Off grid house build Orkney

Yeah feels like a bit of an oversight on their part doesn’t it? Really glad I stuck with the “please come out and fix this” emails!

It’s agricultural show season here which has slowed things down a bit as folk are helping out on family farms, but the external render first coat is still continuing. The Norscot window guys left yesterday as well so I’m hoping that’s everything pretty weathertight now. Thinking this weekend will be ingoes and joint filling in the workshop as well as getting some colour painted in the main room before I have to worry about tiles being down and things.

Also, still haven’t started on my new paint job for the steamroller.. no time for any more projects at the minute..

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A busy few days, with some steps forward, and others backwards..

We’re finalising the off grid system and contacted daikin to get some details about the pump we were going to use, only to be told daikin wouldn’t recommend their heat pumps for off grid use.. complete oversight on our part by just going with the recommendations of the heat pump installer up here.. pretty disappointed by these guys so far as their sparky originally showed up for the first fix a month later than agreed claiming he knew nothing about it being off grid either, but I thought we had got that sorted.. going to be some angry phone calls today.. any tips on off grid heat pumps would be hugely appreciated! I’m going to contact vaillant and hitachi today as possible alternatives.

Also, noticed that the new window they installed last week has an even larger scratch than the one they pulled out..it’s on the outside of the unit so thinking there might be a way to buff it out?

Did a bit of painting this weekend and really enjoy the green for the kitchen wall. Here’s some pictures including the spashback tile and grout colour as well as how the wallpaper will sit against the bedroom walls. We’re also using the same grout for the wood tiles in the bedrooms.

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it’s on the outside of the unit so thinking there might be a way to buff it out?

I doubt you'll be able to polish that out completely by hand. However you could probably get it to the point where you have to actually look for it, to notice its there.

By the time the sharp edges are rounded off, it won't catch the light and you'll generally be looking past the glass at the view.

I've used this kit several times now-

https://www.slimsdetailing.co.uk/products/carpro-ceriglass-polish-kit

Re off grid energy, Ross Gazey of Pure Energy Centre maybe able to help. Off Grid energy is his thing. He is based on Unst in Shetland so your situation is very similar to us up here!

Thanks so much for this. I’ve sent them some pictures but haven’t heard back from them yet.. poor guy is probably still sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.. I wasn’t angry about it in the email and did make sure they knew I appreciated the effort.

@user147895 wow, this could be really useful, thank you! Going to try and give him a call this week but if not will get in touch next week. You’re possibly a lifesaver!
I think the heat pump thing is maybe people overthinking things, or overestimating how often we’ll be without power. Between the generation we have, the storage and our willingness to go without things if we don’t have much power I think we’ll see less power outages than we’ve seen planned and unplanned powercuts annually where we’re renting, and those houses are still recommended to have heat pumps installed. I think people are assuming we’ll be running our batteries down to nothing every other day which just won’t be the case.

Stunning sunset the other night after the island’s agricultural show. Also got to meet the sheep we might be getting for the field. Meet Erik the red (the one with the brown face) , that’s a recessive ginger trait in the boreray breed and they want to have someone keeping them and trying to increase the numbers.

We also got our fancy looking green kitchen extractor which I think will sit nicely against the green wall, and managed to fit a huge amount of internal scaffolding my partner borrowed from her work in the Volvo, I love this car!

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Scaffolding up and a first coat of “letters unread” (someone is paid to make up these names..) on the gable ends. Not a whole lot different but I think it’ll make the place feel much warmer and less harsh than if it had been just white but still keep it feeling big and bright? Scaffolding seems a lot sturdier than last time even though it’s just single wide because of the extra diagonal legs which is nice. The wobble gave me the fear last time.

Also, another crazy sunset and a photo of nihil because there hasn’t been for a while.

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That sunset is ridiculous

Yeah the skies can be pretty special up here, never seen it do that before though!

Spent the last few days wearing my helmet up scaffolding giving a second coat of the gable ends and then another once over of the ceiling while I had the kit here. Chuffed with all the edges on the ceiling, would have been frustrating to do all of that and spend time just hating a curvy line once we’re in and sitting on the couch. (There’s still tape above the green wall as it needs another coat, that’s not a bad edge)

Got our lights delivered yesterday. black recessed spotlights for the bathroom and workshop and white for the bedroom. Had to get ip65 rated for the bathroom and fire rated ones for the workshop. Got these bulkhead lights for outside lights too, one next to the porch, one at each back door and then one next to the workshop door.

