Previous Updates - The Greeny Flat Experience

August 14, 2020: This week’s progress report

As with last week’s Newsletter I’ll let the pictures tell the story of this week’s progress on the Port Macquarie project.

We started the week the way we ended last week… with more rain turning the red clay into really sticky mud.

So we worked inside installing special mineral wool insulation in the west wall which has to be fire-rated due to close proximity to the property boundary.

So we worked inside installing special mineral wool insulation in the west wall which has to be fire-rated due to its close proximity to the property boundary.

With the windows due to arrive we removed the two Roll-a-Doors from the North-facing openings. We put the old garage doors on Gumtree and gave them away to an old fella from Crescent Head who plans to close in his carport with them.

Then we installed the windows and sliding doors. The climate is so mild here there is no need for anything special with the windows. These are just standard, single-glazed, aluminium windows from a local supplier and made to fit the existing openings.

Then we installed the new windows and sliding doors. The climate is so mild here there is no need for anything special with the windows. These are just standard, single-glazed, aluminium windows from a local supplier and made to fit the existing openings.

Then we insulated the rest of the walls…

…laid some turf and started spreading some gravel in the carport space to cover the terribly sticky red clay…

…and finished the week ready for the next rain which is due tonight.

Next week we’ll focus on finishing the cladding on the outside while the plasterers are busy on the inside.

August 7, 2020: Port Project Photos

In our most recent Newsletter on July 17th I gave an update of the project I’m currently working on converting a garage into a passive solar granny flat in Port Macquarie. It’s been a busy few weeks so I thought I’d give another update and this time I’ll just do it with some photos.

First we insulated the last portion of the floor where the bathroom will be using ‘Expol’ foam.

Then we laid 22mm thick fibre-cement board as a base for the bathroom tiles.

We did some repairs to the old weatherboard cladding on the south and east walls ready for scraping, sanding and painting.

While the weather was fine we took the roof sheets off and installed “anticon’ insulated roof blanket before putting the sheets back on.

Completed the plumbing and electrical rough-ins on the inside.

Due to proximity to the boundary, we have to make the West wall into a Fire Rated wall. This includes sealing any gaps with fire foam.

Then installing 6mm fibre-cement board over the entire wall (tricky when it’s only 350mm from the fence).

And this week we did all the earthworks.

Tore up the back yard and installed electricity, phone, water, sewer and stormwater lines to connect to the existing services.

Backfilled the trenches, dug out an area for the carport and regraded the slope of the backyard.

And hauled away three truckloads of excess soil, just in time for the rain to start this afternoon.

And hauled away three truckloads of excess soil, just in time before the rain started this afternoon.

Next week we’ll insulate the walls, install the windows if they show up in time and hopefully start hanging gyprock.

July 17, 2020: Port Macquarie Project Progress

In our Newsletter on June 19th I gave an overview of the project I am currently working on in Port Macquarie to convert a garage to a granny flat. Click the previous link to see a photo of the existing garage plus plans for what it will become. Unfortunately we barely got started on the project a month ago and then I had to return to Mittagong for a while due to circumstances beyond our control. But I’m back in Port Macquarie now and getting stuck into it.

First we removed all of the interior linings and all of the old fibro that contained asbestos.

Removing asbestos and interior linings from the old garage.

Next we removed the old timber floor in the area where the new bathroom will be so that we can lay a fibre-cement floor to make a solid base for tiles.

Flooring removed from the new bathroom area.

Then we installed insulation under the rest of the timber floor.

‘Expol’ insulation installed under the timber floor.

The west wall of the old garage is very close to the boundary so, in order to turn the building into a dwelling, we had to remove the west wall completely and reframe it to create a fire-rated wall.

Removing the old west wall.

The new west wall ready to be fire-rated.

