Our aim is to minimise the impact of Lattice Lodge upon the environment, and to support the local economy. We will do this through sourcing locally and ethically where possible, and reducing waste through careful purchasing, recycling, composting, and trying to avoid disposable goods. However, we will never compromise on quality, and we will also ensure that our choices in this regard don't impact upon your pocket. For those of you with an interest in this area, some of the actions we have taken are summarised below: - January 2010 As from this month we are moving our sustainability diary across to a blogging platform. This will enable us to add images and links to relevant websites much more easily. The new diary is available HERE. We hope you like it. December 2009 Well, we're now mostly back in our original office cum living room, the floor of which (see previous months) has now had 3 coats of 'Suffolk Hard Oil', supplied by Chris at Earth and Reed in Needham Market. A slight confession, in that it does contain turpentine, but that's the only 'nasty' in it. It also contains pine resin, which both smells wonderful, and makes the finish go hard enough to walk on. Mosaic did her usual of mixing in the pigment to get the desired colour, and then she also applied the 3 coats herself. Martin reckons this was to give her the sense of satisfaction at the finished product. Which, for the record, is beautiful. We've also been contacted by someone at the local council who would like us to take part in a Green Building scheme, whereby we provide information about what we've done to others. We're very flattered to be considered, and will hopefully be able to contribute something to help others in a similar situation to ourselves. More home made radiator reflectors are being applied. Hint - when you apply them to bare plastered walls, even using some of that 'no more nails' type stuff doesn't work, unless you apply pressure for quite some time. Finally, we've had a few occasions recently where we've been quite quiet on the business front, so we've taken advantage of the new heating zones that we've created, and we've managed to concentrate guests into certain areas of the house, and let others go down to frost protection temperatures, thus saving energy. November 2009 That 'couple of clear hours' Martin needed to start on the underfloor insulation was a slight underestimation. There was a whole section of floor that we couldn't access, so we ended up (thanks David E - our family friend bridge engineer) with a criss-cross grid of wire cable running below that, upon which we rested the hardboard. Martin then designed an ingenious 'insulation pulling through tool', which was basically some drain rods with a clamp style coat hanger taped to the end. Which, amazingly, worked a treat. So, we now have an insulated floor in our office cum living room. Thanks also to Martin's dad, who helped a great deal - even on his 70th birthday! Our heating engineer has also been round again, this time to 'tune' the boiler and burner to the increased gas pressure from the supply pipe replacement saga. After much head scratching at failing to achieve the expected success, we realise that the burner is actually slightly mismatched to the boiler capacity. Nothing dangerous of course, but it does mean that we can't get quite the maximum efficiency out of it. Ho hum. Despite last years disappointment at not even clearing the first hurdle at the Suffolk - the Greenest County Awards, we're going to enter them again this year. We're going to be much more specific this year, and we'll either enter based on reduction in energy usage (gas usage down by 39% in year 1, expecting 50% by year 2), or waste handling - we're now nearly 18 months in and not a scrap of waste food has left our premises for landfill. We have also just booked an appointment for an advisor from the Green Tourism Business Scheme to come and see us in January 2010. We very much hope that this will lead us towards becoming the first member of this scheme (we believe) in the Ipswich area. October 2009 Well, it's getting colder, so we're now reaping the benefit of the work we've had done on our heating system. Suffice to say our year on year meter readings are showing that we're using considerably less gas. The central heating pump was upgraded during the heating engineer's last visit, which should further improve the efficiency of the system, as it gets the hot water away from the boiler faster and around the radiators, whereas before the boiler was regularly switching off as it 'got ahead' of the pump. You learn something new every day! Having sanded a ground floor timber floor yesterday, Martin will be launching into some underfloor insulation just as soon as he gets a couple of clear hours to start on it. We've considered several options for insulating the floor, and the eventual winner was selected as a compromise between practicality and moisture avoidance. The void below the floor is 18", and Martin is 15" tall when flat on his back (to his chest, not his stomach, he insists), so the majority of the work will be done 'from above'. The plan is to staple hardboard directly below the floorboards, thereby minimising draughts without totally eradicating air flow. We will then fix loft insulation (Space Blanket, made from recycled glass bottles) to the hardboard, thereby reducing heat transfer between the room and the void below. September 2009 We've known for some time now that we would eventually need to upgrade the gas supply from the meter to the boiler, but had been avoiding tackling the issue as it