Under Corona, the deflation in Bali is relatively high. At one time, we heard that land prices had been sold for about half of what they were, but it seems that land prices have stabilised again. Many people may be hoping for a recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Incidentally, the general public is now able to get vaccinated.
Even if long-term assets do not fall in price, the trend to sell short-term assets for cash is unlikely to stop yet: we hear that villa rentals for a year or so are usually 40% off. Hotels and Airbnb are even more discounted because they are shorter term.
My office and house are made almost entirely from recycled or unused materials, so I collect materials from restaurants and cafes that have gone out of business due to Corona. Before Corona, there was a building boom, so some of the recycled wood tripled in price in four years, and I could buy it for a third or a sixth of the price now. I build almost entirely from recycled timber, as the new timber is often illegally harvested, young and unhardened, and not adequately dried.
The first thing I did was to create a nook around the table in the office facing the courtyard. I also put a bar counter in the area facing the hammock. Both of these were taken from a restaurant in Batu Bolong. Both the wooden hammock and the tarp in the photo are made of recycled materials.
From the nook, I am building a loft space that can be climbed up. The loft has a slatted wooden floor, which creates an upward airflow from below, making it very cosy. The office's frame is not exactly straight, as it is made of a 100-year-old house. So it was challenging to find a way to install the slatted wooden floor in a straight line. In this picture, iron support has been removed. I plan to make another small house with the removed iron support and the leftover materials from this loft construction.
Almost at the same time, we have been improving the biogas system. Our staff have used string to make the biogas pipes stand up without any external support. This made installation more accessible, as there is no need to dig in the ground, and the farmer does not have to find any materials to support the pipes. I'll write about this another time.
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