The wait for Welsh Slate

.....is over!
The slates have been lovingly hewn from the edge of Snowdonia, gently put on to palettes , carefully driven 200 miles to Oxfordshire, and finally expertly unloaded on to our plot!

Definitely not Spanish Slate! 

They do look good, but at 4 times the price of the best Spanish slate, they should do!

There do seem to be a lot of them!

 

Work in progress

A finished section

The slates on the south side of the roof seem to be going on quickly, but gaps have been left for the solar panels to be fitted.  These will be flush with the slates when fitted.  Meanwhile, on the north-facing side, the renewables 'team' are busy finishing off the ventilation system by fitting the intake and outlet vents to the roof.

One vent fitted and waiting for slates

Fresh air and the Beast from the East

Before the 'Beast from the East' hit us, the plumber managed to finish all the first fix plumbing, but last week, the weather was so cold that all work on the house had to stop and it was not possible to take the boat for another run.  It also meant that our Welsh slates were further delayed as apparently the staff and lorries could not get to the slate quarry, so our chance of the slates arriving this week diminished rapidly.  The canal froze over and was covered in snow.  Although the canal does freeze in the winter, since we are near a lock there is always some water flowing which usually prevents our part of the canal from freezing solid.

Frozen canal, before the snow

4 x 4's only

Even when the canal thawed, we still had snow

Still no work on site

After the thaw at the weekend, the focus moved to one aspect of the 'renewables', namely the Mechanical Ventilation & Heat Recover System (MVHR).  Since the house will be so well sealed it is a requirement to have a ventilation system to make sure that we can get enough air to breath.  In summer, it is easy just to open windows, but in winter opening windows is a really efficient way of losing all the heat.  The MVHR solves this by bringing in fresh air from a vent on the roof and exhausting 'stale' air through another vent.  Normally, the stale air would also take the heat from the house with it, but the 'Heat Recovery' part of the MVHR uses a heat exchanger to transfer the heat from the outgoing air to the incoming air.  This clever bit of kit also takes warmer and more damp air from the bathrooms and the kitchen, dries it, and distributes it to the other rooms.
It does of course mean that a sizeable unit about half the size of a fridge and looking like an oversized lego brick has to be positioned in the void above the downstairs cloakroom, and ducting needs to be fed to all the rooms hidden in the walls and ceilings but avoiding all the newly installed plumbing and cabling, before the plasterboard is fitted.  Currently our bedroom is being used as a storeroom for a significant amount of the ducting and associated materials.

Giant Lego Brick

The bedroom 'Ducting Store'

Hard to believe that all of this will be hidden in the walls and ceilings

Progress is being made, and most of the downstairs has its ducting in place.  Work has now moved on the the more complicated sloping ceilings upstairs.

Ceiling vent in the Study

We have just heard that the slates are on their way and should be at the builder's yard tomorrow.  This is great news as it means that the roofers who were booked for next week can start on Monday.  Their first job will be to batten out the roof and put the felt on it.  This could not be done in advance as the precise size of the slates and the required overlap must be measured when the slates arrive.  Hopefully, the first slates will go on the roof on Tuesday.  Time to set the time-lapse camera up then!

Although we are very pleased with the boat, we have had the boatbuilders down this week to address some of the snags we have come across.  They are making good progress, but there are still a few areas to be looked at.  We have had two sets of friends come to visit this week.  We thought that they wanted to come and see us, but in fact they were only really interested in seeing the boat and possibly the house!

View of the red roof of our boat from the master bedroom.  

I wonder how long we can keep the boat's engine bay this clean?