Andy's rantings - The Greeny Flat Experience

Apr 4, 2015: UK’s First Carbon Neutral Town

While Australia bumbles along under the mismanagement of our various governments, falling further and further behind the rest of the world in taking action to create a better future, there are exciting things happening on the other side of the globe. As I mentioned in our Newsletter on Dec 14, 2014, the conservative government in […]

Mar 21, 2015: Latest Results and Reader Feedback

One Month To Go!

With just one month left to go of our first year in the Greeny Flat we continue to log very positive results. If you care to examine the table on our Results Page you’ll see that we are on track to finish the year way beyond energy positive. In fact, over […]

Mar 16, 2015: Our Double-glazed Windows

Last week I wrote in more depth about why we chose to use Galvanised Iron and Plywood on our walls. The bottom line of that discussion was that these were personal choices that had very little to do with the energy performance of the Greeny Flat. There were many other sound and practical reasons why […]

Mar 8, 2015: Form Follows Function

As we continue to glide comfortably towards a hugely successful completion of one full year of living in and monitoring the performance of the Greeny Flat we are working on plans for a little celebration to mark the occasion on Earth Day (April 22nd, 3-7pm). Meanwhile, we’ve been receiving a lot of interest and positive […]

Mar 8, 2015: Reader Feedback

Over the last few weeks I’ve received some helpful and interesting feedback from various readers of this Newsletter which I thought was worth sharing.

Alternative Transportation Options

In response to Last Week’s Newsletter I received the following from my friend Glenn Robinson who has built a wonderful, energy positive, affordable house in Bundanoon:

Note your […]

Mar 1, 2015: Some Fun Stuff

With everything here progressing smoothly towards an overwhelmingly successful completion to our first year of living and monitoring the performance of the Greeny Flat (see last week’s post for news on our latest results) I thought I might share a few fun things that I’ve come across in the last week or so.

World’s Smallest […]

Feb 22, 2015: Proof Positive

Today marks the end of our 10th month of monitoring the performance of the Greeny Flat. At this point we can confidently predict that we will complete our first year of testing with a large energy surplus. In fact, at this point, we have exported well over three times as much energy to the grid […]

Feb 15, 2015: Case Studies – Heat Doesn’t Rise

It is a commonly held misconception that heat rises. In fact heat travels equally well in all directions. While it’s true that hot air and hot water will rise due to convection currents, this is only one of the ways that heat moves. The truth is that heat moves in three main ways; conduction, convection […]

Feb 8, 2015: In all sorts of hot water

Last week I wrote about a couple of revolutionary projects that might lead us to rethink the way we design and build shelters. Meanwhile, during this year of monitoring and evaluating the performance of the Greeny Flat we are doing a lot of thinking about what we could have done better in the design and […]

Feb 2, 2015: Rethinking the way we design and build

During the last week I’ve received a couple of emails containing links to stories about some innovations that could really cause us to rethink the way we design and construct buildings.

The first of these is called The Cubitat. It’s a 3m x 3m x 3m cube which turns the idea of a house inside […]

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