Category Archives: Eco Thrifty Renovation

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Retrospective #18: Re-Fence

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Breaking News: The ECO School now has a Facebook page. Please like and friend it.

ETR for the Wanganui Chronicle, 25-08-12
As I have written in the last three columns, ecological design is holistic. It considers the relationships between elements of a system as important as the elements themselves. Ecological design is all about making connections in our minds based on the interrelationships we observe in the world around us.
In writing, one form of connection is the segue – a literary link. I’ll use the one concept included in the last three columns – multiple functions – to segue onto the last of the design principles we followed during this project: the ‘Three R’s’ reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Where ‘reduce’ is more of an umbrella concept including the reduction of material and energy waste, ‘reuse’ and ‘recycle’ are strategies we can put in place to achieve the reduction of waste and the conservation of resources. In other words, by reusing and recycling, we reduce what goes to landfill, and we reduce the amount of new materials that need to be extracted and manufactured. These are good for both the planet (eco) and the wallet (thrifty).
During the renovation we diverted over 95% of all materials from landfill, and spent a total of less than $50 on rubbish fees. On the other hand, we made over $300 recycling scrap metal, and have a big pile of untreated, unpainted ‘scrap wood’ ready for the wood burner. (See Urban Chainsaw post.)
Some framing timber and lots of sarking was too filled with borer to reuse in any other form than feeding the Shacklock. Other native hardwoods that came out of the renovation were ideal for reuse where the building code did not require that certain timber be used. One example is the former deck (aka trampoline) that became an attractive fence that serves multiple functions.
Those functions include: privacy screen; dog-excluder; wind barrier, trellis, and teaching tool. Yes, much can be learned from pulling and straightening nails as our interns John and Amy discovered. 
The most important lesson is the most abstract: mindfulness. Mindfulness 3 R style can be described as materialism, but not the Madonna kind. A materialist recognizes the value and potential of objects. This should not be confused with being materialistic, or addicted to consumerism.
I would suggest that materialists do well at the 3 Rs, and are more likely to frequent op shops, building salvage centres, and auctions. In the case of the latter two, quality products always fetch fair prices, while junky products are nearly always worthless. In other words, in appears that high quality goods are more expensive to purchase new but hold their value longer, but low quality products do not hold what little value they had to begin with.
This brings me back to the former-deck-turned-fence. Although the timber had been exposed to coastal elements for 30 years, most of the individual boards were still sound. Although we could possibly have reused them to build another deck, we preferred to build a brick patio that would serve as a heat sink for subtropical plantings such as banana, Tahitian lime and tamarillo. With the brick patio in place, the deck-turned-fence became a windbreak for the banana and Tahitian lime, both of which came through June frosts fairly well.
Before the brick patio and fence
After: Brick patio and fence on a frosty morning.
In the end, John and Amy learned some things about creative reuse, about construction and about permaculture design. We now have some attractive fences that keep dogs away from our chooks and ducks, block the wind, and allow us to run around naked in our back section. Wait a minute, did I just say that? 

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Retrospective #17: Theory and Practice

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The last two columns engaged in a slightly higher discussion of a number of fundamental ecological design strategies. Those strategies – called multiple functions and redundancy by permaculturists – are important to eco-thrifty design and to emergency preparedness.
These are by no means new ideas. Who was it that first said, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”?
Diversity creates robust ecosystems. It makes strong communities. And it is essential for resilient households in times of emergency and in times of energy and food inflation. Over the last decade, electricity rates have doubled, and there is little reason to suspect that they will not double again in another 10 years.
The feedback that we get consistently about the educational component of our project is that we offer practical examples of all our design principles. For instance, one mum who came along with the Wanganui Home Educators Group on one of their six site visits in June had sent this email:

“A few weeks ago, my family and I visited your house with the WHEG and learnt a lot of helpful energy-saving tips from you. Even though the visit was informal, the presentation was thorough and children of all ages (and adults) could go home with a lot of information to think about and put into practice. It was simple, yet practical and inspiring. Our own home is fairly new and so we already had many of the energy-saving things in place, but through your talk we were made aware of certain things again – our one south facing room does not get its curtains opened for very long at the moment!”

