The other day the rayburn had a bit of wobble, and it sharpened our minds to the big hot water plan that we have been thinking about since we moved here, a few years ago.
The reality is we only afforded this property with it’s nice location and large garden, outbuildings and a couple of small fields, because the house itself, whilst full of character and potential, is pretty decrepid. It was my intention from the start to get rid of the rayburn and install a more efficient boiler, and it was on our must-have list that the house should have a good south facing roof for future solar panels.
We haven’t made a lot of progress with the hot water plan, as we found we could manage with the current system, by turning off the rayburn when we could, including all summer, and besides, what we want to do involves a lot of money, and we have spent our time saving, and working on outside, which is what we bought the place for. And inconvenient and expensive to run as it was, it was easier and more affordable to keep plodding on for now. Up until the point said old system had a wobble… It’s bad enough having to cope with the high gas bills by having no hot water or oven all summer… We certainly don’t want to end up spending a lot of money fixing a system we do not intend to keep. Luckily, the rayburn must have heard us and appears to be behaving again. But as I said it sharpened our minds, and we have decided it is time to draw up the list, and start working on it.
- reinforce floor in our bedroom - as this is the place the thermal store is going to go. the old oak beams are already bent and the bedroom floor has a downhill and back up again floor in it. This could result in us reflooring the room….
- buy and install thermal store – to existing system
- buy and install solar tubes
- build boiler cupboard
- buy and install boiler
- install new chimney flues for kitchen and spare room – the chimney has a break in the top area so either it needs repairing or flues put in all the chimneys we want to use.
- buy and install wood burning rayburn, replacing gas rayburn. – yes the most expensive bit of the whole plan.. we have come to really like having a rayburn, and a woodfired one makes more sense. Unfortunately the current one is not convertible.
- buy and install woodburner in spare room – we both work in this room, so logical to be able to heat it separately from the rest of the house.
Some of this we can DIY, some well will have to pay to have the appropriately registered person (clever dogs those corgis) in to do for us. It’s not going to be cheap. It’s going to take a long time.
