Moving to Orkney

At last!

After many months of surveying, planning and so on. the contractors arrived on the 26th Feb at around five thirty and asked if it woudl be o.k. to make a start, they worked until just after eight if that was o.k. Of course it was!

I must say what a good crew they were. Talk about sixty minute makeover! There were six of them and boy did they graft. Non of this stopping for a brew and biscuit for these boys, they were on a mission.

By eight o'clock they had the old radiators out and the new ones fitted. Just the pipework and the ground source heat pump to install the following day. They said they expected to finish the following day, which I must admit a thought a bit ambitious.

They arrived early doors the following morning, around half past eight, and got straight on. They were everywhere. They stopped for lunch which they went back to the hotel for, but again they were back in less than half an hour. I figured these guys nust be being paid by the house, but apparently not.

By six o.clock they were commissioning the ground source heat pump (what a monster that is, it's huge). We were gutted when they told us that as the ground loop pipe hadn't been laid to the house they wouldn't be able to conect it up and finish the job.

After months of being frozen daft, having jumped the gun with the removal of the Rayburn, we were anticipating a warm house.

However all was not lost the chap setting up the ground source heat pump went on to explain that we would have central heating and hot water but just wouldn't benefit from the ecomony of the ground source heat effect.

It transpires that the gshp takes what heat it can from the ground and then tops up as required from normal electricity. In effect as it wasn't yet connected to the ground source collector it would just heat entirely from normal electricicty. As he said it would be expensive but it would work. At this point we didn't care we just wanted working central heating now that we were this close.

And so it was, the following morning we awoke to a lovely warm house with every room at a nice comfortable temperature. Now in the 21st century readers may not think that so remarkable, but try switching your heating off for a week, you'll soon realise how nice it is when it you get it back! We'd just gone though the coldest winter on record with just an open fire in one room, actually we did give in to some panel heaters in the kitchen and study, but it was still blumming cold.

Now of course the sting in the tail was the warned of expense and sure enough energy monitoring revealed that our electricty usage was runing at around £14 per day (it has to be said, this was overall consumption). This of course would not be sustainable, but will be a good yardstick to measure against once the ground source collector is connected.

More on that later...

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