Build Update

It's just over a year since we started work on the Barn - that's an easy sentence to write and a year into the project we have achieved a lot but still have lots more to do. Being so close to the action makes it difficult to keep a sense of perspective so sometimes it takes a visit from someone who's not seen the barn for a while to remind us what's been achieved. A year ago we were installing steel beams into the barn, this week we are installing insulation and plasterboard ceilings hung from the beams. When the barn is complete no-one will see the steel beams but the ceilings will be in full view and, in some ways, that's the big difference today as we increasingly start to work on items that will be seen. It needs a different kind of mindset; work in millimetres rather than metres, kilogrammes rather than tonnes, single screws rather than hundreds.

We now have windows and doors in the main openings

 

and a new fireplace (with carved granite lintel )  

Both the upstairs end wall (which will be in our bedroom) and the downstairs one have been insulated and boarded ready for plastering

And the upstairs floors have been braced, strengthened and completed ready to support the new ceilings

We have a pretty respectable workshop now - here's Barbara on the crosscut saw :

And Adam's been working on building the new windows for the small windows we didn't get done with the main barn glazing 

As I said at the beginning - very different tasks and skills from what we were doing a year ago .....

C'est la Rentrée !

The rhythm of the year is important in France - nothing more so than the Grande Vacances, when everyone goes on holiday for a minimum of three weeks in July or August. After the holidays it's time for La Rentrée, eagerly anticipated in the shops since the week before the summer holidays began in the middle of July. Lots of other things seem to be impossible to do before the summer and absolutely have to be postponed until La Rentrée, we started discussing a date for the fitting of our windows in March to ensure that they were installed before la pause estivale. otherwise (cue intake of breath by the salesman) it couldn't happen until September.

The blog is having its own Rentrée and, after a summer spent at the Olympics and with various visitors the blog will be back and posting on our project progress, the challenges of growing vegetables, the most cunning species of animals that might damage your garden and the daily challenges of living in France.

Speak soon!

#Allezwiggo

Great day to be British in France today :o)

What an amazing achievement by team Sky Procycling in today's Tour de France stage:

Stage winner:  Chris Froome
Leading Team: Sky
King of the Mountains leader: Chris Froome

And, GC leader and Yellow Jersey wearer, Bradley Wiggins. Wow, brilliant performance.

All details click here:

Will be getting the Union Flag out above La Basse Cour tomorrow for Brad, hope it stays up until July 22nd when he leads the TDF home on the Champs Elysées - dare to believe in a first British winner of the Tour de France!

An Anglo-French disagreement

There are many things that unite Britain and France - two countries separated by only 35km of La Manche. Many more things separate them; language, the price of wine, the social maturity of children, the currency (maybe only until the Euro crashes and burns ....) and, perhaps most contentiously, Plaster. When I was at school we used Plaster of Paris to make casts of animal footprints - Plaster of Paris, along with most of the interesting things I did at school in science, is now banned from British schools on health and safety grounds. It is, of course, still widely available in retail outlets in France.

In the UK we are used to a pink plaster that needs to be mixed to its final consistency and then gives a consistent 45 minutes of working time. French plaster, being French, is different. It's white for a start, needs to be mixed to the consistency of cream and then left for an indeterminate period of time until it firms up (a non-linear processs) and then you have anything from five to thirty minutes get it on the walls or ceiling. Forum boards and blogs written by Brits in France are full of "How rubbish is this French plaster ...." sort of posts. And, I have to confess, when we plastered the house I imported UK plaster to do that. Faced with the enormous task of plastering the utility area in the lean-to and all the upstairs and downstairs barn ceilings, Adam, Barbara and I thought we'd better get the hang of this French stuff.

Plaster seems to me to be a metaphor for the different working methods in the two countries - UK style is to use something consistent, get it done fast, shave off all the time possible and get on to the next job; the French style requires faith that the end will be reached, allows a certain undefined period of time for reflection and discussion while casually stirring the wet plaster sitting on the table and then, suddenly, a huge outpouring of energy once it's decided that the correct consistency has been reached.

As a precaution we used Lutece Rouge L (the L is for Lente - slow) - the C (courte for short) stuff must be amazingly quick setting - probably between pouring it out of the bucket and it reaching the table. [Interesting fact from Adam: Lutece was the Roman name for Paris and, initially, all gypsum for French plaster was mined from under the city].

