The Moo (monastic retreats at Alversjö)

Update (29/04/2024)
We just had the Monastic Retreat in Alversjö last week with 6 participants. We have finally finished the Gazebo behind the Villa, started a permanent garden and cleaned up a landfill in the nature reserve. We also enjoyed good food and some of us a hot bath during full moon in the cold evening.

But what is most important for me to share is that this whole project became something else then originally planned. Currently there is not much development in the renovation of the sheep barn. I havn't worked on it since almost a year. Anyhow the dream of having warm rooms, a proper kitchen and bathrooms is still alive and lives on in the infrastructure project where some passionate people are working on. Currently an architect and a carpenter are planning to insulate a part of the wooden barn and making bathrooms and kitchen there.

An idea arose to include the idea of the Monastery in the garden project and build some tiny houses there. This is still in early development and some more discussions and permits need to be gathered for that. We will make a new project here on OpenCollective for this as well.

Here you can still see and read the original plan:

This project is mainly about renovating the sheep barn, and there is so far only one idea to use it, which is the Burner Monastery. But it can be a multi-functional space with little rooms and a bigger workshop room/dancehall.
If you want to find out more about the idea of the monastery check out this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18n-C2HThdKkUPtpp1gLErk-D9fkZdcKQOIidY9EuEPk/edit#

Maybe you want to donate some money. Priority is to get some more people to help with cleaning during the work weekends and later building bathrooms, insulated floor and rooms. Windows need to be fixed and heating installed, also new doors and maybe a beautiful garden around. If you have any kind of building material that might be helpful, let me know on Discord, or below in a comment.

A rough calculation for dry walls, flooring and a new door might be around 100.000-150.000SEK. The windows could be fixed with new glass for the beginning but might need to be changed for better insulation. Not included is a heating system. A heating pump that uses the warmth of the earth and the sun might be a sustainable solution. Costs of around 120.000-250.000SEK. There might be also a possibility to use the warmth from the attic for a heating system.

The roof of the barn also might suit for photovoltaic panels as the slope is rather flat. We could produce solar power and in the seasons where we don’t use so much ourselves we can sell it to the grid. Further calculations will be needed.

Before the barn can be made really nice it still needs to be emptied from a bit of straw and dried sheep poop that's left, and the heavy iron fences inside need to be cut. Also the floor is not one level but some of the concrete can be removed with a heavy pneumatic hammer.