Green house?

My niece asked me, is it a "green" house? As green as possible, what we can afford, what we can get in South Africa. Not as green as I am! Brownfield (in town) not green – destroying another chunk of nature. Where the infrastructure is already available – water, electricity, phone/internet(!), sewerage.

The actual structure is face brick, which I only realised later, takes lots of energy to manufacture. Cob/adobe – would have returned to the earth from which it came. Slate floor, natural stone, which is not sustainable, and has left a large hole up North at Mazista. Solar powered hot water, it works in Switzerland, certainly in sunny South Africa. Electric geyser, which we have to use to supplement solar panels when necessary, is on a time switch.

The house is low maintenance, less use of toxic chemicals. Face brick, and the metal roof is powder coated. Insulation in the roof is green (literally) recycled plastic.

For the few weeks of winter cold we have a closed combustion stove, wood can be sustainable, mostly invasive aliens like Port Jackson wattle, and we insulate.

Against the summer heat we have two Whirlybirds, no air conditioning! There are ceiling vents in the bedrooms, and bathrooms, and the living room. Our Whirlybirds work on convection, heat rises, gets trapped under the ceiling, into the roof space, where it would usually be trapped till winter. And the breeze, so they have spun almost non-stop since installation! Insulation again to shield us from summer’s fury. We have sash windows with stainless steel fly screens (also burglar proof). Back door with a large window, fly screen, we leave open all night, to draw in the cool night air. Wooden blinds on the sunny side windows.

The living-room is square, so would be dark without the skylight/clerestory window. Captures the daylight, not sun in summer, and the warmth of the low winter sun. We can follow the seasons as the sun moves up and down the central wall, our calendar. Finally a deep veranda is our main living space, except in mid-winter, and even then, in the warm part of the day.

We have a grey water system, which we use to capture water, mostly from the washing machine, but also from the shower/bath, depending on how loudly the garden says THIRSTY! NO LAWN to waste water on! We have two 500 litre rain water tanks – which overflow into the pond, and are eked out after the rain, also used for pots and iffy plants like our fynbos (acid lovers) and anything to be eaten (by us, that is!). We have gravel paths and swales to deal with winter floods.

Our washing is dried on the line, in sun and the breeze. Energy saving light bulbs, except bedside lights, which will be replaced, now that dimmable energy savers are available. There is a Swiss Katadyn water filter in the kitchen, saves plastic bottles! Some grow your own, herbs and fruit, not nearly enough.

We recycle whatever we can. Garden refuse, weeds, prunings, kitchen waste – all goes to mulch or compost. Grey water, see above. And our town is about to start recycling paper, cardboard, glass, metal and plastic. The garden is indigenous/native, wildlife friendly (bird feeders, a pond, and shelter), water wise garden, and we kept as many trees as we could! First plan with a separate garage wouldn’t fit, so back to the drawing board, and we now have one structure. We have bats, and starlings nesting in the roof. Paper wasps at the window.

We eat vegetarian (um except the cats of course, and the various Elton Johns in the garden), organic where possible. My toiletries are mostly Beauty Without Cruelty http://www.bwcsa.co.za/ (no cruelty to animals). We walk wherever we are going in town. We have the usual town infrastructure – a library (I used to read a book a day before the Blotanical/blog bug bit me!), shops, doctor, church. So we only drive through to Cape Town when absolutely necessary. We don’t use poison in the garden or the house.

A compost toilet goes too far, but we would like an owl box and a bat house.

I was determined that we would first live here for a year. Can we live here in an unknown, new town? Then the Ungardener could design our house for this climate. Our home is as small as possible, as large as necessary. We live simply that others may simply live. I believe in God, who created the world and everything in it, and so I can only be green.

This has been the Ungardener’s ultimate project. That is ultimate as in best, not last, it is ongoing… And then there are his granadillas (which my OED has just told me is the Spanish diminutive of pomegranate!)