Investment Review - September 2021

 Here's the combined portfolio summary as at 30 September :-

Investment Review - June 2021

I'm posting this brief review several weeks later than usual - I've been very busy on many fronts - but here's the Combined Portfolio spreadsheet summary at close of business on 30 June 2021 :-

click on the graphic for a larger image ...

Campervan Conversion - Part 7 - Van Tour

It's been a very long time since my last update on the campervan, but I've continued to work on it and things started to come together quite quickly towards the end, if there ever is an end to converting a van, which I doubt.

I don't suppose this project will ever be completely finished, there'll always be things to repair, modify or add, but most of what was originally intended has now been done, along with several examples of 'scope creep' in the form of stuff I just kept adding to the workload as I went along.

We've already been away on two separate week-long trips in the van, and after each we made a few modifications to the vehicle, just to make life easier and more convenient.

So this post is by way of being a Van Tour.  Twenty weeks since I bought the van, the post shows what it looks like now.

on a campsite at Aldbrough in Yorkshire ...

Campervan Conversion - Part 6 - Progress on Several Fronts

Following on from Part 5, I've been continuing with the project across several fronts.

One thing about this conversion is that it's very difficult to actually finish anything, because to complete X means that Y needs to be done beforehand and suitable provision made for Z to follow etc.

For example, it's been over a month now since we made our cabinet carcasses for the RH wall and we've now also built a similar unit to fit over the kitchen area on the LH side, but we couldn't install them permanently until we'd run all the necessary cables behind.  

We're still adding equipment to the design but I've now bought and installed all the cables I'll think we'll need, and I've also run a few extra lengths here & there for any additions we might want in the future.

So the RH wall cabinets are now fitted.  I've also been working on the control panel in the lower half of the rearmost cabinet.  It has two fascia sections, one side fixed and the other hinged for access to fuses and to be able to complete all the wiring etc.

RH wall cabinets with the control panel in blue ...

And we're making progress elsewhere, too.

Financial Planning - 2021 Annual Review

The end of March represented the 8-year point in our 10-year term 'Grand Plan'.  Here are the usual two graph plots:-

Savings Pot to Mar-21

SIPP Pot to Mar-21

There's been a good recovery from this time last year ...

Investment Review - March 2021

 Here's the usual spreadsheet updated after the market close on 31 March :-

I've been busy on many fronts during this first quarter of the year, so I've only looked at the portfolio on the last day of each month and on those specific dates between when dividend payments arrived.

Campervan Conversion - Part 5 - The Solar Panels & Major Electrical Items

This is number five in the series of posts about our campervan conversion, following on from Part 4.   

The solar panels arrived last weekend so it was time to fit them on the van roof.

I've bought 3-off identical 100W panels from Renogy.  Using monocrystalline cells, these are quite compact panels measuring just 1,074 x 498 mm.  This particular panel design is narrow enough to fit between our rooflights, and it also has a low open-circuit voltage which can be important when choosing controllers.  I'd considered 2-off at 150W or even a single 300W panel, but these layouts didn't fit properly on the roof space available and they also tend to operate at a higher voltage. 

the panels ...

panel nameplate data ...

So we've nominally 300 W of solar power available under bright sunlight conditions, although during standard rating test conditions the light source is positioned perpendicular to the panel surface, whereas on the van roof the panels will always be horizontal and therefore the actual available power is likely reduced by around a quarter, so let's say it's a maximum 225 W installation.

Campervan Conversion - Part 4 - Water Tanks & Shower Room Framing

In this post, we're initially looking at the water requirements for the van build.

We've bought a 75 litre tank for fresh water and a 85 litre tank for waste water, both of which will be installed inside the van.   Many people fit at least the waste tank under the vehicle, i.e. underslung from the floor beams and effectively located outside, but I wanted everything to be mounted inside the van and easily accessible for installation, piping & maintenance etc.

upright 85 litre and flat 75 litre tanks ...