meant ripping up the floors in 3 rooms. Well, to cut a long story short, during the heating system works mentioned last month, a problem was identified which means that yesterday was spent taking up the floorboards in 3 rooms, and we are today having a new gas supply pipe laid. The silver lining is that our heating engineer believes that as a result of having a higher gas pressure he will be able to increase the efficiency of the boiler by about 10%. The other good news is that we've decided to use the opportunity to redecorate the 3 rooms, which includes, if Martin can squeeze into the void beneath the floor, insulating under the floorboards as well. Well, it's only been nearly 9 months since we had a door fitted to what was a previously open porch. We sealed it immediately with linseed oil in order to protect it from the elements, but Martin has literally just today started 'painting' it. The 'painting' is in inverted commas because we're not painting it, and nor are we staining it. We're using a natural product called Holkham Linseed Paint which is, pretty obviously, made from linseed oil. It can only really be applied when you've got bare wood, which we have in this case, and it takes between 2-4 coats, but after that, it should be several years before it needs any more attention. Fingers crossed! August 2009 We've just picked the first of our tomatoes! They're a bit big for breakfast, but hopefully some of the next batch will find their way onto customers plates. Now that we've decided to stick with our gas boiler for the time being, we're having the whole system cleaned out, and new zones added, which should enable us to be even more efficient in our use of energy. It's going to be a full on 2 days of solid work for our heating engineer, his apprentice, our plumber, and Martin. Martin is very likely to be tasked with the 'labouring' job of running around the house switching the radiators on and off, and hitting them with a rubber mallet to loosen the rubbish from the inside. Glamorous huh? July 2009 Right from day one we started introducing cleaning products and toiletries that aren't harmful to the environment. Whilst the cleaning products proved fairly simple, we never really settled on toiletries, and have tried several. We think we've now found the ideal solution, in a local firm called Potions & Possibilities, based just outside Ipswich. They produce 'high end' toiletries with no nasties in them, either for the environment or the guest. We will be going to collect our first order from them, and hope to have them in our bathrooms very soon. They are costing us that little bit more than your usual shower gels so, in line with our other 'local produce', we will be offering some of the range for sale as well, to help recoup some of the extra cost. Wahey! It rained last night, and two of the three water butts have water in them, so clearly I haven't aligned one of the diverters quite well enough. Grrr. Well, the wormery arrived, and was quickly assembled. To cut a long story short, after only a couple of days it's clear that the worms have migrated from the bedding they were provided in, to the leaf mould, compost and shredded paper that we added. It's therefore time for us to start adding some of our food waste. We hope to report good progress in the very near future. We have a family staying with us at the moment, and the boys are very keen to have a look at our new wormery! One more thing to add before the end of the month. We've just got our annual gas contract renewal offer in, and it's 25% less than last year, which seriously undermines the financial viability of throwing money at an air source heat pump this year. The current plan therefore is to a) keep our fingers crossed that our existing boiler continues running for another year, b) invest some of the forecast savings into another of the gadgets which should ensure that all areas of the house are kept at an even temperature with the least waste energy, and c) invest the rest of the savings into getting our heating engineer to optimise the performance of the existing system. We must stress at this point that all of the measures we are planning to invest in will continue to provide benefit as and when the gas boiler is replaced by something else. Which leads us to one final observation. As committed 'greenies', we have on a few occasions debated the merits (or otherwise) of offsetting our carbon emissions. It's a complex subject, but our conclusion is that instead of 'outsourcing' the problem, we'll take it on the chin that we're not perfect, and that we have a long way to go before we're carbon neutral, and that we'll invest many times more than it would cost to 'offset' into measures we take ourselves. A very quick count up shows that we have spent somewhere between £2,000 and £2,500 in the past year on reducing our environmental impact. That's around 10 times what it would have cost us to offset. June 2009 We're on a roll! This is also being written on June 14th... Well, the veggie garden is underway, and in time honoured 'allotment' tradition, we're making use of all sorts of odds and ends to help us grow stuff. Some of our tomatoes are being grown in growbags, others are in troughs that the previous owners left behind, but my favourites are the plywood crates that our bottles of apple juice are packed in. We're also reusing a couple of old timber waste bins on poles to grow strawberries in (and which we had our first bowl of last night - delicious). Just a quick update on our Green Cone and Bokashi bins. It has to be said that the Green Cone struggled to