Christmas and beyond

The end of 2013 and Christmas

The two newest Camels had milestone birthdays, Mark's 50th and Holly's 30th -- both of which were celebrated in raucous style in the run-up to Christmas.

Family members came to stay, so there was much readying of the house to make it homely and comfortable, including this rather handy handle. This is the first step towards making the house more accessible for those who can't use stairs.

A useful handle for an elderly relative, installed by Mark in the pre christmas spruce-up

Mould has made an unwelcome return in places. You can see the problems we have in the newer parts of the house here, where the gypsum plaster is making our damp problems worse. We reckon that re-pointing the brickwork on the outside of the house will help prevent this, which is on the agenda in spring, and some work to remove external render is set to be done in the next few weeks - see below for more details.

The downstairs loo, cleared of mould and much of the paint!

Work on the hallway has gathered momentum ahead of the re-opening of our healing room in March - more updates on that in due course. In the meantime check out our stripping skills:

The stairway half way through paint-stripping

The paint here was almost a centimetre thick in places...  also lead-based, so we needed to wear masks

This will look great when sanded and finished

Nearly there: The hall, stairwell and landing needs to be ready for the grand re-opening of our healing room, which will be at the end of March

The garage space has been transformed already into an actually functioning workshop space, with much help from Camel friends Ken and Jim [John's dad]. The main issue in here is the structural integrity of the garage as this outside wall is not sturdy enough to bear the load of all the wood on its own. For this reason, we put in vertical supports that run from the floor all the way up to the ceiling joists, and mounted the brackets onto those.

The new work bench, thanks to the work of Jim. Those lower horizontals are made from reclaimed stairs

Much of our building wood has now been stowed away, making for more work-space

The whole of the garage, a work in progress

Aside from those ongoing projects, plenty of other things have been occurring, such as maintaining this wood store, which we reinforced as it was in bad shape on the right hand side.

Our log pile, with cut wood ready for seasoning

A friend of the co-op has helped us cut the log-pile down to size

We also saw the arrival of a new and rather large item: a beautiful piano. [Ed: Squeeeeee! I haven't played properly in years!!] Once it's tuned, the house will be full of the music of... well, me [Sue] and whoever else wants to learn or improve with me!

Our nearly-new piano! Any tuners out there?

Helen's beautiful solstice banner and our tree.

Into 2014

Work Weekend: 11-12 January

We're having a work weekend next week should any Suffolk-based readers of this blog fancy lending a hand. Food and drinks will be provided. The plan is to tackle the immediate damp problems of the newer parts of the house before they get any worse. People will be around to offer advice and guidance to less confident DIY-ers who want to learn new skills. All welcome.

Investors' Day: 2 February

We're also getting ready for an investors' day to show everyone who backed us when we set up our co-op how we're getting on. If you have invested, you should have been sent details of this - if you haven't received anything from us please get in touch asap so we can update your contact details and tell you about it. We hope to see all of you here next month!

Underground activity

So once again I've neglected the blog! Lots has been going on despite the online inactivity. In the months running up to Christmas we were concentrating on our subterranean spaces, making them weather proof and drying them out as much as possible.

In 23 basement - which we are going to turn into a band practice space - we've finished making the window from glass bottles and lime mortar mix. First we collected up our empty wine bottles cut the bottles in half using an electric tile cutter and fixed the bottom halves together using... erm... duct tape. We aren't sure how waterproof or durable this will be yet but due to time constraints we went with it.

Light tubes ready to be lined with foil and duct taped together

Mark preparing one of the light tubes in the tool room

The next step was building up the layers of lime mortar and layering up the bottles in a line. There are two layers of bottles. 

First layer of light tubes

John mixing the lime mortar

Not sure who this is! Working the mortar from outside the house to get the front straight

In between the two layers of bottles we laid pipes to help with the ventilation and air flow of the house. This means that once we start using the band practice space all the hot air will be able to flow out, taking moisture with it. We kept them flush with the wall by butting them up against a plank of wood. It was all finished by the beginning of November.

In 27 basement we swept out all the damp soil and debris, and friend of the house Ken hooked up an old CPU fan [from a computer] to an old lamp and placed it in a duct to improve air circulation.

Ken, Sue, and John planning how to dry out the basement 

A cunning plan to draw out the damp air

We knocked out the middle separator so we could install the condensation-catcher

So that concludes the underground activity post which I began in November!

We also had a new member - plus dog - join us, meaning we are completely full. Holly - that's the human one - and Loki moved in at the beginning of November. 

More on all the other stuff that's been going on to follow...

Work days, new members, and plans for the future

The House of Random Camel has a new member! Mark's moving in over the next few days, and has designs on turning 27 basement into a space for home brewing, which will be fantastic! It also means there is a new urgency to tidying up the basement.

In 27 basement at the moment we've got issues with damp, so first the mission is to clean it up and reduce mould. We now have a luxcrete street level block window in both basements [thanks to friends and family] so we can begin the cleanup & de-damping. The main challenge is making sure there is air flow so we get the damp out of the basement without causing problems elsewhere. One suggestion we've had is to use heat convection to draw the damp air up through an air duct. This'll be really important when we're using it as a brewing space, because the moisture created by the brewing will add to the damp.

27 basement

In 23 basement we are working on a line of bottles and mortar [above the luxcrete block] for light and installing a ventilation system [or systems] to help with air flow. As this space is going to be used for musicians and band practice we have the extra complications of soundproofing and acoustics to contend with. If you're in a band [or even if you're not] & want to support what we're doing, please get in touch. We've pencilled in a work weekend for Sat 26th & Sun 27th October, so if you fancy coming down to work on it with us that would be great. I'll post it up when we've got a definite plan together.


