If you’re into home gardening, don’t forget the SeedSavers meeting this afternoon at Dapto, from 3:00 – 4:00 pm.

I’ll be there!

Since Molly the rooster moved out to the farm, we’ve been wanting to get another chook or two for the chicken tractor.

Our three black silkies are just about to come into lay (I’ve been saying that for 3 weeks now!), but we thought it would be nice to get a ‘proper’ layer as well. We [...]

What is it?

The MS6115 mains power meter is a device for measuring the electrical power used by an appliance. It looks like an electronic timer switch (see photo at right). You plug it into your power point, and then plug your appliance into it to measure its power use.

What does it do?

You can use the [...]

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in [...]

I attended the Gerringong solar hot water information night on Friday. It was very well-run, and was a great opportunity to talk to lots of different suppliers all in one place.

The presentation by Jamberoo FutureCare was excellent. They don’t have any particular axe to grind – they just want to present the facts and help [...]

This is another workshop I’d have loved to attend, but unfortunately I can’t make it. It would be really useful, given our current efforts to reduce our high electricity consumption!

Date: Saturday 22 November 2008 Time: 9:30am – 12:30pm Venue: Girl Guide Cottage, Hindmarsh Park, Kiama (map)

Learn which parts of your house consume the most energy and the [...]

This is one workshop I would really like to attend, but unfortunately we’ve got something else on that day! If you go, I’d love it if you could leave a comment below and let us know how it went.

Date: Saturday 22 November 2008 Time: 10:00am – 3:00pm

Learn how you can keep happy, healthy chooks in your [...]

I’m really looking forward to the solar hot water information night on Friday. I’m hoping to find out whether it is possible to retrofit some kind of solar heating (or at least boosting) to my off-peak electric hot water system. It’s in good condition and it seems wasteful (and expensive!) to get rid of it [...]

When thinking about a coop for our chickens to live in, we wanted something practical, non-permanent, and space-efficient. We were only planning to have 3 or 4 chickens so we didn’t want to build anything too big or expensive, but we needed to protect them from neighbours’ cats and keep them comfortable.

Looking around the net, [...]

After figuring out our baseline electricity consumption, we were mortified to see how much electricity we use. I had honestly thought our usage was about half of that amount.

So, where are we wasting electricity?

We have over 30 50 watt halogen downlights throughout the house. They use a lot of electricity, and we’re pretty slack about [...]