Beechworth Urban Landcare and Sustainability

by Charlie Robinson

I am living proof that good luck will always compensate for stupidity and ineptitude.  In my last article I bewailed my inability to produce even one drop of apple juice, despite a considerable investment in time, money, and expletives.  Good luck came in the guise of my inventive brother-in-law who just happened to have a pork mincer, with attached electric motor, lying around the shed (as you do).  Now, this pork mincer performs the task of apple scratting to perfection.  It looks like an over-sized meat mincer and seems custom made for the task at hand.

The quartered apples are simply shoved into the top chute and a knurled shaft forces the pieces through a sieve into the bucket at just the right consistency for pressing.  The scratted apples are then placed into the press and compressed by hardwood blocks and the juice escapes through slats into the base which then flows into another bucket.  A washing basket full of apples takes about an hour to scrat and press.  This is enough to produce 25 litres of juice which I leave for a couple of days, skim off the floating residue, and pour into a fermenting vessel.  After adding yeast and a kg of sugar, a lid with airlock is screwed on and the action commences.  Before long you can see the gas bubbling through the airlock and you know that fermentation is happening.

Once the bubbling has ceased, between 7 – 10 days, you can then bottle the fermented juice.  At this stage the liquid smells and tastes a bit rough but I’m assured that the taste will improve in the bottle over the next 3 – 6 months.  I will be calling on “guinea pigs” around September to verify this. Initial reaction from a few friends has been favourable and it’s certainly a huge improvement on the apple scrumpy I purchased at a fair in Oxfordshire a few years ago.

Not everything we’ve done on our property has flirted with disaster.  Our initial decision to plant a Lleylandii cypress hedge around the perimeter of our property was a good one.  We had achieved great results with these trees on our previous property in Bungendore and were keen to repeat the success.

Lleylandii cypress receives lots of bad press but I believe this is not the tree’s fault but the people who plant them.  Nurseries market them as hedging plants when they are actually massive trees when grown to maturity – the trick is to keep them under control early and they are quite compliant to the secateurs.

I’ve limited the height of the hedge to 3 metres and the width to 2 metres.  Although the hedge is still young, this year many of the trees reached their intended height so I simply snipped them off at 3 metres.  This cut will still be visible next year when I trim them back again.

Our decision not to plant a native hedge was an easy one.  There are several varieties of acacia that will do a similar job, and grow more quickly, but they have a limited life span.  The last thing I want to do when I’m seventy is to replace all 240 trees in the hedge.  Callitris are more long-lived but don’t provide the vegetative density I was looking for. There is a long row of dead Lleylandii near the White Spot (Everton) turnoff on the Wangaratta Road, evidence of the severity of the big dry.  However, I have found them to be extremely drought-resistant (more so than some eucalypt species) and there are several examples of long Lleylandii hedges throughout Indigo Shire, but they won’t survive months of no watering.

Many people reading this were brought up with a cast iron stove as the centrepiece of the kitchen.  We bought a new one when we moved into our home and this was a good decision.  It’s so nice to have a large container of soup bubbling away when it’s cold and wet outside while the kettle is always ready for a cuppa.

Maintenance is a breeze and we just wipe the stove with a paper towel and vegetable oil every few weeks to maintain its black colour.   The wood ash is used around our fruit trees and we‘ve never had to buy wood as there is always branches falling across nearby roads or neighbours looking to clear vegetation.   The stove prefers smaller limbs so we can use our fruit tree prunings as well. We also appreciate the stove’s ability to support the solar hot water system on those long overcast weeks when the sun’s power is compromised.  With the cost of electricity continuing to rise, of all our sustainability initiatives the stove gives us the greatest piece of mind.

Next time, I’ll continue to describe the continued successes and failures of our Fighting Gully Road venture.

by Gabrielle Prior

Cutting back your kilowatts  – it’s like cutting back calories, but easier! And you don’t have to give up chocolate!!

I started out with the best intentions to get the filing done, but got sidetracked when it came to electricity bills. I wonder how our usage has changed over 3 years………

An hour and a few excel charts and formulae later I discovered our annual average KWh per day has dropped from 25.8 in 2006 to 19.8 in 2008. That’s a decrease of 23%. This is in spite of the fact that I started working from home during this time, which meant more electricity use during the day. 19.8 is still higher than I would like, but given that we use electricity to pump our water, plus the home office, I’m really pleased by this progress.

