The conclusion of the planning period brought us to a process of:
As there has been quite a growth in both house prices and building costs, the Stage 2 house prices have increased somewhat.
After finalising all the contract details, work on site began in late November, with the long due excavation of the driveway to its full 5m width and correct height. This involved Carl Sorenson, our stage one digger contractor raising the drive about 0.5 meter, forming the swale, metalling and pouring the concrete road crossing.
After that, he removed topsoil and added this to our growing mountain, and then formed the building platforms for buildings F,G,H,I. We chose to remove more trees this time, as they proved expensive to work around and when it came to it, were old and few were worth saving.
There has been a tremendous amount of activity over the winter preparing the way for Stage 2 to begin in Spring. There really is a lot of planning behind the Eco-Neighbouhood's development.
An updated costings process has been necessary because with the recent building boom the costs of materials and especially carpentry labor have increased. Along with this process has been a active dialogue with our preferred builder, an experienced eco-builder who will oversee the complete site works and house construction process. Basically we plan to build on the strengths from stage one, and better utilise our own, now quite experienced, skill base and resources. Other key tasks have been negotiating finance, upskilling our promotion team, and an overall fine tuning of Earthsong's own management systems, seeing some fresh new faces in new roles.
On the social front we have a couple of new families living in the neighbourhood, whom we welcome. The children are reveling in their new environment, soaking up life in a place where there are actually common areas to roam and explore and hang out with each other and bump into various adults going about their business. This is enriching for the children and for everyone else here too.
The Eco-Neighbourhod has had further media exposure, with two newspaper articles, three magazine articles and a segment on TV2's My Home, My Castle. This makes us aware that Earthsong is an important catalyst for discussion about contemporary environmental and social sustainability issues. We are a positive part of the solution, and at this time in history Earthsong's role as an `early adopter` is paving the way for a future where Eco-Neighbourhoods and sustainable living are the norm.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has recogniised this by including Earthsong as an example of best practice in this recent report Creating our future: Sustainable development for New Zealand.
For the technically minded, or those interested in saving money on power and water bills, there is an evolving collection of materials in the technical section. There is a complete set of power and water use data, and the good news is that Earthsong residents are each spending on power and water only 27% of that used on avergae nationally. That means a saving for each household of $1670 per year.
The landscaping and paths are developing and there's lots of new photos of peoples gardens, and also views inside the homes.
There is occasionally a room-for-rent opportunity in an established home here. This is an excellent opportunity to try out cohousing life on a flatting basis, yet with all the benefits of being part of the Earthsong community. If interested phone 832 5558.
Six months after the completion of stage one it is probably safe to say that dull moments are few and far between.
Rather liking what Permaculture author Linda Woodrow has to say about chooks I'm going to start with the chickens. Two flocks of chickens have arrived courtesy of Jose and Kristen, and chook domes (after Linda Woodrow) made to accommodate them. It turns out that in this city, animal enclosures are only permitted in excess of 12 meters from a boundary. Given that practically all urban properties are less than 20m wide, that pretty well excludes chooks. The Earthsong common property is however 90 odd meters wide, so we didn't really have a problem, and the critters are a nice contribution to life here. The kids adore them, and one particular toddler is rather fond of hangin out IN the chook dome.
The long summer days have seen quite a few residents' gardens transformed from bare clay to creative diverse green havens. Some visits and workshops by organics whiz Brendon Hoarre have provided inspiration and new skills for many.
The tree planting programme has been started with a variety of fruit trees added to the "food forest" to complement the existing apple stock. A contractor was engaged to excavate the swale network, and this will be planted up in the early autumn. Work has started on the stone retaining walls, and the concrete footpath network will be poured in February.
Several new vege gardens are cropping nicely and the group has also instituted a weekly food coop from Organic Distributor Ceres Warehouse, at which a resident works. The combination of these two things makes going organic easy and inexpensive.
The wood workshop has been developed, and resulting in productions like swale bridges and outdoor furniture, although racks to house the huge amount of left over timber were among the first projects. This store of glowing aromatic macracarpa represents a lifetime of future woodworking projects.
In terms of services, the hugely useful household maintenance manuals have been put together by Robin. We are looking at offering a CD of this manual which comes in 3 volumes and documents the whole technical side of the project's fittings, materials and photos. On this subject the December power and water statistics are in, and they show the average power consumption per house to be less than 9kWhr per day, and the average domestic water consumption to be less than 240 litres per day. These are both well under half regional averages. The average combined water and power bill for December was $37.50 per household, which we rather like.
There's been heaps of "cohousing moments", lots of neat photos, babies turning into toddlers, and toddlers becoming, well, darlings. And then there was our first body corp budget setting process. Yes...funny money, and all, that was real interesting ;-)
We are sad to be losing a household, and as a result their house is for sale. The completed house (Unit 9 ) is 2 bedrooms + loft with a gorgeous outlook. If you are interested you can contact the owners Louise and Geoff direct on 9-833 4115.
Finally, cohousing scholar Graham Meltzer from Australia was in NZ recently. His comment was that Earthsong is unique among cohousing projects in terms of the degree to which we have taken environmental principles. Graham has written an extensively researched doctorate on cohousing, and is a soon-to-be author of a book on cohousing--so that's welcome praise indeed. All our hard work is now showing results.. and i guess that was the whole point!