Title: The House of Sunshine, Geelong North.
Our home is about 90 years old and is a work in progress. It has front and side eaves and a front veranda. When we first moved in 12 years ago we had pelmets added to the windows and put up curtaining with total block-out backing.
We also connected the "storm" water pipes straight into the garden with a length of poly piping. (Robert says he has had to connect it back to the drainage system only twice in 12 years!)
We put in energy-efficient bulbs and a 5000 lt. (?) water-tank. Gradually we have grown an organic garden (fruit and flowers in front and fruit and vegetables at the back, eliminating all lawn.
We have recently lined our back garden beds with black plastic and cardboard and placed soaker hoses underneath the soil because of the drought. (See http://transitionbell.groupsite.com/gallery/7803)
An apple tree shades our west-facing lounge window and a grape-vine shaded our east-facing bedroom window until it got a virus and died. We are now growing a wisteria in its place).
Last year a little company called ecoMaster (http://www.ecomaster.com.au/index.cfm) did an energy audit for us (cost $380.00 and took four-and-a-half hours) and recommended how the house could work more for us in terms of energy.
We then chose their workers to implement their recommendations. They recommended starting with Draught Proofing and working through their roadmap in an outlined sequence, but we chose to do most of it at once. Because of this they included and installed a ceiling clothes rack for us, so that we could take advantage of our high lounge ceiling and not be afraid of falling over the portable clothes horse on wet days. Last year they also: -
- Fit polyester R2.0 over existing ceiling insulation 72sqm
- Fit concertina foil batts over the top of the bulk insulation 72sqm
- Fit polyester R3.5 bulk insulation to all uninsulated areas 3sqm and –
- Insulated the sub-floor with R1.5 polyester batts, and Air-cell Retro-Shield Thermo-Cellular Ref to keep the cold and wind from coming up under our feet.
All external doors, windows and vents, (even the dog door!) have been draft proofed by ecoMaster.
Later this year they are draft proofing the internal doors as well. They are also going to “secondary” glaze all our windows with “acrylic panel secondary glazing” as this costs less, is less disruptive than fitting window double glass glazing, and saves existing panes probably going to landfill.
We are thinking of buying a ceiling fan to help our gas heaters run more efficiently. They will blow the hot air down in winter (hot air normally rises, leaving one with cold feet) and draw it up in summer (cold air normally descends.)
We have instantaneous gas hot water and gas hot-plates in the kitchen. We put our bath water and washing machine water onto the fruit trees because we use all natural soap, shampoos and cleaning products with no phosphorous.
Because our "instantaneous" gas hot water takes a while to heat up we place a collapsible bucket and a plastic one under the basin and the bath respectively. This saves up to 20 lts of water a day.
We have solar panels coming later this year to connect us to the electricity grid. And in the future, we want to insulate our walls with foam insulation.
(August 2009) (
