One acre… the amount that somebody could plough in a day (with horses, not a tractor!), and about 4000 square metres (One hectare is 10,000 square metres). So… what is the area of nettles which can be scythed by one woman in a day?

We seemed to have some kind of mental block with clearing the orchard/garden between the house & barns. Mostly because I expected M to do it, and also perhaps because I was waiting for us to have more sophisticated tools to hand. As it is, our domestic lawn mower and strimmer clearly weren’t up to the job… we’d discussed getting a more specialist bit of kit (after seeing Jerry’s ride on mower & inch long lawn), but it’s kind of low on the priority list. In the end, I was driven to cutting the meadow (that sprung up in the mean time) using the scythe. Driven by apples… which have been falling for the last month. Read the rest of this entry »

In a pleasingly synergistic development… I am about to elicit the help of very small bugs to insulate my windows.

We have beautiful old windows, which are just in need of a little tlc. Unfortunately, they are somewhat leaky (airwise), and it would seem that everybody else (from here) who visits the house, not only hates them, but also thinks they will be ineffective and should be ripped out and replaced by, at the very least, a smart set of PVC frames. I am reluctant. They may be a little draughty, but they belong to Novy Mlyn. Sparkling, perfectly flat new windows are not for me, so I have been undergoing as much restoration as possible over the summer. It is part of the ethos of Novy Mlyn to reuse as much as possible, ripping out and replacing perfectly good double windows goes against the grain, and the evidence that new double glazed windows would be more effective is inconclusive. Read the rest of this entry »

We were out at Housov Mlyn on Friday night - for a kelt themed night at an amazing old building which is styled in a way which would be forbidden in the Health and Safety dictated UK - a hussite tavern. Straw on the floor (tripping hazard), Candles (fire hazard), open wooden staircases… falling down hazard etc. It was beautiful, a bit like the Viking museum in York but without all the plastic and dumb looking dummies. I was interviewed by someone from the radio (I suspect that this was either because a, I could ((freakishly)) string a Czech sentence together, or b, because the sentences in Czech I can string together sound freakish). It was an interesting evening - there was a talk about Kelt culture (I understood little), lots of food & drink and then they showed a film about the Kelts - we thought this would be a documentary but it was Tristan & Isolde. Later an English speaking friend explained that the people who own the mill made the props for the film.  Anyway, the company who own the mill also take part in the Tabor Meetings (the biggest city festival in CR), so judging by the tavern and the film, it’ll be amazing.

Interesting developments abound!

We have been looking at different heating technology for Novy Mlyn. One option is a heat pump. This proven technology uses heat from a source such as underground, air or water and concentrates the heat, kind of like a fridge in reverse. For the energy you put into the system you should get about four times that out.

First of all I needed to calculate the amount of heat which would be needed for Novy Mlyn. After a bit of a trawl around the interweb I found this formula from Georgia State University. Using a ‘back of envelope’ measurement of the number of very cold days I would expect at Novy Mlyn, my estimate was a requirement for a 31kwh system. Read the rest of this entry »

If our heating need is on average 30 - 35 kw, what quantities of wood would we need to burn to achieve the same temperatures.

Now, this means delving into the territory of BTU’s and cords of wood… a little research is necessary: First off, BTU is the amount of energy needed to heat 1 pound of water by 1 degree farenheit. Being EU, it’s all rather un-metric for me. But, 1 kWh of electricity = 3,413 BTU.

Quantities. 1 cubic metre of wood (a stere) is equal to 0.276 cords.

1.0 gigajoule (GJ) = 10⁹ joules = 0.948 million Btu = 239 million calories = 278 kWh

If we have 10 square metres of wood, this will provide 81.65 gj of heat (if pine and 20% moisture), which is 22698.7 kWh. If we were heating at 30 kWh, the wood would last for 30 days.

Electricity from Eon is provided us at 4.36kc per kWh (cheeky seeing as suppliers sell it for less than 1kc per kwh!). If we have a heat pump we qualify for a special electricity rate, yet to be determined.

To be continued…