Archive for the ‘EcoMyFlat2010’ Category

Eco-my-flat: Wharenui big house

March 9, 2010

Hey Eco-my-bloggers!

Well it’s the first week and we’re all very excited, let’s hope it doesn’t wear off! We are getting off to a good start at here at the Big House.

We had our flat audit last Thursday. Warning: Sharon has too many good stories and is way too easy to talk to, put aside at least 2 hours for your audit! Just before she turned up our landlord sent over a plumber to fix our leaky tap and fix our water pressure, which was great because we were able to talk him into turning our water cylinder temp down to a balmy 60 degrees so now we don’t have to attempt to have showers in alternating boiling/freezing water!

We also had heaps of fun doing some of the stuff mentioned in the workshop: we measured our shower output and it is 4L, pretty good when we were told the optimum was 9L (although not quite as good when you have to shower in it)! We have started collecting greywater from when our shower heats up but with only one single basil plant to water at the moment (a new addition, the start of what will hopefully be a super rad garden) it is just sitting around waiting to be used at the moment. We checked our fridge seals with a piece of paper and they are pretty good, stoked! We were also super excited to get our eco lightbulbs since a lot of ours have burnt out and we haven’t had the motivation to replace them, but free stuff will motivate us to do just about anything so we’ll be getting on to that now!

As is to be expected with the weather this good, we are drying all our washing outside and have a general rule that anyone in the flat using a warm or hot wash will be punished heavily (at any time of year), we haven’t decided how yet but it might involve anything from extra drinks at a red card to some sort of public humiliation campaign. Also since it is still summer (just!), we haven’t used any heating yet, plus since we don’t have any form of heating currently, it would be pretty hard to anyway!

We were super excited to hear Powershop suggested as a good power company at the workshop, since we are already on Powershop. We would totally suggest it, our power bill for the first 2 weeks ended up being about the price a block of cheese each, woop! It was also good to hear the advice about only filling the jug a little, as we were doing this anyway with the vague idea that it saved power somehow but were unsure how, and now we know the facts! It was also super sweet to get free socks, a hat, and the window insulation kit (which we plan to use very soon).

Our big plans for this week: get our veges at growers direct, start growing our own, use the insulation kit on our windows, celebrate Ben’s 21st, prepare for the flatwarming, pick the grapes before the birds get them, and do some urban foraging. It’s going to be a busy one!

Big love,
the Big House

PS Supershed will give you at least 23 cups/plates for $1. Bargain!

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Eco-my-flat: Tauawhi Hooker Avenue Blog

March 8, 2010

Our team name is ‘Tauawhi’, which is the Maori word for ‘to hug, embrace or support (each other)’. We hit upon it while researching more pretentious ways to say ‘The Tree-Huggers’. We live in Hooker Avenue, Bryndwr. The house has a strong kakariki history, and has in the past maintained a solar powered hot-tub, although we don’t actually have that anymore. It has also quite recently had the ceiling insulated, which I imagine we will be very grateful for this winter. I come from the UK, where such things as central heating and double glazing are pretty standard. I must admit, I’m a little scared of the approaching frozen wasteland that I’m led to believe Christchurch becomes in August. There are five of us here currently. My name is Jack, and I share a room with my sexy lover, Cassie, whose role in this is to sew us a whole new set of thermal curtains, and to make the tea. Ning has been here the longest, and is sort of the king of the house. He studies electrical engineering, which will be very handy when we start constructing our new wind turbine. Kaiser and Tim have recently moved in. Tim is very handy around the house, and plans to build us a new greenhouse for our tomato plants in the winter. Kaiser wanted to call the team ‘The Chosen Ones’, and have us all wear capes. Luckily, that name didn’t come out of the decision hat. We also have a lovely house cat called Tiger. Recently I’ve taken on the role of head-gardener, so if you read this regularly, you’ll probably find out quite a lot about my plants. I’ve just finished getting my winter veg in. The turnips are already sprouting, and I’m getting excited about the first roast dinner of the season. Although, I haven’t actually ever eaten turnip before, so I’m hoping that I like them (recipe suggestions please!). We are lucky enough to have a well-established worm farm, with absolutely loads of free compost, which makes things a lot cheaper and easier. And cuts down on the road miles of the fertiliser. I’m trying out some companion planting, apparently peas and brassicas go really well together, so I’m giving that a go, and we use neem soap as a nice organic pesticide. There’s a lot of enthusiasm going around here over the competition. We all already prefer to bike or bus rather and driving. We’ve been planning on installing the plastic window insulation stuff for a while, so when we got the free one last week we practically stuck it up straight away. It went very well, only 3 hours for one room, including the American Idol break. Other ideas that we have include putting a plastic moisture barrier under the floor to keep the air dry as it’s easier to heat. Apparently this is something Tim has done before. Check out the photos of the house, garden, and professional window insulator team (taken by our expert photographer, Cassie. Although, ironically Tim is the one who has the degree in photography. He wasn’t here that day). The attachment function is being annoying at the moment so that might have to wait until a later post. I will try and encourage the other team members to post on the blog, so expect at least on update from everyone.

