Pluspuu Finnish homes

Sooz found a Finnish company that makes a range of prefabricated homes.

Pluspuu's website has a whole bunch of different designs. I've had a lot of fun clicking through all of their photos.

A possible fireplace?

One thing our recent visit showed us was that we would really need a fireplace if we ever want to spend time at our house in the cold weather. I've written about fireplaces many times on the blog but I've not seen one that made me think "wow"!

Marcia sent me a photo of a fireplace with the "wow" factor. It's by Focus fireplaces, who do a number of high-fashion models.  This one is the Slimfocus, and it's gorgeous:

One company in Sweden sells these fireplaces and I've contacted them for information. My fear is that it will be very expensive, but we'll see. I will report back.

UPDATE: I heard from them. The base model is 117,000 kronor (over $14,000). Installation is extra. I don't think I'll be buying one...

We're back!

We managed to get out of Gatwick before the forecasted snowfall and accomplished a straightforward train-airport-bus-boat journey straight to our house. As I thought, the house was warm but not exactly toasty when we arrived. In fairness, it was a tough task for our luftpump to warm up our house from such a cold start. A few hours with the radiators and all was well.

The house was, as usual, in fine shape. There was about 6 inches of powdery snow on the deck. We were able to sweep it away easily. It was strange (for me at least) to be at the house and not have lots of projects. Fortunately, I had lots of emails to keep me busy!

Friday was grey and miserable outside but Saturday was sunny and beautiful. We had our usually wonderful dinner at Annika and Olle's house on Saturday night, and we watched Melodifestival as well. Before we left on Sunday morning, we watched the Vasaloppet on TV, which was a lot more entertaining than we expected.

I have a photo page of our icy island for anyone interested.

A weekend visit

We're going to make a rare cold-weather visit to our stuga at the end of the month. Now that we have our remote-control luftpump, we can have the house nice and toasty for our arrival.

I'll be sure to post lots of photos of winter life on the island!

We've arrived!

This was one of our rare trips in which we want straight from London to the house. We left Gatwick at 9:30 and were at the stuga before 5. We even had plenty of time to do a bit of grocery shopping at the central station, and have a beer at the new restaurant at Stavsnäs harbor!

The house was in great shape as usual. I was able to warm it up in advance with my internet-enabled luftpump, so we were cozy very quickly.

We're only here a few days. My main task is to cover up our boat, although Olle seems to have done a lot of the work for me already!

Rope railings

I've posted last year about my desire to add a railing to our deck.

Originally, I thought of something more temporary but the more I think about it, such a big deck needs something substantial.

I have some leftover 95x95 posts (equivalent to an American 4x4) which would make perfect stanchions. The internet has provided me with plenty of information on how to fasten such posts.

I've also bought a few rope samples from Amazon. I plan to do a bit of experimenting on our next visit and will advise my progress on the blog.

Returning next week

We'll be leaving in a week from for our usual Eastertime opening up of the stuga. We're going to have Friday in the city so we can be at our leisure, and take the later afternoon boat to Aspö with all the weekenders.

I have a few projects to work on, nothing too big, but I will have plenty to report on the blog, I promise.

Our remote control Luftpump should have the house nice and toasty for our arrival! We can't wait.

Hello Again from Aspö

We've had a busy couple of days. Our bag didn't arrive with us Friday night so we didn't make it to Aspö until Sunday afternoon. We were able to have a great dinner with Marcia and Rutger on Saturday night, however!

Everything is fine with the stuga. I spent yesterday on a surprisingly complicated project to relocate the TV antenna. A tree was blocking the signal from its old location, so I decided to fix it properly and move it to another part of the roof.  That took the whole day of going up and down the ladder, and boy, do I feel it this morning! But all's well that ends well and our TV signal is much better. The weather yesterday was superb and it's looking decent for the rest of the week.

I't's the longest day of the year today- the sun rises at 3:30 and sets after 10PM. I found a cool solar graph for Stockholm. Today is the centre line:

The midsummer celebrations begin in earnest later in the week, so more to report on then!

Another webcam

When I visited the house a couple of weeks ago, I left behind a second webcam to go along with my moose-cam. I set one high up on a shelf so I can have an eye on the inside of the house. Here's a recent look at its view.

There's not much to see, really. At night it's ghostly grey. Frankly, it mostly makes me pine for our little stuga.

More practically, though, I have moved my Netatmo weather station into the bathroom. Now I can have a check of the temperature of my 'warm room' over the winter. I suppose the next step will be the ability to actually change the temperature after I check it. I will look into that.

I'm on my way!

First, we will be stopping by in London to visit friends. It's the weekend of the London Marathon. I won't be joining the runners; I ran it in 2001. (I plan to save my energy to run the Stockholm marathon for a fourth time, in 2020!)