There will also be a small hot water tank to design, build and install at some time in the future but that's not an urgent requirement - I can come back to it later when I've eventually figured out exactly how to provide a hot water system.  For now, we'll just concentrate on the main tanks, and I'm including the shower tray here because it's a deep unit and can hold more than 40 litres (see Post 3 in the series). 

The sink and shower greywater will collect in the 85 litre upright tank which sits on the floor up against the LH rear wheelarch.  The flat 75 litre fresh water tank is mounted directly above it.   This configuration minimises the amount of space required for the tank cabinet.  The top of the waste tank is low enough that the kitchen sink waste will flow to it under gravity, although water from the shower tray at floor level will be pumped into it.

Fruits in the Garden - Part 2

It's been a while, but as we mentioned in Part 1 we decided to add to the collection of edible bushes & trees in the garden.  

This post has been delayed because we were waiting for three more bare-root fruit trees to be delivered, but after two months the nursery simply refunded the money and cancelled the order.  Not a word about this cancellation to me of course, either before or after the event - I only spotted it from the credit card statement.  They've shown themselves to be complete amateurs and so I'll be avoiding Chris Bowers & Sons in the future.

Anyway, this year so far, we've bought the following new plants :-

Supplied in larger pots :-

Macadamia Nut (exact cultivar unknown) - Macadamia integrifolia (UK hardiness H3)

This evergreen tree was already quite large when delivered.  It has been grafted, and the variety above the graft has very different leaves from the rootstock. The grafted cultivar leaves are of a lighter green colour than the rootstock, with fewer very sharp spines along the leaf edges and a longer petiole.  The graft has been made quite high up on the trunk of the rootstock, around 600 mm from soil level.  

Macadamias can grow very large if not controlled, and so I'd have preferred the graft to be nearer the soil and for the cultivar branching to start much lower down, to make a more compact tree better suited to containerisation.  Macadamias are only half-hardy and the pot will need to be brought into the conservatory for the winter.

However, it's not a bad looking tree and is growing away strongly, so I cut off all the branches below the graft to stop the rootstock growth sapping the strength from the cultivar.

In the photo pairs, the image on the left is 'as received' from the supplier, and on the right is after my initial training cuts.

Campervan Conversion - Part 3 - Sound Insulation & Shower Tray Installation

Following on from Part 2, the next step was to install some acoustic insulation.   

I applied proprietary butyl rubber sound-deadening panels of 2.5 mm thickness, although self-adhesive butyl roofing tape is basically the same thing and might work out much cheaper if you're on a strict budget.

The van body panels were locally cleaned using methylated spirits, and the acoustic insulation was cut to basic shapes as required and then simply pressed onto the painted surfaces, using a cloth and a small paint roller to smooth them out and ensure a good contact.

These butyl sheets are quite heavy and add mass to the thin body panels to act as vibration dampers.  Each insulation piece is fitted in the centre of every 'sub-panel', as are naturally formed between panel stiffeners and / or folds & creases in the metal.  You don't need anywhere near 100% coverage to kill noise due to panel resonance - even a relatively small piece in the correct location will be effective. 

acoustic insulation panels ...

It was quite cold on the day I added the sound insulation, so I borrowed the oil-filled radiator from our conservatory and used it to pre-heat the van before fitting the butyl panels, to ensure good adhesion.  After I'd fixed the insulation, I also left the radiator switched on during the following night.

Campervan Conversion - Part 2 - Stripping out, Rooflights and Partial Framing

Since the first post, I've been clearing out the van load space.  I'd originally thought of keeping some of the previous panelling but after I'd seen how the battens were fixed I decided to change the whole framing arrangement to provide additional support in some areas to suit my design.

It was quite a task and took several days to demolish the existing panelling and fitments to bring the vehicle load space almost back to the condition it was in when it left the factory.  Many of the panel and flooring screw heads snapped off when I tried to remove them so there was a lot of cursing and a fair amount of drilling & grinding required.

