seriously, if people are still looking for an answer to that question the world is in a lot of trouble than we realise. in our view that is at least part of the issue: waiting for others to do something before we get our own act together may seem like a rational course of action…
we have spoken about the fire rating of our home before. living where we do has a number of benefits, but also one massive potential issue: bush fire. many decisions we have made during the design and build, and the subsequent maintenance, have to do with the fact that we live in the bush, among…
did i mention we love our new (sustainable off-grid) house? it actually works the way we designed it: it doesn’t need much heating in winter (the wood heater is enough) and no cooling in summer – solar passive indeed. the photovoltaic system is mostly bored; that may change when we trade up to an electric…
200 mm in 12 hours, or in other words: a third of st helens’ average annual precipitation in half a day. this is what that looks like on the rain radar: and this is what that looks like on our property: a meter deep washout. we got quite lucky: the road itself didn’t take damage,…
with the bridge covered, there was only one thing missing: a hand rail. at least on one side. actually, one side would be perfectly fine. luckily i had thought ahead and left little stubs so i would be able to use to attach the hand rail to. the main consideration was to ensure that it…
a bridge really needs strong foundations (check: granite) and a tough structure (got that, pretty strong timber), but it also requires a surface – otherwise crossing it because a little tedious. i admit the structure is probably not really bal 29 fire rated, but with a fire rated surface it should still be fairly safe.…
we may have made this point before: in st helens it rarely rains, but when it does, it pours. case in point: yesterday we got 42 mmm in 24 hours, and that makes it a real challenge to channel the water into places where it can be managed and does not do too much damage.…
the last few years were uncharacteristically wet: la nina brought lower temperatures and more than the usual amount of rain. so far so good. this made plants grow faster and more luscious, and nature as a whole prospered … which is sort of where the good news ends. scientists claim that, among other things, this…
we have really tried to leave as many trees as possible in place. we had to cut down a few, due to bush fire risk management, which stipulates that depending on how vulnerable a site is (and our house is in a very vulnerable spot) a sufficiently big distance must be kept between trees and…
the house was done, we had the road fixed up and previously also landscaped the area east, south and west of the house. the one part we hadn’t been able to get to yet was the north side, the area right in front of the house. there were a few reasons: most importantly, since this…
we finally made it: we moved into our new home. this was exciting, not only because we had never before moved into a new house we built ourselves. of course, we didn’t really ‘physically’ build all of it ourselves, but we definitely very much ’emotionally’ participated every step of the way. nat and i had…
nat and i spent the long weekend in st helens. and in case you were wondering, it was the king’s birthday – not his real birthday of course, he sort of inherited the date from his mother, and from what i understand it wasn’t really her birthday either. anyway, it was a day off so…