Autumn!

Just to quickly follow up on the last blog post, we did indeed have a lot of decorating done whilst we were away, and the business was closed for the best part of 3 weeks. Our usual decorator did the hall, stairs and landing, and a new one did the living room. Suffice to say that we are very pleased with the results, so if anyone needs a good decorator who is experienced with 'eco-paints', then get in touch and we'll give you the contact details.

We had a large crop of tomatoes, but due to the odd weather patterns, very few ripened, so we made about 40 tons of green tomato chutney. We'll have more time to nurture them next year, so fingers crossed that a few more guests will have genuinely home grown tomatoes on their plates next year.

In the week before we got married, one of our hot water cylinders decided that it would be a good time to start leaking.

Thanks Murphy. A quick conversation with our hugely capable heating engineer resulted in our needing to source not one, but two new tanks, as the other tank was probably the same age and it made sense to replace both at the same time. A little internet research led us to Copper Industries, based in Northern Ireland, who made us a couple of very high performance tanks in bespoke sizes. A few simple sums showed that for every extra 10cm tall that we had the tanks made, it was about another 30 litres of hot water that we could store. They are also fitted with 'finned' coils, which mean that hot water replenishment is as good as instantaneous. They are also extremely well insulated. All this together should mean better performance combined with lower gas bills. It also meant another dent in the bank account. Ho hum.

The biggest recent decision we've made on the environmental front is that our electricity supplier. We inherited the tail end of an absolutely stonking 5 year deal from the previous owners (thanks Pauline and Bill), which kept our costs low and enabled us to spend money on insulation etc. That deal ends on 31/10/10, and true to our eco-principles, we have made the decision to buy a 100% renewable supply from Ecotricity. We should add however that we did a market wide comparison, and although the deal we've chosen is costing us a LITTLE more, it absolutely ISN'T costing us a LOT more. Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is.

We think that's it for now.

We hope to welcome you to Lattice Lodge in the near future.

Martin and Mosaic