Last weekend I went to pick them up with our 1 tonne ute and a trailer.

I have to say that I seriously underestimated the weight of the slate tiles and I had to take it slowly up the Blackall range (at times I only managed second gear).

I even managed to ‘break’ the trailer just before unloading by driving over a sharp stone in the driveway and flattening one tyre.

The 87 m² of slate didn’t even all fit in the ute and trailer. I reckon I managed about 70-75% of the slate in the first trip. I’ll be picking up the rest of the slate tiles this Friday and luckily will be able to fit them in the ute only and won’t need the trailer.

We’ll use the slate tiles on the floor in the kitchen, dining, lounge, and the bathrooms.

Has anyone used slate tiles in the bathroom before and is there anything that you need to be mindful of?

The course covered pretty much anything to do with solar power generation, from solar panels and cable sizing to battery care.

The course was presented in an easy going two days and aimed at giving anyone a good understanding on solar power generation and it’s impacts on your life style.

One of the most interesting things I picked up from the course is that you can still use a bread maker but you just need to be careful when you use it. As a bread maker uses quite a lot of electricity you should only use it when you have excess energy being generated by your solar panels and your battery bank is already full.

Personally I believe that this course is very worth while for anyone interested in generating electricity from the sun, be that a grid connect system or an autonomous remote area power system (RAPS).

I have just recently finished reading this book and have to say that it was a quite easy to read considering the topic and the book covers many aspects.

I really like how the book looks at the whole solar power system from a more holistic point than just from a technical point of view.

In the first part of the book Collyn discusses all sorts of energy consuming appliances that we have in our households nowadays with a view of highlighting where it makes sense to improve the efficiency of the appliance before installing the solar power system.

The second part covers the basics of any solar power system while also listing other alternative power sources and their feasibility.

Part three covers the design and scaling of a power system, highlighting the need for an energy audit to be able to work out how big your system needs to be.

Part four covers the basics of installing a solar power system. Interesting in this part I found the section about what you are allowed to do yourself and what you need to get a licensed electrician to do.

Part five covers the actual installation of a power system with lots of tips on how to make your system more effective and secure.

Part six describes some typical examples based on actual installations. This part of the book gives you a rough feel of the likely costs to set-up a solar power system. As this book has only been released in June this year the pricing is still quite applicable.

Part seven in the book talks about financing a solar power system and the various rebate schemes available in Australia.

In the last part Collyn then describes the solar power system he has got on his property. Collyn also describes living with solar power and that the biggest challenge for Collyn is dealing with visitors that are not used to conserving energy and that one visitor can basically double their daily power consumption easily.

All in all I heartily recommend this book to anyone that is interested in getting their own solar power installation. The book is not just easy to read but I can see it also becoming a little bit of a reference book for myself. It contains some simple formulas to work out electrical properties of various parts of a solar power system.

In a deal unveiled in Melbourne, international company Better Place plans to team up with AGL Energy and Macquarie Capital Group to set up a network of “charging spots” and “battery exchange stations” to power electric vehicles in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Shai Agassi, chief executive officer of Better Place, said he hoped Australia would prove that electric cars can work anywhere and that the technology to support electric cars is available now.

Better Place plans to set-up a network of charging spots, to top up batteries, that would be located in places where cars park, including home garages, shopping centres and office car parks.

Additionally, on the outskirts of city centres and on freeways, “battery switching stations” would be built for trips longer than 161 kilometres.

Mr Agassi said Better Place wants to to build the infrastructure first, while the company was dealing with car manufacturers to produce the battery-run cars.

“You can’t sell cell phones before you have the towers,” he said.

Thanks to Jess at Sustainable Suburbia for blogging this and linking to the article in The Age news paper.

These handles have come of some doors where the builders installed the wrong type of handles on the internal doors on a large new building. The business where John works was employed to remove this handles from the doors and install the correct handles.

Believe it or not, as this handles already had been installed once, they couldn’t be sold as new and were just sitting in a corner in a box taking up space and were about to be thrown out, when John offered us these.

Of course we were only to happy to receive all the handles for our doors for free and we certainly don’t mind that they have been installed once before. In fact they do look brand new and have hardly been used ever.

Later on we also found some handles for our front doors on eBay. They were very reasonably priced at $68 inclusive postage, so we are quite happy about those as well.

So now we already have all internal doors, the main entrance doors, all the door handles we need and some of the windows.

On the planning side of things we are now waiting on some engineers drawings before we can submit the plans to the local council for building approval. It’s quite exciting and Rosalba can’t wait to actually start doing stuff on building our new home.

