Lattice Lodge Guest House - Sustainability Diary

Summer 2011

2011-10-18T11:54:00.001-07:00

Well, the first item to report is that we've been classified as one of the 50 Greenest companies in Anglia. As a result of that, we've got some lovely coverage in the East Anglian Daily Times, which mentions this blog. Hence sitting here writing it!

A quick review of our last blog first. We've definitely signed up with Haven Power with their 100% renewable biomass generated electricity, and it all seems to be going fine. As I write, Mosaic is also out at a 'Pig Club' meeting, and they are currently planning to start in late November. At the moment the work is all planning, and hence indoors. But at some point very soon it will involve building an ark for the pigs, which will be outdoor, cold work. I'll take along a flask to warm them all up.

As you will appreciate, it gets ever harder to make big strides in reducing your environmental impact, but we think we've recently made another one. As I'm Chair of the local hoteliers association, I got contacted by a company called SaveMoneyCutCarbon.com, and I assumed it was another website selling aerated shower heads and water displacement devices for toilet cisterns (we use old plastic milk cartons). And whilst it is, it is so much more. They have invested a serious amount of time - and hence money - into road testing the gear they sell. To cut a long story short Mark - the guy behind the business - lent us an EcoCamel JetStorm shower head. As a result of that test (Mosaic, who hates 'dribbly' showers, gave it the thumbs up) we have invested in 10 JetStorms for our own property, and we also - courtesy of Suffolk County Council - gave some samples to other local hoteliers.

The JetStorm shower head looks good, feels robust, and gives a hell of a shower. It's a bit noisier than a normal shower head, but it uses about 40% less water than a normal shower head. We actually just got a guest review which referred to the 'powerful shower'.

The basic fact is that water is relatively cheap. However, hot water ain't cheap, and saving potentially 40% of the hot water that is used in our showers, whilst actually enhancing the guest experience, is a no brainer. I can't remember the exact numbers, but the payback for the shower heads should be within a year (they are £40'ish each from memory).

We have also invested in a load of soaker hose and a pump to water the garden direct from the - now 1500 litres - of rainwater storage we have around the house. It saves us a bit of time, which we wish we spent sitting down instead!

Finally - not in terms of importance or achievement I hasten to add - Mosaic was recently filmed by the Green Suffolk team as part of a promotional video - you can see the results here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuD8WVjCnPI

If I think of anything else, I'll add it when I do!

Thanks for reading.

Martin and Mosaic

Spring 2011

2011-05-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since we updated our blog.

We've still been plugging away doing what we do, and we've made good progress with the garden this year. We've also just started on painting the exterior of the windows with Holkham Linseed Oil paints. This is the sane stuff we used on the porch a couple of years ago, and that still looks as good as new.

What's really prompted this update is that we got a letter from Ecotricity today advising us of a near 20% increase in our electricity rates. Ouch. So, seeing as we're on a rolling 28 day contract (hats off to Ecotricity for that at least), we got on the phone and made a couple of calls. One of the potential suppliers is an expanding local company called Haven Power. We looked at them last time round, but they failed at the first hurdle, as their sales people seemed to know very little about their own green product. A quick check of their website showed an improved set of information, so we called them, and they do have a 100% renewable product, powered by biomass. This has come in at £400 a year below the increased cost of staying with Ecotricity, so we've switched. As well as being 100% renewable still, we're also supporting a local company and local employment. That's a winner as far as we're concerned.

We've also engaged with the local Transition Ipswich group, and hope to be supporting the establishment of a 'pig club' on a small farm just a few miles away.

Our local butchers and greengrocer are already very good on local sourcing, but as a result of our recommendation, they have both just started stocking the same apple juice as we serve our guests.

Not really an eco thing, but some news hot off the press. Instead of closing down when we want (read 'need') a weekend off, we're going to be letting Lattice Lodge as a whole house on a self catering basis. Fingers crossed!

Cheers,

Martin and Mosaic.

Local Sourcing...

2011-03-11T13:23:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update to prove that our claim to use the best possible local ingredients is 100% true.

Two of our suppliers are covered in Rose Prince's column in the Telegraph today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8373066/Meet-the-fresh-young-foodies.html

Stephany provides our jam and marmalade, and Katherine our yoghurts and some of our milk.

Delicious they all are too!

Martin and Mosaic

Winter 2010...

2010-12-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Wow. Our efforts on the environmental stuff have finally received their first official recognition. To cut a long story short Suffolk County Council support a scheme called the Suffolk Carbon Charter, which businesses can apply for and receive accreditation from. We applied and got a Silver Award, and the original of the certificate below is now proudly adorning our dining room.

It was way more than we expected, as although we do a lot of things, we don't document them very well. Fortunately, and by complete coincidence, some of the people running the scheme happened to stay with us when in the area, so they could see that we're the real thing, and don't do greenwash. That doesn't mean we didn't get a whole host of suggestions as to how to achieve Gold next year though.

We were also probably a little fortunate that our Ecotricity supply started just in time for us to submit their contract to the awarding panel as evidence of our commitment.

Autumn!

2010-10-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

Crikey, apologies for being absent for a few months. It's partly due to new eco-initiatives being a bit thin on the ground - we've already done most of the major things, we believe - but also the small matter of our getting married at the end of August has been somewhat distracting.

Suffice to say that our wedding is a very 'eco' affair, with Mosaic organising such things as locally grown flowers, and Martin making sure that our local lager, Calvors, will be available at the bar.

