Sustainability courses, and the course of sustinability

I was recently alerted to this site, which offers courses in sustainable building and practices. All courses are offered online, and prices are very reasonable. Subjects covered include sustainable design, green building principles, renewable energy, and sustainable waste management.

While it mainly focuses on businesses trying to reduce their carbon footprint and operate more sustainably, there are also courses aimed at individuals and owner builders. Content Developer James Huddleston says he aims to try and increase the number of courses for owner builders.

If they do it in Mongolia, why don't we?

Meanwhile it's very disappointing that the course of sustainability in Queensland has been severely compromised by the State Government slashing the feed-in tariff for solar electricity from 44c/kwh to 8c/kwh, making it one of the lowest in Australia. In a country like Australia with almost unlimited sunshine and rising power costs, I believe the government should be embracing solar, not making it less attractive.

One slight positive is that solar PV suppliers were flooded with requests as many people, ourselves included, signed up for solar power before the rate cut-off  on 10th July .

Frogs

The incessant wet weather several weeks ago gave us an evening chorus of frogs. These little guys found the tub of water Russell had been using for the light earth mixing, and made themselves at home.

Red eyed tree frogs

A couple of days later we noticed eggs floating on top of the water, and within a week we had dozens of tadpoles.

We've been feeding them lettuce leaves and watching them grow. Now the tiniest of frogs - no bigger than my thumbnail - are heading off into the forest. We like to think we're doing our bit for the wildlife!!

Rendering the earth walls

Most of our earth walls, as well as the Durra panels, are now ready for rendering.

 

Russell spent a couple of days last year at a strawbale building workshop run by Huff andPuff. The main reason he went was to learn about different types of render, and how to apply them to earth walls. Unlike straw bale, which needs a thick ‘scratch’ coat to fill out the uneven surface, our light earth walls are made in formwork and therefore have a fairly even surface, so need far less render.

The render sticks well to the rough surface of the light earth walls, but we stapled wire onto the parts where there was just timber studs, to help the render to stick there. Where we used Durra straw panels we thought we could just ‘rough up’ the surface to make the render stick. We tried a mallet with nails in it, but in the end we decided that this would be very slow and noisy (i.e. it couldn’t be done on the weekends, when we have cottage guests), so we covered the panels with wire mesh using a staple gun. 

Wire mesh on walls. Window reveals are rendered first and allowed to dry

We had already tried a render mixture of sand, our red clay soil, and lime in equal proportions, and this had worked well. The soil needs to be finely sieved, and for this we used Mark VII, the same mechanical sieve we used for the earth in the walls (Mark VII followed Marks I - VI, and is the Rolls Royce model of sieves!). 

It's important to first wet down the light earth with a spray bottle to make it take the render, and to prevent the wall from sucking the moisture out of the render too quickly. 

On the first walls we placed some guide strips down the studs to screed against, to help get a uniform, level surface. Russell later improved on this by devising a render thicknesser to run 15mm over the surface and take off the excess.

Render thicknesser

Render thicknesser

As the render dries, it will crack a bit. To minimise this we found it was better to put on a rough coat first, then a thinner second coat when the first has dried a bit. 

Clay render - rough coat

Clay render - second coat

 

A very thin layer of render, basically a clay paint, will be added if the cracks are too extreme. But we actually like the look. The dried render has a real aged, Mediterranean quality, with the lime producing a gentle whitish ‘bloom’ in the soft pink earth colour.

We need to talk about Kevin!

I've just finished reading Kevin McCloud's Principles of Home - Making a Place to Live.

You may or may not be a fan of Kevin and his Grand Designs (I admit to being a real Kevin tragic!), but he has a sensible and refreshingly positive approach to sustainable living. He believes we need to embrace a slower, more enjoyable and gentler way of living that is less taxing on the resources of the planet, but that we don't have to compromise our comfort or lifestyle to do it.

