How to repair a break in a dog containment system’s boundary wire.

(This is a repost of a previously-published article, rescued after my web host screwed up my site.)

A trailer is an invaluable addition to a homestead. It turns the family car into a ute (pickup truck if you live outside Australia!), without the expense of buying and maintaining an additional vehicle.

This is a list of what I think are the ideal features for the ultimate homestead trailer. You probably won’t find a trailer with every feature on the list, and your needs won’t be quite the same as mine, but hopefully …

The highest average national temperature ever recorded for Australia!

Here’s a great opportunity to have a tour of one of the Illawarra’s most sustainable homes – the Rowes’ residence in Shellharbour.

If you’ve got a farm or homestead, an inquisitive nature, or even just a problem with a neighbour’s pet, a game camera could be what you need. Aldi has them for sale very cheaply at the moment.

Here’s a list of the podcasts I regularly listen to. I’d love it if you could suggest others you think I might like!

My thoughts on Australia’s first mass-produced all-electric car. Is this the start of something big?

I spent most of Sunday helping to staff the Jamberoo FutureCare table at the Shellharbour Solar Expo, at Shellharbour Workers’ Club (who actually have 22 kW of solar panels installed themselves – see photo).

The expo was organised by Jamberoo FutureCare, in conjunction with Shellharbour and Kiama Councils. There were a number of solar power and solar hot water suppliers there, displaying their products and giving people quotes. There was also a wind power company and a few other energy-related displays. FutureWorld had the table next to us, which was great …

Australia, and many other countries around the world, are legislating to phase out the sale of incandescent light bulbs. It is estimated that this initiative will reduce Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by 800,000 tonnes of CO2-e; not bad, but it’s still only 0.14% of our total emissions. That said, any saving is progress.

I’ve previously published about my own experience of switching from low-voltage halogen downlights to CFL downlights

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had several people express concern to me that the mercury in a CFL poses …

Not long ago I dropped and broke a compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) in the garage. D’oh!

I had a vague recollection that there’s a procedure you should follow to safely clean up broken CFLs, due to the small amount of mercury inside them. So, geek that I am, I jumped on the computer to look up what to do.

The best instructions I found were from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) web site. To summarise (this is for hard surfaces, like the garage floor):

Before anything else, air …