keep up over the extremely cold winter, and we were probably not liberal enough with the accelerator powder to keep it going. So it's now got a black bin liner over it to encourage it to catch up, and we're using the bokashi bins. We have 4 of these, and each one takes about a week to fill. At the end of the 4 weeks, we empty the first one into our normal composters, and start again. To our surprise, this seems to be working very well, and the composters are alive with insects and worms. Seems they like a curry as much as we do! Well, we've been spending money on 'green' things again. Now that the veggie patch and greenhouse are demanding more water, we surveyed the house and have installed a couple of water butts, one of which is an enormous 700 litre tank and takes the rainwater from about half of our roof area. In light of the fact that our current Green Cone and Bokashi bins are struggling to keep up (mainly with guest food waste, not breakfast leftovers!), we have ordered an enormous wormery. The plan is to divert most of the stuff that is currently going to the Green Cone and Bokashi bins to the wormery, which should vastly reduce the pressure on them. Time will tell. The liquid drained from both the Bokashi bins and the wormery will be put into the water butts, as it is a very rich liquid fertiliser. May 2009 We're actually writing the 'May' update on 14th June, which is for various reasons. Partly that Martin made a change to our wireless network to add extra control over usage, which somehow blocked our access to update our own website. Ho hum. Secondly, that we just didn't get around to it, and thirdly, we actually haven't done anything worth shouting about. Actually, that's not quite true. We took over Lattice Lodge at the start of June 2008, which means we're approaching the time when we need to renegotiate our energy contracts. With that in mind, and the fact that our gas boiler is old and not very efficient, and could give up the ghost at any moment, we've been researching potential renewable technologies to supply space and water heating to Lattice Lodge. Solar panels have been an early casualty, as we simply don't have the appropriate expanse of roof facing the right direction to boil more than a kettle. So that's out. Ground source heat pumps have also been discounted, as our largest area of land is the car park, and is covered by tarmac. And we're not digging up the back garden. Which leaves us with air source heat pumps. At first glance they're great, producing 3 to 4 units of energy for every one used. But then you scratch the surface, and find out that performance drops during cold weather which, ironically, is when you need it to work most. Then you find out that the performance quoted is based on producing hot water at 55 degrees, which requires oversized radiators. And that's all without adding in the price differential between gas and electricity. Where does that leave us? Well, we're going to wait and see what sort of gas price we're quoted for the coming contract, and then work out the financial implications. Rest assured that if we can make it financially viable to go with an ASHP then we will. We have a couple of things in our favour on this front, namely the potential availability of an interest free Carbon Trust loan, which speaks for itself, and the Enhanced Capital Allowance scheme, which allows us to write off the total cost of a qualifying ASHP in the first year. Which is good news for us. April 2009 Some people monitor the change in the seasons by seeing the first snowdrop flower, or the first blue tit to appear. We have a slightly different method. Today is the 8th April, and that's the first day this year that Martin has donned his shorts and cycled to the bakers to collect the bread. He actually wanted to do it yesterday, but he couldn't find the shed keys. Our green mentor John has been around, and has worked with Martin on further insulating some of our loft spaces. The greenhouse frame is up, and Martin's dad has been busy digging the future veg patch, and transporting mature compost and leaf mould from Martin's nans garden to ours. Being early April though, Martin is largely chained to the computer making sure the numbers are complete and correct, before submission to the accountant. He's writing this update as brief respite from the aforementioned excitement. We have just been made aware of a local cycle hire service. Kevin will even bring the bikes to Lattice Lodge and collect them, all at very guest friendly hours. His website is at http://www.bicycledoctor.gbr.fm/ March 2009 The month started on a bit of a downer, as we learned that our entry to the 'Greenest pub, club or hotel' in Suffolk was unsuccessful. We don't know where we fell short, so we'll just have to wait until the winner is announced and compare ourselves to them. We suspect that the winner will have invested much more capital than we have, which is of course to be applauded, but we felt that the strength of our bid was that actually, anyone could do what we're doing, without needing to spend oodles of money. Oh well, we do the 'green' stuff because it makes sense, not to receive plaudits, so onwards and upwards... Well, more 'downwards' actually, as we've been digging. The previous owners had a hardstanding for their caravan, and as we don't have a caravan, we're going to grow stuff in the space. So, as the sun dared to bring the outside temperature up to a reasonably moderate level, we launched into lifting paving slabs. Apologies for the view from room 5 as this work goes on. We don't have any set plans as to what