Green Building - The Greeny Flat Experience

May 17, 2015: DIY Solar Air Heater Prototype

A while ago my sister, Cate, told me that she was getting quotes for a Solar Air Heater to add on to her house in Canberra. The basic idea is to use a flat-plate solar collector to heat air which is then pumped into the house during sunny winter days to a) provide fresh air […]

May 10, 2015: K.I.S.S. My House

In last week’s Newsletter we discussed the potential for the Tesla ‘Powerwall’ to revolutionise the way we think about, produce, use and store energy. Since then there has been a flurry of media commentary about Tesla’s ‘big announcement’, much of it positive and some negative. The nay-sayers claim that there won’t be much of a […]

May 3rd, 2015: Tesla Reinvents Electicity

Nikola Tesla did not invent electricity but he certainly played a major role in the mankind’s efforts to produce and use the stuff. At various times he has been called ‘the father of radio, television, power transmission, the induction motor, and the robot, and the discoverer of the cosmic ray’. No wonder Elon Musk chose […]

Apr 26, 2015: Party Pics and Random Bits.

Our 1st Earth Day Party was a fun and encouraging event.

Thanks to everyone who came along to our 1st Earth Day Party on Wednesday evening to help us celebrate the outstanding success of the first year of the Greeny Flat Experiment. We had about fifty people come through which, considering the amount […]

Apr 19, 2015: Greeny Flat’s 1st Earth Day Party this week

We started monitoring the performance of the Greeny Flat on Earth Day (April 22nd) last year hoping that we could make more energy than we used over a full year. This Wednesday will be Earth Day 2015 and, at the end of our first year, we will have exported to the grid almost FOUR […]

Apr 12, 2015: Sand Wars, Floating Solar Farms and other Fun Stuff.

Sand Wars… (not the happy, summer, beach kind).

For those of us who are concerned about the impacts our building choices have on people and the planet, there are so many things that we just don’t think about or hear about. Here’s a new one… a friend from the states just sent me this article […]

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 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 […]

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 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 […]

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