We'll fly to Stockholm in a few days, and then make the schlep to Aspö with all our stuff in time for the Valborg weekend.

I always look forward to seeing the house after closing it for the winter. Ole and Annika have taken good care of it, or course, and I've received many pictures over the past few months. But being back again for the first visit of the year is a real joy for me.

I'll get a photo page up as soon as I can. We don't have any big projects, rather lots of little things going on. There will be an island cleanup on the next two weekends, and I'm looking forward to pitching in and helping my neighbours. Stay tuned!

Window over the door?

One thing we've noticed in our house, especially during our visits in the spring and fall, is that it can get fairly dark inside. We get all sorts of light from the glassed-in front of the house, for sure. Inside, though, by the front door and our garderobes, it's much darker.

I've installed a light over the front door, of course. Another idea would be to have a window in that space.

A high window, one above eye level, is referred to as a "clerestory" window. They are designed to bring light, and sometimes ventilation, into a room without providing a view or compromising privacy.

Viktor has such a window on his x-house. I found a photo and added a helpful arrow to point it out.

We could add a window like this pretty easily. I talked to both Stefan and Willie; it's a straightforward matter of taking a chain saw to cut out a rectangle and fitting a simple non-opening window. It wouldn't impact the integrity of the house, although Sooz is leery of cutting any holes. I've added an exceedingly crude photo illustration of where such a window might go, complete with another yellow arrow.

Another option is to have a window in the door. In fact, Olle has a spare window, which he's given me.

It's a proper door window; triple-glazed and it weighs a ton! I'm holding it up in the photos to give an idea of where it might go.

Olle says putting it in the door is simple, and of course I trust him. Cutting a hole in the door instead of the house would be simpler, and wouldn't be a permanent change either.

One drawback of a door window is that it might reduce our privacy a bit. I could install a shade or curtain of some sort, but I'm not too sure how that might work. 

Either way, it'll me a nice project to delve into later this year!

Where to place a luftpump?

I posted a while back in September about adding a Värmepump to our house for heating (and cooling). Both Olle and Peter read my post and wanted to talk to me about it when I was over in October.

They both have a lot of experience with these units; in fact, Olle used to work for a company that sold them. They told me the placement of a heat pump was very important. I had intended to put it on the kitchen wall, as my little sketch shows:

The problem with installing it here is that airflow (as indicated by my red arrows) can only reach the central area. I can't direct air into the bathroom or either bedroom, so only part of the house benefits directly.

Peter said the idea setup would be to put it in the center of the house:

Although it would be most efficient for air circulation, it's not possible, as that wall of the house is all glass, so there's no place to mount the fan unit.

The third option would be to mount it on the opposite wall:

That gets air most everywhere, except, perhaps, the guest bedroom. However, one big drawback of doing this is what happens outside. That wall is the front of the house. I'd have to attach a decent- sized pipe along the front of the house down through the deck to the fan unit below. That would be unsightly, at best. Also, having the fan unit beneath the house at the front makes it visible from our new deck.


I'd have none of these problems with my original installation idea. The back of the house is not visible or trafficked. The fan unit could be installed safely and quietly out of the way. We would lose some of the whole-house efficiency of a front-wall installation, but it would look a lot cleaner.

The advice from Olle and Peter is excellent, but I wonder if I really need to worry about heating the whole house. We can heat our bedroom pretty easily with a small radiator, a nice comforter, and perhaps a bit of cuddling.

I will give this a bit more thought on these winter days. It is very good to have valuable input from my neighbors!

Happy Boxing Day!

We received a photo from our neighbors Raymond and Eva. I'm glad they visited. I love the picture, and I'm glad to see the deck is still standing!

Electricity analysis

I received a letter from Vattenfall the other day. Two years have passed and it's time to renew my contract.

They do a good job of providing analytical information on my account webpage. I find it fun to delve into all kinds of data about my electricity use. (Everyone has their definition of "fun", I guess!)

I made the chart shown above, which compares my electrical use as measured against heating degree days. Degree days are a tool used to calculate how much heating (or cooling) is needed for a building. A day's average temperature is measured against a base of 65°F. One day with an average of 60° would count as five heating degrees. A much colder 5° day would count as 60 degrees. Adding the daily sum for a month (or a season) gives an accurate picture of how often—and, crucially, how much— a building needs to be heated over a given time. (The same process is used to measure cooling days needed, which is important in Texas, but not Sweden.)

The European Environment Agency has a great chart showing the falloff in heating days in Sweden and Finland over the last 30 years. It's pretty clear proof of global warming, if you ask me. I also found a useful website for US/Canada that shows detail on heating and cooling days for any location, going back 20 years.

