For a while now we have been toying with the idea of moving and living in the countryside. We were first thinking about this when we were still in Bristol and relocating to Santiago may have seemed like a step in the wrong direction (...though it has its pluses, like 330+ sunny days per year and the Andes only a few minutes by car! - or
a few mooooore minutes by bike ;o)).
The main thing that thus far has kept us from seriously pursuing this idea was - like everything in life - that one has to make compromises and at the moment living in this big, hectic, overpopulated and polluted city means we are close to Patricia's workplace and we get pretty much everywhere we need to go fairly quickly either on our bicycles or by public transport.
However, over the last couple of years we have been working towards a little more flexibility with regards to our work arrangements and working from home is now a regular occurrence for both of us. Limiting the commute to a couple of days a week or so suddenly makes the scenario of life in the countryside a lot more realistic. So we decided to take the plunge, buy some land just south of Santiago and start an new little project...
The plot currently has a traditional cob-house and is surrounded by vineyards; it is located at the foot of the Andes. It is flat, it has water (free: from the mountains and also metered) and also electricity. And there is a local bus loop going past the property which connects with the nearest metro station. On the downside, the options for internet are not great at the moment but Chile is in the process of rolling out the 4G mobile phone network and with that we are pretty hopeful we will have the fast internet we are used to within the next 12 months or so.
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| The plot - there used to be a house just past where Patricia is standing until the big 1985 earthquake |
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| The current house |
Another interesting detail is that the previous owner of the land never lived there. Instead - and this is quite common in Chile - there were some "caretakers". This is basically a local family who is given a contract to live for free on the premises in exchange for looking after it. Without such arrangement, parts of an empty property would soon start vanishing into thin air and magically re-materialise elsewhere in the neighbourhoor... that's how it works here. We have met this family and they seem nice, so for the time being we will continue this arrangement.
We are not ready to move out of the city and the property is not exactly in line with our requirements, just yet. For starters, the house is not very earthquake proof, but it doesn't stop there. There clearly is a big mismatch between what we are after...
- A sustainable and energy efficient building - throughout the entire life-cycle
- The use of natural materials
- Passivhaus design - there is so much sun in Santiago and so little winter, there really shouldn't be much need for heating if designed properly
- Earthquake resistant
- Grey water system - i.e. you can reuse the water you have already used once
- Compost toilet - don't panic all of you traditionalist out there, there will be a "normal" toilet too, just in case
- Nice big bright and airy rooms (...but not not too many, we are not looking for a castle)
- A permacultury garden with fruit trees and veggies
- Peace and quiet
...and what the local housing market (and this includes our new property) generally has to offer:
- Houses with lots of tiny little rooms to allow families to have lots of children
- Terrible energy efficiency
- Not a lot of thought about materials, orientation etc...,
- Often right next to your neighbour (i.e. zero privacy), small cramped gardens (the family grows, the house grows with it and eventually there is no garden and no one knows how this happened).
- either overly manicured gardens or a "garden" that really is only wasteland
So the plan is to design and then build what we want (or what we can!) over the next (few) months (years?).
Back in Bristol we already started taking an interest in "eco-building" and since then we went to a
cob-building and
staw bale building course, learned how to build a
green roof, just generally - whenever there was an opportunity to do so - familiarise ourselves with some of the techniques that have been (re)invented over the last few decades. Nevertheless, it remains a daunting task.
To help us on our journey, we recently decided to join the
Red Chilena de Construccion con Fardos de Paja (the straw bale building network of Chile). This was well-timed as they had a "bio-construction" celebrity in the country just last weekend:
Gernot Minke (a german architect who has a lot of experience in the field, and a couple of uni courses and books under his belt). He came to participate in a seminar (which we attended) and a 1-day excursion to a few unconventional properties near Santiago made with straw bales and similar materials last weekend (which we also joined). It was a great opportinity to learn a bit more about some pitfalls of real life building and ask lots of questions.
A few photos of this little excursion below:
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| House number 1 - nice strawbales but not enough solar design and too much concrete for our taste |
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| Random pic of an algarrobo tree - you can actually eat the pods, they are sweet :o) |
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| House 2 - pretty good, just not as "strawbaly" as we want it! |
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| House 3 - with some funky cob patterns |
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| House 3 from a different angle - the almost living (soon to be living?) roof |
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| House 3 again - a self supporting roof |
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The bioconstruction celebrity and the organic children ;o)
(a bottle of wine for the first person who guesses correctly who the celebrity is !) |
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| House 4 |
A wide variety of people joined this excursion - from the real hippies with not much money, nor shoes or showers ;o), but a lot of enthusiasm to a
retired agricultural engineer from Bristol who is now creating an eco-village near Villarica with his Chilean wife.
Here are a few interesting links for people into bio-construction in Chile and looking at building in a slightly different way (note that we are not recommending any of these, just sharing what we have found in the area!):
We will update this regularly with the project milestones (currently there is no real plan but we think a year and a bit (this bit might be 1 to 11 months?) is probably a realistic timeline? ;o))
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