More than Just a Move
At the end of last year, my girlfriend and I moved from a rented apartment to our first home together. Before making the decision, do we buy or don’t we, we thought a lot – and learned a lot – about sustainable and intelligent living, about the very real decisions that ownership would entail.
For example, the roof and walls of our house are wrapped with natural isolation material. This is to keep the heat from our heating system inside during wintertime and to leave the summer breeze outside during hot summer days. Not only that we have a wonderful climate in our house now – on top we safe money every day due to low energy consumption.
Another great advantage in our new house is a big cistern. You can’t see it, because it’s hidden under the porch. A system of conduits, pipes and filters brings natural rainwater into the cistern, rainwater that would normally run into a sewage duct. Because of the cistern, we use rainwater to flush the toilet and use in the washing machine. Which is clearly a more sustainable use of rainwater. Also, the pH level in rainwater is much better than the level in the city-supplied water. Using rainwater for washing also makes our clothes, bedding and towels much softer.
When deciding to buy our house, we chose a more sustainable way to live. We now have wooden floors. And we have white walls painted with organic wall paint. Outside there is a garden – waiting for fruits and veggies to be grown.
Since we both work for hessnatur, we have been greatly influenced to live a “greener” life. As we say at hessnatur, “clothes are more than what you wear, they’re how you choose to live”. And that goes for houses, too. It’s how we choose to live.
By the way, the mailbox you see in the photo was purchased by us in Great Barrington, MA on our trip to the US last summer. A reminder of how much we love New England!
Tags: Environment, sustainability
Written by Michael Krause.
Loading ...