The Kitchen is the Hub of the Frugal Household

Frugalising the Kitchen

While money saving and frugal living can be fun, it is also a lifestyle that many people have to follow, for one reason or another. The reason I chose it was simple - lack of income, no entitlement to benefits, no possibility of a mortgage and I love the lifestyle. Saving to buy a house outright was the only sensible option, in my opinion.

Buying a cheap fixy up property as a renovation project can also be fun, but we need to live and work here, earning enough to sustain the household and carry out essential refurbishment. The most important element of this longterm project is affordability - the house has to be made into a warm, dry, comfortable home and the garden laid out in such a way that it can help sustain the household. This is what I refer to as microholding. It's a very small, self sustaining unit, providing all that's needed to generate enough income to keep the house and household running efficiently, while also providing us with a source of food and, hopefully one day, energy.

Reducing overheads is a must - it doesn't make economical sense to have to spend £50 per week in winter heating a small house, so insulation is the number one priority. The kitchen is the heart of the frugal  microholding lifestyle. It is where all the food is prepared, it is the gateway to the garden and it is also the most energy hungry part of the house, as far as electricity is concerned. This room is a conversion that appears to join an old stable, wash house or pig sty to the main house, so the later walls are block built while the original ones are stone.

So far, we have fixed all the electrical and water supplies and renewed the entire kitchen roof. The roof, hopefully, has been the single most expensive part of the project so far. Insulation began with 100mm of Black Mountain Sheep Wool insulation, followed by foil-backed plasterboard. This new ceiling still has to be plastered, but that job can't be done until the window and walls have been completed. Sheep wool is not the cheapest option but it does fit in with our best efforts at eco-renovation.

Last week, we managed to get the old window and frame stripped out and replaced, making a further change to the temperature difference between outside and in the kitchen, which has no current source of heating. During these chilly, winter mornings, when the outside thermometer is reading 0C, the kitchen is holding 10C without heating. Once the fire is lit, the heat spreads and raises this another couple of degrees, so things are looking up in that department. Once the walls are replaced and we have a proper floor, rather than just bare concrete, things should improve dramatically.

Today sees the start of 'project kitchen walls'. The next batch of 50mm sheep wool insulation has just been delivered and this is what will insulate the new walls. Phase one is removing the old plasterboard, then the walls need to be damp proofed before fitting the sheep wool between the wooden framework that will then be clad in foil-backed plasterboard. Again, these will need to be plastered, but that's for another phase of the frugaldom renovation project.

Now, I'm off to clear the space along the back wall of the kitchen and start making a big mess. I'll update with a photo as soon as the first wall is visible.

1st Update: This is the first corner to be revealed after stripping it back to the bare block. Only the wood at ground level is rotten, with the usual tell tale signs of woodworm.

The actual blockwork feels dry, other than one tiny damp patch at ground level, which would have been below the level at which the kitchen was previously saturated by burst pipes and the old, leaky roof.

I'm optimistic... I think this looks like a DIY job once I've read up a bit more about the best methods of damp proofing.

The rotten wood will need to come out and be replaced but I still have about 10 litres of the Cuprinol 5 Star wood treatment, so that means I can treat all the wood before it gets covered over by new plasterboard.

I'll continue removing the old plasterboard, all of which seems to be perfectly dry and, possibly, reuseable for something, even if it is only the outbuilding. with luck, the temperature won't plummet too low, as there's going to be absolutely nothing to stop what little heat we do have in the kitchen from escaping straight out through the wall. Perhaps I'll drag out the huge sheet of polythene that accompanied the last delivery of sheep wool - anything is better than nothing. :)

2nd Update - There were no hidden surprises awaiting me behind the old plasterboard. Indeed, it was amazingly dry and still no signs of any rising damp. This is an external wall, so I'd have expected any dampness to have shown itself by now.  Frugalpuss thought it was a great game of hind and seek and is still sat in the midst of the dusty mess.

The framework on the wall is far too narrow, so this will all be brought out to extend the gap to allow for 50mm of sheep wool to be used to insulate it. It isn't particularly draughty with the boards down, so I'm hoping that means the new roof is doing its full and proper job. The walls and concrete floor all need to be damp proofed but I'm still awaiting word about what the most economical and environmentally friendly way of doing this really is. All suggestions welcome.

NYK Media
www.scottishmultimedia.co.uk

The Sheep Are Keeping My Kitchen Warm!

New Roof, New Door, More Rewiring, Insulation and a New Ceiling

Amidst our current trials (and errors) of calculating the costs involved in heating an old cottage in a rural Scottish village, we have reached the next step of our renovation journey.

As can be expected, the good old Scottish weather has dictated the order of things, so it was with some dismay that we had to endure the full blast of last week's 'hurricane' with the wind whistling through the old back door at the same time as having no ceiling in the kitchen. Any attempt to heat the place was pointless.

