Green value ... ?

 A couple of things happened over the Easter break that made me reflect on energy efficiency and costs.

After the floor insulation had been laid we took the offcuts and remnants down to the déchetterie (recycling centre) - two cubic metres of polyurethane foam, produced from a fossil fuel, non recyclable and hence another 2 cubic metres went into landfill. I'm a bit ambiguous (and frankly confused) about the green credentials of some of the techniques and materials we are using - we've put 80mm of foam insulation into the floor (more than the recommended 60mm which should reduce our energy consumption - good) but it's made from oil based products - not so good. And we're using electric underfloor heating which is significantly cheaper than oil, gas or heat pump technology, has fewer CO2 emissions than oil or gas (as most of the electricity in France is generated by nuclear and renewable power - but is that good or not?). Air source heat pump technology is the favourite technology for heating in our region, it consumes about 30% of the power required for our underfloor heating but it would take over 11 years to recover the initial cost. So is that good or bad ...... I'm confused.

And after my previous blog on European Integration / Car Servicing Costs http://labassecourfrance.blogspot.fr/2012/03/european-integration.html the CR-V was serviced by Hendy Honda (bear with me - there is a link). You'll remember that the car service at a Honda dealer was over €150 cheaper in Southampton than in Vannes. I was given a courtesy car but instead of the usual slightly tired and used courtesy car I got a brand new Insight IMA Hybrid with 118 miles on the clock http://www.honda.co.uk/cars/insight/. This car is powered by a petrol engine/ battery system and is one of the green technologies held out as the future for vehicles. I managed to get 69 miles per gallon out of it driving on the motorway at 60 miles per hour - that's pretty good but here's what confuses me. Even our big old 4x4 CR-V will do 49 mpg on the same route so the Insight is 28% more fuel efficient - which is good - but the Nickel Metal Hydride batteries require large quantities of nickel and other heavy metals and the chemicals used are both corrosive and carcinogenic - not so good.

So are hybrid technologies the way ahead or is my diesel less damaging in the long run? Are heatpump technologies worth the huge extra cost? Is it more environmentally sensitive to insulate our floor with foam made from oil and dump the remnants into landfill or should we not insulate and spend more energy made from nuclear technology in the future heating the barn?

It's not obvious to me .... but the CR-V was beautifully washed, waxed and cleaned at no extra cost so the only clear conclusion in this story is where the car maintenance will be done in the future.

Summer Visitors

The first swallow of the year flew in on Sunday, shortly followed by another. They paid particular attention to the lean-to where we found an old nest on one of the beams when the roof was taken off in December. Since the swallows left last autumn the lean-to now has a new roof, windows and floor so must have seemed like when one goes back to somewhere where you grew up and find it has changed almost beyond recognition.

A small flock of house martins flew in over the pond on Tuesday in the midst of a rain storm and 50kmh winds - they must have thought they'd taken a wrong turning somewhere on the route from Africa !

The Longest Day ....

"It's not flowing very fast is it?"

In fact the driver of the mixer was on our step ladder with our spade trying to persuade a reluctant 7 cubic metres of chape (screed) to run out of the big mixing drum. What had arrived wasn't what either Kevin or we had expected (we thought we were getting a liquid screed like the subfloor that had been laid in 45 minutes back in November). We weren't set up for this chape traditionelle that had to be laid by hand and was clearly going to take a long time, worse it wasn't auto-nivellent (self-levelling) so it would have to be trowelled out to level.

Our not very liquid chape

Kevin and Adam set to to begin to lay the chape and Steve, our electrician arrived soon after to re-test the underfloor heating system - this needs to be done after the floor has been laid over the cables and I'd recklessly said to Steve that we should have finished by 10am. Steve kindly rolled his sleeves up and joined the team laying the chape, By lunchtime we had about half the floor done but the chape was going off rapidly so it was decided to cut our losses and abandon about a third of the chape unlaid and finish the work on another day.

L to R: Adam, Tim, Steve working on the Salon-Sejour floor

Kevin and Keith working on the cellier floor

Adam finishing the Salon-Sejour floor

After six hours of intense work Kevin must have been looking forward to something a bit easier - an afternoon of digging out a trench from the lean-to up to the road to carry our new underground electric supply. Unfortunately after 2 metres he found our water supply pipe with his bucket and the trench started to rapidly fill up with water. Our supply has a stopcock out in the road that only Veolia have a key to so we had to put in a call for them to turn off the supply. Cue a farcical sequence of events as one Veolia van arrived and, despite running up and down the verge several times with a metal detector, the technician failed to find our stopcock. He called out un mec who "knew the area" so quickly there were two Veolia vans on our drive.

The mec couldn't find the stopcock either despite increasingly frantic digging and hammering. Eventually they did succeed in turning off our neighbour Lucien's water supply, meanwhile Barbara was in the ditch pumping out the water:

Finally the stopcock was located and, after yet another delay when the key wouldn't fit, Noah's flood was finally averted and the leak repaired.

A difficult and stressful day - surely one of us must have walked under a ladder that morning .....