Andy's rantings - The Greeny Flat Experience

Nov 25, 2014: Think light for a cooler roof

In our last newsletter we talked about the how Passive Solar Design helps to keep the Greeny Flat cool in summer and how we can help this process by operating the windows and blinds correctly.

Another factor in the design of the Greeny Flat that has a major impact on summer cooling is the choice […]

Nov 22, 2014: Staying cool in the heat

Everything is going very well with the Greeny Flat experiment after seven months of testing. If you look at the Results table you’ll see that in total we have now exported 2252kWh of electricity which is almost three times as much energy as we’ve imported (764kWh). It’s been another very dry month so our town […]

Nov 9, 2014: The benefits of a small home.

A few days ago my darling sister sent me the following link to an article about the arrival of the Tiny House Movement in Australia.

http://theconversation.com/move-over-mcmansions-the-tiny-house-movement-is-here-32225

I’d known about the Tiny House Movement from my time living in the states. In fact I met a guy from Seattle whose entire house and office measured just […]

Oct 26, 2014: Last Sunday the Greeny Flat made 4 TIMES as much energy as it used!

The chart above shows the Greeny Flat’s energy use and production for last week. And the little box shows that on Sunday, Oct 19th, we used 4.18kWh of electricity and we produced 17.76kWh. That’s a production of just over 4 TIMES as much as we used!

But then the next two days were cloudy […]

Oct 12, 2014: Lessons learned so far

Cintia and I have been living in the Greeeny Flat for over five months now. Our testing and monitoring will continue for at least one full year so we have a long way to go and lots more to learn. Nevertheless there are a few lessons that we have learned already and will probably do […]

Oct 10, 2014: Why an all electric house?

The Greeny Flat is all electric, i.e. it has no gas, petrol or wood burning appliances. Even our lawn mower and weedeater are electric.

This decision was partly due to our desire to be able to clearly compare how much energy we use with how much we produce, a comparison that is much easier when […]

Sept 22, 2014: Great Day for Renewable Energy

Today marks the end of our fifth month of monitoring the Greeny Flat and we continue to produce well over twice as much energy as we are using. But that’s not what makes this a really great day for renewable energy around the planet… the GREAT thing that happened today is that the Rockefeller family […]

Sept 21, 2014: Greeny Flat Cost Analysis

Two of our primary goals for the Greeny Flat experiment were to try to build a small infill house that was ENERGY POSITIVE and AFFORDABLE. After nearly five months living in the house we’ve made well over twice as much energy as we’ve used so we are completely confident that we’ll meet the energy positive […]

Sept 11, 2014: $10.63 worth of energy in 3 months.

Exciting news at the Greeny Flat experiment this week! We just got our electricity bill for the last three months and the total came to $89.51 which works out to $0.98c/day! And that was for the worst three months of the year (June, July, and August).

If you look at our bill below, on the […]

August 30, 2014: Greeny Flat open for Sustainable House Day

The Greeny Flat will be open for the Sustainable House Day(s) on Sunday Sept 7th and 14th. If you’re interested in what we are doing and how things are going, this will be a good opportunity to come and have a look. Andy will be here for both days and available to chat about how […]

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