We are now living in the house! On Saturday 10th July we began to move things in and spent the first night in our new home. As you can imagine we are very excited to be beginning a new chapter of our lives.
The house itself is performing very well overall. The open spaces and ventilation is really nice and it feels cool and airy despite the hot humid summer weather we are experiencing here. It is a good thing we had insect screens installed on all the windows though as the sheer amount of bugs flying around at night is mind-boggling. Australia has nothing on Japan when it comes to insects!
The kitchen has been nice too – very easy to work in. The IH cooktop is great – so fast to heat up, and the oven has been good too. My cooking seems to have improved in the new kitchen as a result. Even better, for the week we have been living there we have been almost totally self-sufficient with vegetables, eating fresh garden produce each night - despite the overall neglected and waterlogged state of the garden, I have managed to russle up something.
Unfortunately, we do not yet have an internet connection – not even a telephone line, which is why this post is a week late. However, we are signing up today and will have a broadband line installed, although it will take about 2 weeks. So, there will be no posts for a while…
However, one we are reconnected there will be a lot more coming. I will put up a full gallery of finished house photos for starters. So, you’ll be able to see all the “under-construction” features you’ve seen so far in their final completed glory. There’ll also be a bit of a report comparing the ideas in the concept essay to the final implementation, analyzing just how much achieved the “eco-house” ideal.
Afterwards, the blog will take a more garden and permaculture focused orientation. I have actually been working on a vegetable garden and orchard all this time, but have not had time to include anything about them yet. That will change, so stay tuned to see how the garden has been shaping up and what sort of things I’ve been up to apart from building a house.
