A 1930's house in Clacton has been picked to be a part of a network of eco-friendly show homes, according to the Clacton gazette. The Burrs Road home of Chris Southall is now part of the Permaculture Association's LAND learning network, which has examples of eco-friendly and self sufficient homes all over the country. The homes all show good practice of permaculture, which is about developing sustainable ways to live, including growing food and producing energy.

Over several years Southall, a member of Tendring Eco Group has turned his house into a self-sufficient homestead. It includes a wood stove, solar panels and organic beds for growing fruit and vegetables.

Chris said: “It's a very good scheme and means we will get people coming here who want to learn about the things we are doing. We have put a lot of effort into sharing what we are doing with other people, and it means a lot to have our home recognised like this.”

Some of the work already completed at Burrs Road :- "We have installed a wood-fired central heating stove and cooking range to make use of the plentiful supply of waste wood available in the nearby industrial estate. We now own a small piece of ancient woodland and are coppicing and re-planting the trees there".

"We have installed a solar panel kit (20 vacuum tubes 1700mm long)". "I have found a source of insulation off cuts in the industrial estate and have used them to insulate our flat roofs".

"We have planted 30 willow cuttings from Willowbank - 4 varieties for comparison - 3 sorts of super willow and one for making baskets etc. These arrived as unrooted lengths of willow shoots and have been planted at 1 meter spacing. They have grown over two meters in the first year !"

"We have built a rain water harvesting system and a grey water recycling system consisting of:
- A surge tank to collect the water from the bath, washing machine and vegetable washing sink.
- The reed bed: a combination horizontal and vertical gravel filter planted with reeds and rushes. We have dug out an old well which we are using to water the garden in the summer.
These systems feed:
- A leaky pipe watering system watering the polytunnel, dipping ponds and fishpond.
- A series of vegetable deep beds made from scrounged turf & soil, horse manure & scrounged roofing tiles for edging.

"We have completed a lean-to greenhouse obtained from Freecycle and using recycled concrete blocks from a demolition next door to give us solar gain and plant growing space, including a rock storage for excess heat recycling (now working well)".

"1.6 Kw solar PV (electricity generating) system - We are using a battery bank to store the electricity, this give us some independence from the grid but we sacrifice some of the power because of losses in charging the batteries. We also get a lower payment from the government".

More projects are upcoming - see www.ecodiy.org for details.