But the insulation had arrived - six rolls of Black Mountain sheep wool. We opted to purchase this from a company called Natural Insulations and I have to say, their service was faultless. The half pallet of insulation arrived at the door within a couple of days and the delivery company kept us informed as to exactly when they would arrive. I even kept the pallet as extra firewood.

This has been one of my 'luxury buys' for the Frugaldom household, as the budget wouldn't normally stretch that far. Attempting to be environmentally friendly, however, is something that we want to do here, despite all odds associated with frugal living.

There is little (or no) incetive for households on a tight budget to incorporate enviromentally friendly, carbon neutral products into any renovation or improvement projects, so some financial jiggery pokery had to be done, along with a money making challenge to help increase the income last month. Fortunately, that goal was achieved and I wasn't forced to settle for cheap, nasty, subsidised glass fibre insulation.

Being in the unfortunate situation that our roof had to be replaced without removing it in its entirety (owing to adverse weather conditions) the joiners were faced with the task of then renewing the ceiling while incorporating insulation from the uderside, rather than being able to simply lay it between rafters. To be fair, they had expected me to opt for insulation boards such as Celotex or Kingspan, so this was a first encounter with sheep wool for them.

Work began this morning with the arrival of the electrician to rewire the kitchen, followed shortly by the joiners, complete with the foil backed plasterboard and other necessary bits and pieces.

The insulation was at the ready and I have now been informed that it is excellent to work with, when comparing it to standard glass fibre. Aside from the fact that the joiner currently looks a bit like a yeti, where his fleece has attracted the other fleece, he has suffered no irritation from the product whatsoever.

The Black Mountain sheep wool insulation at 100mm thickness offers a thermal conductivity of 0.039 W/m².K. It is 95% natural wool fibre, created from the fleeces of Swaledales and Welsh Black Face sheep. It is a truly sustainable product, easy to handle, cut and shape, has an ozone depletion potential of zero, locks away carbon and even feels warm to the touch. It can absorb up to 35% moisture without its insulating properties being affected, so that's a definite bonus in a well used kitchen. (Technical data can be found here.) And the cat loves it!

The kitchen is progressing well, with most of the rewiring completed and the new ceiling now being fitted to incorporate all this lovely insulation.

I've double checked to ensure cables are double-insulated and they've all been tested to ensure there's no possibility of any heat radiating that could create any fire hazard and the plasterboard is now going up, adding an extra barrier by way of the foil-backing.

You can already feel the difference in the temperature of the kitchen, despite it blowing a gale outside at the moment, and that's just the first half of the ceiling done.

My initial comparison had been done on the chance that we would have had to use Celotex or Kingspan type insulation board, but further research proved that this board would have cost around 20% more than us having had the sheep wool delivered to Scotland from Wales, so there has been some small saving, enough to cover the cost of the foil-backed plasterboard! There has not been a great deal of extra expense incurred by 'going green' on this issue.

All in all, I'm very optimistic about the quality and capabilities of this product and very pleased that the decision was made to go the most environmentally friendly route available to us.

The electrician has to return and finish wiring in the lights, the ceiling needs fitted in the back hallway, where sheep wool has also been added, and then there's plenty more to do after that. But we have the long-awaited, insulated kitchen ceiling, just in time for winter setting in properly.

There's money saving and then there' money saving - the sheep wool won't need to be topped up or replaced every 10 years, for a start, and I have the rest of the winter to calculate what savings can be made in keeping at least one room of the house warm until we've saved enough to start on the next one.

In addition to the above, we also had the back door and framework replaced, so no more wind whistling through that!

On completion of the kitchen, this will be the first part of the house to be insulated, so the challenge is on to save enough to invest in more sheep wool for the rest of the house, both upstairs and down.

The frugal renovation project continues with the replacement of the kitchen window, which was held up by it not being made in time for the joiner's visit this week. The joys of Listed buildings and their 'like for like' modernisation policies, everything new needs to be made the same size and shape as the old, but I guess that's what I like about old buildings - they have traditional character.

NYK Media

www.scottishmultimedia.co.uk

The Cost of Heating a Rural Home in Scotland - Part 2

Burning Logs

Today is log day, so it won't be the easiest thing to try and calculate. The photo shows what was left of the trailer-load of logs bought exactly 4 weeks ago - enough there for another week, I would reckon. We had another load delivered yesterday, which should last us through the festive season. Until we get around to building a proper, walk-in log store, we don't have suitable space for storing much more than a trailer-load at a time. (The photo isn't blurry, it was snowing quite heavily yesterday and we've had another flurry today.)

