I had a vision...

Ever since I was a teenager and the whole "green" movement really kicked off in the UK, I've been at least vaguely environmentally aware. I've even got a green Blue Peter badge to prove it! However as you move out of your idealistic teens and enter the real world, such thoughts quickly vanish... Certainly in my case they vanished for around 15 years, 5 house moves over 650 miles of glorious British countryside (or smelly noisy wasteland if you count Slough...), 4 jobs, and 9 cars. As I've gone on, I've perhaps grown less and less satidfied with my life as I've moved further and further away from my lifes ambitions...

Until last year, when in a magnificent show of defiance (or stupidity?), I said stuff it! I applied for and got a job I knew backwards for a company I believed in which resulted in a 160 mile move with my wife and dog, a large pay cut (and a complete career change and pay cut for my wife!), selling our house of 10 years in the height of a housing slump, and leaving all our established friends for a new life! We did of course move to one of the most picturesque parts of the country - sunny Devon. I had worked for this company in a previous incarnation, and we both had friends around here so it wasn't a complete wrench thankfully!

Having rented an 1830's Devon Cob house when we moved down here during the height of winter, we became very aware of how horribly expensive the house was to run, and of the increasing cost of both gas and electricity. I was again becoming more and more environmentally aware, but this time from the much more practical point of view of wanting to save as much money as possible rather than just an idealistic notion of wanting to "save the planet"

So we've spent the last 6 months trying to find the perfect house. The housing crash seems to have passed Devon by, but we did eventually find such a house in the most unlikely of guises! Not a period thatched cottage in a quaint village or a victorian townhouse by the sea, but a 1960's chalet style house slap bang in the middle of Oldfolksville in a nice market town in East Devon! We think we've reduced the average age of the residents in the street by 20 years...! However this house had so much scope, a large garden, and the most fantastic panoramic views all the way to Dartmoor! It was also rated C/D on the Home Information Pack - a document most likely ignored by most, but one that seems to have become increasinly important in my drive to save money!

The HIP recommendations are a good basis to start from, and a good basis on which to start a blog! My aim is to make this house energy efficient as inexpensively as I can! I don't have a big budget, I'm not handy, I have no knowledge of green or energy efficient technology - I'll hopefully pick all that up as I go along. I have a lot of preconceptions - many of which will be wrong! However I want to share my experiences as I go through what I expect to be a long and difficult journey, and I hope that if people do read this, that they contribute their own experienes and advice which may help me (and others) through what should hopefully be worthwhile endeavour!