I Found My Dream House

Thanks @FullyChargedShw for helping find another house I can’t afford 😕

So while perusing my daily feed on YouTube, I came across a really interesting video that ended up with me going down a rabbit hole. It was by the guys over at fully charged and called Can you Heat & Power a big house with Renewables? It’s all about The Moonstone house and their journey of building an eco mansion.

After watching the video and falling in love with the house and the technology behind it I wanted to find out more and thankfully the owners have set up a website (themoonstoneproject.co.uk) where they have created a video blog of the process and the technologies they have used. I spent most of last night watching around half of the videos and I’m completely hooked. I either want to buy the place or make my own, it’s just a pity that I can barely afford a sausage roll let alone a mansion.

The project has filled my head with a stream of ideas on what I would do to not only the house I’d love to build but the one I have my eye on in Bridlington (I hope the owner doesn’t think badly of me for remodelling their home). As talking describing the home I want to build would be a post in itself so I’ll go with the one I would love to buy.

Honestly I didn’t borrow this off google maps… Yeah I’m not getting away with that
There are a few reasons I would love this house. The first is that it is absolutely stunning. I love the architectural design and would love to take it on a bit of a project to later live in. I also love the fact it has an outbuilding (to the left of the photo) that I could turn into my workshop and well as the plant room that would house the batteries and heat exchangers. It’s just around the corner from Abi’s folks (their garden goes onto this one) and finally, I love the size of the garden.

It’s HUGE! All the right-hand side of the garden is overgrown and need cuts back but that is where I would start with my renovations. Whilst we were getting rid of all of the overgrown plants I’d dig down and fit some pipes for ground source heat pumps and then on top of that I would make a small solar farm. Not only would this provide power and heat to the house we may also make some money off the excess that isn’t put into the batteries in the outhouse.

Next up would be the house itself. The first thing I would do would be to take everything back to the brickwork and put in a boatload of insulation to reduce the amount we’d need to heat or cool the house itself. I’d then rewire the whole thing making sure to wire it for networking at the same time. I’d also put in some form of air conditioning too but I haven’t researched into eco-friendly air-conditioning yet but the stuff I have seen would take up far too much space. The hope would be not to have to use it but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

I’d then let Abi loose with the kitchen design and decoration in the rest of the house. While she was doing that, if I could get planning permission, I’d love to extend the outhouse so it attaches to the house (front to back and height) so we could have a couple of extra bedrooms and a decent sized workshop. If not I’d see if about making the outhouse slightly deeper and putting garage doors on the front. Again the outhouse (now workshop) would be fully stripped to the brick so it could be insulated and rewired just like the main house but this time with a focus on the plant machinery and workshop.

I’d also have my office upstairs in the outhouse too above the workshop. This way I can fishing work and just leave it there when I go into the house. Finally, I give the garden a bit of a going over. I’d extend the sidewall and replace the wire fence that is there. I would possibly add some gates their too so we could get vehicles into the back of the house or even build a carport or sorts if the planning permission didn’t go through for the outhouse extension. I’d love a shaded decking area by the rear of the house. I’d then put some raised beds around the part of the garden that isn’t covered in solar panels and put a lawn down around the rest for a place to have BBQs and chilling out.

I know I’d probably never be able to make this dream a reality but I have fun figuring these things out anyway. I just wish I could get the building plans so I could do a full 3D design based on the current building.

Have you come across any amazing Eco Home? What ideas have they given you? Would you rather buy new or renovate a home? Let me know in the comments below.