Heating an old house

Sarah feels the cold keenly, while I can usually just put on some more warm clothes to deal with British winters. But even I was finding it hard to work in my home office when the temperature went below ten Celcius; fingerless gloves still let me type, but numb fingers increase my error rate, and the pain is distracting.

Part of the problem was that our house is draughty. There were a lot of gaps in the window and door frames, through which daylight could be seen; when it was windy and rainy at the same time, the wind blew rain in through the frame of the large window in my office.

So step one was to fix these. The large office window, it turns out, is somewhat curved, so when my brother in law was visiting, we screwed extra handles to it, pulled it properly closed with levers wedged in the handles, then did up the bolts at top and bottom to force it to stay in shape, which fixed a large source of draughts.

Then I want around a few other choice places, adding draught excluder strips where I could.

Next challenge was to increase the heat. We had only one real source of heat in the house, a wood/coal burning stove at one end of the house. Since it's a long thin house, this was little help for me in my office, right at the opposite end - but it didn't even make enough heat to keep Sarah happy sitting next to it, so she would often use the expensive electric fan heater to keep her temperature up, much to my concern (for if we can't pay the electricity bill, things will quickly become rather unpleasant).

Now, the grate in this fire was rather small compared to the size of the fire itself. The grate had only sides and a front, so had to be pushed back against the firebricks in order to not spill coal out. This meant that air coming in through the vents would tend to rise over the fire and up the chimney, taking heat away without imparting much oxygen to it. Even then, it would slowly wriggle forwards over time, spilling ash and coal down behind, until it came too far forwards for the ash shovel to be pushed underneath it, meaning the fire would choke itself. But as it moved forward, the effective volume fire increased, with a notable improvement in the heat output - even though the fire at the back would be starved of air from beneath, as it sat on a bed of ashes.

While rummaging through piles of random bits of metal lurking about the place from when we moved in, though, I found an iron grating that I suspected might be able to fit in behind the existing grate, enlarging it. Sure enough, it did - and it fitted so perfectly well that I suspect it was actually meant for it. Suddenly it was possible to have a large bed of coal in the fire, with air coming in through the vents from underneath it and being drawn up through; this led to an awesome increase in heat. However, it led back to the same old problem - we now didn't have room to get the ash shovel in underneath to take ash away. And so the fire would slowly choke itself with ash.

So I ordered two metres of 25mm square hot-rolled mild steel from Hindleys, my favourite home-engineering supply house. When it arrived I used my angle grinder to chop off two lengths of the stuff, then used them as spacers on either side of the grate to lift it up an extra inch.

And now the fire's awesome. I can easily get it so hot that it becomes mildly terrifying, an angry yellow glow emanating from the air vents as it roars away, the radiated heat unpleasant to be too near. A few days ago, it actually melted the plastic crates we store our newspaper and kindling in, purely by radiation.

But it's still rather cold in my office.

So we decided to spend some money on the problem, as it was in danger of harming my work. I went down to John Stayte Services, a local purveyor of awesome things. We buy our coal from them, but they also sell propane, butane, related accessories such as heaters and Sievert torches, workwear, and animal feed. To my delight, they had a deal on; a shipment of gas heaters had been damaged due to the shipping container being broken into by illegal immigrants who built a home on top of them for the duration of the voyage... so they were selling a slightly dented heater, along with a cylinder of butane, for £89 when normally a heater alone would cost more than that (and a gas cylinder £50 or so as an initial outlay).

I set it up in my office, lit it... and over the next few hours, the temperature rose from ten degrees to about twenty, with me correspondingly shedding layers of clothing. Since then I've been running the heater on low power, and the temperature's stayed around seventeen degrees; with the stones of the building having been warmed up, it's now not taking much heat to keep it nice and warm.

And so, I can proudly state, for the first time since we moved in, it's actually warm enough at home that we are turning down heat sources so as not to be too hot!

Sheds - stress

Barbara came back from holiday yesturday and I excitedly showed her the shed - but I got this sinking feeling that she doesn't remember the two or three conversations we had about putting a shed in early this year

I am now awaiting her getting really upset about the fact that it appeared whilst she was on holiday.

Ladybirds

Sitting at my desk working, I found a spider in my hair. So I went and opened the window to put it out.

This is, the big office window's not been opened for a while. As I opened it, lots of stuff rained down on me. And when I looked I realised I was covered in ladybirds.

Seems they're attempting to hibernate in the gap between the window and the frame - except now they're all disturbed. So I shook them off of me, and left them to collect together so I can decide what to do with them.

I took some pictures as they started forming good clusters:

But there's plenty more than that still making their way into the clusters... and I opened the other side of the window as they were crawling into the gap from the inside (and I don't want them inside), which caused a whole load more to shower down.

Wish me luck.

