Nobody said it would be easy building an off-grid house on a remote island and there are moments when this rings true. We arrived back here at the beginning of February after a long break away, not quite sure of what we would find. If you were anywhere in Britain in the past few months you will have experienced the “storms" that have been sequentially rolling in. First it was Agnes, then Babet, then Ciaran, then Debi, then Fergus, then Gerrit, then Henk, then Isha and finally Jocelyn … and its only February! One islander, who has lived here for 50 years, said of the recent weather “Aye, it's been a bit blowy right enough but there’s not been a big one for a while”. There are tales of the "big ones", with flying caravans, 10,000 litre water tanks completely disappearing, and slates being weaponised by the power of the wind. Well, I'm not sure what is going to happen when the next "big one" hits but we’d better be living in the house by then as the caravan might well end up in the Sound of Mull!
I’m not sure why they give the storms names - there are so many of them. Eddie Stobart started giving his trucks names but as his empire went through a rapid, and possibly unforeseen expansion, they ran out of names and had to start using double barrelled ones like “Mary-Alison”. Mark my words, we will have double barrelled storms by 2026.
Anyway, suffice to say, it has been a bit “blowy” while we have been away and there has been some damage to address. The most serious of which was a solar panel being literally "ripped off” and left dangling by its cables, crashing around on top of the array.
Our neighbour Mike very kindly went up and retrieved it before it could do any more damage. It’s one of those Whatsapp messages you really don't want to get when you’re on a chairlift in a ski resort. Apart from that, a few of Julia’s newly planted trees were blown over, some untethered materials on the ground were “relocated” and our electric fence wire was severed - presumably by flying debris.
One weather radar showing Coll at the epicentre of the storm...
So for the first few days we had no power and, without power, no pressured water either. And, no pressured water = no hot water = no shower. We could have restored power sooner had the strong winds not prevented us from safely ascending a ladder on the solar array.
So that's it - 10 steps forward and maybe a couple back. Everything is sorted now though and the solar has been better than expected in February so fingers crossed, we will have reliable power now until mid November! I say that because we did hit our first serious “off grid” challenge towards the end of last year. Solar power is simple, reliable and truly amazing. Between February and November, with our batteries, the solar should power all our needs (including our electric car). We have added a lot more panels since the last blog and now have almost 7kw which, even on a dull day in summer, will restore charge to our batteries. This was the finished array on a very cold morning before the storm damage...
The problem however is in the darkest 10 weeks when, at our latitude, the sun only rises about 10 degrees above the horizon and only for a few hours a day. We discovered that 3 dull days in a row is all it takes to deplete our supply. Even when we reduce the usage to bare essentials (a fridge/freezer, laptop charging and a couple of lights), the batteries start to deplete. In theory this should not happen as we still take in more than we use but it doesn't quite follow the spec. We don't know exactly why. It could be the cold, it could be that the inverter uses more power than it should or maybe the batteries use power to maintain themselves but we will likely never know. It was so bad at one point before Christmas we had to shut the system down and wait for a sunny day to restart it. We can’t simply run down the batteries to nothing as there is no way of restarting them! (oops ... a big bad design fault...). There is a way of attaching a generator to the inverter to charge the batteries but it would have to be a very big one (12kw) and a “pure sine wave” type which you simply can't get in that size range. 12kw is a big generator but not quite this big...
The original plan was to use wind power in winter to directly heat water and use the solar/battery system for everything else but, for those bleak 10 weeks, this isn't going to work... even with 10kw of solar. The solution is to either integrate wind power with the battery bank or acquire another gadget that can safely charge the 48V DC battery bank in emergencies. We are still investigating this but thankfully have about 8 months to come up with a solution.
So, now we are over the solar “hump” we can focus on trying to get the house ready for occupation! To say the “off grid” stuff has been a distraction is an understatement. It has seriously slowed us down and I have wasted hours trying to research and learn more about it. Nevertheless, some progress on the house has been made since the last blog.
We have finished the wall battening and installation of VC foil everywhere except for the main room floor and the small ceiling area.
The Chilli Penguin stove is now in place and the flue built up to where it will penetrate the roof. The scaffolding is set up outside and we are just waiting for the perfect weather window to “break through”! We need a light wind, no rain and a temperature above 6 degrees to do that. Unfortunately at this time of year, the sunny days with light winds also tend to be cold ones so this might have to wait a while.
I’m not sure if I’ve spent more time watching plumbing videos or actually plumbing but we have done a fair few pipe joins. Our thermal store (a big tank that provides hot water and central heating) is in place and we have run most of the hot and cold water pipes. We’ve been using a combination of copper welds and “push fit” systems. The welding hasn't been too bad considering we have never done it before. Thanks very much to Clive for making us the “how to” video!
Here's a couple of shots of the thermal store and header tank ... Not very interesting I know!
I have been testing my welds by inflating a balloon at each end of the pipe and leaving it to see if they deflate. I doubt that’s a method in the plumber’s handbook but it seems to work. We shall see when water pressured at 3 bar is running through them...
