Welcome to Wychwood

15/03/05

09/12/08

I have finished redeveloping the bungalow above into a new house and garage on a 1/4 acre plot in Herts, UK.

I put this site together to chronicle the build from start to end.  This is so family members in many far-flung parts of the globe can easily keep abreast of developments and also allow other potential self-builders to share in my dream.

Please explore this site.  The latest pictures are found in ‘Progress Pictures’.

The small red square indicates the total surface area that would be required,  utilising solar thermal energy technology, to provide all of the electric power needs for the entire European Union. The larger square would sustain the entire world. (Source:- ‘EVWorld’)

Due to high photographic content of this site a broadband connection is recommended.

See the latest pics by clicking Progress Pictures, above.

Please email us here if you wish with comments, suggestions, abuse etc (not too much abuse, please).

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An Interesting Fact

The New Electric Vehicle Conversion

Not content with spending all our spare time and money building a house we also decided to green things up a bit by converting our wee van to electric drive! (See EV Conversion pages)  Unfortunately, it was wrecked by a looter during the 2011 riots after nearly 14000 petrol free miles (saving £1700 in petrol).  So, its on to EV Part 2. 

Check out the latest info and pictures on the Sebring ‘Electric SX’ kit car.

  06Jul2014 - Last Update:-  On hold whilst I faff about finishing the house!

Electric SX

I will be stripping all the electric drive bits off the shell of my poor van (below) - all of which survived unscathed - and will be re-installing them in one of these... a replica of an Austin Healey 3000, starting around Autumn 2012.  Watch this space.

Unhappily, my van was written off in a collision with a looter during the riots in Enfield on the 8th August 2011 and is no more.

Want a 7 minute primer on “Why EVs?”.  Then watch this video presented by Robert Llewellyn (yes, him... of Red Dwarf fame - it’ll take a while for anything to appear, so be patient!)

And if you now want a longer, more US-biased take on it all, try this video (this first part is 10 minutes long but the whole series of 10 runs to 92 minutes! - likewise, being a video it won’t appear immediately...).

In the meantime and sticking with the electric transport theme, I have got one of these.  Click here for more info.

10Jan2014 - Can’t charge my electric motorbike at work any more (not MPS policy - tho why no-one minded when I first bought and started charging my EV there 4 years ago - with permission - is beyond me!).  So...

My latest EV... traded in my rubbish fume-farting Ford Fiesta for this Peugeot Ion (Mitsubishi i-MiEV) in Taunton for £9k5 - 2011 with 3k4 miles on it.  Drove it back home via my brothers house in Devon.  It was ‘quite interesting’ trying out the Ecotricity-installed DC rapid chargers along the way.  I am now fully conversant with what comes after ‘range anxiety’.

06Jul2014 - Update: 8700 miles

Arguably rather goofy-looking aesthetics aside, easily the best car I have ever owned.  Acceleration is amazing, very comfortable and so smooth and quiet. And about 1.5p/mile running cost (new wiper blade costs £30 - well it is quite a big one!  But hang on...  £30 is 1200 - yes, twelve hundred - miles-worth of electricity!)

27Sept2016 - Update 22724 miles.  Still brilliant - closest it has come to servicing is for me to change the cabin filter (£8 & 5 minutes) and replace the 2 front tyres (£25 each + fitting & balancing).  I simply can’t understand why there aren’t 10s of thousands of these whizzing around our towns and cities - even rural areas.  You can buy one similar to mine in age etc for under £6k now.

May2015 - Succumbed to a mid-life crisis moment and bought a Tesla Model S.

Utterly sublime and everything Mr Musk promised is made real.

Since buying it Tesla have released the AutoPilot software update (via free, built-in GSM) and it will now quite happily drive me around the country (on the motorways at least - see the MS’ own web page here...).

I appear to be creating an EV collection...

SpaceX landing both first stages from the first launch of the Falcon 9 Heavy rocket at Cape Canaveral (sorry about the noise!).  Mars by 2025?

Meanwhile...