You may have all noticed that my blog posts have become more infrequent than usual. Rest assured that this is simply the product of a house move and the associated building and decorating work that I’ve been busying myself with. In the last ten days we’ve added an extra room (by adding a stud partition wall where there had been one in the distant past to recreate the old third bedroom. That introduced a lot of mess, and the need for a lot of decoration. Most of this is now in, and Zoë is moved into her new office.

I let her pick the colour she wanted the walls. Trust her to specifically pick a shade of green that cunningly works as a green screen for doing background effects to her vlog! It actually looks quite nice in the flesh too; especially now the room is fitted out with furniture and her stuff. Hopefully tomorrow whilst I’m away in Scotland on work related travels, she will finish unpacking all the boxes that contain her office stuff that are strewn about the house.

Energy efficiency is something I’ve mentioned before. With rises in gas and electricity costs a regular occurrence, it makes sense. With this house being the first that I’ve ever owned, I wanted to make a real effort to head it up the energy efficiency charts towards the holy grail of a category ‘A’ house. Most people will be familair with the banding system. Any new fridge or freezer will be a good example as they all come with the little banding sticker telling you where the device fits in on the efficiency bands.

For houses category ‘C’ seems to be average, and the vast majority of properties fall somewhere here. This one was at the very top end of ‘D’ – somewhat poorer – because of a few easily rectifiable things. All of the easy to do things have been done including adding cavity wall insulation, loft insulation and changing the 100Watt bulbs that were everywhere for far more modest 11Watt energy savers (don’t ask – we bought the house from old people who seemed to like BRIGHT!!!). According to the energy efficiency report this should shift us to the top end of ‘C’. I want to achieve ‘B’ rating by the winter, and a new roof (with insulation) above the large lounge bay window will go a long way towards that. I have never seen a house that managed ‘A’ in the flesh, but I suspect that for a house built in 1927 that would be a very tall order. Still ‘B’ will be a good target to aim for. When the new boiler and radiators are done, maybe we will go some way to getting there.

Bed beckons as a 2:00am start in the morning will see me on my way to Livingston. On a book-related subject, don’t forget the Waterstone’s signing that I’m doing at the Derby branch in a week’s time. See you there!