Barn conversion plans

The steel barns are almost down now - took a little longer than planned, but at last we can start working out the detail of what we're going to do with the semi-derelict brick barns that we're keeping. You can see the steel barns in the photo here from last spring and in the photo at the top, the lovely view that they were hiding has now been revealed.

One of these back to back brick barns is south facing, so we'll be turning this into a large indoor growing area for planting lemon trees and to take over from our little greenhouse in growing other indoor fruit and veg. We're considering sourcing reclaimed windows to contribute towards glazing the front of this and are investigating options for glazing the roof while keeping heat inside. We're intending to set up some kind of irrigation system inside and I'd really like this to be automated and gravity fed from a rainwater collection system rigged up to collect water from the roof. To get some more ideas for this building, I'm hoping to get lots of trips to stately gardens in this summer!

The second barn (shown here from the back) is going to be converted into a large workshop and storage for bikes and garden equipment. We've managed to salvage lots of structural timber from the demolished steel framed barns, so will be using this to build a framework to support a new roof for this barn. We're currently thinking about installing a turf roof. Nice to experiment with new techniques! We also want to make the most of the heat that will be generated in the attached glazed barn, so are looking at installing vents to allow heat to move from one to the other, keeping both warm.