Thirty minutes ago Andrew and I signed a piece of paper accepting a counter offer to a house...
SQUEE!!!!!! (photos will have to wait until it's a done deal and we're moved in... which wouldn't be until early January 2014)
After almost three months of looking, we finally found a home that may meet *most* of our needs. That and it has a yellow door that I absolutely love... and three peaks. I really like peaks.
It's honestly been a bit of a whirlwind, despite the fact that we've been looking forever. The house came up on the market Wednesday evening. We asked our realtor to book a viewing asap; which equaled Saturday morning. Yesterday we looked at the home, fell in love and put in an offer an hour later.
I am dreaming of the zero-VOC paint colour palate, my childhood piano placement and getting my dad to make me a long lasting clothesline. Visions of bird feeders, a small vegetable garden and having friends and family gatherings around a fantastic open kitchen fill up my mental landscape. It's a fun and exciting time!
And a bit of an overwhelming time. This process also involves quite a bit of testing. Home inspection will happen as well as septic and well water testing since this home is outside of municipal septic and water.
The scary part is that we already suspect there is arsenic in the water as the current homeowners have a reverse osmosis system installed for the drinking water in the kitchen. Nova Scotia actually has a problem with arsenic in the water supply, more so in the areas of bedrock (which is where "our" (future hopefully!) house is).
Nova Scotia (and the Government of Canada) have set acceptable guidelines to 10 micrograms per litre... but we all know how well the government is at setting guidelines based on health research (ie, terrible). Health problems from arsenic are quite severe (which makes sense since it's a poison), ranging from vomiting to cancer.
Although it's mostly drinking water that is the main concern, bathing, showering, brushing my teeth, washing the vegetables, cooking- having arsenic in the water would make me nervous. My ultimate goal, if there was arsenic in the well water, would be to install a point-of-entry treatment system (treating all the water in the house as opposed a point-of-use which is currently installed in the kitchen). Those treatments can be costly; so we'd have to save up for it.
Does anyone else have arsenic in their water? How do you treat it? Point-of-entry system thoughts?
Showing posts with label house hunting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label house hunting. Show all posts
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Tales from the Eco-House Hunting Files
(I am going to avoid the entire: sorry I've been away! bit... cuz I feel like it wastes an entire blog post- instead I'm going to jump right in!)
House hunting is stressful. I know everyone says that, kinda like everyone said wedding planning would be stressful, but I think I was hoping it would be EXCITING. There have been EXCITING moments, but for the most part it's been STRESSFUL.
I have practiced yoga once in the past three weeks :( I know. It's that bad.
Mostly, this isn't as straight forward because both Andrew and I are being a bit picky. Which, considering the moderate budget we have, I don't think we should feel guilty about. We *used* to sit back and make fun of all the house hunters people on HGTV that were ridiculously picky about the houses they viewed ("OMG this kitchen is a COMPLETE gut")...
And now we can no longer point fingers. We have become those people.
One reason that is making this more difficult is that we want to live in a more rural setting. We don't want to be able to see our neighbours. This means a commute into the city. Which means more gas spent (thank goodness my little jelly bean is uber fuel efficient) AND most likely a second car purchase. We were hoping, 7 years ago, that our next car purchase would be 100% electric. I don't know, we had these crazy ideas that by 2010 the world would be filled with frolicking, sunshine and lollipops, electric vehicles and charging stations. We must have been on crack.
Living urban and even a suburban life will suck away all the joy in our souls. Which we definitely do not want to happen. No joy sucking please.
So. Rural living it is. What has been interesting has been dealing with a SUPER suburban realtor. Trying to bring about a paradigm shift in his house hunting thinking has been a process. But we're getting better at communicating more clearly (and less tiptoeing) about what we want.
It's funny how most urban people are AFRAID of wells and septic systems. I had no idea the utter fear and general "nez en l'air" people had towards off the municipal-city systems. Having grown up on well water I can say that they are not scary, nor are they often filled with e-coli, nor are they a TON of extra work, and actually the water is processed and filtered (naturally!) very effectively. Well water tastes fabulous. No really. It does.
And no, you don't need to get your septic tank pumped every so often. The "poo" is often filtered naturally into the ground... just like any other fertilization system.
Ok, back to house hunting. Poo and water rant aside.