This way you are able to generate a large part of your electricity need from the sun without needing to pay for a large upfront cost.

In August I also talked about how such deals seemed not to be available in Australia.

I am happy to report that a similiar deal has now become available in Australia from at least one company named Earth Utility.

Earth Utility is putting a slightly different spin on this type of deal though. As Earth Uility is not an electricity supplier you don’t pay more for your electricity and you get the same benefits on your electricity bill you would get if you own the solar power system outright.

Of course the solar power system is not provided free of charge but at a modes $75 per quarter (source) your savings on your electricity bill are probably more than paying for the quarterly cost for the solar power system.  As a bonus you even own the system after 20 years of service.

If you have been wanting to get a solar power system on your roof but have not been able to to afford it until now, I encourage you to have a look at Earth Utility and see if their way of financing a solar power system would suit you.

Earth Uility also provides similar types of financing options for solar hot water systems.

This week we were lucky enough to win an eBay auction for some nice french doors as shown below. We are planning to use these french doors as the doors to the little area outside our bedroom.

A couple of weeks back we have also won an auction for 12 louvre doors which we’ll be using for all the inside doors.

The following picture is of a couple of wooden inlay panels that we have managed to get at a very good price. We are not yet sure where we will be using these but when we saw them, we just had to have them.

Based on our responses Shayne reckons that on average we’ll be using up to 8.5 kWh per day with an average usage of about 7.8 kWh. Apparently this is at the high end of the modest range of daily energy demand.

Shayne has told us about a similar system he installed recently which was priced at $52,000 (Australian) before any potential rebates we might be eligible. That’s about what we expect to invest into our solar system, so that didn’t come as a huge shock.

To generate enough electricity for our use Shayne has calculated that we need to install 12 solar panels of 165 W each and that we need a battery bank of 1300 Ah at 48V.

Shayne also explained that some appliances use an extraordinary amount of electricity and we should stay clear of them if we can. Appliances such as hair dryers, irons, electric toasters, and bread makers use large amounts of electricity which make the solar system more expensive than it is if you can do without them.

For example, if you keep your bread maker you basically end up spending an additional $12,000 on your solar system to be able to run it.

According to Shayne  a lot of parts for a solar system will get more expensive with the introduction of an emissions trading scheme as demand for alternative energy solutions will increase dramatically.

In Andrew’s own words: “It doesn’t get much better than 10 stars!”

To clarify, in Australia, houses are rated according their nergy needs for cooling and heating on a scale from 1 to 10. 1 being “bloody atrocious” and 10 being “as good as it gets”.

Also to put the preliminary energy rating of 10 into perspective, most brick veneer homes currently built in Australia achieve a rating of somewhere between 4.5 to 5.

So, as you might imagine we are quite chuffed about this extraordinary good result, even being preliminary only.

The next thing we are doing now is to speak to an accredited installer of solar panels (photovoltaic) to perform an assessment of our energy needs. Shane from Alternative Energy Solutions is going to meet with us soon to help us with that.

I’ll keep you posted on the outcome of that assessment.

1. I absolutley adore cats.
2. The first cat I can remember got run over by a car. Since then all my cats have been indoor cats.
   Once we finished our strawbale house I will propably let the cat outside though as we are quite far from the road.
3. I am the proud owner of a Lamborghini. The special thing about my Lamborghini is that it runs on diesel.
4. Rosalba and I are also in the middle of setting up a small organic farm on the land where we are building our strawbale house.
5. We have dedicated half of our land to a program called “Land for Wildlife” to help preserve native flora and fauna.
6. I grew up in Switzerland but never realy liked snow or cold which is why I moved to Australia where I met my lovely partner Rosalba.

So there you go. Now you know all my secrets …

The fun part for me is that now I get to tag 6 other bloggers for a fun post as per the following rules:

1. Link the person(s) who tagged you - check
2. Mention the rules on your blog - ditto, check
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours - ditto
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

Well heres the list of bloggers I’d like to know more about:

1. Carole’s Thoughtfull Spot - Even thoug I have only followed Carole’s blog for a short while, I already feel like Carole is a good friend because of here easy going writing style.
2. Grubby Gumboots - Interesting articles generally about gardening and some lovely pictures.
3. Gr, Midnight & Cocoa - I think I’ve done quite well not having a cat blog in the first two linked blogs. Anywya, this blog has some lovely cat pictures and the odd video.
4. SolReka - Some intersting and weird articles about renewable energy with a hint of conspiracy theroy at times. 
5. Chica & Pumuckl - A blog about two Egyptian kitties in germany. As I said above, I adore cats.
6. Off-grid Living - featuring intersintg articles about renewable energy.