to grow, but it's hoped that we get our lean-to greenhouse reconstructed in this area. Last week, we learned about a car sharing scheme in the area. It's based at Kesgrave, on the Grange Farm housing estate, and we're meeting the owner of the business shortly to see if there is mileage (pun intended) in perhaps having a shared car based in our car park. We're in the middle of a large residential area, so the potential for people getting rid of their second car and using a shared one is a very real one. If it comes off, we're very likely to sell our own car and use the scheme ourselves. Even if it doesn't happen, search for Wombat Car Club, and have a read. We're not sure if we've mentioned it before, but Martin is a member of the Ipswich Borough Council 'Environment Panel', which is a group of lay people who provide feedback to the council on current and future environmental issues. Tomorrow, Martin will be speaking to the meeting about 'alternative composting methods', which really means telling all and sundry that almost all food waste can be diverted from landfill via systems such as our magic 'Green Cone'. Fingers crossed that it garners interest and support from the council. February 2009 Crikey, is it February already? Well, things are continuing apace here at Lattice Lodge. The heating controls mentioned in the January missive have been installed, and we're regularly tweaking the controls to make sure everyone has enough heat and hot water when they need it. We're also renovating another bedroom in the original part of the house, so it's more woodchip off, and more eco-paints being applied. This room will be furnished with a solid pine wardrobe from our own house, and another desk/dressing table bought via Ebay. We probably won't make too much more progress this month, partly because Martin is turning 40, and Mosaic is busy organising a mystery celebration for it, and partly because we've spent an awful lot recently and need to replenish the bank account a little! That last line was a bit premature. We've just completed the fitting of an external door to the porch, which should help stop us heating the east of Ipswich every time the main front door is opened! No doubt this will require further tweaking of the aforementioned heating controls. January 2009 We have now refurbished another of the rooms in the original part of the house. We got lucky again with the removal of the woodchip, and have again painted it with the same range of eco-friendly paints. This time we got a nice antique walnut desk and chair via Ebay, and again have replaced the old TV with a new Energy Saving Trust approved one. The carpet in this room has also been replaced by a local shop, and we've used Hypertread underlay, which is both made from 100% recycled materials and is 100% recyclable, and also is very efficient in terms of sound and thermal insulation. Oh, another thing we're doing as we refurbish rooms and remove radiators is to place 'home made' reflector panels behind them. These are made from UK manufactured recycled wood fibre board from B&Q, which you cut to size and stick good old tin foil to. You then stick these to the wall with a strong wallpaper paste, and Bob's your uncle. Thanks to our green mentor John for this idea! On the subject of energy usage, we're upgrading our space and water heating controls at the end of this month. Our aim from this is twofold. Firstly, we need to ensure that we always have enough hot water for everyone's showers, and that the rooms are warm enough for our guests. We could achieve that by simply leaving the system running 24/7, but that would be very wasteful, not to mention hugely expensive. Which brings us to the second reason - to control costs. All we have at the moment is a very basic analogue timer, so we're having a wireless programmable room thermostat installed, which we can set to different temperatures at different times of day. It also has a feature called 'Optimum on/off', whereby it monitors the temperature constantly and works out the latest possible time it needs to switch on to achieve the temperature we want at a certain time, and the earliest possible time it can switch off at the end of the cycle and still achieve the desired temperature. Clever huh! We're also getting estimates for secondary double glazing in various parts of the house, but that's quite an investment so it all depends on how busy we are as to whether we can afford it. In the meantime, Martin has been wielding a silicon gun around any window frames that dare to let draughts through... Finally this month, we are tackling another of the rooms in the original part of the house. It's pretty much the same as the previous two, with the eco paints (although these are more expensive to buy, they don't smell anywhere near as much, so we can bring the room back into use much faster, which in itself more than pays for the extra cost of the paint), the Energy Saving Trust approved TV, and Ebay sourced chairs and a desk. Oh, and we submitted our entry into the Greenest County awards. Fingers crossed... December 2008 We are currently refurbishing one of the rooms in the original part of the house. We've bitten the bullet and have removed the woodchip from the walls - but we got lucky and the walls underneath didn't need much remedial work. They have been repainted using eco-friendly paints from Earth and Reed, our local sustainable building supplies store. We've sourced a Victorian desk and an Edwardian tub chair, both via Ebay and both local, to complement the character of the room. Being the artistic one, Mosaic has very much