Last week I spoke to Jamie about the philosophy of building his own home off the grid. In this second part of that chat we talk structure, insulation, heating and thermoelectric generators.

To begin with I took the old structure down, I finished off prefabricating the framework and I got all the materials together for the rest of the build. That’s something which I think is easy to overlook when you’re building something; is the whole getting of the materials, because there are always lots of things you don’t realise you’re gonna need. So even as much as a third of the time I’ve spent working has just been fetching stuff.

I’ve been putting it up since the beginning of June but I had already prefabricated some of the framework, the skeleton of the structure. So the first part of the process was a case of assembling what I had already made. I had some help from my two best friends in the beginning but that was mostly with putting up the framework and the exterior cladding. Since then I’ve been pretty much doing it by myself.

­­I made a base for it which sits on the ground, it has no kind of permanent foundations. It has log pillars that sit on the ground at various different lengths to compensate for the slope. The framework is put up on top of that base and then over that framework goes cladding – I used waney-edged boards for that.

Then the windows and doors went in, I chose to make the windows from scratch which was quite tricky. Ordering the double glazed glass, putting that in the frames, hinging the frames. I also built the doors from scratch once you get them in it starts to become weatherproof. After that the kitchenette with worktops and cupboards and a sink went in. Then the chimney and countless other things which I can’t remember.

It’s getting there. I just managed to get hold of a load of wool for finishing the insulation, that was quite a breakthrough. I got some from a guy I know who but it wasn’t enough to do the whole thing. I ended up going into a farm that I saw next to the road and the farmer hooked me up with another farmer and I got a load of wool. It cost £10 per dumpy bag – so a tenner per cubic meter, the other stuff I got was £20 because it cost them more to get the shearing done. But even so it’s really, really cheap compared to basically any other kind of insulation. It’s wicked, it’s a very good material to use for insulation. So the next project is getting that into the wall cavities in the cabin. I’m going to spend the rest of the week, probably the weekend getting the insulation done.

My girlfriend’s dad has been coming and building a range from scratch out of sheet metal. We salvaged sheets of metal and bought one sheet of 4ml steel – it’s been a f*cking huge project. But that’s getting there, so hopefully in about ten days time I’ll have the new woodburner in and all the insulation so the whole thing’s going to be much warmer and much more efficient with fire wood. I should be pretty nicely set up for the winter.

The burner is pretty big, its 800 ml wide, 400 ml deep, the top surface is 900ml from the ground but it’s on legs. The firebox is only one bit of that, it’s got an oven for baking things or for putting firebricks in to store heat. It re-circulates gasses so it burns more efficiently; it’s got a preheated air intake to make it more efficient, loads of fancy shit basically.

My girlfriend’s dad has been welding for 30 years and he’s made quite a lot of burners, nothing this epic, but he’s got all the kit and he’s very knowledgeable. He’s doing it as a gift basically. It’s insane, I think if he knew how big a project it was going to be he wouldn’t have taken it on actually. He’s ended up making me this absolutely crazy wood burner; god knows how many days of work it’s taken. It must be like ten or fifteen so far, we thought it was going to take a couple of days. It’s going to be an absolute beast. It’s got a back-boiler on it as well and hopefully a mate is going sort me out with a storage cylinder.

The back-boiler is like a radiator which is integrated into the back of the wood burner. So heat gets transferred from the burner to the water inside this radiator and then because the hot water drifts to the top, that pulls water in through a circuit from the storage tank which pushes the hot water out and into the storage tank and so it keeps circulating – it’s called a gravity feed system.

When the burner goes cold it works the other way, the radiator starts letting heat out into the space. After the fire goes out you’ve still got something releasing heat into the space so that in the morning the temperature inside the cabin hasn’t equalised with the temperature outside. So it’s old technology really, its an old idea, the Victorians used to do it – big radiators that were gravity fed.

For sure it’s the hardest thing to be cold in the morning and when you’re tired and you’ve just woken up you don’t wanna have to f*ck around lighting fires you just want to get straight on having a cup of coffee, and you know, have a fag and some breakfast.

I suppose a typical day would be waking up, having a coffee and breakfast and then normally I’ll have to go and fetch something from the builder’s merchants or a DIY shop. Than back to the cabin and crack on with whatever needs to be done. Most recently that’s been working on a round window which goes in one of the gable ends where the bedroom is. It’s been quite a big project – because it’s round everything has to fit together so that was quite tricky.

In the evenings I cook, make some nice dinner, sometimes relaxing, reading, wasting time on the internet on my smartphone. Or making music. Music is a big focus of my life, so I’m writing and practicing in the evening.

I’ve got a solar panel which is connected to a leisure battery and I’m using 12v led lighting. Most of the appliances apart from my laptop can be charged by USB so that’s my digital radio, smartphone, tablet, and speaker. Those things are all low-voltage appliances which makes it a lot more efficient because you don’t have to use an inverter which is something that loses energy for you.

Hopefully I’ll be generating some electricity from the range as well, I’ve been looking into these things called thermoelectric generators which basically use heat to generate electricity. So that will be something which is connected to the woodburner and the temperature differential from the inside to the outside of the gadget generates electricity. So that’s pretty cool, something which will hopefully feed into the whole electrical system.

Because I’ve been there for the whole process, every part of the building has meaning to me because it was something that I did, something that I made, so there is experience attached to the material. I can remember drilling into my thumb by accident when I was making the windows, I can remember the five or ten times I had to readjust a leak in the roof, so I’ll never forget that image of that part of the roof. All of these different things – it gives meaning to an inanimate object I suppose, when you’ve had an experience with it.

Next Sunday we have the story of Leo. He went from busking and eating out of bins to being the captain of a millionaire’s super yacht! It’s a great story – be sure to catch it.