy Mlyn over 2 years ago. And the fact that the neighbour laid claim to the well supplying the property originally, and denied us access. Our lawyer said it would be easy (and cheap) to put in a new well. It has been neither. In short, dealing with the permit office, and various other service providers (such as the people who put a bore hole down 26 metres when there was water 8 metres down), the project manager who would never answer the phone, the survey company who refused to help us with forms, but insisted we needed a survey (untrue) etc. has totally convinced me that it would be a nightmare to run a company in the Czech Republic. We are living in the wild west – honest business people are a real find – the general attitude is that cheating strangers out of money is what business is all about. I hope that attitudes are changing, but this immature form of capitalism, with such short term vision, damages the economy from the grass roots up.
Make your own Rock Bog, it will save loads of water and is really simple, and best of all free.
Convert one of your toilets into a Rock Bog by putting one or two large stones in the bottom of the pan, then reducing the amount of water in the flush with stones or bricks so that you have just a 1 or 2 litre flush.
Why? You’ll have a super efficient liquid only loo which can be used by men AND women (no not so mellow yellow splash back for the ladies). You will save water and money AND it will look nice (a Zen garden in your loo!).
A committee of people are at this point standing in the garden, looking down the hole, attempting to connect the various bits of system we have together. What can we do with a host of different sized pipes, a water filter and a garden pump? I read the instructions and was unable to fathom how it could work, but maybe they can. Apparently, though the hole is 28 metres deep, there is water at 8 metres down, so quite obviously this is the same water supply as our neighbours. I hope that this does not cause problems with other people’s water supply. This aside, we may soon be at the end of the dry days at Novy Mlyn.
