It’s starting to look like a proper house . . .

It has been such a long time since I posted on here as we have been so busy doing the house I haven’t had time to write about it. Things have gone ahead in leaps and bounds with the solar on and working really well, the kitchen installed, the plumbing and electrical roughed in, walk in robe fit out completed, and we have plastered about three quarters of the internal walls and 20% of the ceilings and most of the insulation. The underground services are almost done outside except the septic tank, and we just poured the front and back patios last week, in between a visit from my son Michael, and a trip to Agfest. All but two of the double glazing units are in and the passive solar is working just as we had hoped. The extra tanks are delivered and connected so now we are just waiting for a big rain to fill them all. The combustion stove is installed and I can’t wait to start eating what comes of that!!

We have 1kw of solar panels attached to six two volt batteries. We find that the batteries are fully charged anytime between 11.30am and 2.30pm depending on the weather and usage. We have only had two days in the past two months that the batteries haven’t made it to fully charged which is no problem as we have about four days autonomy built-in. It is still a wonder to me that the system just sits there and silently meets all our energy requirements, with no moving parts, and no ongoing costs. 1kw is obviously more than we need but the average house would need much more, it’s just that we don’t have any high use appliances, and no TV etc.

We are using 4W LED lights inside and 9W outside, the fridge is a converted chest freezer running on a control box that makes it a 4 degree Celsius fridge instead of a minus 18 degree freezer. Thanks to the Mt Best device, which is working well and was dispatched within hours of my ordering it.   We did tinker a bit with the temperature til we got it right for our situation. This system goes a long way to reducing our energy requirements and I thoroughly recommend it for only $150.

It was going to cost $2500 to get the electricity connected from the grid and then we were using $60 a fortnight in petrol in the generator so it works out that our off-grid system will pay for itself in less than four years.

Most of the other improvements are pretty self evident as you can see from the photos so I won’t go on about them other than the fact that it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to stay motivated as I can think of a couple of days recently I could just have set fire to it and walked away!! I don’t know how Bryon puts up with me. There is a lot of angst dealing with manufacturers and some tradesmen but when I sit back in the warmth of the passive solar and enjoy the fresh air and light, and especially the spaciousness of the house, it just feels wonderful and we can see our dream rapidly coming to fruition.

The next steps will be to finish the exterior weatherboarding, tiling the kitchen and bathroom, and the bottle walls, stained glass and mosaics, building the Buddha, the chamomile lawn, fencing, the new vegetable enclosure, gardening, making paths and retaining walls, you get the picture by now, a lifetime of work but all good.

The social whirl of St Marys is still in full swing, with lots of visitors and sharing with friends and neighbours although we have cut back a bit due to the extra work getting the house finished. We still love it here, even though we have come across a couple of arseholes we just need to remind ourselves that most people are great and we have made some beautiful friends which more than make up for the negatives. I guess it is like any small town anywhere and we are still amazed at how generous and supportive country people can be for each other.

My counselling practice at St Helens Neighbourhood House is going well with plenty of bookings two days a week and never a dull moment. I will be facilitating a couple of support groups down at St Helens a little later in the year and will be starting to see clients at St Marys Community Health Centre sometime in July. Bryon is enjoying his work at the neighbourhood house too, it is great to be able to work together and keep the same hours.

Anyway, this time I will leave you with the following little story about a project we have worked on recently with our neighbours.

 

Poly tunnel raising

Bryon and I recently agreed to help a friend build a poly tunnel as they had seen ours and wanted one at their place too. Eventually we got together and a few more neighbours joined in and we ended up bulk purchasing materials for nine poly tunnels and a new vermin proof vegetable enclosure for ourselves.

We built our first poly tunnel when we moved to Banksia Hollow as we had seen them on the internet and needed to do something to extend our growing season. The page on this blog about how to build one is our most popular page and we get hits from all over the world.

It has been a great experience working with like minded people who just get on with things at the grass roots level, just neighbours helping each other. We met over a cuppa one morning and decided to do the project like an Amish Barn Raising in that we would all help each other once the materials arrived.

The most exciting thing for me is the fact that there will be so many of our neighbours growing more food, which means food security for our area is strengthened, it also means a lot less spent at the big supermarkets, another step towards a sustainable community, and more variety for us to share between ourselves.

We bought the tubing from Agline as they offered the best price and free delivery, it is called 2” Greenline Rural. When cut to 7m lengths you get 14 lengths out of a 100m roll. The rolls are actually 101m long and they are marked with 1m increments which make cutting easy. A 100m roll will fit in the back of a ute if you want to collect it yourself. We had 600m delivered which is why delivery was free.

The pickets came from Animal Tuckerbox in Launceston as they happened to have a special on them at the right time, they are just the cheap ones as they are covered by the poly pipe anyway and we used 165cm pickets which we bash in 75cm leaving 90cm above ground for the tube to push onto. The pickets for each arch are 4m apart which makes a 2.2m high poly tunnel using 7m lengths of tubing. We ordered 142 pickets which was quite a bit of weight.

The 125m of plastic came from Waratah in Launceston as they sell the most suitable product. We have friends who have had this plastic on their tunnel for ten years and it is still going strong. The materials for a 9mX4m (36sqm) tunnel come to about $300. We didn’t order bracing timber as everyone’s needs were different; some people had recycled timber or bush poles that they wanted to use. Bryon and I picked up the pickets and plastic (3 rolls) when we were in Launceston.

At the time of writing one tunnel is built, one is framed up and we are looking forward to helping get the other tunnels built as soon as everyone is able.