Transition Projects #3: The House (part 2)
Transition Projects #3: The House – part 2
We’ve been working weekends for what seems like a lifetime! Still, it’s all for a great cause – our own home.
We have settled very nicely into our little timber home but we just can’t get past the fact that we just don’t fit in here very well. Add that to our burning desire to live in much more sustainable ways and there is just no putting off the inevitable. We just have to stop talking about it and get things moving.
So plans were drawn up with the help of our trusty strawbale building expert, Brian. A couple of telephone calls, a nice lunch together in the beer garden of the Stanley Pub and we had the makings of a great floor plan. In not too much time we had approval to proceed.
I have to admit that at this very moment I almost lost my nerve. What a task but the sheer opportunity just took over and we began by make a great big mess of our lovely piece of land. 
The mess this process made really had a big impact on me. I felt aweful for the amount of damage I was responsible for but I knew that in the long run our property will be better, healthier, more diverse and more productive than it was on that day. I took a big breath and wondered at the deep orange red soil slowly appearing where will I will build my home.
At the beginning of this project we had very lofty ideals about being as eco-friendly as we possibly could. One of my first lessons is that this whole process is one of compromises. We’ve had to take some hard decisions and at times we’ve felt that our choices have been less than we would have wished. We added a few layers to our decision making that have made things a little more difficult for us. A couple of those have been:
- use local tradespeople, businesses and resources where possible.
- shop on merit not price.
This is tough when you don’t live in a major city and you are running to a budget. However, in the main we’ve done a great job and we’ve met some amazing people and built what I hope will be long and strong relationships with people. Those things are priceless. The compromises we’ve accepted and feel happy knowing we’ve done the best we can do on the day.
Eventually we were left with this big, flat dusty space in which to create something fabulous. Did I mention the dust? 
Of course, I couldn’t resist putting a garden around the edge of all that moved soil – primarily because I love to create things, love to garden and can’t stand dust!
More importantly though, I didn’t want the Autumn rains to start and cause a lot of erosion around the edge. It also gave me an opportunity to put in some simple steps (made from sleepers and star pickets) and give everything a good mulch and a good water. All those lovely trees you see in the background are our Chestnut orchard. Wonderful things because they are so green all through the hot weather and then lose their leaves in the winter letting in all the lovely sunshine.
But that’s another story
We had to hand dig all the holes that were too close to the existing house for the machinery to dig (there were 40 of those) and then we got our trusty digging friend in with his machinery to dig another 110 holes.
We chose to build on stumps to limit the amount of concrete we use as the production of cement creates a huge amount of green house gases and we just don’t want to be responsible for any more of those than is absolutely necessary.
If you look closely at the last picture you can see one of our lovely Collie dogs, a rooster and a hen. Some animals are so curious they just want to be where all the action is.
More soon.