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Eco-my-flat: Flat 34, Ilam Apratments

March 8, 2010

We had a meeting with all of our flat mates and decided on a few things that could contribute to helping out with Eco-ing our flats. There were many different things that each of us thought of but some sounded like they may not be as effective and also it may be hard for all of us to get around doing it, as this is a team commitment and not just one or two of us. More importantly we have to keep in consideration one of our flat mates that she may not be able to keep up with everything, as I will explain in more detail why not in just the next few lines. (She is in a wheelchair)

So here are some of the things that we thought could contribute to our plans from the beginning which we can build on for the future:

1.       Between the 5 of us, we have establish a cooking together plan for 4 of us ( one person wasn’t interested in take part in this one), this way we will be able to cut our usage for power, hot water and just about every other energy consumed by using only one fourth of the same energy as previously consumed.

2.       As one of our flat mates has mentioned it, turning off the switch for power plugs on the wall would actually help and also unplugging the idling appliances as well. ( this could one apply to our rooms since the shared appliances cannot be turned off, since one of our flat mates wouldn’t be able to reach the wall)

3.       The common hallway in our flat does not have a light switch for the light to be turned off, (this may be for safety or other reasons, but the amount of energy being consumed, when adding up in all flats could be a large amount, so maybe a motion detector sensor would solve this issue and also keep up with the safety or other issues at concern).

4.       Coming up with a better waste management system/recycling system, for all flats could also contribute to a greener foot step in the environment for all of us as residences.

5.       As our last point, it could help save energy to hang our cloths for drying instead of using dryers, but that would mean Ilam management could provide us with hanging spaces of facilities for us to be able to hang dry instead of using the dryer.

Since this was our first blog and we had a lot to discuss (we also got very excited and carried away over the fact that we can actually contribute or change something in our living spaces) hence the reason for the long length of the blog, but hopefully going onward the next ones would be quicker updates and a recap on us following up with some of our plan/goals.

Cheers.

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Eco-my-flat: First blog for Albi’s Cave

March 7, 2010

Welcome children and eco my flatters to episode 7, Albi isn’t racist anymore, and the badly burnt Albanian boy from last Thursday has gone to put some home-made ointment on his burns.

The crew here at Albi’s cave constitutes of Laura, Marius, Natalie, Lola (the showgirl cat), and me, Dave. We are all fairly eco savvy and are almost finished setting up our flat. We just moved into our new place, and are looking forward to another round of emf.

Our super-nice landlord bought us some eco bulbs, so we have replaced as many lights as possible with the eco bulbs he brought over and the ones we had leftover from my old flat. We had a sparky over a few days ago to isolate the heating lamps in the bathroom so they wouldn’t turn on with the normal light. At the start of the week we got the compost bin set up in the corner – now it just needs worms and more organic matter. The kitchen gets the morning sun, and then the lounge gets it from noon onwards. Our landlord has just bought a heat pump which should be installed before winter.

Alas, the plants are still in their transport pots and the raspberry canes are looking a bit sick. We have a few really nice cherry tomatoes though, and some red opal basil that has barely survived the slow start to summer. We harvested our first potato crop which was planted in old chch city council recycling bins, and we found three potatoes, each about the size of a ferrero rocher chocolate. It was the smallest of the four potato plants, so we are hoping for bigger crops from the other three.

We are quite proud of our garage. It is quite crowded, and no-one has yet found the duct tape, (even though we are pretty sure there is at least one roll there, and possibly two). But despite the great pile of stuff we have quite the stable of bikes. Between the four of us, there are 6 bikes and a bike trailer.

At the moment we have just one major project on the go. We have decided to have a go at home brewing. We have a kit for 20L of lager, and once we have sorted out beer brewing, we are going to move onto cider. We purchased a large plastic container off trademe for $6.50, and now need swappa crate bottles and a thermometer. Last weekend the flat picked up a bunch of goodies from supershed (we carpooled as we could not get all our stuff home in the bike trailer), and among those was a pair of styrofoam bins which we will use to insulate the home brew as it ferments. To further insulate the home brew we have some terra lana hot water cylinder wrap scraps from the last eco my flat which we will line the bins with. The instructions for brewing are included with the Coopers kits, and if you want some handy tips and tricks, Tom has compiled an “Introduction to Home brewing,” which you can get off him if you bug him enough. We have a copy on our fridge, and if anyone can’t get a copy off Tom, if you speak to us at a workshop we could photocopy ours for you. We will blog our future successes/failures so that others can benefit.

Another project involves an old Avanti mountain bike. I would say more but that’s as far as we have gotten.

As a flat we are looking at refining the art of urban foraging. We picked up a bike trailer load of pairs on Saturday from some trees up an alleyway on Centaurus Rd, and we will be preserving those in the coming days. For Laura and myself, preserving pears is becoming a habit (see our blogs last year from “The sunflowers ate my potatoes”).

So, that’s all from Albi’s Cave for now, and we’ll catchaz later

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Eco My Flat 2010

February 3, 2010

It’s Back! Throughout the next several weeks the Carbon Credit Collector blog will be hosting, for the third year in a row, the weekly updates from the amazing students from Canterbury University Eco My Flat competition who are tackling their flats (and sometimes flatmates) in attempts to live more sustainable lifestyles. I’m so excited I can barely sit still!  Thanks so much to the University of Canterbury for allowing Ooid to be a part of this wonderful project! Wishing all participants the best of luck!

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