88v8
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There's this chap core drilling air vents through our 2ft thick walls... 'Can you just put a hole through this brick panel while you're here'... but it wasn't.
So here things rested for 18 months until the advent of new oven/hob prompted a return to the job. It wasn't that I didn't have a suitable fan. Now, in this context, 'suitable' means old. And before Penners observes that there's no such thing as a period fan, my approach is that everything has to be as old as I van manage... light switches, sockets, lights of course, even though some of them probably are newer than I am. Hmmm.
Courtesy of eBay, I had an NOS Vent-Axia, the 'pub' type, a superb piece of engineering whose design goes back to 1934 when it was called the Silent Six, and from a different seller an NOS controller, the transformer type giving three speeds via voltages of, errm, 190V, 230V and 260V, I think it was.
Right, there I was with this fan designed for fitting into a pane of glass, and a hole part-way through a wattle wall. This needed some careful planning. However, I don't really do planning so I did what I usually do which is to start, and then work out what I should have done as I go along.
Having installed the controller, I set about the hole.
As you can see, plenty of straw. I soon realised that stitch drilling had been quite unnecessary, as the daub could be picked out with a runcible spoon. Or a screwdriver. What brilliant building material: There was no breakaway round the hole, no crack propagation.
Eventually, we had this inside.
And outside. Nice woodworm.
And after cutting the wattles, this.
At this point, I felt a real connection with the chap who made the wall 400 years ago. He cut a hazel wand, quartered it, then as it thinned he halved it, then he used the whole wand, then when he ran out he went to the hedge and cut a shoot of elder, and there was his wattle. Fantastic.
Anyway, my plan, OK vague idea, was to clamp the fan onto the wall using studs n nuts, but that soon foundered - the wall tapered in thickness, and was only 3" thick which meant that it wouldn't even accommodate the depth of the mount plate & cowl.
Luckily, just to each side of the hole was a hazel upright into which the wattle had been woven, and I realised I could mount a board to those and clamp the fan on the board as if it had been a sheet of glass.
So I did. Half-inch ply, primed all round, brass screws
Too many pics... to be continued....now...
So here things rested for 18 months until the advent of new oven/hob prompted a return to the job. It wasn't that I didn't have a suitable fan. Now, in this context, 'suitable' means old. And before Penners observes that there's no such thing as a period fan, my approach is that everything has to be as old as I van manage... light switches, sockets, lights of course, even though some of them probably are newer than I am. Hmmm.
Courtesy of eBay, I had an NOS Vent-Axia, the 'pub' type, a superb piece of engineering whose design goes back to 1934 when it was called the Silent Six, and from a different seller an NOS controller, the transformer type giving three speeds via voltages of, errm, 190V, 230V and 260V, I think it was.
Right, there I was with this fan designed for fitting into a pane of glass, and a hole part-way through a wattle wall. This needed some careful planning. However, I don't really do planning so I did what I usually do which is to start, and then work out what I should have done as I go along.
Having installed the controller, I set about the hole.
As you can see, plenty of straw. I soon realised that stitch drilling had been quite unnecessary, as the daub could be picked out with a runcible spoon. Or a screwdriver. What brilliant building material: There was no breakaway round the hole, no crack propagation.
Eventually, we had this inside.
And outside. Nice woodworm.
And after cutting the wattles, this.
At this point, I felt a real connection with the chap who made the wall 400 years ago. He cut a hazel wand, quartered it, then as it thinned he halved it, then he used the whole wand, then when he ran out he went to the hedge and cut a shoot of elder, and there was his wattle. Fantastic.
Anyway, my plan, OK vague idea, was to clamp the fan onto the wall using studs n nuts, but that soon foundered - the wall tapered in thickness, and was only 3" thick which meant that it wouldn't even accommodate the depth of the mount plate & cowl.
Luckily, just to each side of the hole was a hazel upright into which the wattle had been woven, and I realised I could mount a board to those and clamp the fan on the board as if it had been a sheet of glass.
So I did. Half-inch ply, primed all round, brass screws
Too many pics... to be continued....now...
