Roselea

Author: Shaun

  • The Great Move commences

    We have started our move! A steady baggage train from the old place to the new place has been rumbling along, with us carrying boxes full of our personal bits and pieces, bowls, plates, saucepans, fridge/freezer and dishwasher! Shelving units also has been moved.

    We are slowly sorting out the kitchen in the new place, putting everything in their new locations, giving them a quick clean! The dishwasher has been plumbed in and it has done a cycle without any leaks!

    We have bedroom 1 now occupied with the bed, mattress and bedside table drawers!

    We are sorting out a little work area for Stephen and his electronic work, down at the end of the Sun Corridor outside his bedroom. We are using the old shelves from the kitchen and making a new workbench to provide a large spacious area for the equipment and tools.

    We have 10 days left until the Mains electricity is moved! And all power is cut off from the old place! We had better be all moved and settled in by then!

  • Bits and Pieces #2

    Yesterday and today, we did further tidy ups of outstanding tasks.

    The chest freezer has been moved from the outside shed to the new kitchen. It was cleaned top to bottom, inside and out, all edges and corners! It is gleaming now!

    All the shelves have been washed down (in the kitchen) ready for the migration of all the “stuff” from the old kitchen!

    A tester module has been built to check each digital thermometer probe, all are working!

    The hot tank has settled down and it is producing good quantity of hot water (running up at about 70 degree Celsius). the insulation and the cover are now back in place.

    The air con unit is in the full recirculation mode, much of the old air is cycled back into the rooms to maximise retention of the heat. This is to allow us to heat up the fabric of the building before we move in.

    The shower tray is now completed and is now connected to the supplies coming out of the floor and the waste is connected. No leaks! The shower pump is also working just fine!

    The temperature probes from the heat exchanger are ready for connection to the controller. In the morning the joint between the tray and the walls will be sealed.

    And the lounge carpet has been finally stapled down. We were waiting for the carpet to settle as it has a very heavy and stiff backing with a crease down the middle of the room. But today we gave up waiting and did the best we could to pull the carpet out flat.

    We are more or less ready for the move!

    The plan is to move most of the kitchen over first and then the part of the lunge and then each bedroom separately, over the next week or so.

  • Miscellaneous Bits and Pieces

    For the last three days, we have been doing odds and ends of tasks which needs completing before we can move.

    The shower tray and the heat exchanger are coming together. The adjustable foots to lift the tray and seal up to the walls inside the shower cubicle was glued and screwed on. It is a wedge shaped piece of timber where we can slide in the wedge to raise the tray up.

    We installed another electric cable back to the house to provide additional power. This will allow us to run the immersion heater and fan heaters to warm up the living space ready for us to move in, before the mains electricity meter is moved in 2 weeks time.

    We also installed a network cable at the same time to provide a link back to the telephone master socket and maintain our connections to the outside world, while we wait for BT to come and move our master socket from the old house to the garage.

    The temperature probes were installed in their various places of monitoring, the rain water tank, the air con unit, the hot water tank and the shower heat exchanger.

    A temporary curtain of strips to make an insulating door between the garage and the garden room (the kitchen), made of geo-textile fabric, each strip being 50mm (2inches) wide and weighted with old nuts & bolts to make the strips fall back into their resting position and maintain a better heat insulation.

    we have also started unloading some of our personal boxes into our bedrooms, mostly books.

  • Bedroom Furniture Day 3

    Bedroom 2 got its new bed frame assembled.

    The bed frame was made up of 4 strips of 300mm wide by 2315mm long of the usual 18mm OSB material, sitting (or rather lying!) on three solid legs, each made up of a 1218mm (4feet) cross beam (63mm by 38mm CLS timber). This is supported by two 400mm high posts (89mm by 38mm CLS timber) and these posts in turn sitting on a horizontal 1100mm long foot (again 89mm by 38mm CLS timber) to spread the load over the floor. These were screwed and bolted together, with the planks screwed onto the legs.

  • Furniture for Bedrooms day 2

    Bedroom 3 has it computer worktable all assembled and varnished today this afternoon.

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    The red dye has worked quite well but also we drilled a series of holes along the back to allow cables to come from the little shelf right underneath, right at the back to hold all the sockets and plugs for all the equipment.

  • Electrician Came and Saw!

    The electrician we asked to come, arrived this morning, to see, to talk and check our electrics.

    It was a very informative visit, really appreciating his expert knowledge and advice. He took a look at our Utility Rail with our modular design, pleased to see that the data cables were kept apart but also mentioned that it is not usual to use wood as the material for conduits. He would like to see metal boxes for each socket and switch. He said that the wiring at the consumer unit was neat and tidy. There were issues with our lighting channel in the garage as well. We promised to solve these issues.

    We talked about certificates and discussed the issue of how the wording of the certificate would states that “this electrician” performed the work and certified that it is correct and working. But with us he didn’t do the work so how can he certify it? He mentioned a possible solution by providing an periodic inspection certificate. I think this performs the same tests but does not state who did the actual work.

    But he has agreed that he will be willing to issue a certificate for the consumer unit and will be here when the meter is moved. We contacted EDF (It’s changed its name to UKPower now) to arrange the switch over and it will be in 3 weeks time on the 21st November 2011 in the afternoon!

    This means we had better get a move on with us moving out of the old place then!!

  • Bedroom Furniture!

    We were today making some furniture for the bedrooms. In bedroom 3 will have a new computer work area and bedroom 2 will have a new bed base (replacing a forty year old bed).

    The books are slowly filling up the shelves! Bedroom 1 is almost full!

  • Shelves all Complete

    The major bookshelves for Bedroom 2 and 3 are now complete and installed.


    Bedroom 2 has larger spacing between shelves as there are a different mix of books .. audio books to be exact and other larger items to store on them!

  • Shelves for Bedroom 1

    Bedroom 1 now has it book shelves installed.

    11We have added an extra line of shelves so there are now 18 shelves all together. The bottom line will only serve as an odd and ends shelf as it lines up with the base platform level of the bed frame.

    Each shelf is 1145mm (3feet and 9inches) long and 150mm (6inches) deep, separated by 205mm(8inches) between levels. The top shelf would be only useful for knick-knack and other smaller items! This gives an approximate capacity to store 500 to 750 paperback books, depending on thickness!

  • Thermometer Probes for Controlling the Home Environment

    the Home environment needs controlling to maintain efficiency and best use of the resources so thermometer probes are needed to find out what the air con unit is doing so it can be controlled as well as room temperature.







    These probes are digital, producing a temperature reading in 9bits to provide a reading between -50 degree Celsius to +125 degree Celsius with 0.5 degrees resolution and a 0.5 degrees accuracy.

    The places where these probes are to be used are as follows:

    . Air Con unit

    . Shower and the recycling heat exchanger

    . Hot water tank

    . Underground rain water tank

    Most of them are for scientific inquisitiveness and the data will be recorded on the server and displayed on the web as graphs to show how well (or badly) the various systems are working, what the seasonal variations the rain water temperature is and of course keeping us warm (Winter) or cool (Summer)!