Environmentally Sustainable Design - The Greeny Flat Experience

April 3, 2016: Home Battery Updates

Solarquotes.com.au is an excellent source of up-to-date information about solar power and home battery storage systems. They have put together a ‘Battery Storage Comparison Table’ which compiles a lot of useful data about the range of available (or soon to be so) battery systems on the Australian market.

Home Battery Comparison Table from […]

Mar 26, 2016: An Electric Transportation Revolution

All of a sudden it seems like every car and bike manufacturer is coming out with an electric vehicle, and one of my favourites so far has to be the Honda ‘EV-Cub’.

The beautiful Honda ‘EV-Cub’ (source Gizmag)

Modeled after Honda’s original 1958 ‘Super Cub’ it really is a thing of beauty. My […]

Mar 18, 2016: Mould and Other Fun Stuff

Daniel helping to insulate the Greeny Flat during construction in 2014.

Daniel Jones became a good friend during the building of the Greeny Flat. At the time Daniel had just completed a degree in engineering at the University of Wollongong and had recently been a member of UoW’s victorious 2013 Solar Decathlon winning […]

Mar 12, 2016: Reader Feedback and Lithium Issues

In last week’s newsletter I wrote about how Australian ‘standard practices’ for the insulation and air-sealing of buildings leave a lot to be desired. This clearly touched a chord with readers and I received a number of affirmative responses.

Architect Mary Bowe of Coolfield Pty Ltd made the following comments:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts […]

Mar 6, 2016: Beware of ‘Standard Practices’

For the last nine months or so I’ve been helping a friend who is trying to get her dream home built not far from the Greeny Flat. She started with a vacant lot and I’ve been consulting to her on the design, permitting, choosing a builder and attempting to ensure that the project gets completed […]

Feb 28, 2016: Fossil Fools

In our Newsletter three weeks ago I mentioned that President Obama had proposed a $10/barrel tax on crude oil as a way to fund a $300 billion plan to make America’s transportation system more sustainable. As I said at the time, there is zero chance of this plan being approved by the US Congress, […]

Feb 20, 2016: Grow, Cook, Eat – Offgrid Power – and Welsh Cars

In last week’s Newsletter we featured a couple of small, affordable, relocatable homes. This week we look at

Moss Vale Community Garden‘s new Off-grid Power System Southern Highlands Grow, Cook, Eat Festival, March 20th, and A Small, Hydrogen-powered EV from Wales of all places. Moss Vale Community Garden‘s New Off-grid Power System

The […]

Feb 14th, 2016: Gotta Love These Little Houses

Well it’s Valentine’s Day. I’ll let Cintia choose whether I cook her dinner or we go out to a restaurant… either way this will have to be a quick Newsletter so I thought I’d share a couple of exciting little houses that readers have told me about.

Now THIS Is Affordable Housing!

Modular […]

Jan 24, 2016: PHEV Goes Bush

By now our regular readers will be quite familiar with our Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle – new readers can get caught up here). This week we took it on our longest trip yet, were delighted with its performance and also received some interesting feedback from other PHEV owners.

Go West Young PHEV […]

Jan 10, 2016: How To Reduce Our Carbon Footprint

Chevy Bolt Released In US

The new Chevrolet Bolt EV goes into production

As described in this Gizmag article, Chevrolet has started production of their new ‘Bolt’ Electric Vehicle (EV). It will go on sale in the US with a price tag of around $38,000 (although the US offers a $7,500 rebate on […]

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