We also got this feedback from some of the children:
“When we went to the Eco House I learnt how to keep our house warm by the sun.  It was a fun visit!  Mum and I are going to buy some woolen blankets for our windows and it is really fun to cook pasta in a box!”
Bethany, aged 8

“I really enjoyed our visit to the Eco House.  I learnt that bricks keep in a lot of heat.”
Nathanael, aged 9
I got similar comments about the slide presentation on 5thof August at the Quaker Meeting House. It is nice to receive such feedback because one of the multiple functions of our eco-thrifty renovation is as an educational project. We have also worked with a number of local and regional schools on a cross-curricular unit called, The Little House That Could. (Funding was provided by Wanganui District Council, and an administrative role was played by the Sustainable Whanganui Trust.)
In the space that remains this week I’ll give one more example of the design principles mentioned above, only with a biological twist. Last week I was helping Mark Christensen transplant raspberries, and he sent me home with two dozen plants of various types: summer-bearing, autumn-bearing, and thorn-less.  

Regarding multiple functions, the photograph shows the raspberries planted in front of wind netting. For its part, the wind netting serves its primary function – breaking wind! – but is also a chook fence and partial view screen for our semi-cluttered side yard. The posts that hold up the netting also support the galvanized wire that will trellis the raspberries. And finally, the raspberries will serve their primary function – in my belly – but also screen the side yard and shade the wind netting from the sun, which will prolong its lifespan.
In terms of redundancy, I’ve planted the different varieties of raspberries in different locations around the section. After all, I don’t know the best place to plant them. Only they can tell me that.
Eco Thrifty Renovation

Retrospective #16: More Multiple Functions

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Last week raised the bar on the discussion of eco-thrifty renovation: ETR 2.0, if you will. That discussion included the permaculture design principles of multiple functions and redundancy. In other words, each element of a system should serve multiple functions, and each function should be fulfilled by multiple elements. Last week’s column focused on windows, and how their direction and the time of year can affect their function regarding heat loss or gain.
This week I’ll use the same design principles to talk about space heating and cooking, and how a holistic, complimentary design helped us achieve a $20 power bill during the bloody cold month of June.

If you have been following this column, you will be familiar with our antique Shacklock 501 multi-fuel stove in the classic Kiwi-green enamel. Aside from being the centerpiece of our eco-thrifty kitchen, this 300 kg piece of iron, with an additional 400 kg of brick and concrete around, it serves multiple functions in our home. The two most obvious functions are heating and cooking. By stacking these functions on cold, cloudy days we get “double” use (multiple functions) out of the wood we burn, and save electricity because we don’t need to use the electric hob or oven. The Shacklock came in especially helpful during the power failure in March when we stoked it up for the first time and cooked soup and baked bread.
But the Shacklock has another function I described briefly during one of my first columns: thermal mass. Because of the passive solar re-design of our villa – including shifting windows from south-facing to north-facing as described last week – we receive ample heat from sunlight alone on clear winter days. (This is an example of redundancy as our home can be heated by the sun or by wood.) But a critical element of passive solar design that is often overlooked is having enough thermal mass inside of the building envelope to avoid overheating.
We added thermal mass in a number of ways, but the most massive mass, the Master of Mass, is the Shacklock. The low-angle winter sun strikes the cook stove, brick surround and concrete/tile hearth at three times of day through three different windows. Some of this heat energy is ‘stored’ in the mass until the indoor temperature drops overnight, at which point it is released into the room. This is another function that the Shacklock serves when there is no fire burning within it.
As you can see, stacking functions can save resources and power, but what of redundancy? On a warm day we could cook on the electric hob, but if it is also sunny, we could use our solar cooker, even in the middle of winter. This example of redundancy exhibits an even higher level of eco-thrifty thinking (ETR 3.0?!?): complimentary systems.
In other words, whether it is sunny and cold or cloudy and cold, we can heat our home and cook our tea without electricity. If it were sunny and warm, we would probably have a BBQ or stoke up the outdoor pizza oven. If it were cloudy and warm, I would go for a surf and heat up beans and toast on the hob. They all sound like good options to me.
Aside from saving power and money, designing for multiple functions, redundancy and complimentary systems is excellent practice for emergency preparedness. We do not know when the next earthquake or big blow could knock out our services, but we can be ready for when that happens while saving power and money. See, even our multiple functions can serve multiple functions. 
Peace, Estwing
Eco Thrifty Renovation