And today we cleared everything out and had the pest controllers come in and spray the whole place to get rid of a fairly bad cockroach infestation and to protect it against termites. I don’t like using chemical treatments unless absolutely necessary but, in this case, the original structure wasn’t built with proper termite barriers and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to install reliable physical termite barriers all the way around. Plus, you wouldn’t believe how bad the cockroaches were.

Pest controllers spraying for termites and cockroaches.

So we’ll let the chemicals dry out over the weekend and get back into it next week.

June 26, 2020: All Electric Workhorses.

Long-time readers will know that we have been enjoying the many benefits of owning an electric vehicle for almost five years now. For more recent subscribers, here is a link to some of the articles we written about our Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid SUV.

Our PHEV, of course, is not a full Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) and can only go about 50km using just electricity, after that it runs as a hybrid (like a Prius but big and powerful enough to pull a trailer full of tools and building materials). This combination has worked well for us because we work from home we can plug it in during the day and charge it up using our excess solar power. The 50km range allows us to do most of our short, local trips using renewable energy which is great for us and good for the planet. But the Outlander PHEV is really a luxury vehicle with all of the modern bells and whistles, extremely smooth and quiet and is an incredibly sophisticated piece of machinery. Not exactly a workhorse.

For that I’d like to have a closer look at one of these…

The all-electric Bollinger B2

A friend of mine from Montana sent me this link to the Bollinger website and, I have to say, if you were looking for a workhorse, you’d have to love their list of “features”:

ALL ELECTRIC

ALL WHEEL DRIVE

ALL ALUMINIUM

DUAL MOTOR

15″ GROUND CLEARANCE

Plus, they don’t mention it but the biggest joy I get out of my electric car is how quiet it is. Imagine being able to ease around a farm or go bush in one of these while hardly making a sound.

From their video it looks like a lot of the body panels are removable. Hopefully the rest just bolt on like the original Toyota Landcruisers. For about twenty years they made fantastically practical Landcruiser utes that all had identical body and chassis parts and all the body panels simply bolted on. Every farm and ranch in Australia had a few of them and, if one got damaged, you could simply swap bits off an old one. Totally simple and practical so, of course, they stopped making them like that.

If you seriously want a workhorse, you don’t need all the unnecessarily complicated luxuries that most utes and SUVs are full of these days (our PHEV and the new Landcruisers being two examples). Just a durable body, good clearance and a reliable motor (plus a heater if you’re in Montana). These Bollingers seem to tick all those boxes.

I don’t know if they’ll be available in Australia or how much they will cost but I like the general idea and I hope someone comes out with an all-electric passenger car that has similar simplicity, durability and practicality at a fair price.

June 19, 2020: Port Macquarie Project

As delightful and comfortable as it is to be living in the renovated house next to the Greeny Flat, it’s possibly even more comfortable and delightful to be spending the next couple of winter months in Port Macquarie. A dear friend of ours owns a nice older home near the beach and wants to convert their garage into a granny flat.

The garage in Port Macquarie that I will be converting to a granny flat over the next couple of months.

The great thing about this garage is that those two roller doors face directly north so, by replacing them with large windows and adding a small awning for summer shade we’ll be able to set up the granny flat for really good passive solar performance.

Here are a couple of computer generated images showing the before and after concept.

3D model of the existing garage

The garage converted to a north-facing granny flat

And here are the before and after floor plans. I’m excited to see how it turns out because I think it’s going to be a really comfortable and functional little dwelling.

The existing floor plan

The proposed floor plan

I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

June 5, 2020: Mount Gibraltar Stone Stairway

In the midst of all the craziness this week a dear friend named Sarah Cains sent me a link to a very nice article she wrote about the renovation of the wonderful stone stairway on Mount Gibraltar. You can find the full article on the WinZero website at the following link… For The Walker Who Seeks

I am very proud to say that my mother and her hardy band of volunteers known as the Mount Gibraltar Bushcare and Landcare group (MGBL) were instrumental in raising the money and coordinating the restoration of this delightful experience. And I can highly recommend a jaunt up the stairs and back down again (or vice versa) to anyone living in or visiting the Southern Highlands of NSW.

