I havent told you all what I've been up to in my new kitchen, we've added a little lean to to the front of the caravan, after some large piece of metal sheating hit the side of the caravan and ripped a hole through it.. so we decided to use the old lorry back that we used as our patio, turning it into the base of our new kitchen, using fridge lorry panels we built the walls up and some rejected roofing sheets, a couple of old windows, some old caravan lining sheets for the internal walls, and a kitchen we bought o ebay for £60 hey presto my new kitchen....
There was one thing missing, which I didnt know about till we went to the last Coed y Dinas farm sale.. A Rayburn, I bid £65 and couldnt believe I was the winning bidder.....
Before I had paid for it a man offered me £250, I was tempted and told him if he gave me £350 I would deliver it, luckily after thinking about it for a while he decided not to go for it... So we brought it home and built a heat retaining wall, or heat safe behind it and 2 slabs under it, and there it sat, whist we tried to ebay the flu pipes, imposible.. then we looked at Welshpool Coed y dinas farm shop, and Derwas' but each pipe started at about £40, too much for us to afford, so clever old Joe went of to the metal man, Jermans of Cyfronydd, nice old boy, known him for ages and he cuts the steal too. .. For £30 odd. Joe had bought all the pipe he needed and a lovely bend one too, he welded it all together, and hey presto one perfect working flu pipe....
Years ago, in Shrewsbury we spotted a skip with some fancy stainless steal flu pipe and cap cowel thingy in , so after asking the gent, he let us take it, to the disgust of the local scrap man driving past, who slammed on his brakes and tried to take it from us but to no avail, it was ours.... its been sitting in the useful one day pile and now its come in... we popped the cowel on the top of out flu pipe and it works just fine,
We've been struggling to get our head around the plumbing, but maybe we will get there, we have recyled old radiators, copper cylinder and expansion tank to make it complete, but so far we are using it without finishing the job...
I'm so in love with my rayburn and at last my kitchen is finished except for putting the lyno down, its wonderful, my rayburn saves so much money, I cook on it, in it, it heats us wonderfully, we are so warm, if not too warm.. we have to open the back door!!! it drys my clothes much faster than the dryer, it makes me happy, it produces lovely ash and soot for my veg patch... i'm in love!!!
Every one should have a rayburn, I have decided to have a savings fund, every week I will put some of the money it, that the ~Rayburn has saved me, as I want to buy a much bigger Hungarian ceramic, self build fire kit, they are beautiful to look at and you can build them to what ever design you want, mine will encorperate, a huge oven, a slow oven, a cooking plate, a smoke chamber for curing sausage etc, a clothes drying area and an in built, wood drying unit which will blow warm air around the logs so they are lovely and dry before you burn them, thats my design, the output on our rayburn at the moment, running on just tick over not roaring away, with wood, not much coal etc. we measured at 80 degrees c.. now thats amaizing..... Every day Joe goes and cuts 6 or 8 logs splits them and puts them in the rayburn oven to dry, so its so easy to maintain and not at all dirty....yipee....
Ive just been sitting in frot of it reading my slef sufficient books deciding how lucky we are being able to have the chancce to feed our selves from our land... We are going to become Tom and Barbara Good in mind set.... We will produce everything we can and I'm making plans for a compost loo.... this is going to be such a good year for us....honest...
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