A busy month with no posting, so time to catch up.
We've had three visits down to our block over the past weeks with a few interesting developments.
Solar power -
Its looking more and more likely we will be going completely off-grid and setting up with enough solar power for our needs. This has come about because of the ridiculous costs we have been hearing to get connected to the grid. Apparently to connect to the mains power which is not more than 150 meters from our house site will cost 40 - 50 k! Potentially 40k alone to just get the power onto our property and then possibly up to 10k more to connect to the house. All for the pleasure of paying what will be ever increasing power bills.
In comparison we've had Bruce from Solar West (based just up the road from us in Nannup) come out for a long and interesting chat about a solar setup for around $35000. So valuable to have someone like Bruce up the road, who works with Solar power all over Western Australia including in the extreme conditions of the north west. Current plan is we will install the panels on our shed which will give us all the power we need for both the house and also have all the batteries and other vitals of the system stored away from the house.
Permaculture Plan -
Our local permaculture guru Jeff Nugent has completed our desktop plan for the block with a final walk thru and discussion on the 20th November. Initially we'll be focusing on the northern facing slopes near the house site where we'll be installing a number of swales (contour banks) to slow the water down as it runs down hill and building up green barriers to fire.
Strata Group -
Also on the 20th we met with the majority of the strata group at the yearly strata meeting and bbq. A lovely bunch of folks with a mix of permanent and weekender folks, with many looking to move in permanently which will be great to have more permanent neighbours in the fullness of time.
House Plans -
Heaps of work has been undertaken on the house front. Ali has been corresponding with Brian Hodge from Anvill and also Plans for People working on finalising the house plans. At present we've designed a 279 square metre 3 bedroom house, we'll post the plans as soon as we own them!
