Sustainability
Making The Most From Your Solar Panel
To get the best value from your solar panels you need to maximise your use of power when the panels are generating, and avoid taking grid power during that time. This limits the kW you generate that are paid at…
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Coffee Makers
I see some display homes with expensive built in espresso machines costing thousands. I’m afraid I’m for the inexpensive, and easy life, so I am happy to use a Nespresso machine which cost me less than $200 (My milk frother…
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Rendered Foam Walls
This addendum was added to an original Post from 2014 as there has been a lot of publicity recently (late February 2019) about foam panels and certification has been removed from certain types of panels. A particular issue for apartment…
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Ancient Air Conditioning
I’ve just returned from the City of Yazd in Iran and as usual I have been looking at houses and buildings, I bet you thought air conditioning is a fairly recent invention but that is what these wind tower structures…
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Freezing A Solar Hot Water System
Before you look at buying a Solar Hot Water System think about the freezing risk. It might not be a concern in many areas but in Victoria, Tasmania and the colder parts of other states freezing conditions can damage cheaper…
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Lighting Levels
There are two elements when considering Lighting levels for your new house. Electrical Power (Watts) Amount of Light (Lumens) Watts In the old days with incandescent bulbs it used to be simple, bulbs came in 40, 60 and 100watts and…
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Curb Your Power
We are currently customers of Powershop, and have decided to get involved with an interesting program they are running. The idea is that they will tell us by SMS when they are expecting very high demand. If we can reduce…
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The Value of West Facing Solar Panels
Its almost 2 years since I installed a solar power system on my current house. The installation is 8 x 250 watt panels facing North and these 5 x 250 watt panels facing West. Over the time they have been…
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Time To Rethink Sensor Switches?
Sensor switches used to be thought of as a big power saving measure but these days I’m less sure. 30 years ago when light bulbs were typically 100watts and had short lives a sensor like this could save some serious…
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Are You Going To Have A Washing Line
When I was growing up all the washing lines looked like this. . . . long straight nylon ropes. Since then things have changed backyards have got smaller and some people don’t even have washing lines, everything goes in the…
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