Also, the tiling has started too!! Need some thoughts on this, the tiling seems to be achingly slow and he’s doing it by the hour so I’m not sure if I’m getting the piss taken or not.. he originally said a week for tiling the whole house and 2 days for grouting, but there’s two of them and they’ve averaged 8m2 a day over the last two days.. I have read that a square metre an hour is reasonable but also read people saying it should take way less time than that..? They’re 155x620 or 6”x24” so aren’t small tiles..

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Getting there.. one room done at least and they’ve spent some time finishing the first coat of external render and the cement round the blockwork of the workshop. Going to use some of the larch for kitchen cabinet doors and had read about the charring method and love how the grain seems to come out. Bought a blowtorch and gave it a wee blast. Trying out different amounts of burning/sanding/oil to see what looks better for now before I really start on anything.

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I have no idea about tiling, but maybe those long ones are a bit tricky?
And paying a bit more is probably better than having small imperfections that annoy you every time you clean them/sit on the sofa?

How's the broadband up there?

Yeah you’re probably right, trying to pinch pennies as things are tight at the minute but in the grand scheme of things paying a wee bit more for a job done right is probably worth it!

@mashton Apparently we’re getting fibre on our wee island soon (although, I’ll believe it when I see it). We’re not putting a phone line or anything in so have had to go with one of those wee mifi devices. The 4g signal where we are isn’t bad as you can see straight across the water to one of the towers so the internet is actually quite good.

Got one of the bedroom floors finished and the office/second bedroom floor is almost done. I really like the tiles and they do look quite like wood actually, there’s a slight texture to them and they’re not quite perfectly square edges. Judged the grout colour online as there isn’t a huge amount of selection up here and chuffed with how that worked out too. Going to use the same dark colour between the pink kitchen splashback tiles to try and pull everything together as well.

My last few days have been moving all the different bits of wood scattered around into one mass. Got a tarp down underneath and everything sitting on pallets balanced on top of blocks and stones. Been told the last bit of the groundworks is a few weeks away so was wanting to just get it all cleared out the way.

We managed to see the finished product on the side of the house today, with the first panel getting the topcoat of silicone render. This cement board has been a long, and therefore costly, process so hoping it will have a long uncomplicated lifespan..

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Really starting to come together now and looks fantastic.. I love the first photo in it's context.. When are you hoping for completion?

What are you doing for water? (sorry if i've missed that)

Thank you very much, haven’t walked out in that direction in a wee while and just nice to see how it sits in the landscape. Really glad it doesn’t feel or look too intrusive. Really needing it to be in the next couple months, mortgage, rent and invoices are kind of breaking us at the minute. Hoping the electrics issue will be sorted soon and the water connection should be in the next few weeks. Our wood stove started it’s travels up yesterday too so we’ll be able to cook and eat, even without power which could move us in before the habitation certificate and sign off.

@boomboom we’re being really boring and just connecting to mains water.. had looked at rainwater systems, but all our money went in to the renewables and that is something we can always add on in time. It’s gravity fed and we’re relatively low on island so are close to 3 bar pressure which I wasn’t expecting. Know a guy who lives at the top of a hill and has 0.5 bar..

Builder has been taking their time on things and submitted a rather large invoice for not a lot being done. Told him just to focus on the outside and my dad and I are just going to tile the house ourselves to save paying him any more for it.

They have again got their quantities wrong and so don’t have enough of the silicone render to finish the last gable.. 3 weeks because the colour is a special order..

The renewables guy came out and fitted the turbine inverter yesterday. Had a chat with him and the sparky about this ongoing heat pump issue. Problem seems to be that there isn’t a two way control to the heat pump to tell it to not draw power when there isn’t there to draw. We think we could probably find a way around it manually, not demanding hot water and thermostats down to whatever ambient temperature there is in the house so as not to make it switch on. Talking with them though there does seem to be an inverter which can put the heat pump on a separate part of the system so it can only be switched on when certain demands are met (ie. Producing x kw and batteries at x% full).

CURRENT THOUGHTS – make it work with ASHP now? Or live with only using the immersions and woodburning stove until next year and try and add a heat pump or work out an alternative solution?

