Sustainability is a hot topic in our normal daily life, and this includes where we are staying for our business and/ or leisure trip. In this blog a short version of The Green Path for The Hive at 52
It has been topic, on and off in our household for many years. Sixteen years as a matter of fact, starting off shortly after we moved into our house. It is clear that viewing a house is great however the home truths don’t appear after living in a house for some time.
We discovered that our walls had no insulation and many of our windows were of single or poor double glazed windows. What did this mean, heat going out of every gap in walls, windows and roof! First point to action was to have the roof redone, insulated and made snug, after which we had no money for a while!
Trough the years we (ie Lucy), insulated 80% of our external walls, with the first 20% done by a building company. It means that all of our external walls now have at least 15mm high performance insulation stuck to it, with roof and floor insulated with plenty of mineral wool. We also replaced every single window in the property with new height efficient double glazing, including all of our external doors.
Bed and Breakfast
We knew we had snug & well insulated house, and more importantly started our journey to become as sustainable as we can, than we decided to start a bed and breakfast! The start of the business was a hard however enjoyable journey, however not as sustainable as we probably could have done it. We are now working hard to turn it around and be nicer to our planet.
Small steps
Over the last 2 or so years, we have been making small steps in ways we are running our business more sustainable and green. No more bin bags in guests room, bio-degradable bins bags in bathroom bins, fresh milk in re-usable glass jars, fresh coffee in airtight jars and since the start of 2022, homemade washing powder. Small steps but for us oh so important steps.
It is not just in our house and now Bed and Breakfast where we are looking to improve things. In 2020 Lucy was keen to plant trees around our village, Weaverham, and in early 2021 she fulfilled her wishes and planted 8 trees on a piece of grass. (permission given by council!). Am sure she is looking at taking this further and plant more trees around.
The future….
The future has already started recently as after lots of research and discussion we installed two airsource heat pumps at The Hive at 52. It supplies us with hot water for our showers and heating. We are hopeful that we will have 8kw of solar panels installed by the end of October/ start of November, hopefully making us as much as possible self sufficient for energy.
What else? Who knows! Once we have experienced the Airsource heat pumps & Solar panels for some time, we’d be looking at installing an EV charging point and finally buy an electric car!
So the journey to sustainability is getting along really well, however we are not there yet! It is a journey full obstacles……….! We love to hear your story, journey or even better ideas.
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