If you haven’t been up or down them before you are in for a treat. It is a charming and invigorating experience and a great way to connect with the history of Mount Gibraltar and the beauty of the Endangered Ecological Community it fosters.

I remember, as a kid, playing war games on The Gib with my mates back in the days when the quarries were still operating. We would hear the occasional siren warning of a pending detonation which added greatly to the realism of our imaginary battles. Back then the entire mountain was a tangle of weeds such as ivy, holly, privet and pine trees. This was great for camouflage and sneaking up on our imaginary enemies but it was choking the life out of the native bushland.

This is what the whole of Mount Gibraltar looked like when I was a kid.

These days it is picture perfect with lovely dappled light filtering through the gum trees and with hardly a weed to be seen thanks to the tireless work and perseverance of the MGBL team.

This is what the Mount Gibraltar ecosystem looks like now

So if you do make the effort to hike up and down the stairs or around some of the many wonderful trails through the Mount Gibraltar reserve, remember to say a little silent thank you to the MGBL volunteers for their twenty-six years of humble hard work restoring the ecosystem of an entire mountain to its former glory.

(For anyone new to the delights of Mount Gibraltar, the stone stairway can be accessed from the top at the Bowral lookout carpark, or from the bottom at the end of Cliff St, Bowral.)

May 22, 2020: Morrison Wants To Give $11M To A Coal Baron

In last month’s Newsletter I was very happy to share the results of the previous six months of monitoring the energy performance of both the Greeny Flat and the old cottage next to it. We have been gradually upgrading the cottage with a complete energy retrofit over the last few years so I was delighted to announce that both houses had exported two-and-a-half times more energy into the grid that they had imported from the grid over a six month period. This clearly shows that it is possible to build new, or upgrade old homes, to the point where they generate more energy than they use and could easily be built to run entirely on renewable energy.

The Greeny Flat's solar panels are mounted on the garage roof.

The Greeny Flat’s solar panels mounted on the garage roof with the pre-retrofit cottage in the background.

It’s encouraging to think that, by building or retrofitting large numbers of homes like these, we could make a significant reduction in our national fossil fuel use. Which makes the following headline so much more discouraging…

Morrison Government Wants to Give $11M To A Coal Barron

A long-time reader sent me the following information which comes from the Nature Conservation Council…

The Federal Government is on the verge of handing $11 million of your money to a coal baron to prop up an old, dirty, coal-fired power station.

The only thing standing between the coal baron and this pot of money is the NSW Government and you. If the Morrison Government wants to give money to the Vales Point coal-fired power station, it has to be approved by Premier Gladys Berejiklian first.

Berejiklian made a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions in NSW. If she backs Morrison’s plan to fund polluting coal, NSW will be dragged backwards by the climate deniers in the federal government.

Vales Point is a dirty power station with a dirty past.

The NSW Government sold Vales Point to coal baron Trevor St Baker for just $1 million. A few months later the facility was independently valued at $370 million. Now it’s worth more than $730 million.

St Baker is no stranger to political deals. He once ran as a National Party candidate and is a major donor to the Liberal and National parties. Since 2017 he has poured $84,000 into the Coalition’s pockets. Now in an egregious conflict of interest he’s got his hand out for $11 million from the Coalition government.

Berejiklian has the power to stop this scandalous waste of public money.

Scandalous indeed if this is true. Let’s hope that Gladys gets the message and blocks the funding. Meanwhile it’s hard not to feel deflated trying to build energy positive homes in a country whose government is so closely wed to the dirtiest of all fossil fuel industries. On the other hand, it’s also a stark reminder of how vital it is to reduce our fossil fuel use. Every time we draw electricity from the grid or drive a petrol-powered car we are directly supporting fossil fuel businesses. The best way for us to combat the power these companies wield is to stop buying their product so every time we reduce our fossil fuel use, we take a bit of that power back.

