Ready for the new season :-)
The last three years we have worked on several projects to develop our property - both for ourselves and our guests. First the pool and the garden and then the last project, additional insulation of the roof and new windows / doors in the whole house. This was finished in October last year. Together with the already installed car chargers and solar panels / air to water heat pump to produce energy, this concluded our main “sustainability project” at Ferrarotti. The house is now energy rated as “C”, which is two levels better than before the project and the best possible for our house - and no more burning of fossil fuel for heating.
After this - finally - we could start working on projects which were impossible with all the truck, cranes, scaffolds, cars, workers etc.. necessary to do all the work on the house. One of the projects was upgrade of the courtyard. We have had enough parking places for our guests and ourselves, but this year we finally could upgrade the courtyard to better organize the parking of cars and a nicer look :-). The idea was to use a cover material with colours that works well with the colours of the house. The river pebbles we finally decided to use are collected from a cave not far from Mondovi. Very nice to use “local” material. We decided to use the same pebbles to make a footpath to the house (and drained this part of the lawn to remove the small pool on the occasional heavy rain day…).
We have also built a pergola on the right side of the pool where guests can relax and enjoy the views of the Piedmontese landscape and the mountains in the distance. A very nice place for a glass of wine in the sunset - or for playing board games as a recently visiting family did. Anyway, a new facility that we hope our guests will like and use.
(Click on the pictures to enlarge).
In addition, we have done various smaller projects and upgrades which we think will be positive for visitors - for instance a gas grill. We have already had many guests this year and are looking forward to meet lots of new and many returning guests in the coming months!
Benvenuti a Cascina Ferrarotti :-)