I realise that many people advise against burning a combination of fuels, even although it has been done for centuries but, for the purposes of lighting the fire, I use one firelighter (7p) and kindling sticks. This morning, about a kilo of coal (23p) was added to get the fire blazing, then logs added. By this point, the water in the backboiler could be heard beginning to boil, so the pump was switched on to feed it through to the hot water tank and radiators.

During cold, wet, winter months, we need the coal in order to get enough heat generated to quickly dry off any dampness from the logs. We aren't yet equipped with a large, undercover log store and it didn't help that the latest load was delivered during a heavy downpour. Surplus logs are stacked (off the ground) and covered in a loose tarpaulin. (The frogs, toads and lizards love it in there!)

It takes 8 large wheelbarrow loads to shift a £40 load of logs, so I'm estimating £5 per barrowload. At a complete guess, I would think half a barrowload would last us a full day, but I'll start my trial today using what's already stacked by the fire and then continue tomorrow with a full barrowload.

I've had to hang a curtain over the doorway between kitchen and main hallway to try and cut down the through draught. Right now, owing to the horrible weather - high winds, rain and snow - the curtains are billowing, but this side of the house does feel warm.

Great excitement! An articulated lorry pulled up outside just minutes ago and my extravagant, environmentally friendly, Black Mountain sheep wool insulation has been delivered!

1) It arrived on a pallet, so that will provide more free kindling for the fire!

2) It was all wrapped up inside a massive, heavy-duty, polythene bag. This will be ideal for securing over the huge hole in the kitchen wall when they come to replace the kitchen window. In fact, I may pin it over the entire window, to help cut down on heat loss until then! I care not what it looks like when it's at the back of the house and only us to see it!

All we need now is to hear news of when the new window has been made and when the new back door and frame can be fitted, then we can plan on getting the new ceiling put up in the kitchen, along with the sheep wool insulation.

Back later with an update on log consumption by my hungry fire.

Edit: This experiment was temporarily halted as I'd to damp the fire right down when we had a power cut. This is the downside to relying on an electric pump to circulate all that hot water that's generated in the back boiler - it has no place to go other than to spurt out the overflow.

Estimating now continues, but with the addition of another kilo (23p) of coal to get the fire back up and running sufficiently to reheat the radiators; these cool down much more quickly than I'd like! In this sense, storage-type heaters are superior in their ability to retain their heat during power cuts. (Assuming they were fully charged prior to the outage, of course.)

This is the second power cut we've had over the past month, so a stand alone log burning stove, in addition to the heating system, is looking more and more of a possibility. One similar to what we installed in the previous house would serve us well, as that allowed us to cook on it, too. But that involves getting in the builders to fully check the second chimney. I feel another savings challenge coming along soon.

NYK Media
www.scottishmultimedia.co.uk

Insulating a Flat Roof...

... From the Inside!

Having replaced the flat roof above our kitchen, we've now ripped down the internal ceiling - sounds a bit of a weird way of doing things, but the weather wasn't in our favour when the roof was being done and we couldn't do without the kitchen at the time, nor could we risk water into the electrics. Now, however, we are left with a dilemma - what type of insulation should we use?

The insulation will need to be fitted from the inside before the new ceiling goes up, so this does make things a little bit more complicated: the insulation needs to be held in place until the new plasterboard gets fixed and, just to complicate things more, these jobs may not be possible to do on the same day.

Insulation is really important in as far as holding in the heat during our freezing Scottish winters and the recent weather has done nothing to help things along. Now that the frost has arrived, we need to work quickly to beat the big freeze that is bound to arrive soon.

Insulation, insulation, insulation... slabs, butts, rolls, Celotex, Kingspan, Rockwool, Thermafleece, EcoTherm, Space Blanket... ? I don't really want glass fibre or cheap and nasty, but costs for anything else are ridiculous for such an essential component of our renovation project! And what's worse is the fact that this is just the first room! We have no insulation at all at the moment.

Keep in mind that this is for a kitchen, so there will be extra heat generated from cooking that I'd prefer not to lose straight up through a flat roof. There will also be steam, which could cause condensation if we don't do the job right.

Whatever I choose, it will probably be fitted above foil-backed plasterboard and then decorated. We probably won't plaster the ceiling, prefering to employ a more frugal, Scottish process known as 'Ames Taping', then simply decorating over the top.

I haven't decided on any interior decor, yet. That's way down the list of priorities. The immediate problem is settling on what type of insulation to use, when I would prefer NOT to use the cheap and nasty glass fibre variety.

This blog post is now open for debate and comment... what type of insulation do you think would be the best to suit our purpose?

From an ecological point of view, I would love to use the environmentally friendly sheep wool, like Thermafleece.

For ease of fitting, thermal boards such as Kingspan or Celotex would be an obvious choice.

