John and Debbie turned their former nursery school 2 acre site into a community resource. John’s particular skill is finding second-hand materials and repurposing them in creative ways, while Debbie has a gift for designing and planting cosy natural spaces for human activities and wildlife diversity.
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Many of the wooden windows in their house are delapidated. John’s solution has been to screw polycarbonate sheet as double glazing on the outside of the windows. These not only prevent further rot, they also appear to work more effectively than the few UPVC replacements in stopping condensation and insulating the house. This DIY solution cost only £300 to rescue all the wooden windows in the house.
John fitted his first solar 4kWp PV panel array in 2012, using a simple German mounting method called the Hamburg Roof – but using repurposed roofing from a skittle alley. The panels are slotted in flush with the tiled roof rather than being clamped to a rack above it. This replaced a ton of concrete tiles with light industrial steel cladding, salvaged from a building being demolished, and used the maker SEN’s system of passive ventilation to prevent the panels getting too hot. In September
2023 he also re-roofed part of their house, replacing most of the old slates with a different in-roof system made by GSE in France, powering a separate “hybrid” inverter with an off-the-shelf 5kWh lithium (LiFePO4) battery. This system has a south facing array rated at 2.5kW and a similar sized north facing array which has performed surprisingly well, exceeding the output of the original 4kW south facing array. Earlier in 2023 he’d assembled a larger 8kWh capacity home-made LiFePO4 battery with parts bought direct from China for just £1200 to store energy from that 2012 PV array.
The garden is watered with harvested rainwater in a 4000 litre store in butts and re-used 1000 litre IBC’s from local dairy farms. The slope of the land provides a gravity fed system, and filters made from nylon net curtain and scrap sinks, deliver plenty of water for the polytunnel and outdoor vegetable beds.
The house is an example how a little ingenuity and hunting around can achieve much at very little cost.
This home is Open by Appointment all year round - email bridportjohn@watercleaves.plus.com to book a visit or call 01308 422559