About us

Our history

After our daugher was born in 2012 we naturally started thinking about the future, about a timescale beyond our own lifetimes. We became more aware of the petrol and diesel we were burning in our cars, the gas we burned every time we turned on the hot water, and the impact what we were eating was having on our planet.

It didn't happen overnight, but living a sustainable life went from an apiration to a fundamental principle. We wanted to live free of fossil fuels, using renewable energy sources wherever we could, as efficiently as we could, producing minimal waste and eating sustainable food.

In 2019 events coincided to act as a catalyst for change.

In February our daughter decided to take part in the School Strike for Climate. The school was supportive, but she was the only child to protest, and it must have felt very lonely on the High Street outside the school with her banner and whistle. The lack of fellow protestors was not surprising in a small rural primary school in a constituency which has voted Conservative for the last 45 years, but it did explain why we were feeling a bit lonely in our pursuit of a sustainable life.

Around the same time we found ourselves vising Devon quite a lot, first visiting family in South Devon and then camping in North Devon where my brother-in-law was running a campsite. In stark contrast to Cambridgeshire we were amazed to find ourselves surrounded by climate protesters, sustainable towns, organic farms and eco-housing projects. It felt like we'd come home.

In September, we were 3 of the estimated 100,000 people to attend a Global Climate Strike rally in central London, and again felt the energy from being around people who thought like we did, and were trying to do something about climate change.

Finally, the death of a family member forced me to consider the shortness of life, and the importance of living according to our principles, and we finally decided to make the leap and moved down to Devon in late 2019 to start a new sustainable life.

The reality was tough. Thanks to capitalism and the dominance of private developers in the UK housing market, no-one was building sustainable houses. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and as every overpaid executive in London realised they could work from home, house and land prices in South Hams shot up. We realised we couldn’t even afford the land to build our own, let alone buy a house. Ten months after moving we were gazumped on an overpriced canal-side property in Tiverton. Devasted and demoralised, we had a rethink.

Following advice from a relative we had a family discussion about what we wanted from our home. What were the non-negotiables, and what was most important to us? We all agreed we wanted to live sustainably and close to nature, ideally near fresh water. This led me to research living on the water, and I found a boat builder who claimed they could build a sustainable solar powered boat. Unable to visit their yard due to Covid restrictions, and regretably not thinking to ask for a reference, we decided to put all our savings into this boat, and an electric car. Whilst it turned out the boat builder was incompetent and the boat was unsafe, 2.5 years after we bought it we've almost finished refurbishing it (as of February 2025) and it now fulfils the promise the original builder failed to deliver on.

The view from the front of our new home

Our dream home

  • No fossil fuels
  • Powered by sustainable energy
  • Efficient use of water
  • Generate minimal waste
  • Close to nature

We're completely free of fossil fuels, using solar power from March to November, and marina shore power in the winter. We heat the boat and hot water using a pellet stove in the winter and the solar powered immersion heater the rest of the year. We have a Heat Recovery and Ventilation system which pulls fresh air into the boat and heats it using the warm air taken out of the boat. Our non-drinking water is reclaimed from rainwater (when there's enough) or topped up with marina drinking water. We use a separating toilet and compost the solid waste, disposing of the liquid waste in the marina elsan.

How we’ve reduced our impact on the planet in a year

The calculations below are based on not having a flushing toilet, using alternative heat sources to a gas combi boiler, and the estimated total solar power we generated in our first year.

  • 19,710 litres less water used
  • 17,000 kWh less gas burned
  • 2,324 kWh less electricity from the grid

This is just the start, with a refurbished boat we believe the solar power is more efficient, the heat recovery actually works (it didn't before) which should reduce our fuel consumption in the winter, and we're going to improve the insulation on our front and bank doors to reduce heat loss (which will reduce fuel consumption even further).

You don't have to live on a boat to do any of the things we've done here (in fact living on a boat makes it a lot harder!), so do get in contact if you're interested in any of the ideas in this blog!