Entries Tagged 'energy saving' ↓

Should I or shouldn’t I? As we go to bed on these chill Winter nights that’s the burning question in the heads of many thousands of Tasmanian households who warm their homes with heat pumps.

“Yes” say some experts. “No” say others. So, what’s the sensible thing to do?

The short answer is turn it off. For most people in most homes the best thing to do is to use the heater’s timer to start up the heat pump about half an hour before you arise. That way you will save a heap of energy.

The reason why there is such confusion over this question is that nearly every heat pump installer tells the purchaser to leave it on all the time for best efficiency. If you doubt the veracity of that message then please read on…

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As demonstrated by the successful Waterworks solar program, bulk purchase is proving to be a great way to extend new technologies into our everyday lives. Now there’s an opportunity to do likewise with electric bikes.

Eco-Bikes, run by environmental colleague Ahmet Bektas, is attempting to bulk purchase a limited range of bikes. There are hoping to offer 20% to 30% savings on two or three bike models customised to suit Tasmanian riding conditions.

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Here’s a welcome new website dedicated to finding products and materials needed to make your home energy efficient.

The site focuses on DIY projects – such as how to insulate your hot water cylinder – explains each project and provides background information and links to resources. It includes a handy listing of online and local (Hobart) suppliers.

It’s all there for you to use, so take a look and see what else you could be doing to save energy.

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Here’s your chance to test a variety of electric bikes from Eco Bikes and join a community BBQ after.

10.30 am
Site 8, Waterworks Reserve

If you missed out on this event you can contact Eco Bikes HERE.

Is this you?

You’ve swapped over your light bulbs, insulated your ceilings and windows, changed your shower rose, put in a veggie garden…. and you feel mighty good about those things, but then there’s that darned family car. And those frequent plane trips.
(Click on the chart at right, to enlarge it.)

As part of our Climate Connect project we engaged intensively with community members about the barriers that prevent us from living sustainably… and it seems that people are most frustrated by their travel footprint. Because it tends to unravel most of their other good deeds.

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New parking sign in Collins Street, Hobart.

World oil depletion is on the verge of radically changing our travel modes and habits. We need to get used to it.

It’s occurred to some of us that most households own a vehicle that suits their biggest need, whereas most travel by car is one-person-per-vehicle. Nearly all of our actual needs are for a very small, efficient vehicle.

With this in mind, a proposal is afoot for several households to collectively own a practical street car (named Desire!) that can be available for shared use, thus enabling those households to do without a car altogether – using an electric bike, for instance, or a tiny efficient vehicle – but still have access to a practical vehicle for bushwalking, building materials etc when needed.

If interested in the idea, just send us an email or comment below. (See here too.)

Hello and welcome. Below are some resources developed for our Climate Connect program – which looked at household behavioural change.

To undertake the Household Behaviour Survey please click HERE.

To view responses from above survey (in graph form) click HERE. (These are compiled from 428 household entries statewide.)

To read ‘big picture’ story and do self-test please click HERE.

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RMIT has just launched a new user-friendly household emissions calculator. Now it is much easier to get a visible estimate of how your household is performing energywise.

Click on graphic at left to give it a try and let us know what you think!

(A feature of this calculator is that it graphically shows your transport and food footprints.)

And here is another one (right) – also very simple to use. We’ve been using this international one for the Climate Connect behaviour change project.

Which calculator do you prefer? You can comment below or email us directly.

After last year’s successful open forum on the emerging ‘Peak Oil’ phenomenon, another one has just been held on 2nd of July.

This forum focussed on how local government is taking a lead with this important issue.

For a concise summary just go to this link.

Many thanks to community members who helped and attended.

Waterworks Valley Community has just won the 2011 Award for Environmental Excellence (community category).

The award was presented in recognition of the work that we have undertaken during the past two years with our Climate Connect Project – overcoming barriers to behavioural change.

Our project team comprised Jacqui Allan, Jonah Gouldthorpe, Amanda Sully, Stuart Godfrey, Chris Harries and our partner organisation Eco Tasmania Inc (a spin-off from our successful bulk purchase of solar hot water systems). Glenda Hosking played a key role in managing the project’s finances.

For more information click Here.

Although Dynnyrne area is quite well serviced with buses, there are many reasons people give for not using public transport.

Problem is that our urban car culture is so strong that most of us are used to jumping into cars without thinking – and are not in tune with our own bus services.

To make it easier, make these two links ‘favourites’ in your browser.

Huon Rd Timetable (Being updated, bus times are on this PDF)
Dynnyrne Timetable

Conveniently, when you go to these links the very next bus going along that route will be highlighted.

(For those who don’t use computers much, you can print out each route on an A4 page and pin it up in a convenient location.)

We’ve got solar PV panels installed – finally. We should have done this years ago!

We’d been debating for a long time whether or not to put in a grid-connected solar electricity system, as we thought it would be complicated, expensive, time-consuming and possibly not worth the effort.

Well, we were wrong! We’d committed to reducing our energy use as part of the Climate Connect project and solar power seemed an obvious thing to do. We were also shamed by a visit from a journalist from the Owner-Builder magazine who was surprised that we didn’t have such a system already. So, in a spirit of “keeping up with the Joneses” (although in our case it was keeping up with Chris, Troy, Shaun, Lilith, Amanda, Ian, Dorka, etc down the road) we sought quotes and chose our installer (the company who did many of the South Hobart installations).

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Some brilliant good news to end the year, and it stems from this community’s successful solar bulk purchase efforts.

EcoTasmania Inc has awarded a $7,000 grant to the Peak Oil working group to conduct education and lobbying on peak oil – an emerging issue of great importance. EcoTasmania Inc is the corporate body that was set up from our community solar initiative to support sustainability projects.

For those wanting to know more about the peak oil issue (you will hear about it soon anyway!) you can read a good primer by clicking here.

And for those who don’t have solar hot water connected yet, the EcoTasmania solar enterprise is still going gangbusters, now set up as a normal business operation. You can contact them by clicking here.