We want to avoid making an expensive mistake with the heat pump, so thinking adding it next year (if possible at all) may in many ways be preferable, we would also then have plenty of data as well as an understanding of living in the house how additional components should be incorporated. But if we can make the original plan work now (with reasonable confidence) it would certainly be great. I’ve read a couple of case studies on line with heat pumps integrated in off-grid Victron systems – which lends me to believe the Victron controller can treat the heat pump as a separate AC load from the rest of the house loads, and there is the scope to program the controller..

If a heat pump is installed, my thoughts around operation are something like this:
· ASHP should run fairly consistently in winter months – production dependent – we can live with manually adjusting timers and thermostats based on current and expected daily weather. Also, we will look to prioritise DHW only on low production days, by using the wood burning stove to provide most or all of the space heating (and possibly cooking).
· If battery storage available drops below 50% say, triggers a normal shutdown of the ASHP? i.e. Switch to allow ASHP to turn on only when battery storage is above this threshold. Allowing priority of other house loads over hot water when storage is low. Avoiding situation on low production days or at night, the heat pump running down the batteries and us having no power (also potentially avoiding the heat pump to hard shut down if power runs out)
· ASHP is not used as a dump in the sense of programming it to come on or do more when we have excess production – as this seems risky and might not be achievable anyway. We could increase load manually on high generation days by increasing DHW demand or increasing thermostats… but could a immersion be used as a dump instead, raising the water temperature of the thermal store so less is required of the heating system later? Limited by only having 3kW immersions at the moment (and assuming we can use one of them in this way). If smaller immersions can’t be added limits this dump to only when production > demand by 3kW – but could still provide a good use of excess power on very windy days. Would need some temperature sensor control for this immersion if used in this way.
· Manual management of high power ASHP legionella cycle – will need to plan this around when we have available power (and mitigate by decreasing other loads during the high power cycle).

If it’s not going to be possible to add a heat pump at this stage we will need to use immersions for water heating this Winter. We will have to rely on our wood stove for primary space heating (unless it’s windy and sunny I think) and ration our hot water use – but I think it will be liveable (we don’t have central heating in the place we have been renting for the last few years, and it’s no where as insulated as our new house and we’ve been fine). In this scenario we will want to use the immersion as a dump to take any excess production (after house loads and batteries full), which if there is plenty of wind should mean we manage to heat the water reasonably well those days?

Got the floors cleared for starting on the tiling when dad shows up this weekend too.

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Also, a bit of a photo dump here but our stove arrived (which will cook us alive in this well insulated a house) so I’m suddenly less worried about keeping warm. The oven’s temperature gauge goes from cool to very hot, standards of measurement I can get behind! It’s even prettier in person and handmade in Lancashire I believe.

Looking to place our container elsewhere when we’ve got the furniture out of it so have been clearing and levelling a space further along the field. Doesn’t look like a lot of space in the photo but measures 7mx3.5m so a fair old pile of dirt came out, tough couple days..

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My dad came up yesterday so we’ve been getting cracking on the floor tiling as really can’t afford to be paying anyone to do it.. big heavy bits of 14mm thick limestone so they’re going down quite quickly but it’s tough work.. with a few rows done getting a real idea of what it will look like. Also got the office grouted (still to be properly scrubbed) and laid the hearth so it has time to cure before the stove gets fitted on Tuesday.

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Nice work.
Dad's are fuckin great.

Yeah he’s a proper lifesaver, talked to him feeling pretty overwhelmed on Monday and he was up on Friday afternoon, legend!

Lovely floor. Tiles are great.

Thanks, I’m really chuffed with how it’s looking! Think they’ll help the house not feel like a new build which is kind of what we’re after, want it to feel seated in and like it’s been there a while. There’s really pretty variations in the tiles as well. Not cheap, but our hope is they help hold the heat from the underfloor heating on the days we don’t have enough power to switch it on.

We got cracking again early doors this morning and managed to put the same amount down today as we had in the day and a half before that. Hopefully got the guys coming to fit the stove tomorrow so won’t be tiling tomorrow to give them space to do it. Started at the kitchen wall so there weren’t fresh tiles down where the scaffolding will sit for them. Think we’ll clear the kitchen and things into the second bedroom and maybe looking at wallpapering in our room or something.

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Is the stove in the kitchen as backup for cooking, just for fun or the main deal? It's fun for sure.

I know I could/should probably do the maths myself with your posts - but how has your tiling progress/speed been compared to the pros who were doing the other rooms? (Granted they were different tiles)

In awe of the project/house/views, as ever- fantastic stuff!