Evenin!
Writing this from the deck of the caravan onsite at Plot 4 on Bantaskin Street. Man are we lucky it’s been such a warm summer so far… we really have felt like we’re on holiday for a lot of this. We got a bit of the taste of winter last week, with a few cold nights. We still have holes in the floors of the caravan and it is by no means insulated, so we’re talking about plans for how to insulate. The log burner is here, but not yet installed. Our friend Paul will install it, but as yet, we’re all a bit worried about heat and flues and polystyrene/timber very close to where the flue will be. I think our plan is to bring the whole stove away from the caravan wall by a few feet and use some concrete board to replace the existing walls. We might need to go double skinned for safety too. Still deciding… But I think winter is going to roll in fast! We are considering cladding the whole thing in wood, and insulating at the same time. Just not sure about guttering/the roof/building a new roof? Anyone have experience of this? Equally we aren’t working right now, and our Airbnb is slowing right now so hmmmm perhaps we don’t have the funds to do this. But will we freeze?! Ben’s talked about insulating on the inside - maybe we’ll do that. I have some rolls of cork - maybe they’ll work?
We’ve situated our caravan at the back and to the side of the plot, so that once the house is built, we can (HOPEFULLY) roll it on out. We’re looking at buying a woodland or patch of land somewhere sunny on which we’ll plonk our static caravan and family and friends can head out to stay there. A holiday cabin! Some guy working on the street the other day did describe our humble, rusty, tin can of an abode, as a “cabin” and I was totally flattered. Cheers mate!
We’ve been waiting for around 8 weeks now to finalise our Building Control submission but we have some serious delays with our SER (Structural Engineering Report) and our foundations design. Really hoping that next week we will get this finalised and submitted (Stage 1 warrant) - which will mean we can go ahead and try to get foundations in soon, soon, soon. Before the frost Craig says!