My chart confirms the obvious- there's a strong correlation between how cold it is, and how much energy the house uses. Delving into the Vattenfall data provides more detail, and my stay at the house this past March was eye-opening:

This shows my energy usage that month, along with the daily temperature. It tells two things very clearly. First, I picked a bad time to visit! I was there exactly during the coldest days of the month.

Secondly, warming the whole house used about 65 kilowatts each day. This represents an incremental cost of about $9.25 just to keep the house warm on one cold winter's day.

For our infrequent visits in the cold weather, this is fine. After all, our house is fundamentally a summer cabin. But there are things we might do to provide more efficient heating. More on this subject soon!

Painting, the final chapter

I posted about three weeks ago about how much we liked Ove's paint job on the front of the house. Not only have we protected the wood, the house looks great, and it smells good, too!

I asked him for a quote to do the other two facades. The short side still looks perfect, but the back of the house has an issue to address.

We've kept the trees around back; many of them are quite close to the house. The shade and moisture there has allowed a bit of green growth. I hesitate to say mold or algae, but it's clear the wood there needs to be brushed off and protected.

From the wood's point of view, the front of the house was clearly too hot & dry, and the back appears to be too shady and wet. Thankfully, linseed oil paint can fix both of these problems!

Ove's price to paint the house was high by Texas standards, but not really by archipelago rates. The best news is that he thinks he can be done before we return in July! It will be great to have that all done.

We decided not to paint the guest house right now; we have to economise in some ways, and it's a simple enough job that we can do it ourselves, perhaps next year.

UPDATE: They've already started. I caught a glimpse of the workers on my dropcam, and Annika sent me a photo of the back of the house with the caption "looking good"! So it will all be done by the time we arrive, for sure.

The painting is done

Our painters, Ove and Leif, came by this morning and polished off their paint job.

We are very pleased with their work. Not only were things done neatly and professionally, but the colour itself is just what we were hoping for.

Ove told me the wood was very dry, and that it readily absorbed the linseed oil paint. I'm glad we got it done, for protective as well as aesthetic reasons.

I am thinking very seriously about painting the rest of the house, as well as the little house, too. Ove and I talked about doing that, and he will be sending me a quote.

A messge from Lars today

I received a bunch of info from our handyman Lars today. He is almost finished with washing and sealing our deck, and he is very happy with the results so far.

Through the miracle of iPhone technology, he sent along a little video of the process. It's obvious the deck is much lighter underneath the scrubbed portion! We are looking forward to seeing it in person in just under three weeks.

I don't believe the painting will be done by the time we arrive, however. It's not yet consistently warm enough to paint safely. Who knows? I might be able to be part of the painting process when we're there.

Lars the handyman

I've mentioned hiring a handyman, Lars Dahlin, to do a few things around our house. I posted recently about our discussion to fix a few leaks, but what Lars and I talked about a lot was cleaning the deck. He's an expert at helping restore island decking to clean condition.

Note: not our deck!!

Lars' secret is a long and patient washing with a scrubber, followed by Thompson's Water Seal. This will brighten and clean up our deck, and lock in the new look for at least a few years.

Sooz and I really want the deck to look less grey, so we are going to ask Lars to do that for us. I found a photo that represents the kind of change we want to see.

The other thing Lars and I have talked about doing is painting the front of the house. I've blogged about that ad nauseum, so I won't go into it any more here. Suffice it to say we'll be using the medium-grey linseed oil paint, and there will be a lot more on that subject coming up!

A visit from Wille

I've neglected to report on a visit to our little house by our very own Wille in late November.

When I spoke to Lars Dahlin on my last visit, we reviewed the water leaks around a couple of windows around the house. He suggested I call Willie as he thought they were pretty bad.

I did, and sent him a few photos. He called Stefan at X-House and they agreed it needed to be looked at. Stefan gave Willie a few supplies and suggestions and he went out to our house to seal the windows (and door) at the front of the house.

He texted me these 4 photos of his handiwork. Willie did say he will probably come back in the summer with his tool box and we will look more closely.

It's likely I will be out at Aspö more this summer, so it would be good (and educational) for me to work together with him on addressing any other leaks!

Hello to all the nice people from Cabin Porn

I had blogged back in August about a drool-worthy website of cabins around the world, cabinporn.com. I sent in a photo of our little stuga but didn't hear back.

I visited as usual today, and lo and behold, there it is! A lovely Christmas image of our house is now listed with all of the other beautiful cabins on the site. It looks like a number of people have made their way this blog from the Cabin Porn link.

For those interested in learning more, the introductory posts are a good summary of our project.