I know I know ... you haven't heard from us for ages! A long time has passes since our last blog BUT ... we've only really been been working on the house for a about 12 weeks of that time. There are various reasons for that which I will come to and there is certainly a lot of news to report - some good, some bad and some sad.
Let’s get the sad stuff out of the way first … our dog, Tsala passed away and is now chasing bunnies in the sky. She had 15 wonderful years which is 4 more than the average for her breed and she definitely had a good life. The end was all a bit sudden and as there is no vet on Coll, we had to take her on the ferry to Tiree. She is now buried on our plot and we have planted flowers around her grave...
We really miss her but it’s good to know she isn’t suffering any more.
We are going to have to think about alternative deterrents for the bunnies on the plot now though…especially the cheeky wee fellow with the white dot…
The bad news is thankfully brief. To escape the worst of the Coll winter, we decamped to the French alps. Unfortunately, I once again had a fall dislocating and fracturing my shoulder. Due to the poor snow cover, I had to be helicoptered off the mountain which would have been fun ... had I been conscious! On the positive, I clocked a PB on Strava of 294kph!
Those of you that know me well will be saying “Not again!” … I seem to have been disproportionately unlucky with snow sports so let’s hope my luck will change…
Unfortunately the shoulder is far from fixed which has limited us with the build. Despite this, we have still managed to get a few things ticked off on our ‘Green Mile’ list. As you can see however, the list has grown arms and legs ...
Pretty much everything else is good news though - topped with the arrival of our first grandchild in February… on the day of the Calcutta cup which was a fantastic Scottish victory at Twickenham. (Sorry English pals). We got the news of Maxie's arrival just after Van Der Merwe’s amazing try!
Meet Maxie Skye Neilson…
Maxie is half English and half Scottish so I’m sure there will be some parental debate on her rugby allegiance. Her auntie Tillie is already working on that though...
So what have we done since the last blog? Quite a lot surprisingly but we still have a mountain to climb. The most significant is the installation and commissioning of the off grid solar system. We are now literally living off the sun which feels truly amazing! We have had no help beyond friends, supplier advice and Youtube. I’m slightly relieved to say, without incident too…
The technical stuff (batteries and inverters) ...
We have 2 inverters which will run in parallel eventually but for now we are just using one...
And the solar panels... We were able to "repurpose" (I love that word!) a load of timber from a neighbour who recently finished his house build. He used it to form the slab for his shed after which it was just lying around. Thanks Nick! Structural advice as always came from my fantastic brother-in-law Chris who continues to help us with advice for almost every task we take on...
And some vertical panels pointing SE for the morning rays on the horizon...
Note the electric fence controller in the foreground below. We have installed an electric wire on top of the fence around the whole plot to stop hungry cows crashing through. The controller is temporarily located outside the caravan so it can be powered by the 12v marine batteries...
So far we have installed 11 solar panels which will probably power all our needs until November but we do have another 17 panels to put up at some point. No doubt that will become more pressing when the nights draw in. We could bore you with detail of our electrical system but let's leave that for those of you with an unhealthy interest… All you need to do is ask but I should warn you that you may regret it!
This is undoubtedly a huge milestone though as the solar power is the linchpin of our energy plan.
We have also finished the cladding. The last bits were the fiddly reveals around the doors and windows. A lot of work for not much surface area. It was unwise to have one line on the Green Mile for "Install Cladding" as it was probably a solid 2 months of work!
You may recall that our water comes from the sky. I know everyone's water comes from the sky but in our case there is no 3rd party involved! We capture the rainwater from our roof and soon we will filter it for domestic use too. We have 5 roof surfaces to harness (excluding the caravan) - now each with their own capture tank. In total we now have 11,000 litres of storage onsite. And, within 2 days of installation, they were all full!
The tanks required yet more concrete slabs to be built. Concreting is now a job we are quite competent at...
The plan is to have all 5 tanks connected so the water level will be the same in all of them. Sometimes, due to wind speed and direction, you get x4 the rainfall on one side of the roof than the other so there will be some flow between the connected tanks which has a helpful stirring affect.
We have bought the filtration system but have yet to install it…that is the next job!
Our general policy is to work outside whenever we can and leave the indoor jobs for bad weather days. Since we returned, we have been quite lucky with the weather though and a lot of the outdoor jobs have been done. I suspect that one day soon we may run out of outdoor work and be forced inside on lovely days. That will be frustrating but much better than the other way round!
You may recall that the house panels were delivered on 5 articulated lorries (arg!) and all the non structural ones were piled up inside the house for the best part of a year. Well, we have finally installed and, where necessary, built them. This is known in the building world as "framing out"! We have left 2 down for now to help with materials access but it won't take long to put them up.
And Julia has been emptying expanding foam cans into the myriad of gaps and holes. All but the high up ones have been done now. They will have to wait for the scaffolding tower. We have also insulated and boxed in the steels...
We had planned to return to Coll a bit later in the Spring so we see a lot of the recent progress as a bonus. We are going to spend the rest of the year on the build with very few mainland exits so hopefully we will make good progress. We really want to move in sometime next year!
Our priorities for the rest of the summer are installing the stove and flue, landscaping the ground around the house (a lot of Digby work involved in that!), building the stairs, putting in the under floor heating and incapsulating the whole house with a shell of vapour control membrane (VC Foil)! The VC foil as it's known is the silvery stuff you see in the above photos.
In other news, we have just returned from Julia’s Dutch and Italian family gathering in Holland. It’s a huge family with almost all of the 3 generations attending which was really fun. The main event was a birthday party for Julia’s aunt and, for those of you present at our wedding, there was a lot of familiar Dutch music and song...
Finally, I have volunteered for the coast guard on the island. I spent most of February in a combination of classroom and online training and now I’ve got a shiny new uniform…
I haven’t been on active duty yet as my shoulder needs to fix a bit more first but I’m hoping I can be of help if/when needed.
We have been working on the house now for 2 years however we both remain surprisingly enthusiastic and committed to the project. We never planned to do the physical work ourselves but it has been an educational and rewarding experience. We are also loving our island life in spite of our rather limited facilities in the short term. Let’s hope we can move in before the end of the 3rd year!
So that’s the round up. Sorry it’s been a long time coming. Next one will be when we have some more progress to report - I’m hoping before the autumn!
In the mean time have a lovely summer.
K&J xx