How long can one live without the internet? Don’t panic we have renewable energy powered broadband internet available at the Eco-Stay. As the Eco-Stay is too far from the telephone exchange for dial-up internet or broadband services, the only option was 2 way satellite!
Bring you laptop and connect via Wifi.
Ok so we do not really have sheep in the walls. Could be a bit hard to sleep at night with the noise!
Although we have the next best thing - “Wool insulation”. This is in external and internal walls, ceiling and and under the floor. This makes for a very cosy house!
This is a locally sourced great product to work with. Not irritating to hands/skin or breathing and you end up with soft hands at the end of the day from the lanolin!
The only issue was that the house smelt like a shearing shed until the plaster board was up on the internal walls!
Hot water for the Eco Stay is provided mainly by an Evacuated Tube Solar collector on the roof. During summer months this provides 100% of the hot water, in shorter daylight winter days and extended cloudy periods the wood fire has a “wet back” which will heat the water as well.
One of the biggest dilemnas we faced when building the Eco-Stay was how to process sewage. Traditional septic tanks are not exactly eco-friendly and require pumping out at regular intervals. We looked into composting toilets and found that although some good models existed, we still would have to find a solution for “grey water”. i.e. the water from sinks and shower. All of the other waste water processing systems on the market in New Zealand all required large amounts of power to run them. This was not an option when off-the-grid.
Eventually we found the Biolytix System which is manufactured in Australia that would handle both sewage and grey water with ease and had a very low power consumption due to the method of processing the waste - Worms!
