Nearly two years ago, I wrote about trying to get an alternate access to our plot. And yesterday, we finally were able to test it. Not the way we originally envisioned – but doable. The exact path is shown on an old entry in the Sasine Register of Scotland as shown below.
We actually only wanted to move our digger to our neighbour’s site to assist in setting fence strainers but along this exercise we had to take our Mule as well. The Mule just fits the track …
As we wrote previously, we installed a dishwasher – and sat it on top of our washing machine. Currently, the only place where we had space _and_ water in reach …
But operating the washing machine not astonishingly proved very unstable – at least for the dishwasher. So, we decided to create a luxurious frame to sit the dishwasher and hold in place when the washing machine was spinning.
Not being agile but very waterfall, I needed a concept first. So, I fired up my trusted CAD programme and started sketching …
4x2s intersected with other 4x2s surrounded by 6x2s – that was the way to go.
So, first I cut the intersections of the 4x2s and used chop saw and chisel to get the cross sections.
Later on, we added 6x2s so the dishwasher would not fall off. And at the end, not visible on the images, we added a strap around both devices to stop the dishwasher from bouncing off – just in case …
Now we have a washing tower – until we move it into our new kitchen. And this is all I can tell. See for yourself.
What a day! We got a call from Rembrand asking if they could deliver the PIR boards we ordered a day earlier. Sure they can! We quickly made space and waited fo the truck to deliver.
In my calculation the complete pile of boards would sum up to roughly 8m. Quite a load – especially with today’s wind! The truck actually did a tour just for us …
And then we drove the load over to our plot – all the way from the main road. It took four round trips to get everything (64 * 2400 x 1200 x 90mm, 20 * 2400 x 1200 x 140mm) into the barn.
And then we had to find space to store them …
Luckily, we designed the hallway of our tiny-house-in-barn with a 1450mm width and all doors 1080mm wide. Enough space to store some of the boards in one of our just ready-laminated rooms on the first floor. No problem lifting it with the TeleHandler!
When we ordered from Rembrand the actual manufacturer was not specified. But upon delivery we could see the brand – IKO. According to their web site the thermal conductivity lambda for the material is 0.022 W/mK. For the walls this gives us a U-value of 0.18 W/m2K. Just what the building code asks for …
For the floor things look even better – with thicker boards the calculated U-value fits the requirement of the code as well: 0.13W/m2K. And this does not include our laminate floor and the insulation layer under it.
So, now we just have to choose what to do next. Installing the roof, continue with flooring or start insulating the walls …
Here is a quick overview of the current state of our laminate flooring: By now, we completed the kitchen, the bathroom, the bed room and the study.
Still to do: utility room, storage room, living room and two hallways. So, not quite there yet.
Our initial silicone tests showed we would use way too much silicone (around 6* 310ml per small room) to fill the required 12mm gap between the laminate and the wall. So, we went for a 10mm foam backing rod and put the silicone on top – with the help of a Hilti Dispenser and Fugenfux. We got the silicone from Screwfix: Sanitary Silicone White 310ml 12 Pack. And the result looks like this:
For the skirtings we will use 19mm x 19mm x 1.6mm 90° Aluminium angles from Metals4U that will cover the silicone and any imperfections. But – thanks to DX (a courier company with an impressive TrustPilot score of 1.4, 1.2 or 1.7) – who lost the package in transit already twice – we are still waiting for the actual delivery …
Again, we are not there quite yet. But making progress. So, hopefully in a couple of weeks we are done.
We definitely moved beyond Maslow’s pyramid and introduced a dishwasher to our ever growing list of utilities – which by the way fits nicely next to our Saurer 2DM … It is a Siemens iQ300 SN23EC03ME which is also driven by our DAB Esybox Mini 3.
What we found out so far:
But all in all, we still save time, water *and* power compared to washing up by hand. And this holds true even for much less energy efficient dishwashers with an energy star rating of D or worse.
So, next time I buy a dishwasher I think twice if I spend a 100 quid extra on a more power efficient device – especially, when using solar for most of the year …
With Christmas on the missing doorsteps (pun intended) we now have completed the ground floor of our tiny-house-in-barn. See for yourself …
Here is a complete view of the shed-to-be from different perspectives.
Last year in December, I started the drawings (with FreeCAD) for our “house-in-house” build: a wooden compartment inside our barn for electricity, water, storage and the like. But somehow, I never started it because of my mental concrete block (pun intended). This changed when a colleague of ours came by and helped me with laying the concrete pads. And from there we did the frame and the floor in less than 2 days – thanks to our Milwaukee Nailer and Larry Haun with his book The very efficient Carpenter.
Of course, there were some gotchas and mistakes needed to be fixed. But all in all it went really well. So well, that in fact we could have our first BBQ on the new platform (and not in the dust as usual).
So, below you find some pictures and drawings of the “house-in-house” and the making of the platform of the ground floor.
Finally, they arrived! We now have bins from the Highland Council. This means, we no longer have to drive to the Wick Recycling Centre to dipose our waste. What a convenience! For us this is another milestone (after getting a postal address, the Planning and the barn built).
As our plot is not exactly reachable by the bin men we now drive them to the main road – 440m to be exact. Though this may sound tiresome, but it is still way faster than to drive to the recycling centre.
Our Journey to Scotland 