Elwood Farm 2019

House Notes – Elwood Farm

Since retiring 5 years ago, my wife and I have taken the opportunity to enact a plan we have had for many years which is to build a sustainable home and live (as far as possible) a self-sufficient lifestyle, I think we have largely accomplished this.

Our home is of rammed earth construction providing excellent thermal and acoustic properties. Also it is almost 100% maintenance free and a very pleasing colour and texture. The walls are 300ml thick which makes them virtually sound proof.

We have louvre windows strategically placed so that we can capture the prevailing breezes in summer and also prominent windows on the north aspect to capture the winter sun.

All of our rooms have ceiling fans for cooling including on the large verandas at the front and back of the house and our heating is from a slow combustion wood fired heater using mostly pest species of timber sourced on site.

Since last year we have also installed air conditioning for cooling on the hottest days however, as with our major appliances of the home, this system is only used when the sun is shining and we are generating our own solar power.

The floor inside the house is make of bamboo and all of our lighting is low energy and our water outlets and toilets are low flow units.

We use all of the captured rain water from our roofs for domestic purposes and so are not connected to town supply.>We also have a small dam that we pump from to a high tank which we than gravity feed down to strategically placed taps for the purposes of water supply for our chickens and the gardens.

Our water is heated with an evacuated tube solar system and we have 6.5 kw of solar PV cells which supplies the majority of our electricity needs while also providing a proportion of green energy back to the grid (for which we are paid).

Since connecting to solar electricity, we have had credits each month on our power account instead of a bill except for two month where we had the air con on every day through a heat wave, on those two months our electricity costs totaled $17.00 which was easily absorbed by our outstanding credit balance .<p

Our house also has an internal access cellar for storage of preserves and wine etc.

We grow most of our own fruit, nuts and vegies with an extensive garden and orchard area. All of our gardens and trees are fertilized with compost and animal manure that we generate on site. To utilize the surplus produce, my wife bottles fruit, pickles and jams etc. and I also make wine from surplus fruit and veg . I have also made a solar dehydrator which we use for drying tomatoes, beans, bananas, pineapple, apples and many other things. We also have chickens for meat and eggs and we also grow fish for the table in our aquaponics system, which also provides a wide variety of vegetable from tomatoes and capsicums to lettuces herbs and even strawberries. The most exciting part of this system though is that we are also growing fish for our own consumption. These are jade perch which is an omnivorous Australian native species which grow quickly and have exceptional eating qualities.

We would be happy to welcome anyone who would like to see what we have done and hopefully they might take away some ideas for themselves to make their own homes more sustainable.

Our hope is that people will see that thy can still live sustainably even while enjoying all of the comfort of a modern home.

Please drive up the driveway, there is plenty of room for parking and turning near the house.