Retrospective #15: The Multiple Functions of Windows

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Many of the things I’ve written about over the last three months can be described as the low-hanging fruit of saving energy at home. In other words, they represent low investment and rapid payback. Taken in isolation, each of these works, but taken together there results a synergy where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
A home is a system of interacting elements. The greater our understanding of how the elements work together, the higher levels of energy performance our homes can achieve. For us, the consistent $20 – $30 (including line charge) power bills are the result of a holistic approach to renovation. While science and maths play a large role in eco-thrifty renovation, we did not apply any scientific or mathematical formulas when setting goals for the project. We simply wanted to take the worst house possible – a drafty old villa with 12 foot ceilings and no insulation – and see what we could achieve.
Eco-thrifty design is just one type of ecological design. Ecological design – by definition – is holistic. It treats the relationships between elements of a system as important as the elements themselves. Ecological design aims to be as robust as the natural ecosystems it mimics. When we look at native bush in New Zealand we can see that no plant or animal fills only one niche, and that no niche is filled by a single species.

In an ecological design system called permaculture, these dynamics are summarized by the principles of multiple functions and redundancy. In other words, each element of a system (plant or animal) should serve multiple functions (niches), and each function (niche) should be fulfilled by multiple elements (plants or animals).
Graphics for Holmgren’s permaculture principles.
In eco-design we take the lessons we learn from nature and apply them to human environments. The term ecology comes from the Greek word oikos, meaning home. My home (and gardens) is my ecosystem. (With a major renovation, a huge landscaping job, and a PhD thesis I bloody never leave it!)
In our home, as well as yours, windows serve multiple functions: they allow the passage of light and heat; they provide views in and out; and, some can be opened for ventilation. In our home, and I hope yours, there is more than one window to allow these functions.

Here is where the science and maths come in: at this time of year the path the sun travels across the sky (science) means some windows are net energy gainers and some are net energy losers (maths). In other words, northerly windows gain more heat than they lose and southerly windows lose more heat than they gain.
Recognizing this, we “manage” our southerly windows differently than we “manage” our northerly windows. By manage I simply mean when we open and close curtains (if at all) and when we put up and take down window blankets (if at all).
Additionally, the recognition of relationships between seasonal sun angles, windows and heat flow helped us make design decisions about where to add glazing and where to remove it. One of the major aspects of our renovation – requiring consent and now requiring a qualified builder – was adding and subtracting windows and doors. Here is an example of applied eco-design thinking.
Where the kitchen was located when we bought the villa, the window over the sink faced to the southwest. At this latitude, that window was as a heat loser in winter and a heat gainer in summer. Oh boy, the worst of both worlds! Could you imagine working at the kitchen bench in January with the late afternoon sun streaming in? That kitchen would have been unbearable for cooking tea during summer.
Before: Southwest side with old kitchen window (yellow part) bringing in too much summer afternoon sun, and losing heat in winter. 
At the same time, the toilet was located in the northernmost corner with just one tiny frosted window for ventilation. And we can’t even blame this solar-illiteracy on the builders 100 years ago because the villa was moved to this location in the 1980s!
After: Southwest side with old kitchen window removed. Result: cool in summer and warm in winter. 
The eco-design solution (some might say common sense solution) was to swap the location of the kitchen and bath, and to relocate the southwest window to a northeast position. A northeast window is a heat gainer in winter and neutral in summer. In the end there was the same amount of glazing, but in a location supported by sound science and maths. 
New northeast window brings winter morning sun into the relocated kitchen. 

Peace, Estwing
Eco Thrifty Renovation

Late Winter Garden Tour

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The first buds on the plum trees are bursting. The garlic is up. Tagasaste is in flower. We are on our way toward springtime.

Although not long ago we had a heavy frost. Luckily, our banana and Tahitian lime are in a sun trap/ heat sink.

Our winter annuals are doing well: broccoli and broad beans.

As well as the world’s smallest lemon tree. 
I recently bought 7 half-price olive trees to make an edible hedge that will screen the red iron fence. Olives do well in coastal conditions like ours. 

I also planted a pair (male and female) of kei apples, given to us by our friend Rob, who says these will also do well here.

And speaking of gifts, I was happy to see the calendula given to us by our friend Ron come into bloom. 

And the tamarillo given to us by Andy is weathering the winter in its sun trap / heat sink as well.

 This loquat – a gift from our friends Clare and Tim – is also planted in an exposed position on the property.

Here are garlic chives (thanks Rob) and society garlic from Annie.

And the borage from Lyn is just going for it!