enjoyed choosing the paint and pigments, and mixing it all up. We've also put a new TV in the room, which is a model approved by the Energy Saving Trust. We've also largely completed our entry into the business awards for 'Suffolk - The Greenest County'. We spent many hours burning the midnight oil to meet the deadline, only to read when we were about to submit it that the deadline had been extended by 5 weeks! Oh well, at least the majority of the work has been done. ;-) Everything below this line was implemented between our taking over the business in June 2008 and the end of November 2008. Meat - all of our meat is supplied by Mickelsen's butchers who, as well as being our local butcher and only a minute walk away, also have a local sourcing policy. Any sausages or bacon that you eat at Lattice Lodge will come from pigs which have been non-intensively reared in Suffolk or Norfolk. Fish - our kippers are supplied by Youngs on Ipswich Market. They are caught and smoked locally and are undyed. They're also pretty big! Eggs - our eggs are from the 'Happy Hens of Henley', a local village, and are free range. Mushrooms - our mushrooms are local and organic, and are supplied by a lovely chap called Adrian, who drops them off to us twice a week. Butter - much to our frustration, we've come to the conclusion that having those little wrapped portions is the only real solution in these hygiene conscious times. However, we always pay the extra for English butter (Country Life or Wykes Farm so far), rather than New Zealand butter or the generic wholesaler own brands from who knows where! Apple juice - we are supplied by Maynard House, which is a small grower based near Bury St Edmunds. At the time writing we have the Discovery flavour for our breakfast juice, although this will change with the seasons. Bread - our bread is from Martin's bakery, a 10 minute walk away (although Martin usually cycles there). In turn, they use Marriage's flour, who are based in Essex. Jams - all of the jams and preserves used at Lattice Lodge are locally produced using local fruit by Alder Tree from Needham Market. Apart from any orange marmalade, which although using oranges from Seville, is produced locally by Alder Tree. Coffee - we're afraid to say that the only coffee grown in the UK is at the Eden Project in Cornwall, and a certain Jamie Oliver has snapped that up for his Fifteen restaurant. So we've done the next best thing, and our coffee is supplied by Azzouz at The Coffee Link in Ipswich. Azzouz is passionate about coffee, and he imports the beans, roasts them himself in Ipswich, and grinds them for us on a weekly basis to retain as much of the flavour as possible. Tea - all of the tea used at Lattice Lodge is Fairtrade. Water - we reckon that transporting water by road is plain daft, so we've had a water filter plumbed in, and all rooms get 1 litre of fresh filtered water every day. Milk (1) - we use our local milkman, which costs a bit more than the supermarket, but hey, you use it or you lose it, right? And anyway, there are loads of people in our immediate vicinity who rely on this traditional service, so we're very happy to support it. Milk (2) - we're not huge fans of those little UHT milk portions on both environmental and taste grounds, so we supply each room with sufficient chilled fresh milk in a vacuum flask every day. Sugar - all of the sugar at Lattice Lodge is Fairtrade, and we use raw cane sugar, which is less processed than white, but tastes the same. Bathrooms - in order to minimise waste, we don't use those 'one use' shampoos and shower gels in the rooms. Instead, we use dispensers, and in addition, all of our shampoos, shower gels and liquid handsoaps are entirely natural and biodegradable. All of the toilet paper that we use is either 100% recycled or is FSC approved. It's also very good quality - no need to explain further! Martin has an eye for a bargain, so if you see a man manoeuvring a trolley stacked 9ft high with Nouvelle through a supermarket in Ipswich, it's likely to be him. Chemicals - we try as much as we can to minimise the use of chemicals throughout Lattice Lodge, both in terms of the liquid soap you wash your hands in, the laundry powder we wash our linen in, right through to the cleaning materials we use. Trouser presses - we don't have them! What we do have are those nice wooden 'clamp' style hangers, so if you hang your trousers upside down from them overnight, it does pretty much the same job. Food waste - as all of our breakfasts are cooked to order, we have relatively little food waste. But we have a large composter, and also a wonderful invention called a 'Green Cone', which is a bit like a composter but reduces meat, fish and sauce etc. waste to water and C02. Magic huh? Also, all teabags and coffee grounds used during breakfast are diverted to the composter. Used teabags etc. - each guest room has a ceramic pot in it for used teabags and other compostable waste. These are replaced daily. Guest waste - we even make an effort to divert as much of the guest waste away from landfill as possible. Suffice to say we don't put on head to toe protective gear, but if we see a newspaper or plastic bottle sticking out of a waste bag, we'll recycle it. Bin liners - we've just bought a load of carrier bags that biodegrade in 4 years, instead of the usual 100 years. Food waste (2) - we've just bought a couple of Bokashi Bins, which achieve pretty much the same goal as the Green Cone above, but in a slightly different way. These give the Green Cone a bit of a rest for a week to let Mother Nature get on with what it does.