Andy's rantings - The Greeny Flat Experience

Sept 9, 2016: Happy Sustainable House Day!

By now you should all know that Sunday, Sept 11 is Sustainable House Day (SHD). But just in case you’ve been naughty and haven’t been reading our Newsletters, SHD is a FREE, annual, national event in which sustainable homes across Australia open their doors to interested visitors. To find out if there are open houses […]

Sept 2, 2016: The Beginning of the End of Solar Subsidies in NSW

Cintia and I are currently on a fact-finding and sun-seeking mission between Sydney and Brisbane so this Newsletter will be brief as I am writing it from the road.

Last night’s campsite near Broom’s Head… another perfect deserted beach… ho hum.

FIT’s and REC’s

As most of you are probably aware, the days […]

August 25th, 2016: Lessons from an Infrared Camera

In our Newsletter back on March 6th entitled ‘Beware of Standard Practices’, I described some of the challenges we were having getting the builder to properly insulate and air-seal a house that I designed for a friend of mine near Mittagong. The house is finished now and it has turned out really well. It is […]

Aug 19, 2016: Open Source Tiny Homes

This week I would like to introduce you to the extraordinary work of Catarina Mota and Marcin Jakubowski.

Marcin and Catarina are Open Source Advocates and they are working on a number of projects that could prove to be highly disruptive to corporate interests and highly beneficial to people.

So what does ‘Open Source’ mean? […]

August 12, 2016: Sustainable House Day 2016

Long time readers will know that we have opened the doors of the Greeny Flat to visitors for Sustainable House Day for the last two years. Well we’re at it again on September 11th for our third consecutive Sustainable House Day. The Greeny Flat will be open from 10am to 4pm and you can register […]

Aug 4, 2016: Solar Bulk-buy with SunCrowd

In last week’s Newsletter I introduced readers to a wonderful community solar organisation called Repower Shoalhaven which is helping small-to-medium sized businesses and organisations obtain ‘better than free’ solar power systems with the help of local ethical investors. Repower was founded by an exceptional community solar activist named Chris Cooper. As I mentioned briefly last […]

July 29, 2016: ‘Free’ Power with Repower

Repower Shoalhaven is a community group that gathers ethical investments from local community members and uses the money to fund solar power systems for businesses and community organisations. Technically speaking, these systems are not ‘free’ to the recipient because they pay for them over time by purchasing the power produced. However, effectively the result is […]

July 21, 2016: Fibro Cottage Energy Retrofit

The existing fibro cottage at 16 Queen St, Mittagong with The Greeny Flat in the background.

Now that we have been in the Greeny Flat for over two years and it has proven itself to be so very successful we are turning our attention to upgrading the original house on the same property. […]

July 15, 2016: Science With a Conscience

Over the last few weeks (see here and here) I’ve been ruminating on the pros and cons of drones, robots and artificial intelligence (AI). On the pro side of the debate, I found this Gizmag article about the “Dronestagram” Drone Photography Contest. If you click on the image gallery in the article you can view […]

July 8, 2016: Election Day – Droning On

Well, election day was a week ago and we still don’t know who won but it’s looking depressingly like the Coalition might cling to power with the help of Bob Katter’s Australian Party. As usual we poor suckers were faced with a number of awful choices between the lesser of various evils. I dream of […]

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