He also believes that despite our current depletion of the planet's resources, we will be saved by our own resourcefulness and imagination, by returning to good design and craftsmanship, and by embracing a philosophy of sharing rather than wanting everything for ourselves.

The book offers practical suggestions on both building and retrofitting your home to make it energy efficient, how to shop sensibly and ethically, and what items are worth investing in (and what aren't), as well as looking at what a home offers in terms of social and personal values.

Kevin McCloud practices what he preaches. His building company, Hab (It stands for Happiness Architecture Beauty.) builds low-cost, affordable and sustainable homes, designed in the belief that they should enrich the environment, create a sense of community and make people happy.

Bunya Nuts

It's Bunya nut season, and the massive cones are crashing down every day, spilling scores of nuts onto the driveway.

Bunya Nuts in the cone

It's not surprising that the Aboriginals travelled vast distances to take advantage of their bountiful harvest. One large tree can produce an enormous number of nuts.

Bunya nuts in the husk

 

They require a fair amount of work to cut open the tough husks and release the nuts, which are about 6cm long. 

  

Russell bought this Bunya Nut Recipe Book from the Bunya Nut Cafe at Blackbutt, and will be experimenting with new uses for the nuts. They taste rather like potatoes, and can be roasted and used in soups. The ground nuts can be used instead of flour in soups, breads and cakes, and also as a pesto.

Eco-friendly wood finish

We've tried wherever possible to use low VOC, non-solvent based paint and wood finishes, so in Rose Gum cottage we finished the floors and the timber kitchen and vanity tops with Cabots CFP water-based wood finish.

Unfortunately it has been a disaster. Within weeks there were splash marks on the benchtops, and rings where people had left cups, wet dishes or the dishwashing detergent. With the help of our humid climate, these had soon turned to black mould. When someone spilled red wine on the floor - and I have no doubt they hastened to wipe it up - it nevertheless left a red stain.

A phone call to Cabots technical section revealed that if we wanted to recoat the benches with something else, we would have to sand them back completely to remove all the water-based finish.

We've now taken out and sanded back both the kitchen bench and the vanity, and refinished them with two coats of matt Estapol followed by Scandinavian oil.

Kitchen - Rose Gum Cottage

It was frustrating to have to redo what had already been completed just recently. It's also disappointing to know that the environmentally friendly approach did not produce an acceptable finish.

There may well be eco-friendly products out there which are suitable for wet areas, and if so we'd love to hear about them, because there's still a lot of the house to go!

Even more eco-friendly cleaning!

In line with our philosophy of using eco-friendly and healthy cleaning products, I was pleased to come across Norwex microfibre cloths.

It came about when one of our cottage guests told me she’d cleaned the windows in the cottage. It is not every day our guests do the cleaning for us! 

Judith explained that she was an agent for Norwex, and had cleaned the windows with the antibacterial envirocloth and the dry window cloth, using nothing but water. They looked amazing.

Windows get particularly dirty here, with a combination of mould and cobwebs, and cleaning them is not a job I enjoy. Seeing the streak-free result of her efforts, I quickly ordered three cloths - antibacterial envirocloth, window cloth and kitchen scrub cloth.

Norwex antibacterial envirocloth

I can honestly say they are a delight to use. The antibacterial cloth can be used dry for dusting, or wet for general cleaning. The window cloth dries off after the antibacterial, leaving no streaks, and the scrub cloth works on stubborn bits without the use of abrasive cleaners.Windows and shower screens are cleaned really easily and well, while the antibacterial cloth and scrub cloth make light work of bathrooms and kitchens.

I have since bought their floor cloths – one dry for dust (saves vacuuming) and one wet for washing - both interchangeable on the one velcro-tipped mop head.

The initial investment may seem high, but using microfibre cloths, which require only water, avoids the use of standard cleaning  products, which can cause skin irritations, pollute the environment, and are expensive - making them good for the budget as well as the environment.