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 vehicle – free fuel? and of course free water collected from the roof, and no sewer charge either.
the solar hot water systems are also mostly doing their job, providing hot water. especially since i fixed the lack of thermo paste the plumbers didn’t notice (they probably thought that was an electrician’s job).
we still have a few odds and ends to tidy up around the house, and the deck was the biggest one of them. and since the house is located in a bal 29 fire hazard zone we needed to carefully select the materials; timber, which is mostly used for decks, was out of the question for that reason.
instead we had to resort to somewhat less renewable building materials. the substructure was built using steel c-sections, and the deck itself is made from fire resistant composite material, which apparently includes a fair share of reclaimed material.
while the fact that it is fire-resistant (to the required bal 29 standard) it’s not a great material to build long structures with. even a few degrees of temperature change results in several millimeters of change in length, and with the required 3 mm gaps (to ensure embers do not fall under the structure) gaps quickly become very tight.
the sides also need to be fully enclosed; two steps on the west side provide access. we used a little fire resistant timber (yes, that exists, typically hard woods) to help straighten out the front. this would be very difficult to achieve with steel.
we have ordered a little dirt to bring the ground level up and close the gap on the low side; that will be a fun afternoon on the excavator, but finish off the whole south side very nicely.
ps: we also finished off the edges of the slab with some fresh argonaut gravel and some prime dirt, to which we applied liberal amounts of grass seed and growth enhancers, aka cow shit.
let the greening begin.