All of the above are expensive in comparison to the 'cheap and nasty' subsidised rolls of insulation that are currently available at 'buy one, get 3 free', IF you live anywhere near a stockist. We don't! That would be a huge saving, but would I be happy knowing that's what's up there when we're planning on being here for the longterm with the kitchen being the busiest room in the house?

From a financial point of view, I can have insulation board delivered, probably free, from our local(ish) builders' merchants, whereas the sheep wool variety is being quoted at £60+ JUST FOR DELIVERY!

The boards are far easier to work with in our situation, what with them being installed on the underside of the ceiling, cut to fit and they should stay in place while fitting the plasterboard. It makes me wonder if 100mm polystyrene would be simpler to use.

Why is sheep wool so expensive when farmers are constantly complaining that they're only getting about 50p per fleece at shearing time?

Are the terms 'green' and 'eco-friendly' just new-age speak for 'expensive'?

Why is it so impossible to be green AND frugal?

Your recommendations or feedback on this matter would be greatly appreciated. The job has to be done soon, the kitchen renovation 'savings pot' is about to be emptied and I don't really want to regret my choice a few winters down the line.

If any insulation supplier would like to sponsor the Frugaldom kitchen roof project, I'll happily dedicate this post to your company and ensure that all SEO tactics are employed to your full advantage! :)

NYK Media
www.scottishmultimedia.co.uk

Can Frugal Living be Eco-nomical as well as Eco-friendly?

A Home Needs a Kitchen... and a Kitchen Needs a Roof!

In my book of life, the kitchen is the heart of the home. My dreams of one day owning a house with a roomy, farmhouse kitchen, complete with logburning range and comfortable seating area may not have been realised, but that is not to say that we have failed. On the contrary, it is more a case of looking at what we have and then making the very most of it.

I'm not on a farm, I'm not in a farmhouse, I don't have a logburning range and the kitchen, once completed, will never be big enough to house the entire heart of this frugal home, but we need to start somewhere. For Frugaldom, that somewhere is making the 'kitchen' wind and watertight before winter sets in and we all freeze. :)

Our little end-terraced cottage is about 200 years old. As such, it would have had no seperate kitchen, as all the cooking would have been done in what we now call our livingroom. But somewhere along the line, someone saw fit to join the house to what we assume must have been the original washhouse, although some neighbours suggest it was the stable and/or pigsty.

Yes, our cottage is in an area where huge families crammed into tiny houses, grew & reared much of their own food and most walked to work at the nearby mill. Or else they went by horse & cart down to the village, about three miles away. I suspect previous owners here, at some point in the past, had a donkey, judging by the tiny, rusting shoe I excavated from the garden.

Behind the green door lies the basis for my dream kitchen. For all its faults, the door opens and closes, even if the wind does whistle in all around the edges and the rain does run in underneath. It's not like we have carpets in there - we don't even have a proper floor, yet.

The space has almost been gutted. All that needs doing now is the panelling removed from the walls, the rotten ceiling pulled down, the leaking roof replaced and then we can begin renovating the place properly. We're trying to find the most economical ways of doing this, but it would also be great if we could keep it as eco-friendly as possible. Did I say that we're also using it as a kitchen? A few units, a piece of worktop, cooker, fridge, freezer and washing machine have all had to go in there, because we still need to live, eat and do the laundry.

After four atempts, we have finally managed to find a builder/joiner who is prepared to quote for replacing the tin roof, which is an absolute priority. I really don't want to be messing around on an uneven concrete floor strewn with buckets while trying to cook the breakfast porridge, especially if it's a sub-zero winter's morning. I would LOVE a greenroof, but haven't even broached the subject with the roofer. For now, it's a straightforward off with the old, on with the new and leave off the tin sheeting. There's approximately 30 sq metres of 'L-shaped' flat, felted roof to be replaced, then the new ceiling and insulation to be done, plus associated electrical work. Of this, about two thirds of that space needs insulated, the other third already has a ceiling in place that, with luck, will suffice for now.

From an eco-friendly point of view, the suggestion has been made to use sheep wool insulation (thank you for that, 'smallholder Carole', and for the reminder that it's campaign for wool week), so I have been researching the possibilites, comparing costs and working out if it's economically viable for us frugalites to pursue such a luxurious course of action. For this, Google is my friend.

A bit of searching online finds sheep wool insulation at £6.71 per sq metre + vat, then carriage on top of that, so a total of around £200 for this option. Insulation boards, such as Kingspan, were what I had originally considered as the expensive option. Surprisingly, they work out about the same price as the sheep wool. On the other hand, we could simply opt for traditional insulation, which costs about one quarter of the above - so, as ardent frugalites, which 'eco' bell should we toll? Economical, or eco-friendly?

Hmm... decisions, decisions, decisions... I think I need more information and help before making this one.