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Artists-turned-permaculture experts, Kirsten Bradley and Nick Ritar, moved to the Mudgee region in NSW from suburban Melbourne just over five years ago.
“We originally moved here because it was Nick’s family’s farm, and we thought we’d just chuck up a quick little shack out of recycled materials while we contemplated our next move,” laughs Kirsten. “We hadn’t really seen any other examples of tiny houses when we started, we just wanted something small because we didn’t want to spend all our lives at the farm inside the house... but we found it much more difficult to build something well than we’d expected!”
“We used as many local and/or recycled materials as possible for the entire house,” says Nick. “Using recycled materials is time consuming, but we did it because of the ethos; building materials can have savage ethical conundrums associated with them, so by using pre-loved materials we knew we weren’t contributing to the problem and were actually diverting from landfill.” Before moving into their tiny 60 m2 home, the couple lived on the property “in a mixture of pop-top caravans, other caravans, sheds, and the small original cottage of the farm”.
Kirsten says “I love the simplicity that comes with living in a small place; you’re really forced to value what you do have”.
LESS IS MORE ENERGY:
“It was going to cost us $40,000 to get the power connected to the house to use the grid, so instead we opted for a stand-alone solar system,” says Nick. “We moved in on August 11 last year, and so far we haven’t had any need to use a back-up power supply. We have a refrigerator that uses very little energy, and the lights are all efficient LEDs.”
The solar hot water system was bought second-hand at a garage sale, and is backed up by a Rayburn wood stove in winter. Kirsten says, “the gas cooktop is awesome in summer when you don’t want to fire up the woodstove, but for the most part we’ve been cooking on the BBQ outside.”
BRIGHT AND LIGHT:
“The passive-solar design catches light very effectively,” says Nick. The dam directly next to the house on the downhill north side is integral. “The dam acts as an open space to allow light to come into the building, and it also acts as a reflector – a big mirror – so the light reflects off the dam up into the ceiling of the building all winter long.”
Kirsten also adds that the high ceilings contribute to how spacious the house feels “because we didn’t want to feel like we were living in a cave”.
CONSTANTLY COMFORTABLE:
The tiny house is built using passive solar design principles which use the surrounds, and the building itself, to collect and store the sun’s heat in winter, and to reject the sun’s rays in summer. With temperatures ranging between -10°C to 40°C at the farm, the house is prepared with 3-12 inch insulation, and a lot of internal thermal mass. “The house is very heavy; everything’s got a lot of mass to it, and that mass resists changes in temperature,” says Nick.
Being such a small house, it’s not difficult to get the temperature right, but the nearby 1.8 megalitre dam also influences the environment inside the house. Kirsten tells us that when she gets home she’s sometimes feels as though she’s stepping into something that is alive. “You get in there if it’s cold outside and it’s like the same sort of warmth as an organism... it’s this radiant heat that’s different from a fireplace or anything else.”
ROOM TO MOVE:
The rooms are kept basic to allow for future re-jigging. “We won’t put built-in wardrobes in because we might want that room to become a lounge room one day,” says Kirsten. A wall bed is the only permanent item of furniture, and the only piece bought new. “It was a great investment as it frees up room for our son’s play area. I was expecting it to be too much of a hassle, and that we’d only end up putting it up once or twice a year, but it takes no more than 30 seconds so we do it pretty much every day.”
SIMPLE SOLUTIONS:
“The toilet is a humanure compost toilet that’s built on the Lovable Loo design,” says Kirsten. “We built the bathroom on the cool side of the house, and it hasn’t got smelly at all. It’s kept simple so there’s less that can go wrong; it’s a bucket with a box around it and a toilet seat ontop. After every deposit, we add a scoop of sawdust, then every four to five days we take the bucket to a compost system, and cover with a lot of straw. A year later it makes amazing compost that’s full of earthworms which is completely safe because the human pathogen cycle doesn’t make it past nine months. We use this on our fruit trees, not veg, just because we don’t want to freak people out!”
ORGANIC MARKET GARDEN:
Now in it’s second year of production, the market garden provides food for the crew and students of the courses held at Milkwood Permaculture. “We’re proud to produce 70–80 per cent of the vegies and 100 per cent of the greens we need!” says Kirsten. “We’ve now got a full time market gardener, Michael, and he’s amazing.” The fertile patch of dirt that has taught hundreds of green thumbs’ is fenced off to protect it from rabbits; the picture to the right shows just a portion of the 1000 m2 productive garden.
A PLACE TO LEARN:
“Milkwood Farm itself is a permaculture education hub. People come here for up to two weeks for intensive courses learning about small farm design, integrated animal systems, beekeeping, market gardening, permaculture theory and design, and more,” says Kirsten. “For us, it’s just about learning good life skills, which can also be applied in the urban sphere. We encourage the re-learning of skills to feed, clothe and house ourselves, our families and our communities more sustainably.”