Back to business. We have just replaced our old oven with a brand spanking new one, made in the UK by Belling. Our first attempt to have it fitted was aborted when the electrician saw how much power it needed. Which was a bit odd, as it is 'A' rated for energy efficiency. Anyway, a two week delay and a fuse upgrade later, it is now in. And it's great. We can now cook in one oven and 'hold' in another, which should ultimately mean less waste.

We have also just renewed our gas contract, so we're committed to gas for a little longer. We are however keeping up date with 'Micro CHP' units, which seem to be gas boilers that use the waste/escaped heat to power a pump which in turn generates electricity. If we wake up one in the winter to a cold house and a dead boiler, we will hopefully be knowledgeable enough to get one of these put in sharpish.

We are also closing for refurbishment for a couple of weeks, and we're once again using eco-paints from Earth and Reed in Needham Market, although we might be trying a different type of paint this time around. We'll post an update when we know how it's worked.

And that's it for now.

Cheers,

Martin and Mosaic.

April 2010

2010-04-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

Well, we've invested in a new (actually an ex fleet bike from Suffolk Cycle Tours, who are based at Alder Carr Farm in Needham Market, where we get our jams and apple juice from) bicycle for Mosaic, so with the weather being much more suited to cycling, the car is being left sat in the car park far more than it was.

The garden is springing into life again, and Mosaic has been busy planting and potting up, using a lot of our own home made compost and leaf mould. Using lessons learned from last year, we're hoping to produce a lot more of our own tomatoes this season.

We have taken delivery of our new supply of locally sourced yoghurts from Marybelle, which are proving very popular with guests.

We have also started offering the smoked salmon and scrambled egg, which has also gone down well.

March 2010

2010-03-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

Further to our previous mention in a recent month, we are now a published case study on the Suffolk Green Building Network website. We're just chuffed to have received some recognition for our efforts, and if it shows just one person that savings can be made by simple solutions then that will do us. We won't however be able to participate in the Heritage Buildings weekend, as we're planning on being on honeymoon during that period, and the relief managers will probably have enough on their hands without lots of other people wanting to be shown around and everything being explained to them.

Now that the sun has decided to shine for more than the odd hour here and there (bye bye tumble dryer, yippee!!), we're revisiting our breakfast menu, with a view to adding a few 'lighter' options. We've already decided to start stocking yoghurt from Marybelle in Halesworth, but we're still mulling over the method by which we deliver it to the guest, bearing in mind we try very hard to minimise waste and packaging. We're also planning to start offering smoked salmon and scrambled egg as a regular menu item, and until something else comes onto our radar screen, we'll be getting the fish from our local Co-op, which has a responsible fish sourcing policy.

On the domestic front, we've been preparing the veg patch for the year ahead, so guests can expect some zero food mile tomatoes on their plates again in 2010. The leaf mould collected during the autumn of 2008 will be playing a big part in this years growing plans.

February 2010

2010-02-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Well, we've just received our gas bill for January 2010, which is rather high (no 5% VAT this month!). Which has prompted us to look back at last years usage (before we had the boiler management wizardry installed). We were quite surprised to find that in both December 09 and January 10 we have used slightly more gas than the previous year. After a little thought, we closed for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year 08, so that explains why we've used more this December. After a little more thinking, we've come to the conclusion that not only has this January been a little colder than last, but actually (insulation allowing) the boiler management system will save us most energy when the conditions are less extreme, i.e. during autumn and spring, because, well, when it's this cold, all it can really do is confirm that the system needs to be running most of the time.

We have just decided to stick with our existing toiletry supplier. The business recently changed hands and is now based in Lincolnshire, so we did some research, but simply cannot come up with anything of the quality we require (let alone cost - that didn't even feature!) closer to home.

We also received a rather interesting - and flattering - call this morning. No names at this stage, but a hotelier in a nearby town has started on the 'green' route, and as they also have an old building (much older than ours, and therefore probably much more of a challenge) the advisor from the Suffolk Climate Change Partnership has recommended that they come and pay us a visit. So they're coming round next week. Fingers crossed that at least some of the measures we take here will be of benefit to them. If not, at least it's an excuse for a nice sit down and a coffee...

Oh, and we're just putting the finishing touches to another room renovation. This one is now furnished with some of our old personal furniture from our previous dwelling, plus some lovely eBay purchases. Once again we've used eco friendly paints from Chris at Earth and Reed.

January 2010

2010-01-08T05:42:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our new sustainability diary. The main reason for moving across to a proper platform is that we are now able to add images and links much more easily.

Crikey it's cold! The underfloor insulation in the office cum living room is clearly working, as it's lovely and warm in there.

Our current project is to go round all of the rooms and, where there are not already thermal linings on the curtains, we're adding them.

We just got our latest bill in, which was pretty horrific, but we take comfort in the fact that it's a lot less than it would be without the measures we've taken. Which reminds us, our October bill only had VAT charged at 5%, which we subsequently found out was because it's only once you reach a certain usage that you're deemed 'commercial'. Anything that legitimately keeps money from the tax man is good with us!

We also had the visit from the county council regarding our being a good example of managing an old building in an efficient manner. The result is that a case study is being done on us for publication to other interested parties, and also we may even be on the list of buildings included in the annual 'Heritage Open Days' in Ipswich. We think that's over egging the pudding a bit, but if it helps people understand that there are simple, practical and cost effective ways in which to save energy but still have the comfort, then we're game.