April 22, 2020: Happy Earth Day

Today is Earth Day and we would usually be having our annual Greeny Flat Earth Day Party tonight.

A pre-social distancing Earth Day Party at the Green Flat.

But, of course, we can’t do that this year and I have to say, it’s a bit of a relief. I don’t wish to downplay the tragedy and hardship that Covid-19 and its associated economic and social restrictions are causing around the world. I know that for many, many people this is an absolute disaster. On the other hand, for those of us lucky enough to live in Australia and to have not been devastated by the death of a loved one or a total loss of livelihood, this is proving to be an opportunity to slow down and reconsider our priorities. There are so many things that we simply can’t do at the moment so we’re not rushing around being too busy. As much as it would have been a pleasure to see all our dear friends tonight… I’m glad Cintia and I don’t have to worry about cooking pizza for fifty.

The point I’d like to make about all this is that most of that rushing around we do in our ‘normal’ lives is unnecessary. We choose to do it. We tell ourselves that it’s all important stuff but, as this lockdown is proving, if we don’t do it things just slow down and it’s not the end of the world.

Relief For The Earth Too

Speaking of the world… our lovely planet seems to be breathing a sigh of relief too. I think she really is having a Happy Earth Day. Perhaps the greatest surprise of this whole Coronavirus situation has been the effect it has had on air quality around the world. To the point where people in India have reported seeing the Himalayas for the first time in their lives. And that is just the most visible environmental benefit. I suspect that all of the Earth’s natural ecosystems are cleaner and functioning better than they have for decades… and that is just from a few months of reduced economic activity!

My great hope is that the so-called ‘Global Economy’ does not return to ‘normal’ when this is over but shifts to something resembling sanity. I’ve written lots about the madness of a world intent on infinite ‘growth’ on a planet with finite resources. Wouldn’t it be nice if the current global slowdown led to a rethinking of our aims and priorities and to a shift away from the goal of ‘Growth’ and towards the goal of ‘Balance’?

Our Environmental Balance Sheet

On the subject of balance, today also marks the end of six years of monitoring the energy performance, water use and comfort levels of the Greeny Flat, and six months that Cintia and I have been in the house next door.

We built the Greeny Flat back in 2014 with the broad goals of trying to make an affordable house that was comfortable, energy positive and used at least as much harvested rainwater as town water. I’m delighted to report that, six years on, we have exported 21.0MWh of electricity to the grid and only imported 8.3MWh. That means we have put two-and-a-half times more energy into the grid than we have taken out! And I would like to stress that, because the house is all-electric, this represents our entire energy use, there was no additional burning of gas or wood. We have also managed to harvest and use more than twice as much tank water as town water. So we have far exceeded our original goals.

As impressive as the above result is, it was achieved with a purpose-built granny flat, designed and built from scratch with the goal of meeting those environmental objectives. In general it is much more difficult to convert an old house, especially on old fibro cottage with a tile roof and no insulation, into a comfortable and energy efficient home. Long-time readers will know that this is exactly what we have been working on with the house next to the Greeny Flat for the last few years. And for the last six months Cintia and I have been living in it while we put the finishing touches on it.

So now we have access to all the energy data and the early results are looking very promising. So far we have managed to export 2.6MWh to the grid and we have only imported 1.0MWh. So, just like the Greeny Flat, we have exported about two-and-a-half times more energy that we have imported. But that was through the summer months where our solar system was making lots of of energy and we were not having to heat the house. I expect that number to drop a bit over the winter but my guess is, over a year, we’ll export about twice as much as we import. For an energy retrofit on an old house that would be a fantastic result.

We haven’t installed the rainwater harvesting system on this house yet so we’re using only town water. But once we have the tanks and the pump all in place we’ll be able to start reducing our footprint even further.

Happy Earth.

