Local & Green

La Bastide des Amouriers is an old, traditional farm dating back to the beginning of 19th century, located in a vast agricultural zone between the towns of Le Thor and Caumont sur Durance in Provence, near Avignon and Isle sur la Sorgue, at the gates of Lubéron. Apple and pear orchards, lavender fields and market gardens are the predominant produce.

We first visited the imposing Mas in 2014, fell under its charm and bought it in 2018.
Right from the outset we knew that to make it our permanent home and an upscale holiday destination would mobilise shedloads of money, courage, love and creative ingenuity.

Our idea was to invest every year in major improvements and focus the everyday activity on the continuous reduction of environmental impact of our presence and carbon footprint of our rental activity.

Building work would be prepared during the summer and executed from late autumn to early spring. Obviously, our best intentions and bank balance were often mismatched with the prices and availability of local artisans.
However, priorities were easy to rank; client comfort and a full energy transition went straight to the top of the list. Cosmetic improvements and upgrading our residential quarters would be progressively considered and planified according to means and fortitude…

The two oil-fired central heating boilers and their capacious water heaters were scrapped. The 2 domestic fuel tanks were decontaminated and recycled.
The massively polluting, archaic system was replaced by two high performance heat pumps and two thermodynamic water heaters.

Summer 2018 marked climate change acceleration with a hot and dry period starting early and continuing well into the autumn. Our clients adore clear skies and the omnipresence of very noisy cigales (cicadas), but we felt it necessary to provide some nocturnal respite and put in a reversible air conditioning system. Back then, masons knew instinctively how to build naturally energy efficient dwellings in Provence, basically by constructing thick stone walls and setting the house north-south. Cool in the summer, with plane trees providing the much needed shade and warm in the winter with log fires constantly burning in walk-in fireplaces and hay in the attic isolating the roof from the chill of the Mistral wind.
It took us 6 months to get it together, buy the right gear at almost the right price and find a team capable of discreetly integrating modern comforts into a very old Bastide. Our clients appreciate as the hot, dry summers succeed one another with an alarmingly relentless progression.

The 120 m3 of pool water comes directly from one of our 3 deep wells, well not so deep as the groundwater is only a dozen feet below. It doesn’t know man and his chemical purification, it’s naturally immaculate and rather mineral having been filtered by rock and sand over time. It’s also very cold at a steady 12°C, hence the necessity of a reversible heat pump that brings it to a comfortable temperature in the spring, keeps the pool warm in the autumn and cool it in the summer.

All this equipment is energy efficient, but kilowatt hungry. In the high season the house needs lots of juice to run all the lights and comforts and the laundry room changes into a frantically spinning my little launderette from the hand washing era…
So, we installed 24 solar panels on top of the waste water filtering mound at the back of the car park. We are in the self-consumption mode: electricity generated by the panels is used to power the house and its equipment and the remainder is pumped into the national grid…free of charge!

In December 2021 two 22kW electric vehicle charging stations were wired into our grid, one at the client car park and the other on the garage wall. It now seems an obvious, self-promoting choice as more and more visitors arrive in their own EVs or rent them for the duration. Our EV completes the virtuous loop and benefits from the prolific output of the solar panels.

Watch this space…