Green Building - The Greeny Flat Experience

April 17, 2016: Gimme Three Reasons

We always enjoy getting feedback from our readers, especially when it comes from good friends like Judith and Paul Collins. I wrote about our visit to Paul and Judy’s wonderful Permaculture Farm called ‘The Keep‘ way back in our Newsletter from June last year. At the time I commented on the incredible job that the […]

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 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 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 […]

Nov 29, 2015: Walking for Climate Action and Driving Electric Vehicles

What to we want? CLIMATE JUSTICE. When do we want it? NOW!

On the eve of the United Nations Climate Summit, people around the world are marching today to send a message to the delegates in Paris that we expect them to take strong action for a transition to renewable energy, clean air, […]

Oct 8, 2015: The Big Disconnect?

Will the battery storage revolution take us all off the grid?

Since I wrote about Tesla’s announcement of the release of its battery storage system called the ‘Powerwall‘ back in our May 3rd Newsletter I’ve had countless people ask me what I think about battery storage for solar power systems and how soon […]

Oct 25, 2015: Pros and Cons of Granny Flats

Hello again and thank you very much to all the readers who sent congratulatory messages following our Green Globe Award announcement last week. So far the award hasn’t led to anything too exciting but you’ll be the first to know if and when that changes. Meanwhile we keep plugging away.

This week I’ll be presenting […]

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