Thanks to all our friends (including Hadi for the banana, Lindy and Murray for the tagasaste and apple trees, Phil and Bern for the garlic, and Mark for the broad beans and plum trees), and thanks to the sun for returning from its vacation up north. Welcome back!

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Retrospective #14: Low Cost / High Performance Window Insulation

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In one of last week’s photos of my 1782 farmhouse in the States was a window quilt made from a quilted mattress protector. I picked it up, along with a dozen or so others, at various rummage sales. A rummage sale is an op shop on steroids.  Church groups, school groups or scouting groups may sponsor a rummage sale once or twice a year.
The sales fill large gymnasiums and last an entire weekend. But by Sunday afternoon, everything must go! That is when the fill-a-bag-for-$2-sale is on. That’s the time to get old bed sheets to use as painting drop cloths, or quilted mattress protectors to insulate windows. While I have yet to hear about a rummage sale in Wanganui, I am known to frequent op shops about town.
Last year while in one fine establishment looking for a quilted mattress protector, I ran across a shelf of wool blankets at $3 each. My wife will tell you I have a fetish for wool blankets, but I will argue it is a fetish for any high quality product made of high quality materials. I also have a fetish for warm homes and low power bills. I am happy to report that our power bill for June was $20.67.
Which reminds me, one of the best ways to cut a power bill by 10% or 20% is to take advantage of the discount for prompt payment. For the average New Zealand home, that means a discount of $25 – $50 each month. One way I make sure I remember to pay early is to walk from the mailbox straight to the computer and pay online. Done and dusted.
All this is a long way round to today’s topic – back by popular demand – window battens, or as a more practical person has recently called them, window blankets. I wrote about this Yankee/Kiwi hybrid of a window quilt over a month ago and people are still telling me they use them and have noticed a difference in warmth retention. That’s awesome…for them. But winter is only half over and others may not have seen that article.
Single-pane windows are one of the biggest sources of heat loss in a home. For those who cannot afford double-glazing or thermal curtains, this is the lowest cost / highest performance option. A tight-fitting window blanket offers the performance of double-glazing or of the best thermal curtains at a small fraction of the cost. I am “trialing” a number of variations.
The prototype I wrote about consists of a blanket “sandwiched” between two long, thin pieces of wood (25 mm X 25 mm, and 25 mm X 5 mm) fixed together with short screws. As you can see from the pictures, the wood is wedged at the top of the window frame and the blanket is held in place by gravity. It takes 10 to 15 seconds to take down, role up and put away in the morning, and about the same to put back up in the evening.
Another variation I’m using consists of a wool blanket draped over a single piece of wood measuring 10 mm by 50 mm. The board is wedged at the top of the window frame and the blanket falls front and back. This version is easier to make, but does not suit daily removal and replacement because it takes a while to square up the blanket. We use this version in some south-facing windows where we plan to leave them for the next two months.
At this time of year, only northerly-facing windows receive the heating provided by direct sunlight during the day. But at night they lose heat just as southerly windows do. Thus the removable window blankets described above.
Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Retrospective #13: Lessons from a Long Dead Patriot

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One of the few things that my villa in Castlecliff has in common with my farmhouse in New Hampshire (USA) is that the Jehovah’s Witnesses always know how to find where I live. Now, this may not seem like a great accomplishment of geo-location on their part, but the location of my farm practically defined the wop wops.
Trollbakken – as it was named by the previous Norwegian owners – is two miles off a rural highway, one mile beyond where the pavement ends, ½ mile after the last power pole, and 1/3 mile past where the snowplows turn around during the five months of winter. In other words, it is heaven on Earth. How I came to trade that paradise for my current one here in Wanganui is a story for another day.

