New slates found!

We rescued as many slates as we could when we took our roof down in 2015, we probably have around 9000 of them stacked in odd corners. But we did break quite a few, some are in bad condition and our new roof is bigger than the old one – we raised it up by 45cm and the rafters extend down to cover up the concrete blockwork. We will need to buy new ones to make up the difference. On the plus side, putting photovoltaic panels directly on the sarking on our south-facing roof will save hundreds of slates. We have no idea how many we would need, it will become clear after we start the slating.

A separate issue is that building standards (BS5534) mean we cannot re-use our half-slates (that are less that 150mm wide at the narrowest point), for butting up to our parapets and running up the valleys between sections of roof. We need several hundred slate-and-half sized ones instead. The old slates are 18” x 9” (460mm x 230mm), the nearest equivalent today is 500mm x 250mm (500mm x 375mm for the slate-and-half), so we will need to trim them to size and roughen the exposed edges.

We really struggled to find a good match, they all have different colours, patterns, fracture patterns, lustres, hardness, colour-fastness and levels of impurities. I was genuinely surprised when a long-shot blue-grey Chinese slate (Fesco Blue Grey from the Natural Slate Company) turned out to be The One. It is very subtly bluer in colour but everything else matches, as far as I can tell from small samples of old & new. And it is the second-cheapest one we found, £1.20 for the standard, £3.00 for the slate-and-half. It comes with a 75-year guarantee, which we would have to pass through the family as an heirloom.

We will use the slate-and-half ones in amongst the old slates, but will probably put any new single-sized ones on the west wing roof that overlooks our neighbour, which we will not really see. If we end up ordering more than we need, we will hang on then until re-roof the bothy.

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More on timber for windows and floors

We discovered the website of the Association of Scottish Hardwood Sawmillers (http://www.ashs.co.uk/) back in September and I picked through it, for a round half-dozen possible suppliers of timber for windows. I emailed each supplier, explaining what I wanted. I had a quick response back from one of them, to say that he had sold his business and had moved to Devon, but he gave me the contact details for his successor, who I also emailed. Other than that, it all went quiet for a week or two. I had expected that I would need to phone up and chivvy them along.

I did get a response, un-prompted, from Abbey Timber, near Duns in the Scottish borders. They suggested ash at £1200+VAT per cubic metre or douglas fir at £700+VAT per cubic metre. This sets a very handy base price of c. £5,000 or £3,000 respectively, for all our windows and doors. This is quite a bit better than the £6,000 or so that we were expecting and ash is one of my preferences anyway. The douglas fir proposal was a bit left-field for me, I checked with Ric and he was positive about it.

It also made us think more about solid timber flooring. We decided early on that the ground floor would be tiles (kitchen area and bathrooms) and engineered hardwood boards. The latter being more stable with underfloor heating than solid timber. Upstairs, where we expect to have radiators, we decided on carpets over chipboard panelling. In which case we would not be looking around for solid wood flooring. I factored all this into my costings and had allowed no more than £30 per square metre, average, for floor coverings.

We discuss with Ric the pros & cons of timber flooring upstairs, over the summer – he was enthusiastic, I was wary about adding cost. Thinking more about it, I conclude that I had assumed that solid timber would have to mean hardwood and that it would be too pricy. In fact douglas fir makes very good flooring and we could keep within the £30psm limit even with comparatively luxurious 1” (25mm) planking. On looking at the Abbey Timber website, I see they do prepared 25mm T&G planking from £24+VATpsm. So that is a definite possibility.

To further muddy the water, Ric suggested using underfloor heating upstairs, with solid wood floors. He gave us tips to ensure that it does not go horribly wrong, including using thinner planking. This would, of course, apply equally to downstairs. So Abbey Timber do hardwood flooring starting at £28+VATpsm. I looked at engineered timber prices and was a bit surprised/shocked that whilst you can get (3-strip) boards at £27incVATpsm, single-strip boards are nearer £40incVATpsm upwards.

So my assumptions that solid wood was not affordable downstairs may be wrong. Because we will use a heat pump, our heating water will never be above 35c and will run most of the time, so we would not expect problems with wood warping due to the heating.

So yes, it is all up in the air…