Austerity Era Projects 2015

House Notes – Austerity Era Projects

We had a lovely and busy time last year and met some great people that we learnt so much from.  So we will front up again this year.

We have some of the usual sustainability features such as a 3kW solar system, whole of house water collection, extensive fruit and vegie garden with 120+ edibles, chooks, community composting and all kitchen waste is managed on site.

And we have some more unusual features:

– build using urban milled timber that we mill and grade ourselves
– straw and earth rendered rooms with loft beds and corner sofa beds
(we found the straw on a bike path and collected on our cargo bikes and we designed and built our corner sofa beds.)
– one room with a bed that lowers from the ceiling
– beekeeping with a novel observational horizontal hive we designed
– six aquaponic systems including roof/deck top grow beds and a pond where we
are working on breeding trout in an aquaponic system (I think a world first)
– pellet oven/central hydronic heater that runs of pellets we make from grass, sawdust from our timber mill and urban waste.

If you came last year, then I am sad to confess that we haven’t completed many new projects over the year.  We have almost finished the kitchen, done a heap of urban timber milling (such fun saving beautiful lumber from the fireplace), and got much better at preserving and using the produce we grow, oh and raising our gorgeous toddler James.