From the bathroom door

Finding a bearable electric heater

I have neglected the blog-friendly listings of recommended sources we've used this far, so here's a shocker - I found an electric panel heater (no gas in these parts and what with the price of oil....) that actually looks ok and is made by Dimplex! I know, weren't they one of those dull British companies making dull, poorly-designed things? Not any more....
It's a white, glass-fronted and nearly square, and half the price of the stone radiators we were going to get. Whilst we will rely mainly on the inset woodburner for heat, it's realistic to have a back up for when you get in on a cold night or run out of logs. (That can happen, even with your own woodland, especially when it's got a Tree Preservation Order).

See more about the Dimplex range here.

View from the bed

Not at all bad, huh?

Adam moves into the drainage trench

After the septic tank burial Adam now turns his attention to the 12m+ of drainage trench. Luckily its much shallower than the septic tank, being a simple perforated pipe in gravel.
Bizarrely all the old shack had attached to its loo was a rough old soakaway, barely buried. And for 40 odd years it seems to have worked, we expected to uncover something very grisly in the recent excavations but so far so good.

Glazed Expression

We've waited rather to long for this moment, having got our glazed doors in months ago. Finally the windows-that-don't-open ("glazed units") have gone in and very lovely they are too.
Now we're on the final furlong, I've never seen so many people on site and a nice vibe too.

The Bigger Picture

Note how uncannily similiar to the architects' impression (website header pic) this current site view is...

Sinking the Good Ship Septic Tank

With a very slightly loose interpretation of the neccessary health and safety regs, the septic tank finally got installed today by Adam, Guy and his guys. These pictures don't show that it took 2 goes - and that's not an easy thing to lever out of the hole without someone risking being buried alive.

No machines allowed on our Tree Protection Site, so spades-are-us....

The Good Ship Septic Tank

Building regs prevent you from fitting a septic tank commensurate with the size of your (in our case, tiny) house. The minimum size you can get is frankly massive, about two thirds of the size of the Shack's actual bedroom.
This one - an 'Acorn' - is kind of lozenge shaped, saving our protected tree roots from excessive digging to bury it.
Try telling Adam - who has done the lion's share of the digging - that what he's done is not 'excessive'!

One of the reasons I hit the glass ceiling in Girl Guides (never ascending through promotion beyond patrol second-in-command) was that I refused to go to camp, on account of my horror of the hand-dug latrines.
What irony that here I am three decades on hand-digging an almighty hole for our septic tank to go into.
Only a metre to go.