I didn't remove the floor panels at the front of the load space - there is a solid aluminium plate over this location covered with a rubber matting.  At the rear however, there was a thick plywood base which I stripped out to expose the steel floor of the van body.  

steel floor exposed at the rear

Campervan Conversion - Part 1 - The Original Vehicle

We've decided to build ourselves a camper van, or rather to buy a van we could then fit-out as a camper.   

The initial idea is to retain much of the very useful functionality of a large van and so any major camper items in the load space (e.g. the bed) can be removed if required.

A couple of weeks ago, I looked at a few vans to get an idea of what we wanted for a base vehicle - one of our neighbours has a relatively new Transit but it's of standard height so immediately we climbed in the back we knew we needed a high-roof version.

In the end we bought a 2007 Ford Transit Mk 7 350 medium wheelbase (MWB) high-roof model, or the L3H3 version (length code = 3 and height code = 3) - many van configurations from other manufacturers are also described in this same way. 

That's what we think is our van specification - there are many references online for transit van layouts, but having measured ours we still can't quite reconcile the actual dimensions with the information we found.  In particular, the length of the load floor is around 3,200 mm but in the references this should be matched to a shorter wheelbase than the 3,750 mm we also measured.   

Anyway, we've now just about surveyed the vehicle to find out exactly what we have to work with ...

So this is 'definitely' the medium wheelbase version, although at just under 6.0 m only the jumbo vans are longer.  It's rear wheel drive and fitted with a 2.4 litre turbo diesel engine.

Garden Casualties ....

In the early hours of last Friday morning, just before I was off to bed, I noticed our cheap-and-cheerful 4-channel digital thermometer was reading -12.2 degrees C from the outdoor sensor.

It's hardly a precision instrument, more of an ornament than anything else, but its greenhouse sensor was also reading below -10 degrees and so it was worthy of further investigation.  I dug out a torch and went outside to the bottom of the garden, where I've a 'proper' mercury max-min thermometer mounted on the shed wall.

Sure enough, it was cold, -10 degrees at that time and when I checked again during the day it had been down to -11 degrees C, a record low in the ten years since we've lived here, and by quite some margin.  

coldest temperature recorded here in 10 years ...

Local Conditions - Weather & Climate etc ...

I put this post together because I was beginning to describe the local weather conditions etc within another post I'm preparing about the new fruit trees we've just bought, but such information is also very relevant to growing anything at all here and so I've made it a standalone reference.

Location

Our home is located in England at around latitude 55N longitude 2W, to the nearest whole numbers only.  This is vague enough to cover a huge area of the north-east ...  

As best as I can determine from online resources, our property elevation is 111 metres (365 feet) above sea level, which is somewhat higher than I'd previously thought.

The nearest comprehensive weather station to our home that has data stretching back several years, is located around 11 miles to the south of us and some 61 m below our elevation.   It's also more urban than where we are, so perhaps not an ideal basis for direct comparison but unfortunately it's the best data we have.

Fruits in the Garden - Part 1

We're intending to significantly increase the quantity and variety of the edible perennials in the garden, mainly in the form of additional fruit bushes and trees, but all the new plants we've bought recently will be described in Part 2.

In this Part 1, we're summarising the edible perennials we already have growing in the garden.

Growing in the ground

Rhubarb (unknown variety) -  we've three crowns planted next to the raised bed area, and these produce a lot of stems throughout the year.   Very undemanding to grow, it needs next to no attention at all.

Chives - not a fruit of course, but then strictly speaking neither is rhubarb ...  There's a patch of chives in the raised bed area.  Being an allium, it's evergreen, can look a little straggly in winter, but it comes back strongly again every spring.   If left to flower it becomes a magnet for the bees.  With nothing to do except harvest the leaves as required, it's the very easiest edible perennial you can grow.

Investment Review - December 2020

Another year over, and here's the final quarterly investment review of 2020.   Let's start with the combined portfolio summary sheet, updated at the early market close on 31 December :-