Well…

Yesturday I asked Inga one of the gardeners about the climbing plant on our garage/electronics workshop, I was pruning it like every two weeks - but the last month and a half I haven't and I was worried that it was on the phone line and stuff. Plus Barbara always moans when I prune it so I wondered if I was being too heavy handed - No apparently it needs pruning every two weeks to keep it in check.

Inga then begain pruning it for me - She cleared up and went and the internet wasn't working. This ment that in order for Alaric to get what needed to be done done we had to go to Aviator and use their free WiFi. This was with a Jean full of sugar from a birthday party :/

Al contacted BT and they texted saying an Engineer would be coming out today.

Al's meeting had also been rearranged so he had to be off early this morning to get to Reading for said meeting - becuase we had got in just after Jean's bed time I put her straight to be with only tooth brushing - this ment I was hair wahing and bathing her this morning to get pink glitter from the party out of her hair and the face paints off of her cheek.

But I got her ready and was heading out of the door when to my supprise a BT van appeared - I ushered Jean back inside to deal with him.

The line was cut - I assume from the pruning :/ So in trying to stop the line being damaged and breaking I had succeeded in garenteeing that it was broken Also this a chargable repair - fair enough but I feel like everytime I try and make things better this happens - I have no idea how much it will cost either :'(.

Still the engineer was nice and did all the house stuff quickly so I could go to the school. Jean ran most of the way bless her. I had my stick and was attempting to motor up the hill - but I was the slow one of the two of us

We got to the school in 10 minutes! Just as they were going through the door. People then gave me letters and things and I dropped my stick and fumbled and then realised I was the only perant left in the playground.

Aching I set off for home - but the frantic walk up had just hurt me too much and I had to stop and sit on the verge by the allotments. I just couldn't walk any furthure - this is getting rediculous but its not a constant thing - August I did the whole boundary walk and was only like this right at the end.

Anyway I was feeling a bit frustrated by it all especially as yesturday my back was so bad I wasn't able to get up out of the bed - I'd had chronic hip pain the whole night and had to space myself on pain killers so thinking is a bit fugy at the moment :/

Now I have to leave to get the bean from school - I'm so tired from these walks I'm not getting any tidying or sorting done which is starting to worry me - I'm hoping it will improove - this was not a good time to have a flare up.

An invasion of Wiggalls!

Yes Wiggalls not wiggly pets but Wiggalls, also spelt Wiggle and Wiggill. Every few years this extended family has a reunion and descends upon Cranham where some of the oldest records of the family show they live in the 1700 and 1800's. One of the properties they are thought to have lived at was Suttons Mill (the other building here where Alaric's aunt Barbara lives).

The records say treat with caution though and it is only definatly known that the Wiggall in question was a Miller in Cranham but the family still came to have a look around on Saturday afternoon.

I put on Tea, Coffee, squash and buiscuits for them - Barbara had triple booked herself for Saturday as she had an Opera in Cardiff and hadn't realised what time she had to be where. She did provide the posher buscuits mind!

We had known about the Wiggalls visit but had thought there would be about 12 people coming for tea and cake - instead Saturday morning I took a chocolate cake over to Barbara's to feed the horde when she a) announced she had forgotten about them and we needed to go and greet them at the village hall at 1 o'clock (Al wasn't due back from London until 2 as thats when she said they would be coming and b) that there were 100 American Wiggalls descending upon us expecting a historical tour of the place!!!! And me being me I went EEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But at 1 o'clock I discovered that there were only 50 of them this year and not all of them would be coming - relief! There was also a lovely buffet lunch set which we were apparently invited too but Barbara couldn't hang around so I alas had to go.

The Wiggalls arrived and at the Mill at about 4 o'clock after saying they'd be here at 3! the photographer was late They all seemed to enjoy the bits and bobs about the Mill that we could remember. And of course my piece de la resistonce - the Roman Urinal - I was thinking I should have had the photo of it out.

They took lots of photo's and signed the guest book and even bought Wiggle Pets I should have brought out the post cards as they feature Wiggly Pets and bits of the Mill and garden but never mind! There was a little girl a bit younger than Jean with them so Jean had a great time showing her the slide - though it is wet!

Jean had got very excited about it all and had been abit confussed that the Wiggalls were going to be humans - she thought they were either giant wiggly pets, that band that sings Ferfer-esk songs, or dancing worms (I'm serious!).

They were all really nice and we even managed to end up in a discussion about metal work with some of them They are from all over the place New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, America, Ireland and off course various local places round here!

They have demanded that we look after the place and mantian it or we will have the Wiggall clan down upon our heads!

It was a really nice afternoon once I stopped stressing about the fact they were coming. They signed the guest book and my events book - there were lots of previous entries for them in the Mills guestbook which was interesting