Sustainability
As well as recycling and composting to reduce waste, here are some of the other things we've introduced at Nurses Cottage:
Glass Bottles & Filtered Tap-Water - to reduce single-use plastic waste, we provide guests with glass flip-top bottles, which we fill with filtered tap-water.
Homegrown & Locally-Sourced Food - our own organically-fed chickens provide eggs for breakfast and our seasonal soft fruit is freshly picked or frozen and used to make compote for the winter & spring months. Local Arundel shops provide many other breakfast ingredients.
Solar PV - 18 Schott panels on our SE and SW-facing roofs generate electricity that we either use or feed-back into the power grid. These were installed by Greenheart Installations from nearby Itchenor.
Solar Thermal - Sussex-based company, A Greener Alternative installed our 20 Barilla tubes, which contribute towards the hot-water system.
Multi-Fuel Boiler Stove - a Yeoman CL8HB boiler-stove contributes to heating for the extension and hot water for the whole house, by 'charging' (along with the solar tubes) a large Akvaterm thermal store (also installed by A Greener Alternative).
We use a combination of our own seasoned logs or local supplies from Andy at South Downs Lawns and Hedges and Stubbs Copse to fuel the stove.
Rainwater Harvesting - two large Graf Carat S underground tanks collect & filter up to 9600 litres from the roof, which is used for the washing machine & flushing toilets as well as for watering the garden.
We also have several water butts and a large trough for collecting water from our sheds - every drop counts!