At our last party and work weekend Gem and John put compost bins together using polycarbon, old pallets and willow to help move air around them. We've been using them! and they serve the purpose much better than the old plastic one did. We also started stripping the paint from the windows outside to prepare for winter and will hopefully have all the downstairs windows done before it gets cold, which would be nice!

compost bins

our recycling system...

A blast from the banner making years [before my time]

The hallway and landing in 27 are looking better all the time as we strip old wallpaper and cover up wires. We figured less people want to book a lovely room to use for therapies if they have to get to it through a badly decorated hallway and landing. So we've decided to relaunch the healing room when the landing area is looking tip top and the woven artwork we started back in April is ready to go on the wall - I'll keep the blog updated about that too.

In other news, the House of Random Camel was one year old this September! We also had a few birthdays, and we said goodbye to two original co-op members and friends. Gemma's cycling round Europe to learn more about eco-building, and Mike has moved to Germany with his girlfriend. Alex's got more photos of the big birthday/anniversary/send-off party on his flikr.

So, this means we still have room for a new co-op member! If you believe in what we're trying to do/want more info/think you might want to be part of it, email us.

Mega update!

Repointing - this is what our wall looked
like after scraping & wire brushing all
the old mortar out [except upright]

Everyone has been busy since May, which is great, but we've neglected the blog a bit, so here's a quick rundown. Look what we've been up to...

herbs & pallet benches [bike sculptures were from last year]

Finished repointing!

Mixing new mortar for the repointing,
using a sharp sand and lime mix

Lots of lovely people came to help on our work weekends, skill-share, and keep us company over stews & potato cakes. We've been stripping wallpaper, repointing, tiling, plastering, and swotting up on straw bale insulation at an exciting straw bale build in Saxmundham. In other news, we had to rip out our old cooker - which luckily didn't kill us - and put in a big new one with a hefty 8 hobs, which was kindly donated to the house by our brilliant friend, Alex. So, happily, it turns out we now have a super oven to make amazing communal meals with! There is a bit of debate about the energy consumption of the fan, which looks like some kind of spaceship.

Our garden suddenly sprang into life and we've been growing herbs, tomatoes, strawberries, kale, and some other, less useful, but rather pretty things in it...

Frankie's surplus of willow meant we learnt a bit about keeping it alive and making useful things, like a fence, a veg bed, a bike shelter, and... er... decorative tetrapack fence panels...

willow and tetrapack fence panels 

bed of peas!

We had a couple of parties too...

In June we threw a party to raise awareness about the declining bee population, and when people went away they took the wildflower seeds we gave them, which some of them planted... We know this because someone actually sent us a picture - check out the happy bee!

So to celebrate summer & crack on with preparing for winter we had a garden party featuring all the usual party stuff, and a spectacular 7-hour DJ set from the Decibel Kid, followed by some slightly shaky DIY the next day. We had eco-friendly compost bin-building, stripping flaky paint off the windows and sanding them down, and a bit of work on the basement, which we are turning into a band practice space! Watch this blog for more updates on that... We used pallets, willow, and poly-carbon to make the compost bins. Hopefully I'll get some pictures of them up soon.

The House of Random Camel once again desires a new member!

Due to one of us moving on to pastures new there is a space opening up for someone new in September. Everyone interested in living as part of an urban communal house committed to ecological sustainability, activism, and working towards social change, please get in touch with us about it! If you want to know more, have a look at our previous post from February. Everything except the description of the room is the same - see below. Also, we have given in to twitter and occasionally post things to keep the internet gods happy.

Rent for this room is £55 per week [still within the local housing benefit rate] and there is still no council tax to pay. The room is 12ft x 15ft, with a metal double bed included. It is on the first floor, and it has two windows overlooking the street, facing north west.

The healing room is now open! Thanks to the lovely people who came to the opening, to Alex who made this video and took lots of pictures, and to everyone who has used it so far! We still need more bookings, so spread the word.

Launch of the Healing Room!

You are invited to the Camel House at 27 Foundation St, on Sunday March 31st between 2-5pm

To celebrate the opening of our newly decorated massage and therapy space, we are having a Therapies Taster Day - tasters in massage: shiatsu and full body and more - and tasters in fine beverages: bring your own to share! Tensions will be soothed and energies will flow as free as the homebrewed wine and caffeine-free tea. A multi-coloured ribbon will be cut upon the threshold.

The Healing Room wants you! If you are a practitioner in any form of bodywork; shiatsu, massage, reiki, kinesiology, reflexology, feldenkrais and are looking for a town centre space to rent, we have highly favourable rates. The room is big enough to move around a massage table; we have one which you might borrow and a double futon. Our reason for offering the space is to generate an income for our co-operative; our business plan works if we collect £20 pw rent from the space. Ideally this would mean us charging 20% of what you earn. For example, you charge £25 ph, you pay us £5 ph rent.
We will have a diary to arrange appointments that you can ring Mandy to book into, and someone will be at home to let you in or you can pick up a key from the Museum St Veggie Cafe.
If you are interested, please come ply your wares and meet us at the Taster day on March 31st.
All enquiries ring Mandy on 07813092605. Residents of the coop; Mandy is a studying shiatsu practitioner of 7 years, while Frankie does full body massage