The art of downshifting – finding freedom with the simple life

I was truly heartened to read a story in the Telegraph about women’s co-operative Amazon Nails, which specialises in environmentally friendly housing, being commissioned to build Britain’s first straw council houses.

Only six have currently been commissioned, by North Kesteven County Council in Lincolnshire, but it’s hoped that many more will follow.

There are many sound reasons for building in straw. To start with, such houses cost far less than conventional buildings – £60,000 on average instead of £80,000. They are also less polluting, especially as they use less concrete. The houses are so well-insulated and energy-efficient that they save householders around 80 per cent on their heating bills (the planned houses will be connected to the gas grid for cooking only, and will be heated by woodburners in winter).

They also make use of a waste product – enough surplus straw is produced in the UK each year to build 250,000 homes, and God knows there is a profound need for social housing, which will probably increase rapidly as hundreds of thousands of people lose their homes in this recession.

My first encounter with straw bale housing was about a decade ago when our friends E and K built themselves a bale house to live in (above). They had been living in a 6ft caravan and E was now pregnant, so something had to give. Straw bale construction was in its infancy then and they build a load-bearing structure. Very few people do this now, as it means you’re very limited in the heights and widths of walls, doors and windows – instead, modern straw bale houss are usually timber-framed and you use bales as infill rather than bricks or breeze blocks.

Being a couple of feet thick, the insulation properties of the straw are truly amazing. We popped down from time to time while it was going up and it was astonishing to find how warm it was inside even when the openings weren’t glazed, it was winter, and there was no heating. Once E&K took occupation and fired up their tiny woodburner cooker, they lived with their big window open for much of the year round, to let OUT the heat. The walls, both inside and out, were lime-plastered – a wonderful finish that gradually turns (chemically speaking) back into rock over time. Like most straw bale houseowners, they left a ‘truth hole’ (right) to show that the house really is made of straw.

I have my secret fantasies about having a house built (too much watching of Grand Designs on telly) and it definitely involves straw for areas such as utility rooms and porches. Straw, lime plaster, lots of energy-efficient double glazing, exposed timbers, terrazzo flooring. Oh la, all a pipe dream really, unless my architect friend M decides to make one for me out of the kindness of his heart.

Still, a girl can dream…

The DH and I were having another one of those discussions over the weekend – how to reduce our bills and at the same time go more eco-friendly.

We are all for being green, as I’m sure most people are, but the primary push is probably going to be forced on all of us. For instance, we stopped using our tumble dryer a year ago in order to reduce our electricity bill, and for the same reason, we now wash up by hand rather than using the dishwasher. (In any case, it broke, and the part was a fortune, and we can’t afford a new machine.) So back we are (or rather, the DH is) washing up with a bowl and soapy water. It is not so bad, really, and at least enables us to use our nice raku dinnerware, which was too delicate for the machine.

A bunch of us girlfriends also wanted to try soap nuts, so we split a 20-euro bag between four of us (giving each of us enough nuts for six months). The verdict so far is pretty positive – the soap nuts seem to get your clothes as clean as old-style washing powders or liquids, and leave no residue in your clothes to irritate sensitive skin. The only drawback is that the clothes don’t smell fresh. They don’t smell dirty either, of course, they just don’t smell at all. Perhaps this is something we’ll all get used to – you can put a few drops of essential oil in the dispenser if you want, but I don’t like to do it too often because we have a septic tank.

Another thing that’s on our minds is lighting, because the old-style incandescent lightbulbs are being phased out now, and that will mean switching over to energy-saving bulbs, like it or not. Which is fine, even though they’re three times the price, because they last virtually forever and they use, say, 11 watts of electricity instead of 60, which will mean a massive reduction in consumption. But in our case, it also remains replacing all our light fittings, because our current ones won’t take eco-friendly bulbs.

We have a dimmer switch for the main lights, and that’s a no-no for energy-saving bulbs, so it will have to come out. This house is also French but the people who restored it from a ruin were British and they brought over British fixtures with them – crucially, these take bayonet-fitting bulbs. Try getting those in France. It’s hard enough to get incandescent ones, but in long-life, it’s virtually impossible. So every British light fitting in the house will have to come out and be replaced with a French one – that’s 14 fittings.

Oh la. It can’t be helped. It is what we call the Montcocher effect – we try to do the simplest thing, like put up a shelf, and it entails some massive palaver with drills and rawlplugs and special screws and I know not what. But once again, when it’s done, it will be done, and I’m sure we’ll be glad of it.