A day of dry and not-too-cold weather provided a long-overdue opportunity to wash the worst of the building site mud off the BMW i3 and to give it a coat of Autoglym Extra Gloss Protection to try to stop it getting too dirty too quickly again over the Winter.

The outside space works very well for washing the car, with two outside taps (fed from the rainwater harvesting tank) and the permeable block paving draining the water away.

Even with the boot and bonnet open the car still looks small inside the garage, with plenty of room all around for access – and scope to accommodate much larger vehicles. (The i3 is exactly 4m long whereas larger estate cars can easily be 5m – but the garage is more than 6m, at the insistence of the original Architect.) The lighting works well, with four pairs of outdoor-grade Philips LED fittings – each pair being switchable independently. Each light fitting draws 42.9W so that’s 343W if they’re all on – which seems like a huge wattage for LED lights but the illumination level seems about right (and will improve once the walls get painted white).