We have got to the point where there is no longer a gale blowing through the workshop (yay!): doors are shutting, and fiddly insulation and air tightness detailing is well under way. The obvious next step is to start considering a heat source. Passive solar gain is already in effect – the inside is staying about 5 degrees above the external temp, which is about zero degrees at the moment (yes working out there is cold). Although that’s quite encouraging, and it will be interesting to see how much better things get when the porous straw walls are properly rendered, we are thinking that another heat source is going to be needed. Especially when doing less energetic and more technical hackery.

Having a reasonable supply of wood on the Golden Hill site, a wood burning device of some sort seems like a good, carbon neutral plan. Bongo has been wanting to have a go at making a wood burning stove from scrap materials for some time anyway so…

First step: research, think about materials, and dream up …Continue reading »

A little update and some funny happenings from the adventures of Flowering Elbow: Project workshop/lab/studio/lair!

The workshop seems to be at a confusing stage. On the one hand, as our old and beloved geography lecturers might have said,  …Continue reading »

The Flowering Elbow lab/shop is starting to take shape as a slightly less barn-like entity. Here’s a little annotated photo round up of some of our recent goings on.

The single existing block wall had quite a few steel 'bits' cemented into it that were right in the way...

…Continue reading »

Workshop building continues…. but in other, lighter news: Bongo, of Flowering Elbow struck lucky and won a years subscription to Make Magazine with the entry of some photos of the Ambient Energy Aqua Purge Device (AEAPD) in a competition jointly organised by Ponoko (3D printing and Lazer cutting dudes) and Make Magazine.

For those of you that don’t know, the AEAPD is a steampunk style clothes …Continue reading »

It’s been a while since the last post with the little slideshow of our mad day-and-night floor laying mission, and since then we have had a rest in Berlin for some wedding related festivities, fixed some of the leaks in the dutch barn’s old roof, and helped with the official open day for the Golden Hill Centre. I should make clear, the open day excluded the FE workshop, which is far from finished, but we were in attendance with a display stand, and we gave a short ‘talk’ about Flowering Elbow – our plans, hopes and dreams, that type of thing – and got some encouraging feedback and interesting questions.

Anyway, we did promise some more details on the workshop progress and floor specification, and now it has seen some circle dancing and capoeira related action we best get on with it… The order of things and …Continue reading »

The golden hill centre opens to the public

The Golden Hill Centre, the site near Carmarthen on which we are building our FE Workshop, opened its doors to the public last Saturday (16th July). While our workshop remains very much in-process, there are a number of other recently converted buildings at the Golden Hill Centre. Among them, a gallery, some therapy and seminar rooms, and an IT training suite. We, that is Flowering Elbow, were there with a little display stand, and were invited to give a talk/presentation. Dave was there snapping away with his new camera – here’s a few ‘photo-highlights’ of our day. …Continue reading »

A few major stages in the FE workshop have been made since the last post. The insulated roof is now on! The old firewood, twigs, building rubble and other organic rotting matter have been dug or carried out, and floor roughly shovelled level.
Somewhat more excitingly after a non-stop day and night mission (with a few weeks of preparation), we now have a concrete floor for the new workshop! A full write up on the specifications, technicalities and considerations of laying the insulated floor to follow, but for now Dave has put together a nice little time-lapse of the ‘main event’ for us…

And here is another little vid of Dave using the power float to …Continue reading »