The room that is closest to completion is the bathroom. And very proud of it we are too. When we moved in we had a tiny shower room with barely enough room to turn in. We converted what was an ungenerous second bedroom and now we have a bathroom large enough to swing a cat. Several cats, possibly simultaneously. If you were into that sort of thing.
From an eco point of view, adding a bath doesn’t make much sense. The biggest environmental issue in the bathroom is water usage and, as anyone who can quote tired statistics will tell you, showers use a fraction of the water that baths do. This is something I have always had issue with. It is taken as a truism but really is only accurate if you have a short shower. If you spend half the morning in there shaving your legs and waiting to rinse out the conditioner you may as well have run a bath. If in doubt, try putting the plug in while having a shower (obviously this only works if your shower is of the over-the-bath variety) and see how high the water level rises. If you’ve got kids you’ll know that it is virtually impossible to wash a small wriggly five year old in a shower without saturating yourself. And two separate kids’ showers add up to more than throwing them into the bath together. Not to mention the hours of entertainment they spend in there. When you’re sitting in the bath you aren’t consuming any energy at all – I consider it a low impact activity. If yours is a power shower, you can forget the moral high ground – they are energy vampires.
Does all that sound like justification? Well it is. Dilemma or not, we got the bath. Showers are great for waking you up and getting you clean but there are times when only a long soak in a bath will do – for instance when you’ve been self-building all day and every muscle you didn’t know you had aches. But of course we tried to do this in as low impact a way as possible. Having sourced the bath we wanted – a British-made one to save on air miles – Donald went to collect it only to find it in bad shape. When could we get a replacement? Not for three weeks. In the end the plumber sourced the bath as he was booked in and couldn’t wait. So, another compromise. There are other ways of sourcing baths for an eco house – salvage is a fantastic way to re-use period furniture and fittings and will usually be cheaper than getting a reproduction. We didn’t go for this option as we felt that claw baths + kids = big puddles to clear up after bath time.
Our eco points come from re-using what was there. We moved the existing toilet, sink and shower into the new bathroom. We even took down and re-used the wet wall from the shower, painstakingly chiselling off the adhesive and silicone. We sanded the floor boards, which came up lovely, so we can seal the gaps and stain them – no need for new flooring.
Having a nearly complete room means something else – I finally get to indulge the urge to decorate which has lain dormant amid the rubble for so long. However, the rapidly diminishing budget means I can’t indulge it as much as I’d like. Sigh.
First thing I wanted was funky taps for the bath. On holiday in France last year, the apartment we stayed in had mixer taps with a thermostat that had a push button control. This meant that the bath filled at an even 38o – saving the hassle of adding a bit of cold, then a bit more hot, then another drop of cold. If you wanted to go hotter than this you had to depress a safety button – so no accidental scalds for the kids. The other button controls the flow to reduce water usage. We took a note of the brand – Hansgrohe – and went searching for them. Turns out they aren’t stocked by any supplier in Perth. Donald tracked them down at the Ecobuild Conference in London and priced the taps we wanted. £400. Ouch. Not being in the habit of giving up, I went online and discovered that Hansgrohe UK have an ebay outlet – http://stores.ebay.co.uk/hansgrohe-uk. We got exactly the taps we wanted (Ecostat) for £100 including postage.
Then I turned my attention to tiles. I fancied glass tiles and figured that it must be possible to source some made with recycled glass. Again, I searched the internet. Again, our ideals and budget clashed. We found some gorgeous ones at Bottle Alley Glass - a huge variety of shades and patterns – but the price! At £150 per m2 we had to pass. There was a crowd in Glasgow who only did bespoke at £200 per m2. At the same time I priced ‘designer’ glass tiles from conventional sources at approx. £100 per m2. Which brings us back to the eternal question – why do manufacturers of recycled products charge a premium when their materials are so cheap? But tenacious as ever (ok, stubborn) I managed to find a product that proves it is possible to be both economical and ecological. Original Style produce glass tiles in England using traditional methods – so they are quality tiles. One of their ranges – recycled glass matt mosaics – is billed as their ‘economical and environmentally friendly’ range. It is available in a limited range of colours – white, black/grey, blue and green – but it’s a start. And lucky for us, the green ones work really well with the existing wet wall. We ordered the three m2 we needed for the bath surround for the grand total of £66. Not per m2, that’s the total. That brings them in at less than 20% of the cost Bottle Alley’s tiles. Maybe not quite as funky and original but, y’know, for £22 per m2 I can live with that.
Our bargain Hansgrohe Ecostat taps
- Recycled matt mosaic tiles from Original Style