The farmhouse was built in 1782 by Mark Batchelder, and although he died over 200 years ago, he has been a great teacher for me. You see, long before the term ‘passive solar design’ was coined, Batchelder, and other sons of the American Revolution, were building with the sun in mind. For example, Trollbakken sits on the southeast slope of Ragged Mountain where it catches the first rays of winter, morning sun and is protected from cold northwesterly winds. (Remember, that is the Northern Hemisphere.)
As a traditional “cape cod,” it has a massive center chimney (with three fireplaces) that serves as thermal mass at the heart of the dwelling. Once warm, the chimney would hold that warmth for long periods after the wood fires had gone out.
Taking what I learned from Batchelder, I looked for a house in Wanganui that was sheltered from the prevailing winds and would get good morning sun. Additionally, we installed our wood burner along an interior rather than exterior wall of our villa.
Neither home was insulated when I purchased them, so that was a priority in both cases. Because of the historic nature of the Batchelder home, the renovations were limited to insulating the attic, replacing rotted wood in a few places, and exposing the original hand-hewn chestnut post and beam frame.
The last of these three started as an innocent idea to remove some ugly wallpaper. Under the ugly wallpaper was more ugly wallpaper. Under that was cracked horse hair plaster and split wood lathe that Dani and I decided to remove. And under that was a hidden treasure: 20 inch wide vertical boards and the 8 inch by 8 inch hand hewn posts.
An afternoon project turned into a two-week project that included pulling hundreds of small nails that held on the lathe, caulking lots of small holes, painting and installing a crown molding. At the same time I replaced the two windows on that wall with new double-glazed windows (the frames are made from vinyl, not aluminium, in the States).
In the ‘after’ picture, you can see a window quilt on the left. As these were north-facing windows that received no direct sunlight in winter, I fixed that window quilt with thumbtacks and left it up for five months. The other window had a removable window quilt so we could look out and see the moose, deer, and coyotes out the back. (The black bears were hibernating.)
Renovating a 220-year-old structure is a slow and cautious process. But as a farmer with five months of snow cover, I had plenty of time to dedicate to it. No phone. No TV. No internet. Not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses were willing to make the 1/3 mile journey through thigh-deep snow between December and April. (But like the black bears, they would return in spring.) Nothing much to do but learn lessons from the ghost of Mark Batchelder. Those lessons have served me well.

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Retrospective #12: Mud Room Cont…

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This is part two of the new mini-series gripping Wanganui audiences: The Eco-Thrifty Mud Room. If you missed last week’s episode, I wrote about covering the gaps between our floorboards, Bruce Springsteen, and a hybrid Kiwi/Yankee version of a storm door. While that column fell short of a Pulitzer, hopefully it inspired some readers to think outside the square when it comes to low-budget/high performance approaches to warm, dry, healthy homes.
This week’s column remains inside the square, or rather inside the pelmet. You may recall that I like pelmets almost as much as I like Neil Diamond. You may also recall that pelmets are important for preventing warm air that has collected on the ceiling from being “pulled” down against cold windows and creating a convection current that will cool and entire room – even a small mud room.
I have noticed in some homes around Wanganui a pelmet over the front door with a curtain that can be drawn when appropriate to add an extra layer of insulation. I decided to do this in our mudroom even though we already had two doors providing a level of protection against the cold by creating an air gap between them.

As with the pelmets elsewhere in our home, I made this one out of weatherboards removed while re-cladding the exterior. I inverted the weatherboards so that the scallop faces down. This makes an attractive detail on all of our pelmets.
As you can see from the photo, this very special weatherboard has been signed by a local artist!

While the paint was drying on our new pelmet, I used some off-cuts of framing timber to make a framework to hold it. While all of our other pelmets are just 150 wide mm, I made this one about 400 mm wide so that it would reach from the ceiling to just above the door, just covering the second-hand curtain rail and the top of the second-hand curtain.

I hung the curtain rod so that the curtain would not quite touch the floor of the mud room that could, on occasion, be muddy. To make up the space between the bottom of the curtain and the floor, I wrapped a “two-by-two” (45 mm x 45 mm) in an old towel to make a “draft blocker” – described in a column a few weeks ago. If the towel gets wet or dirty it can be thrown in the laundry easier than the curtain could. The draft blocker also holds the bottom of the curtain against the door for a nice, snug fit.
To summarize, the story of the mud room is one of romance, intrigue, solar gain, insulation, draft-proofing and creative reuse. The reuse of doors, hardboard, weatherboards, curtain rails, curtains and off-cuts of framing timber in this small Eco-Thrifty case study are just a few of the many examples of creative reuse and repurposing that we embraced during our project. In future columns I’ll document more of the ways we have turned trash into treasures in our little house that could.


Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Retrospective #11: The Mud Room

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This week and next  I’ll wrap up the discussion of how to make a home warm, dry, healthy and energy-efficient on a budget with a small-scale case study of our “mud room.” In the process of shifting the kitchen, bath, toilet and laundry around the lean-to section of our villa, we created a small room at the existing back door. The room measures roughly two metres by two metres, with a hot water cupboard taking up about one quarter. Both the door and the floor were anything but weather-tight.
 Before: Smashed glass in back door.
 Before: Natural ventilation.

