Today is the day the roofers arrive to replace our roof with a beautiful larch wooden roof. I need to remember to take some ‘before’ photos.

Wooden roofing is by far the most sustainable option – and unlike Cedar – is grown locally – so less embedded energy in shipping. The slats are hand split to make them naturally resistant to woodworm & other bugs.

The roofers plan to start with the roof of the front porch – that’s great because we will be able to see it immediately. Wish us luck!

Sell photos on photrade | By EveryDayEnglish

ARGH!

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.

Sell photos on photrade | By EveryDayEnglish

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:

1. The local supplier has not written back (to an email written in Czech by a fluent friend)
2. The cost
3. Time (we need an affordable solution now)
4. 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.

The roof guys brought along one of their sons who spoke good English and were really, well, just nice & genuine. So, we have agreed that the work will happen over the summer holidays because the owner’s son and his friends would like to practice their English with us. We have offered to provide food and accommodation. It would be nice to organise the same kind of thing for them in the UK in future. I’m sure there are green builders wanting a larch roof (they are naturally bug repellent, like Cedar, but they last longer and are grown locally).

They say that they are interested in working in the UK and will give us a commission for every customer we put their way. It’s great that some of the ideas we had about Nový Mlýn are beginning to work out. This is a typical example. The process was: investigate the available technology, judge which is the most eco friendly & sustainable, find a reputable company to install the technology at Nový Mlýn, then promote their work to other green builders. I will now add information about their offering to the 500 year vision website.

A larch roof for Nový Mlýn would be a dream come true. I think we may have to install windows in it just so we can poke our heads out and admire it.

The bright sunshine is making me feel that spring has come early, as if it’s time for our period of hybernation (in other words: knitting season) to end, I worry that other hybernating mammals will feel the same. Of course it’s entirely possible that we will have a second winter arrive to take us through February and March, and given our experience of the seasonal patterns of weather, we have absolutely nothing to go on. M was complaining earlier about the irony that the severe winter a couple of years back lead to the collapse of half our property a couple of weeks after we bought it, but we’ve had hardly any snow here since then. Will the winters here continue to change? Who can know. We had best prepare as well as we can for all possible weather variations. And at least we’re not down at sea level with the ostriches living on Sandbanks.

So, tonight I will go through my instructions to double check them, then list the pattern on payloadz, etsy and ebay.

So… gone is so much work from 2007. At least I have a clean slate with the Novy Mlyn project plan again.  Redoing my accounts for tax return was no fun. It really isn’t the sort of job you should have to do twice.  Maybe next year I will have an accountant.

With the temperatures hovering around minus 5 degrees c (daytime), there have been all sorts of good reasons to knit rather than undertake any arduous DIY (like the paint doesn’t work at such levels of cold). Knitting by the fire has been more on the cards. I think that having spent 12 months living (as much as we can) at the house will give us a good perspective on our priorities for the reconstruction.

I am praying for inspiration, and motivation to get through the next year. It’s been a tough few months with many dissapointments… but soon it will be spring.