Volunteers, vision and the odd leyland. training, education and workshop
This morning and it was a meeting with Paul and various people to discuss the Marine Source heat pump. We had a walk and the old marine path which runs just above the high water mark on the Menai Straits (sometimes below it). Rhys from the Upland footpath team was over to advise on the repair of this path. This access is needed for the new manifold building (pumps and heat exchangers). Looks fairly straight forward and things are moving well.
After lunch and over the other side of the Menai Straits and a world away from cutting edge marine heating systems and i was in the Faenol wood land with John Whitley the ranger looking at a new energy system for his ‘hewn out of the woods’ off grid work-base. This building has come on quite a bit since i last saw it. He is such an advocate of the much maligned leyland cypress. Its light weight and durability lends itself well to cladding and shingles (as can be seen in the images) My task is to work with John to beg, borrow and steal a low-cost energy system for lighting and some spare power for re charging the power tools on the site. (PV, LED, battery and some head scratching) We also had a word about heating the building “i have a cunning’ idea but more on this in later blogs. This is one of my favourite projects currently under way. £20,000 and thousands of volunteer hours and you have a building which is growing out of the woodland. This building is to be a workshop, storage area and education room. most of the building has been harvested, milled and constructed within 200m. Sticklebarn which i blogged on last week is a stunning building and the Faenol work base is being built with the same level of care and people’s investment. According to John the leyland cypress is the new vernacular building material in the Faenol. It’s just what they had to hand and it performs to what they need. Vernacular is not old, it’s just local
Could not get more ‘in the woods’ if you tried. Off grid, off water and off the track. The building, the roof and the cruck. The leyland roof looked superb
