Beechworth Urban Landcare and Sustainability

Current Activity

• We’ve had several meetings in the interim period resulting in the first two fact sheets on ‘solar hot water’ and ‘heat pump hot water’ prepared by Klaus Baumgartel
• Our view is that solar hot water is a must on all new buildings and should be mandated by Indigo Shire. The higher cost of solar is fairly minor compared to the overall spend in a new house
• Retrofitting less greenhouse intensive hot water systems on existing houses is less definite. Heat pump hot waters are  relatively cheap and generally easy with current Victorian subsidies, and can reduce greenhouse by up to 60%

• These first two fact sheets can be included in the ‘folder for first homebuyers’ under design by the communications group (see the hot watersub section
• We were planning four more fact sheets as follows: ‘home heating’, ‘solar photovoltaic electricity’, ‘energy makeovers on existing housing’ and ‘design of new housing’. However the effort of researching and writing seems to fall to the core group and busy people are reluctant to sit around talking at meetings. So we are suggesting some new modes of operation for 2009.

Future Issues

• As noted above, the effort of clarification and distillation on ‘energy machines’ required to help the normal home owner is substantial and does not make sure that wise decisions are made.
• The ideal recipe for low-energy lifestyles can very quickly be undermined by short term ‘cheapest’ decisions, partisan advice from trades persons, and ineffective policies and decisions at local and state government levels.
• Given this, we feel that in 2009 the efforts of the ‘energy machines’ group could be best spent helping organize five night time lectures and information sessions for the Beechworth Community at large. These five sessions might form part of say nine lectures (one each month February to November) that Beechworth Sustainability would host in a ‘same day, time and venue’ sense to ensure a decent roll up from the town
• Our five lectures would be ‘best hot water’, ‘best PV electricity’, ‘best home heating’, ‘energy retrofits of existing houses’ and ‘design standards for all new houses’
• The energy machine group would then possibly move onto research into a town sized biomass-fuelled electricity generator that would consume town waste and forestry residues.