As a mud room – where you take off your boots when entering a home – I decided that we ought to put vinyl on the floor. My wife disagreed, so I waited until she went away for the weekend and then put down the vinyl. But first I had to level out the floor, which was cupped and split. We had some painted hardboard formerly known as the kitchen ceiling in various hues of white and neon green. I reused the hardboard to cover the gaps and level the floor, and then laid the vinyl end-of-role that I bought at a great low price from a local flooring shop that sells small pieces for small jobs. This took care of the draft coming through the floor, and sometime soon I’ll get around to installing the under-floor insulation. The next element to tackle was the bruised and broken door.
A ceiling becomes a floor.
My approach to replacing the door was to do it twice. That is with two doors. In most parts of North America two doors are better than one. The second (outer) door comes in two flavors: screen and storm. A screen door features in the opening line of one of the greatest rock n’ roll songs ever written: Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road. 
The screen door slams; 
Mary’s dress sways; 
Like a vision she dances across the porch; 
As the radio plays.
A storm door is neither as lyrical nor as romantic. Screen doors conger images of summer and pretty girls in sun dresses. Storm doors conger images of…storms. But we get storms in Wanganui, and our back door is to the prevailing winds. 
After: Two new doors.
I bought two second-hand doors: one from an online auction ($40) and one from a local building materials reseller ($100). I hung the dearer four-pane rimu door on the inside to replace the one that had been smashed, and hung the cheaper two-pane door on the outside to serve as the storm door, being careful to flash the top to keep out blowing rain. I attached draft excluders to the bottom of both doors and installed foam window and door seal around the frame of the inner door. 
After: Two new doors.
For a total under $300 I was able to seal up all of the air gaps, put in a new floor and achieve a version of eco-thrifty double-glazing, which lets sunlight in to warm our home but also insulates against heat escaping. But that’s not all, I’ll continue this story next week. 
Peace, Estwing
Eco Thrifty Renovation

Eco, Thrifty, Prepared

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For those in attendance at the Josephite Retreat Centre on Sunday for Guy McPherson’s presentation, the information he shared on climate change was sobering. Although I have been studying and teaching about “global warming” for over 25 years, I was still shocked by some of the latest research in the field. 

Personally, I “checked out” of the climate debate after the failed Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December, 2009. Since then, the conversation internationally has shifted from prevention to adaption. In other words, governments worldwide have essentially admitted there is no chance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions below dangerous levels and instead we need to brace ourselves for the fallout. 
Fallout, in most cases, comes in the form of rising sea levels and an increase in the number and severity of extreme weather events. In response to sea level rise, Venice, Italy is spending up to a billion dollars on giant flood gates that are hoped to hold back storm surges. In the U.S. state of North Carolina, the legislature is fighting a rising sea level by passing a bill forbidding state agencies from reporting that sea level rise is accelerating. (This is not a joke.)
Regarding protection against extreme weather events, it appears to be more of an everyone-for-themselves response. Large-scale responses – such as the Horizons’ proposal for the Whanganui River – are likely to be rejected by the majority of rates payers. Tax increases anywhere in the world appear to be universally despised. That leaves protecting oneself and one’s family to…one.
For us, many of our efforts at climate change adaption also reduce our carbon footprint and vice versa. At the same time, many of these efforts also protect us from disruption of services due to a major earthquake or power failure for any reason. For instance, we have seven ways to cook only one of which requires electricity. During the power outage in March, for instance, we baked three loaves of bread and cooked a huge pot of soup on our good old Shacklock 501.

We regularly use our solar cooker for everything from potatoes to cheeseburgers.

We also enjoy cooking outdoors in our pizza oven or on the BBQ (both wood-fired). 

In case of an extended drought and water restrictions, we have a 500 litre tank to collect roof runoff. To protect against high winds damaging our fruit trees and vegetable gardens we have wind netting, in some cases two layers.

Guy advocates four approaches to resilience: access to food; access to clean water; provision for maintaining body temperature; and, building community. We have established all of these from scratch during the last year and a half. This blog has demonstrated how we did it all on a tight budget. 

By designing and building a low-energy, resilient home and section, we are fulfilling a version of the cliche’ saying: “Live your life like you will live for a hundred years, and as if you’ll die tomorrow.” In our case it is in response to climate change: Live your life like you want to prevent climate change, and as if you’ll get a record setting storm tomorrow. 

 Peace, Estwing