Our goals for our Scandinavian cottage are fairly straight forward.
First and foremost, we wanted to have fun building and living in our new home. Being from Australia, I love being outdoors so "rooms'' persay will not be restricted to the house. We have put in a number of garden rooms for entertaining, hanging out, daydreaming, and planning Viking raids to Starbucks...
Second, our home has an environmental footprint the size of a Lotus shoe. We used local or employee owned businesses, and products made in the USA as much as possible. With 72 trees on the property, we have surplus carbon neutrality. Because of the design and eco-friendly features we included in the structure of the home, the entire utility bill for the home in the middle of the Michigan winter rarely exceeds $90 a month. We also used traditional building practices to keep construction noise down so the local flora and fauna were not disturbed too much. We have designed and positioned the house to take full advantage of passive heating and cooling which significantly reduces our bills. The internal walls are all insulated to take full advantage of zone heating and provide sound proofing. We use a modern high efficiency wood stove to heat the home using wood grown on our property or our neighbors property.
Third, we want to be as self sufficent as possible - in a neat, organized sort of way. We have a modern water well with pure, clear, spring water on the property and an inground transpiration/drainage septic system - so no county water or sewage bills. We can aesthetically recycle all our paper, garden clippings and kitchen waste on the property and use the compost on our enormous potager garden. We have landscaped the one acre plus property with hundreds of mature fruit trees, berry bushes, and food producing plants.