We had decided to plaster all the walls and ceilings in the lean-to as a warm up for the main barn and Barbara reprised her role of mixing and timing supervisor with the drill and paddle and Adam and I were the plasterers. Plastering requires a team of two or three to be efficient, solo mixing and plastering must be a very hard task. After a couple of tricky batches (too soft, too hard) we all got the hang of the process and turned out a consistent result that, even though I say so myself, looks pretty good. It's not a mirror flat polished finish but the odd trowel mark and line looks appropriately rustic in an old building.

The other slight difference between French and UK plaster is price - about €15 for 35kg in France compared to £4.20 for 25 kg in the UK. That's about twice the price ......

Marriage - French style

We were working in the garden during one of the rare breaks in the rain in April when Nicole, our neighbour who runs the farm with Dominique her husband, came down the drive to show us Awen, her new grandson, (three weeks old) and give us a wedding invite for the marriage of their oldest daughter, Sophie. She said it’s traditional in Bretagne to invite all the neighbours to a wedding (we hadn’t actually ever met Sophie – she lives in Angers). It was extremely kind of them to invite the auto-constructeur Rosbif neighbours to the wedding; the invite was to the civil ceremony in the Mairie followed by the church service and a vin d'honneur.

It was the first time we had been to a French wedding - lots of things were similar but there were a few puzzling and entertaining differences for us:

The couple arrived together in a specially decorated car that had seen better days - and probably wouldn't get through a Controle Technique ....

Arriving at the Mairie: L to R: Vincent, Vincent's mother, Dominique, Sophie, Vincent's father, Nicole

Note for English readers: In France the church and the State are completely separate and so the "official" marriage ceremony can only be performed by a representative of the State, in this case the Mayor. Actually in this case the mayor wasn't present so it was an ajoint to the mayor who conducted the service.

The ceremony wasn't nearly as solemn as we expected - everyone piled into the room at the Mairie trying to get the best place to take photos from - the prime place seemed to be behind the table looking over the ajoint's shoulder.. Those who couldn't get in chatted loudly to their friends in the foyer. I'd guess that the Maire isn't absent very often and it seemed like it was the ajoint's first marriage ceremony judging by the number of times he had to stop and thumb through the book he was reading from.

But everyone was in a good mood and the ceremony completed with Sophie and Vincent being declared as married and everyone applauding,

Not sure who was more hesitant - the newly married couple or the ajoint

Next, everyone left the Mairie and headed the 100m over to the church - it was our first time in a French church for a service and, I guess, we'd expected things to be a bit more solemn than at the Mairie. Not a bit of it - the bride and groom were led down the aisle by the priest to Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" - a bit different to "Here comes the Bride" - and the priest had to chase the same posse of amateur photographers  away from the altar area where they had taken up residence. The singing was good although only printing 50 service sheets when there were 200 in the church meant we weren't able to join in - maybe a good thing .... !

In the Noyal Muzillac church

After the service everyone walked over to the Salle de Jeune France for the vin d'honneur and in a convivial setting we met up again with the singer from Claudette's garden party last year. Instead of a Liste de Mariage people queued up to meet the bride and groom, wish them good luck and give them an envelope with money or a cheque, appropriately given Sophie's background these were then posted into an elegantly painted milk churn.. Being English we had brought them a gift that they couldn't post in the churn! 

During the vin d'honneur Lucien, Sophie's grandfather and our neighbour from over the road, came to talk to us and took care to introduce us to his new friend - an elegant lady who we have seen at his house a number of times ....

Progress Update

The build has progressed a lot since my last update.

Adam has completed one of the two new windows on the North Side, this was done in a similar way to the doorway but was complicated by the position of the beams and the size of some of the stones in the wall.

The first new window partly completed. The support posts, props and Strongboys are stabilising the wall whilst the work is underway

The finished window from the inside of the Barn

And from the outside - soon it will look as if it's been there two hundred years like the rest of the building.

 We've also had our new souterrain electricity supply installed and the old, ugly overhead cable has gone, the huge steel cable support has been taken down too:

 Barbara and I have been working on the fit-out of the lean-to, we've done the first-fix electrics and plumbing and have framed out the walls for the plasterboarding to follow. The lean-to will be one of the areas of the building that will be finished using conventional framing and plasterboarding; actually of course "conventional" in this case means modern rather than the techniques that the original builders would have recognised. We'll be using more traditional methods and more ecological materials in the main barn. Interestingly, after my previous blog post on my green confusion, the insulation in this picture is made from recycled bottles - so we'll be continuing our efforts to contribute to the stock of empty bottles to be turned into insulation ;o)

Framing using the French metal rail system (rather than the British tradition of using wood)

Electrical and Plumbing first fix in progress. The window we found and re-opened can be seen in the back wall.

Electricity "Connection Central" - hopefully we'll be able to connect all this lot up correctly.

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.