Beyond rural living, we also would prefer to not live in a cookie cutter house. I know... we are being difficult. But we don't plan on reselling any time soon. I really love houses that look like cottages (you know, vaulted ceilings, wood, that stuff) or older heritage style homes. BUT we don't have the budget or means to do a fixer upper.
So... you can understand now that we don't have a lot of options that jump out after those (weird) qualifications. If we added our original hopes of environmental qualifications (geothermal, passive solar heating, eco finishes). Embarrassingly, there was actually ONE house that had a whole slew of eco finishes and aspects that we stumbled upon... but within a few days it sold.
If only we could afford to build our own home. (again, this doesn't scare me since this is the norm I grew up with, living rurally most people build their own homes). Le sigh, recent changes in mortgage rules makes it almost impossible for new home buyers to get a building mortgage.
Right now we are thinking the following things:
1. rural and privacy is key
2. no split level houses please (cookie cutter boxes)
3. no massive fixer uppers
4. large windows and something funky would be nice.
5. just like wedding planning and what I hear about pregnancies, everyone has an opinion about what is best for house hunting.
Hopefully the eco-aspects could be added later... right?
House hunting is stressful. I know everyone says that, kinda like everyone said wedding planning would be stressful, but I think I was hoping it would be EXCITING. There have been EXCITING moments, but for the most part it's been STRESSFUL.
I have practiced yoga once in the past three weeks :( I know. It's that bad.
Mostly, this isn't as straight forward because both Andrew and I are being a bit picky. Which, considering the moderate budget we have, I don't think we should feel guilty about. We *used* to sit back and make fun of all the house hunters people on HGTV that were ridiculously picky about the houses they viewed ("OMG this kitchen is a COMPLETE gut")...
And now we can no longer point fingers. We have become those people.
One reason that is making this more difficult is that we want to live in a more rural setting. We don't want to be able to see our neighbours. This means a commute into the city. Which means more gas spent (thank goodness my little jelly bean is uber fuel efficient) AND most likely a second car purchase. We were hoping, 7 years ago, that our next car purchase would be 100% electric. I don't know, we had these crazy ideas that by 2010 the world would be filled with frolicking, sunshine and lollipops, electric vehicles and charging stations. We must have been on crack.
Living urban and even a suburban life will suck away all the joy in our souls. Which we definitely do not want to happen. No joy sucking please.
So. Rural living it is. What has been interesting has been dealing with a SUPER suburban realtor. Trying to bring about a paradigm shift in his house hunting thinking has been a process. But we're getting better at communicating more clearly (and less tiptoeing) about what we want.
It's funny how most urban people are AFRAID of wells and septic systems. I had no idea the utter fear and general "nez en l'air" people had towards off the municipal-city systems. Having grown up on well water I can say that they are not scary, nor are they often filled with e-coli, nor are they a TON of extra work, and actually the water is processed and filtered (naturally!) very effectively. Well water tastes fabulous. No really. It does.
And no, you don't need to get your septic tank pumped every so often. The "poo" is often filtered naturally into the ground... just like any other fertilization system.
Ok, back to house hunting. Poo and water rant aside.
Beyond rural living, we also would prefer to not live in a cookie cutter house. I know... we are being difficult. But we don't plan on reselling any time soon. I really love houses that look like cottages (you know, vaulted ceilings, wood, that stuff) or older heritage style homes. BUT we don't have the budget or means to do a fixer upper.
So... you can understand now that we don't have a lot of options that jump out after those (weird) qualifications. If we added our original hopes of environmental qualifications (geothermal, passive solar heating, eco finishes). Embarrassingly, there was actually ONE house that had a whole slew of eco finishes and aspects that we stumbled upon... but within a few days it sold.
If only we could afford to build our own home. (again, this doesn't scare me since this is the norm I grew up with, living rurally most people build their own homes). Le sigh, recent changes in mortgage rules makes it almost impossible for new home buyers to get a building mortgage.
Right now we are thinking the following things:
1. rural and privacy is key
2. no split level houses please (cookie cutter boxes)
3. no massive fixer uppers
4. large windows and something funky would be nice.
5. just like wedding planning and what I hear about pregnancies, everyone has an opinion about what is best for house hunting.
Hopefully the eco-aspects could be added later... right?
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