My wife Janice have been living in the hut on our block of land for over two weeks now so we are getting to see where there are advantages and disadvantages. We are lucky enough to have Janice’s parents living not to far away in Geraldine so we drop our washing off there and we can also use their wireless internet connection.
I thought that the internet was going to be one of the big problems being so far away from civilisation and having no power. Instead of having a home phone both Janice and I have brought cell phones on a plan that includes internet. At the hut we have no phone coverage yet up at the building site we can get coverage that comes and goes so we have been out and brought a yaggi aerial that is meant to give us better coverage. Yesterday we had Janice’s brother Peter McIntyre up for Christmas and he had a look at how the aerial would work best as he used to install them. It turns out our best option is to put the two aerials on top of the hill with one pointing to where the signal is coming from that is connected to the second aerial which is to be directed towards the hut and building site. This way we should be able to have cell phone reception at the hut. Peter also connected my wireless connection between my phone and my computer so I can type out an article then upload it onto the web site all from the comfort of the hut. Also while Peter was here he wired up a car stereo in the hut so we now have a radio and some music if we want.
There is nothing in the hut now that we need as the shower works well along with the gas oven and our lights run off a twelve volt system. We also brought some LED lights from mitre 10, three lights for $9 and they work real well you can even read by them if you want. At this time of the year though it is not getting dark until near 10 pm so we would normally just go to bed at this time rather than run the lights. Neither of us miss the television or paying rent, farmside or that dreaded power bill.
We have had our builder Gary Allan and our house designer Andrew Roxborough from wildwood homes up to look over the building site so we hope to have something ready for the council to look at in early January. We still have a bit more work to do on the solar power side of things but are getting there.
We had one night where I got keen and lit the fire under the out door bath, for any person that has not soaked in an out door bath you are really missing out. We spent over 2 hours soaking away and never got out until 12.30 am. When we first got in, it was overcast with a lit drizzle but as the night went on the sky cleared so that we could see the stars.