sustainability
We’re opening our house for Sustainable House Day 2014
One of the best things about our eco efforts is the way it helps us connect with locals from across Lewisham, Leichhardt and beyond. We’ve had many conversations across the front fence, about our vege patch, the solar panels, bees and more.
This year, we’re opening the house for even more conversations, as part of Sustainable House Day 2014.
On Sunday September 14th, 10am – 4pm, you’re most welcome to drop in for a house tour, and an opportunity to connect up with other folks interested in urban sustainability. (Note: we’re only opening on the 14th, and we won’t be opening on the 7th.)
Our house will be up on the SHD website shortly, which will give you the address a few days before we open the house. In the meantime, add the 14th into your diary.
See you soon!
Fact sheet for our house
We’ve had a number of tours visit our house, most recently, a group organised by Marrickville Council. While we haven’t done anything truly extraordinary, I know from personal experience that the most helpful thing can be sharing the little details, such as what materials to use, where to source supplies, or what contractors to use.
So to help with this, we provide visitors with a fact sheet (PDF), containing a summary of what we’ve done. Hopefully you’ll find it useful too!
Sustainable House Day is today!
There are over 250 houses open today for Sustainable House Day, throughout Australia. Including ours 🙂
This is the fact sheet for our house, to give details on what we’ll be talking about. Drop by and say hi!
Sustainable House Day not far off!
We are opening our house as part of this year’s Sustainable House Day, which is on Sunday September 12. If you’ve been following this blog, you have an idea of what to expect, and this is your chance to drop by to see it in person.
I’ve posted some details on Shmeco, to whet your appetite…
Sustainable House Day (12 September 2010)
Just a quick note to say that our house will be included in this year’s Sustainable House Day, to be held on September 12. While ours is not a radical example of what can be done, it does show what can be retrofitted to a house without requiring major renovations. We’re also quite proud of our gardening.
More details to come, but put the date in your diary now…
Water sustainable urban development: tour through Marrickville
I spent an enjoyable morning today, visiting local houses who are saving water in interesting ways, as well as looking at some “rain gardens” in the street. (Our house was also the last stop on the tour, showing off what we’d done in the garden.)
The Water Sustainable Urban Development (WSUD) tour was organised by the “water revolution” staff at Marrickville Council. Not knowing what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised. It was hard to tell who were more passionate, the householders installing the water tanks, or the folks on the tour!
A few highlights:
The first stop was Graeme’s house in Marrickville. This showcases a significant project (8 months in length) to install a pair of 5,000L water tanks at the bottom of their large, and heavily sloping, garden. The tanks were then plumbed into the house, for absolutely everything other than drinking water. The cost was actually pretty reasonable, and the duration of the work was I think due to Graeme doing a lot of the work himself, presumably on weekends.
Something I hadn’t seen before was the pressure accumulator tank. About the size of a gas bottle, this holds water at pressure. This means that if a small amount of water is required in the house (washing hands, etc), the water is drawn from this holding tank, without the pump having to come on. This reduces the electricity required, and presumably helps to prolong the life of the pump. I’ll definitely have to look into this for our house.
The Hill Street rain garden was extremely interesting. This takes the normal storm water that runs of the street, and passes it through this mini wetland. The goal is not to store the water, but to filter it through the plants, which are grown on top of several layers of sub-surface material.
The end result is cleaner water going into the waterways, with a lot of the sediment, rubbish and nitrogen stripped out. I think it also makes for an interesting take on street-side gardens. Would love to see more of these go in throughout the Inner West.
John Caley, who ran the water course I attended some months back, had a house that certainly met expectations. Plenty of careful design of water tanks, and a nice use of water off next door’s roof (with their permission!). What took my fancy, however, was their lovely little communal garden in the small laneway beside the house. Plenty of produce to share amongst the neighbouring houses.
Mike and Jen’s house had everything that an inner-city greenie would want. Water tanks, careful management of water runoff, and chooks. Oh, and a nice vegetable garden squeezed into their small back garden.
Thanks to Maggie for organising the day! Visit the Marrickville Council water pages to find out more on future events, and how to get involved.
Lewisham House and Farm 