Our Renovation – Major features
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Skip - As much as possible was saved from the skip; but we still ended up with 3 skips full of rubbish. -
Framing for the new kitchen window. -
Cutting the external bricks for the new window. -
Complex system of pipes underfloor! -
We cooked on the outdoor rocket-stove a few times when the kitchen was out of action. -
New Entrance tiles. The builder's apprentices weren't impressed "it just looks like smashed up tiles". Ah yeah; that's the point. -
Newly polished floorboards (old and new). -
Insulation - R5 in the ceiling. -
Panty - which I mostly built myself, out of the old kitchen cupboards and other building offcuts. -
Sanden Heat-pump Hot Water, plus the AC units for the Split systems. -
That means, we got OFF gas. Gas meter is GONE. -
Huge hole in the roof - new greenhouse / skillion roof will go here. -
Original cream bricks on internal wall, which we kept as a feature. -
These big panels are "Solar Venti's", a wonderfully efficient means of passive heating. -
North facing skillion roof lets in heaps of winter sunshine to the main living area. -
Another view of the greenhouse in action. -
"Don't be afraid of using colour, they said". -
Induction cooktop, and Tiling with our own random tile pattern. We pretty much didn't have a single tile left over. -
Great to use the new kitchen benches to bottle up some Apricots! -
Final yield... jams, jars and still lots of fresh ones! -
Friends over to celebrate our new space. Perfectly timed with the end of lockdown. -
Another angle on the kitchen. -
Finished kitchen.
Well it’s a bit delayed; since the bulk of the renovation was completed over 12 months ago. But here we go… check out the gallery above for some photos and a few explainers… although it’s a random collection and not really a timeline of any accuracy! We really need to do a video, but not sure when that’s going to happen!
In the Previous Post we detailed what was going to happen – and why we were doing it (the existing conditions), so might be worth checking that out. The Next Post (now up) is about Energy.
If we were to list the actual “features” of the new renovation… it’d go something like this:
- Underfloor Bathroom Heating (450w) + mirror demister!.
- 6kw + 2.5kw Split systems for main living area and study.
- Sanden Hot Water Heat-Pump (250L)
- Solar-venti solar air heater (study)
- North Facing Kitchen
- Automated external blind on West facing kitchen window
- Open plan kitchen / dining.
- Double Glazed windows in the kitchen and living areas.
- Large walk-in Pantry with “Cool Cupboard”.
- Internal ‘Greenhouse’ with external shading (pergola), and extended skillion roof – allows light and warmth. into the main living areas, as well as a place to propagate / grow plants.
- Underfloor insulation; wall insulation (in renovated areas) and R5 Ceiling Insulation.
- Water: Both toilets plus washing machine plumbed to tank water, and internal tap with a filter system.
Overall, we are super happy with our new spaces, the winter sunshine coming in, and the increased thermal performance. Summers so far (though pretty mild this year) have been comfortable, and we only turned on the AC’s once.
Tech – a confession
Permaculture purists, look aside! Yes, we put some tech in. Do I feel bad? No.
Could we survive without it? Absolutely. ….but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun…
- Some automated / smart lights and power points (Some are for convenience; some are to save actual standby energy).
- Wired and wireless home network.
- Home NAS (Network Attached Storage), which is the home for our digital music, and it also backs up PC files etc.
- Put in an external security camera… Just to have that little bit of security.
- New TV & Entertainment (ours was over 10y old). But can I point out, that we don’t subscribe to a streaming service (well, not at the moment)!
This tech has an energy cost – Our total standby power consumption is still only about 100w, and is really quite minor “in the scheme of things”. All the wireless tech is about 60w, smart switches only 3w (all up), with the remainder taken up by office equipment – PC’s / AC’s on standby, powerboards and so on.
However energy use in the home has been seriously considered, weighed up and reduced where possible… it’s not quite rampant consumerism where energy use is not even a thought.
There’s a lot more energy detail in our next post about Energy.
Oh – and who did our Reno? It wasn’t us! We’re very pleased with the job that Dale did (of DLW Builders).
