To Flush or Not To Flush?

It’s really exciting to see the Council’s development notice on the top of our driveway, advertising our application to build a house as well as turn the property into an accredited education facility.

We’ve had so many decisions to make in the past few weeks; heating systems, interior wall and ceiling materials, electrical and lighting plans etc. We’ve found that Google isn’t really your friend in Tassie Mania when it comes to sourcing local suppliers, you need to resort to the trusty old Yellow Pages. It’s not a bad experience actually.

Confirming our window sizes, positioning and type has been an important process. Initially we didn’t like the idea of thermally broken aluminium windows because we thought that timber would be more aesthetically pleasing, though the maintenance of timber windows was a bit scary (especially with clerestory windows on the roof). Then we noticed our outdoor setting, which is a combination of ironstone colour aluminium and dark timber. We love that look, that’s why we bought the outdoor setting for our house in Pymble, and remember saying at the time we’d like to carry that theme through the house. So that was a huge milestone.

Our friend Anna generously spent most of the day with me (when Karim got stuck travelling due to the ash cloud) helping to survey the windows to make sure they offered views of the forest, river, mountains and sky. Admittedly without the guys it took us a couple of hours just to get the hang of the dumpy level, but hey, we got there in the end! Handy tip: it helps not to cover the lens with your finger.

The software that Graham uses (and Graham himself) is so clever. He can actually import the exact view that we will have through our chosen window sizes. Check out the view from our bed. We’re already anticipating the first morning we wake up to this. Ok it might be in 2013, but hey…

Then of course there are other big decisions like the wastewater management system and toilet. Why do we want a wetlands system rather than a simple septic system with trenches? Predominantly to re-use all the water that goes down the drains in the house, as well as the other benefits such as habitat for frogs and aquatic invertebrates, an environment to grow reeds that are useful for basket weaving and many more benefits.

Why do we want a compost toilet? A typical reason is to save water, however our rainwater catchment roof area, as well as our dam and other water harvesting features, means we have an abundance of water, and new 5 star toilets only use 2L each flush. Then of course there’s the policy of “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down”. So the minimal water saving aspect is not a compelling reason for us. Our main reason for having a compost toilet is for the compost. But you know what, we have dozens of hot compost piles in the garden containing a variety of organic materials and animal manures, we really don’t need to, and I haven’t been particularly enjoying, handling the human waste from our compost toilet in the shed. We’re also not happy with any of the so called “accredited” compost toilets. They are anywhere from $3-6,000, are made of cheap plastic, have travelled miles to get here, have mechanical components that rely on electricity to run fans and heaters, and rely on people with composting experience to keep them healthy (which is a problem if we go away). And to add to the debate, we’d have to dig a 1.4m deep x 1.6m wide trench under the house with a floating slab and retaining walls to accommodate the chamber.

So I’ve worked out how we can connect a flushing toilet to an affordable wetlands system. Rather than an expensive BioSeptic system that contains three stages (settling of the waste, an aeration process and the addition of chlorine to kill any pathogens), we can install a basic septic tank that purely settles the waste, connected to a gravel red beed then pond, where plants, bacteria and the sun can perform the aeration and cleaning processes. The pond can overflow into our dam, which is hooked up to the garden irrigation system, so the plants will still receive all the nutrients they would from a compost toilet, but in liquid form accompanied by other nutrient it picks up through the system (without us handling the shit or having to empty a grease trap).

So the question is, to flush or not to flush? Considering we can still recycle the water and the nutrient, flushing appears very compelling. We have a feeling that Mumsie, Kat and Craig would vote for the flushing option.

Apart from working on the house, there was lots of permaculture action during the month. We had a wonderful meeting about the future of the Permaculture Association of Tasmania over a candlelit dinner in a friend’s humpy in Mountain River, during which a baby wombat sat on my lap! It was the most incredible experience. I think the expression on my face looked like I had just won the lotto, that’s certainly how I felt. We also held an Organic Orchard Care workshop on the property. Well two actually, because 44 people registered!

And for a bit of fun we went to Cirque du Soleil, which was awesome and very inspiring in terms of athletic ability. We certainly need to start pumping some weights as before we know it we’ll be lifting 500 straw bales and rendering for days on end. Did I say we? I meant I… doh!

Home Sweet Home

After a wonderful holiday it was really nice to land back on home soil in Tassie Mania. Carly and Dan did a wonderful job of looking after the place while we were gone; the cats were clearly spoiled rotten and didn’t seem to miss us at all. Dan chopped lots of firewood for us to survive the approaching winter, and they looked after the chooks so well that they grew their new feathers and started laying eggs again.

It was amazing to come back from a four week holiday and still be able to harvest more than 10kg of food; it really is turning into a permaculture garden. Things are slowing down in there now, and thanks to all the help from Carly and Dan, it’s really just a matter of maintenance while we shift our focus to the house build. We remember saying to Al in January “we can’t wait for the day that you can’t see the back fence”, and can’t believe that day has already come, considering the first seedling was only planted last July!

We’re fully emersed in the house design phase now. Graham has been doing an amazing job (as both designer and marriage counsellor), and has showed an incredible level of patience to ensure that the internal measurements of every single room (after rendering) are in sacred geometric proportion to us and the earth. I’ll be hand rendering for many weeks, and if Karim gets out the tape measure to ensure that the walls are in haromy by the millimetre I think I will literally kill him!

It was exciting to get the first glimpse of what the house will look like from the outside. The curved section of green roof in front of the curved clerestory will hopefully be an earthern roof, these being two main features that are outside our budget restrictions (which we’re chosing to ignore for now).

It’s difficult for the computer software to generate the “organic” feel that the house will have with round timber posts, natural stone, earthen render and tapered windows, however this gives us a pretty good idea of what the view from the sunken lounge will be like, looking over the half height feature wall to the dining room and up to the kitchen. Of course if we turn 180 degrees, we’ll see the Huon River. The high ceiling over the lounge is the shape of the golden spiral and will be a major feature, possibly with exposed beams.

Here is Eva and James admiring the river views from the future dining room, which is also the view we’ll have from the lounge, kitchen (looking over the lounge), master bedroom and outdoor deck. We can’t wait to start enjoying this view more, and should be able to see the dolphins swim down the river like our neighbours do.

An interesting part of the process for Council planning approval was designing our Bushfire Hazard Management Plan, which is something we take quite seriously considering we don’t want to clear the forest that surrounds us, and Tassie Mania is well overdue for its cyclical bushfire. The plan has just been endorsed by the Tasmanian Fire Service, so we are ready to submit our planning application. We will also apply several design techniques to the house in order to protect it, as our strategy will certainly be “get the cats and go” rather than “stay and defend” if a fire storm is heading our way.

We hosted the second Permaculture Skillshare at the property last Saturday and Sunday, which was a wonderful distraction from the house project. Eva gave an amazing presentation of an old golf course that her and husband Drew have purchased in Brighton, which they are developing into a Permaculture property. Christian presented a Permablitz project that he designed in Melbourne, and being a circus trainer, he taught us how to juggle! We all watched some fantastic lectures and movies, held extremely beneficial conversations about training courses and the future of Permaculture Tasmania, and built a cage so we could trial a new method of hot composting. We chose specific ingredients to make this pile fungal biased, which results in an acidic environment that supports fruits and trees.

Lots of interesting things are happening in July too, but for now, nunoo nunnoo :o)