Saturday, 21 June 2014

Cambridge International Swift Conference 2014 - summary proceedings


For those who missed this conference, we have produced a summary.

The Summary Proceedings can be found on tinyurl.com/cisc2014
Image quality is better if you download it and view it as a pdf.

Also, view the conference movie!


Thursday, 12 June 2014

A new house with 9 new Swift boxes

[Note a download containing many more pictures is available in the Downloads section on the right]
[Update July 2014: 2 of these internal boxes were occupied in this first year, one with a horizontal slot entrance through the brickwork and a second one in a vertical slot entrance]

Bob Tonks already has 4 occupied external Swift boxes on his present house in Milton. He has now built a new house in Histon with a number of internal nestboxes of various designs and entrance configurations. 

The ideas are simple, of low cost and minimal inconvenience to the builder.
The following pictures should be self explanatory, click any one to see them enlarged:

Entrance made by 2 simple cuts in one brick
The above entrance leads to a box fashioned out of an air brick liner embedded in the inner wall

Air brick liner with entrance

Although unconventional, this simple idea provides a vertical slot
The vertical slot leads to a marine plywood box embedded in the inner wall. This box has a perspex back.
Two of these plyswood boxes also have a horizontally oriented entrance
3 entrances in a gable end. All of the boxes behind these entrances are made of marine plywood and
are embedded in the inner wall.

4 neat entrances into the eaves
Eaves nestbox design

Eaves nestbox installed