The “first fit” electrical wiring installation has also been done. Having created the entire off grid electrical system ourselves, we would have been comfortable wiring the house (if a little slow) however building regulations require us to have an electrician’s sign off so Jonny Campbell very kindly agreed to help us. He and his son Ross came over from Oban for a few days and when they left, about 1.3 kms of wire had been installed. My job was mainly to drill holes for wiring routes and cut out sockets. Poor Jonny had a massive blow out on his drive to the ferry and nearly found himself stuck on the island. Thankfully island help was at hand and he managed to borrow a wheel and change it in the nick of time. It was fun to have them with us and we are looking forward to having them back for the second fit.
We created a master plan for all the wiring which proved to be quite useful although Julia was making a few last minute changes...
We have also installed the underfloor heating pipes in 5 of the 8 zones. This involves putting down the VC foil on the floor, screwing battens on top and cutting insulation to fit tightly between them. Then, we lay the pipe loops and staple them to the insulation. Julia and I worked very well together on this - she was in charge of the VC foil and the insulation and I was the joiner. The laying of the pipes is tricky however and, without the correct roll out tools, it was a bit like playing Twister in the tight corners!
VC foiling the floor...
A lot of carving out of grooves is required for the pipes to cross the battens...
And the laid pipe runs on top of the insulation...
We also installed the underfloor heating manifold and the next job is to pressure test the pipes before we cover them with a concrete mix. I would definitely want to find a leak before we did that!
Being a bit of a cheapskate I bought this hydraulic pressure tester on Ebay for £12. Its quite likely it won’t work but we shall see...
Julia has also been very busy outside and has planted about 250 trees! There are Scots pines, Silver Birch, Downy Birch, Sea Buckthorn and Hawthorn. We don’t know how many of them will grow but probably less than half. Note the wind barrier she has added to the fence too. This has survived the storms despite our concern that it may pull the fence down...
This might start looking like a driveway soon...
She has also planted some fruit trees behind the garage including Gooseberry, Blackcurrant and Raspberries. We are also seeing the first shoots of spring. Snow drops already out and others on the way...
Denis gave me a small pot at the end of summer with a tiny sprout. We stuck it in the larger pot outside the caravan fully expecting it to wilt but in a few weeks, we ended up with a triffid! Once we lost satellite signal it got the chop though...
It’s been such a long time since our last update there is too much social news to report however the few hardy souls who make the effort to visit us always get a mention especially when they are here to help. Firstly, my brother in law, Ronald who came for 4 days of hard labour in September. Ronald, at his request, was put to work as our “special heights team” and spent most of his time up the scaffolding tower fixing battens to the wall in the double height room. This is a place I’d prefer to avoid and thankfully Ronald is not perturbed by the exposure. His visit coincided with the Detour Disco which was a full-on weekend of partying. Not what Ronald would have expected to find on a remote Scottish island in autumn!
Ronald and I hard at work by day ...
And by night...
We also had an impromptu visit from Clive and Ronnie who were supposed to be on a sailing trip. Due to a knackered starter motor however, they downgraded to a Calmac ferry and came to Coll. Ronnie slept in the spare room in our static caravan but Clive had the honour of being the first person to sleep in our house...
It was camping really but he did say he slept well.
And we did mange a few walks on the island...
Ronnie helped Julia with the never ending VC foiling and Clive helped me with cabling and electrics. We also all spent some time trying to fix the gas fire which was running at half flame. Cath, one of our neighbours, suggested that the problem would likely be due to an “earie-wig” stuck in the injector. A bet was made on whether or not said earwig was the culprit and a speck of “organic material" was indeed removed from the injector! The fire was fixed but identification of the species remained controversial. I’m sure Clive and Ronnie are still arguing about this...
Another pal, Harvey, flew over the site in a light aircraft recently with the intention of "buzzing" us. Unfortunately we weren't in but he sent us an arial photo which is a bit more current than Google Earth...
While we were away in January, there was an earthquake on Mull very close to Coll. It was a big enough shake for everyone to notice it and the "Coll Grapevine" started buzzing with reports. There were in fact 3 quakes within a very small area and the biggest one made the national news. Lets hope is not a prelude to anything more!
It seems an age ago when Lucy, Mike and Tillie gave us a birthday present of tickets to the Rugby World Cup in Lille, but alarmingly, it was in this caravan so that tells us something about how long this build is taking. The RWC finally arrived and we had a lovely family holiday in Lille. We saw Scotland vs. Romania and England vs. Samoa. When the tickets were given, no one knew there would be an extra person coming along...
So what's next with the build? Well, the short answer is "infrastructure". We need to finish the plumbing and underfloor heating and put the stove flue up through the roof. We then need to connect the stove back boiler to the thermal store and test the whole setup. Ideally we want to do that before we cover up all the pipes with plasterboard.
Once the under floor heating pipes are tested, we will cover them with a dry concrete mix (also known as a “biscuit mix”) and screw down a chipboard flooring on top. The finished floor will be LVT which will be put on top of that - but not until we’ve finished dropping hammers on it so that will have to wait until we are nearly done!
This summer, unlike last summer, will be spent focusing on finishing the internal work so we can move in soon ... Famous last words!!
We hope you're all keeping well and hope to catch up with a lot more of you in 2024!
Keith & Julia xx