melissapardoe

Clearing the driveway

The bulldozer could have removed the 1 m strip required in a couple of minutes, but Mark’s doing it the hard way – by hand – to make sure that damage is minimised. And I’m moving the off-cuts to the cleared area.

Signing the building contract….

So we’ve signed the building contract, but not without a minor hiccup. The builder presented us with a form to sign to appoint a specific building surveyor, and then a separate form, appointing them to act on our behalf with the surveyor. The building surveyor issues the building permit that allows you to start building.Continue reading “Signing the building contract….”

It didn’t take the kangaroos long to find the new house site

Mmm – this might be a problem when they pour the slab…..

And so it begins

And so it begins – site clearance underway

Heating

We knew that power in winter was key to sizing our solar system, so heating was a key focus. We wanted to be able to heat the whole house, so wanted something beyond the wood heater planned for the living room. One of the reasons that we chose our builder was because they had recentlyContinue reading “Heating”

Cooling

Cooling was an easy decision. Installing ducted air conditioning might seem counterintuitive for an off-grid, energy efficient house, but one of the learnings from the shed is that there is a lot of excess energy available in summer. When you do the numbers, it works easily. Depending on our final system sizing, it might notContinue reading “Cooling”

Starting the load list

So we knew that the most important place to start with the solar system for the house was to work out what our electrical load was going to be, in both summer and winter, and what compromises we were prepared to make to our day to day living. We use approximately 12 kWhr/day at theContinue reading “Starting the load list”

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