And Happy Earth Day everyone.

Mar 13, 2020: Coronavirus makes me feel lucky

Friday the 13th. Bad Luck day! We’ve struggled through the summer with terrible fires, hail storms, dust storms, floods and now Covid-19. You could be forgiven for feeling like we’re not living in the lucky country anymore.

But you know what? I’m feeling just the opposite and here’s why.

Australia’s main reaction to the global Coronavirus pandemic seems to have been a stampede to rush out and buy toilet paper. I haven’t met anyone yet who can explain to me why a flu epidemic makes people desperate for bog roll. But apparently it does because everyone I talk to says they’ve been to the supermarket to buy TP and the shelves are bare and every newspaper has front page headlines about the toilet paper crisis.

Source: Meme-Arsenal

So why does this make me feel lucky on Friday the 13th?

Because, according to this article from the Sydney Morning Herald about alternatives to toilet paper, there are 4.2 Billion people in the world who don’t have access to a toilet.

Enough said.

Feb 20, 2020: Kitchen finished

The Finished Kitchen

Yesterday I put the final touches on the kitchen in the old house next to the Greeny Flat. I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s obviously a modern upgrade to an old house but it feels sympathetic to the character of the old girl. It’s interesting how a few small touches save it from feeling too modern and sterile. Things like the cabinet handles we salvaged off the old kitchen (featured in our Newsletter on Jan 24th) and some nice timber details which I’ve just completed. We made these out of the studs that came out of the wall which we removed in order to open up the living room to the new kitchen. It turned out that all of the framing of the house above floor level was made of Cypress wood which polishes up beautifully. So we took some of the old studs, cut them in half, planed them down, glued them together and polished them up.

Sanding a piece of Cypress that has been cut, planed and book-matched.

Varnishing some Cypress pieces.

Cypress shelf at the end of the island bench.

We used these for the ends of the island bench and for the kickboards underneath the kitchen cabinets.

‘Gorgeous kickboards’ is not something you hear every day.

These are, without doubt the loveliest, book-matched, polished, 70 year-old salvaged Cypress kickboards you will ever see. Actually no-one will ever probably notice them because who looks at kickboards but it was a fun way to turn a functional part of the old house into a beautiful and interesting part of the new kitchen. It somehow helps to tie the old together with the new and, for me at least, it is deeply satisfying.

All told the kitchen renovation has worked out really well. I think we’ve succeeded in keeping the charm and character of the old house while adapting it to a modern lifestyle.

Open-plan kitchen, living and dining area.

The last major project of this renovation is to now turn part of the old kitchen into a second toilet which will be a handy and functional improvement to a four-bedroom house that only has one loo.

Maybe Not So Fire Proof

After I wrote in our last Newsletter on New Year’s Eve about a house on the South Coast that survived a severe bushfire through careful ‘Fire-Proof’ design and detailing, a dear reader sent me a link to the following article from The Conversation entitled Building Standards Give Us False Hope – There’s No Such Thing As A Fire Proof House.

The gist of the article is that…

‘…The sad truth is that any practical building that is exposed to an intense bushfire will probably burn down, whether it complies with Australian Standard 3959 or not.

Worse still, the available evidence suggests there is a significant risk that the people sheltering in it will not survive without an effective refuge…’

And the conclusion it comes to is…

‘…We may need to have difficult conversations about whether our subdivision practices are appropriate. Allowing people to build in areas that are bushfire-prone, particularly where buildings are effectively built into the bush, might be creating unmanageable problems for the future.’

And, while I certainly agree that our subdivision practices are inappropriate and that allowing people to build in fire or flood prone areas is asking for trouble, that will not be any sort of comfort to people who already own property in those areas or to the many people who are faced with rebuilding after having lost property in the recent fires.

Morrison Government Wants to Give $11M To A Coal Barron

Relief For The Earth Too

Our Environmental Balance Sheet

Maybe Not So Fire Proof

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