A Vision In Green

Waking up with the curtains open to see the sun rise on the horizon from our bed and watching the moon twinkling on the sea from our glass living-room door last thing at night. These are the greatest, of many, pleasures from our new five-bedroom eco-home in south Cornwall – and something I have done every day since moving in nine months ago. I often feel like I am on a permanent holiday.


Three years ago, my husband Andrew and I bought a Sixties bungalow with sea views to die for, hoping we could demolish it and build a "dream home" for us and our daughters, Jessica, now 19, and Louella, 16. Planning permission and fine-tuning the detailed plans meant that work started 18 months ago. The main build took just over nine months but, after moving in, we have spent the same amount of time ironing out teething problems and landscaping.


Through this six-part diary of an eco home, I have likened our nine-month build to giving birth – with all the highs and lows that go with it. What I had not expected was that even once "the baby" had arrived – and we were living in our home – the similarities would keep cropping up.


Just like having a baby, when we finally moved in last July there was a real feeling of euphoria. But then came a dip with the realisation that there was still a lot of work ahead. The garden was a mud bath and the three-metre-high sliding doors in our living room arrived 15 centimetres short. This meant corrugated plastic replaced glass while a new set of doors was ordered. The builders were still working around us, tying up loose ends. We had no internet access, BT cut off the wrong telephone line and we could not get a television signal. Then the NIBE air-source heat pump, which supplies our hot water and runs our underfloor heating, kept cutting out. There was a moment when we wondered if we had done the right thing by investing in new "green" technology.


Finally, just days after moving in, Louella said her life was over – she couldn't get mobile reception in our village, nobody was going to come to see her in such a remote place and all her friends would forget she existed.


Fortunately, the lows were short-lived. Jacques Egbers, from Mid Cornwall Landscaping, saw the potential in our sloping and triangular-shaped garden and came up with the idea of creating a grass "sofa" overlooking the sea, along with a micro vineyard on a steeply sloping, south-facing area.


Luckily, we moved in during summer, so plastic, instead of the glass doors, was bearable. Matthew Trewhela, from Independent Energy, tweaked the air-source heat pump controls and it now works perfectly. Getting hot water from cold air seems like a good deal to us.


When our village had snow in January for the first time in 15 years, we turned up the thermostat and did not worry about running out of – or paying too much for – oil. Our energy came from the air-source heat pump and our solar and photovoltaic panels. We even get paid more for the electricity we supply back to the "grid" from our photovoltaic panels than the energy we use.


We liked our builders, T & D Carter, so their cheerful faces and willingness to solve problems made life easier. BT reinstalled the phone line three weeks later and the lack of television reception was hardly noticed as the view of the sea and constant arrival of friends was more than enough entertainment. A satellite aerial now gives a perfect picture.
But it was not just friends who turned up. We've had strangers knocking on our door who were either keen on modern architecture or building their own eco-homes and wanted to pick our brains.
Louella changed her tune when the first of her friends walked in and said: "Wow! This house is amazing." "My life is over" turned into "I love our house. Can I invite some people over?" An inbuilt Sonos music system with speakers in the ceiling has also helped.
Living in a new, modern house with clean lines, open spaces and an intolerance to clutter started to make me hysterical about the floors, worktops and walls being marked. Fortunately it did not last long. We inundated charity shops with excess possessions and it felt great to offload years of junk. But perhaps, because our focus is always looking out at the sea, a few cushions out of place and teenage clutter never seems to matter that much anyway.
When we moved in we couldn't imagine loving our new home – designed by the architect Robert Evans, of Evans Vettori – any more. Yet, it has got better and better. I still ring my husband when he is away working to tell him how great a sunrise was.
Weirdly, now that the house is finished I miss the construction team, the monthly site meetings and the building process. We were fortunate that Robert Atkinson of Evans Vettori, Robin van Bij, our project manager, and Ron Kidd, our quantity surveyor, protected us from many day-to-day hassles. The few painful memories that we did have from creating this house – as with sleepless nights from a new baby – have faded.
We cannot believe our luck at living in a house built for us which has come in on budget and on time (give or take a few thousand pounds and a few weeks). Our new home, however, may be an "only child": I cannot imagine wanting to live anywhere else.