The Englishman’s Castle

Just thought I’d give you a quick update on what I’m currently up to. The last couple of weekends have been spent digging, pruning, levelling and visiting the local recycling centre followed by the delivery of a ton of ballast! This ballast was then turned into the concrete base for what will be my new studio… The Englishman’s Castle (Ok, a log cabin then if you prefer).

Here comes the sun

Anyway, as I don’t tend to do these things by halves, the extra dimension to this particular home studio is that I’m hoping to have it partially solar powered! So, it’s been a few evenings swotting up on all things solar and working out what the energy consumption is of all of my equipment. Funny enough, studio equipment doesn’t actually use that much power as long as you steer clear of big power amps and mixing desks, neither of which I use any more. So for a fairly modest outlay, I’ve already bought myself some solar panels, a regulator and an invertor which will provide the 240v for my equipment. All I need now is the log cabin itself (which will be arriving any day soon) plus a deep cycle battery to run it all off.

It’s what’s inside that counts

Of course, once the outside and solar is taken care of, it will be time to kit-out the inside, and for that I’ve been looking at the excellent Ikea Hackers website. It’s really inspiring to see the weird and wonderful ways in which people bend and shape the Ikea furniture. I’ve already got my eye on some modular shelving complete with angled shoe racks which will be great for racking up my old keyboards.

Anyway, I’ve only got pictures of the concrete base (exciting!), but hope to have something more substantial to show in the next few weeks.

In the mean time, if you want to see a really cool renewable energy studio, look no further than Thomas Dolby’s Nutmeg of Consolation, a wind and solar powered studio built into an old lifeboat!