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Archive for July, 2009

WTF?! Seriously, WTF?!

July 24, 2009

Thought for a while about the “headline” for this post, then went back to the original. Because that is EXACTLY what I’m feeling right now.

To cut an increasingly long story short, Wood Newton and George Wimpey plan to solve our issues by replacing all windows and doors. A VERY big job. But we all hope (and it can only be hope, not believe, not feel sure) this will be the end to the water ingress we’ve been suffering for over a year.

We, understandably, want some clarification before such huge work is undertaken on our “new” eco house. We have asked several questions, and raised several issues, which we, quite fairly, wanted clarified before work starts. You may say we have no right to ask why certain things have been done to our property, why certain things will be done to our property, and why certain parts of a report we received from John Green of Wood Newton made no sense to us, or the George Wimpey site manager, whatsoever. But we feel we do have a right to know.

Today, only a week after submitting a list of bullet pointed issues and questions (so to be fair, in very good time by George Wimpey and Wood Newton standards) we have received a reply. Of sorts. And it is that which has us reeling.

For a start, the vast majority of points and questions have, perhaps unsurprisingly, been completely ignored.

Secondly, it adds to the confusion we’re feeling by somewhat contradicting the earlier report it is a response to.

PLUS, it states that the work Wood Newton and George Wimpey carried out in July and August of 2008 following our initial water ingress problems was PURELY COSMETIC and not at all related to water ingress. Which means they did NOTHING about our water ingress on a number of windows (only unsuccessfully dealing with one window and one door by applying Tyvek) before stripping cladding and applying resistit tape as banding around our Windows a full three months (and more) after we initially had problems. While at the same time cosmetically wrecking our windows as they carried out needless, stressful, and untidy “cosmetic work” several times over on the remainder of our windows, telling US this was in an attempt to solve the water ingress. Which takes us back to the heading really…

WTF?! Seriously George Wimpey and Wood Newton, WTF have you been doing to us and our property?!

Tags: eco homes, eco house, eco houses, george wimpey, leaking, leaks, milton keynes, oxley park, oxley woods, oxley woods living, Problems, taylor wimpey, water, water ingress, wood newton
Posted in Architecture, Decor and DIY, Problems | No Comments »

How finished are your windows?

July 24, 2009

Something we’ve just noticed, which is of little consequence given our current situation, but if you have bought an eco house on the Oxley Woods development, or are considering one, you may want to check your window frames.

Do yours look like our kitchen, unfinished with visible screws?

Or perhaps like one of our bedrooms, filled but not finished?

Or maybe like our lounge, finished, painted, and just about tidied up?

Hit and miss? Oh, I’d say so.

Tags: eco home, eco homes, eco house, eco houses, george wimpey, milton keynes, oxley park, oxley woods, windows, wood newton
Posted in Architecture, Problems | No Comments »

Wattson energy monitor

July 19, 2009

On Friday we bought ourselves a shiny new WATTSON home energy monitor from our local Maplin.

The device is one of many available that do pretty much the same job. Check your energy consumption via a clip placed on the live wire near your electricity metre, which is sent wirelessly to a display unit (portable and “wireless”, as long as the built in battery is charged up), so you can keep tabs on your energy consumption.

This particular unit costs close to £100, whether or not it will pay for itself in energy consumption reduction is yet to be seen, but it’s already making a bit of a difference, and proving some interesting, if not entirely insightful (at this stage) readings.

One of the first missions had to be childishly running around switching off every plug about the house to get the reading to zero. This proved harder than we imagined… It took some time to realise that we hadn’t switched off the smoke/fire alarm circuit, which was constantly demanding about 48 watts.

Anyway, nothing much to report on this at the moment, apart from I was surprised how little power (relatively) a tv, sky box and amp combination consume, how much the eco-hat appears to be eating up (around 80 or so Watts on “normal” (not boost) operation) and just how much our Kenwood Eco Kettle consumes, around 2,700 Watts. Although the kettle is rapid boil and has a handy measure on the side, so it’s never on for longer than required!

The nice thing about the Wattson is it gives you a constant readout in either numbers, colours, or both. This includes a not entirely useful readout of how much a years worth of your current power consumption would cost at the current rate.

The best part is when you plug it into your Mac or PC and start logging data, we’ve only got two days worth, but it’s interesting and at the moment quite fun (hope the novelty doesn’t wear off too fast) to see how demand for power changes throughout the day. You can also share this data on the DIY KYOTO website with other Wattson / Holmes users.

Anyway, the longer we have this up and running the more useful things it may give me to say about energy consumption and ideas for reducing it. So far, my best advice is avoid reboiling the kettle whenever possible!

Here’s the Holmes readout covering our initial “play time” and beyond:

Tags: eco hat, eco home, eco homes, eco house, eco houses, eco kettle, ecohat, energy, energy consumption, george wimpey, kettle, milton keynes, oxley park, oxley woods, power, Wattson, wood newton
Posted in Eco living, Good stuff | 1 Comment »

Water through a wall not seen in a year

July 12, 2009

Overnight we had quite a bit of rain. It didn’t seem to rain hard but it was drifting rain being blown all over by the wind, coming, as usual, from a south-westerly direction.

This morning we awoke to see something we’d not seen since July 2008, when we first saw water coming through the walls and windows of our Oxley Woods eco house… Water half way down the wall in our bedroom on the top floor.

Apparently this is caused by water coming in through the high level window above, making its way down behind the plasterboard until it hits something (a horizontal join or wood) when it pools and seeps through the wall. The water mark was quite big, about the size of my hand, but it did dry fairly quickly in the sun that followed.

This window has been “fixed” previously, and as I stated earlier we’ve not seen water on this wall for over a year. This just goes to show the on/off hit and miss nature of both the fault(s) with the design and/or construction here and the fixes which have been applied so far.

The holes in bedroom four (top floor) were also soaked through the wood and plasterboard this morning, but all other places where we’ve seen water in the past seemed to be dry to the eye and touch.

Tags: eco homes, eco house, eco houses, george wimpey, leaks, milton keynes, oxley park, oxley woods, oxley woods living, Problems, rain water, taylor wimpey, water, water ingress, wood newton
Posted in Problems | 2 Comments »

IKEA table meets plywood off-cut

July 11, 2009

Did a little bit of DIY / IKEA hacking this week and thought I’d share the results of my labour.

Basically, I started off with a sub-£30 IKEA table we’ve had for a while now:

Added to that a £3.45 off cut of 22mm plywood from one of the local timber merchants:

Sanded off the rough edges and applied some of a £10 tin of Danish Oil, and the results are like this:

Very easy, and very pleased with the results, especially as it’s an offcut of wood and a cheap table we already had. Not sure what to do with the left over table top now though?!

All the rest of the photos are on our Flickr photo page.

Tags: decor, decorating, DIY, eco homes, eco house, eco houses, george wimpey, IKEA, milton keynes, oxley park, oxley woods, oxley woods living, table, taylor wimpey, wood newton
Posted in Decor and DIY, Good stuff | 1 Comment »

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