I should point out that we currently do not have solar hot water (it’s coming when the existing system finally needs replacing), AND our hot water system is too big for just 2 people, so 5-14kw per day (depending on whether we have a bath or not) is accounted for by hot water.

You can see in the chart below we have made the biggest savings in the ‘winter’ quarters: Apr-Jul (29% decrease 06 – 08) and Jul – Oct (39% decrease 06 – 08!!!).

• gradually replaced curtains with blockout-type curtains for better insulation (when they were on sale, of course!) (2007 – 2008)
• making old fashioned draft-stoppers for all the doors (2008)
• replacing power hungry old electric oil heaters with newer electric ones that have timers and temperature sensors so they cut in and out as required, and can go off overnight (eg in the bedroom) (2008)
• I bought a power meter to track how much power individual pieces of equipment use (2008)
• converting to cf bulbs
• replacing the electric kettle with a stovetop kettle (we have a gas stovetop)

But there were still more simple behavour changes we made that have clearly made a huge impact:

• over time I’ve gradually turned down the temperature on the hot water unit to minimise reheating time
• we ‘curtained off’ the end of the house that we don’t use unless guests are here, so we’re only heating the part of the house we use
• in 2008 we ‘decomissioned’ the second bathroom unless guests were staying – so that meant turning off the second small hot water unit for that bathroom, and not having to heat the bathroom in winter. I think this was strangely the ‘hardest’ adjustment as we quite liked having our own bathroom each!!
• in 2008 I relocated my home office to the end of the house that we use in winter. This was also something I resisted as I quite liked being able to have the office a bit more seperate to the rest of the house. However, as my office was in the “curtained off”, and therefore unheated part of the house, I was using a lot of power to drag the temperature up from 12 to 16 every day, and running a heater 5-7 hours per day. It was a bit mad looking back on it. In the new study I might only have to run the heater for an hour or so on really cold days. And I can always just pop around the corner and warm up by the fire.
• in 2008 I also ‘bubble-glazed‘ the study/office windows to keep the room warmer, but still let in light.
• I switched to only using ‘eco’ mode on the dishwasher (which saves about 50% of the power compared to the normal cycle that includes drying)
• I use my slow cooker as much as possible in winter rather than the oven to cook meals – and I try to make enough for 4-6 serves per meal to make the most of the power use
• We have progressively removed light fittings from our halogen track lighting eg over the dining table we had 6 (or maybe 7) and now we only have 4. In the main living area we had 5 and now we have 3. In addition we try to use lamps with cf bulbs rather than the track lighting whenever possible.
• We have used insulting foam or mud to seal gaps that were letting in drafts

But of course, there is still more we can do! On the power saving to do list are:

• solar hot water
• finish replacing old curtains with insulating curtains in the rest of the house
• moving from rod and ring style curtain fittings to track fittings so we can get the curtains closer to the window (pelmets just wouldn’t work in our style of house)
• replacing the old standard fridge with a chest fridge
• keep up with the gap-sealing work
• opening up the chimney to expose more flue and replacing the fireplace with one that I can put a pot/kettle on to slow cook food during the day / keep water hot for a cuppa .

Alas most of these need some serious $$, so I’d best get back to work!

By Gabrielle Prior

Tired of living in a winter cave with the curtains drawn to keep in the warmth?

Wish you had double glazing but can’t afford it?

Renting a house so window or curtain upgrades aren’t an option?

Want a way to help keep the heat in and maybe reduce your heating costs?

What you need is bubble-glazing!

No, it’s not an urban myth – you really can use bubble-wrap to double the r-rating of your windows (the r-rating is a measure of the window’s insulating abilities). That might not sound like much but trust me, it makes a noticeable difference.

So, what’s so great about bubble-glazing?

• It’s cheap – all you need is regular bubblewrap (not the blue-tinted biodegradable stuff) and a spray bottle with water
• It’s easy to install – spray the window with water, place a piece of bubble wrap cut to size onto the window – bubble side facing the glass – and press gently. No special tools required. We have found that a little bit of glycerine (available from the supermarket or chemist) enhances the sticking power, but plain water also seems to work.
• It’s easy to remove – just peel it off the window
• It doesn’t leave marks on the glass – a quick wipe over and thei are good as new
• It’s reusable – mark your pieces with small stickers and you can put them up year after year. Lifecycle estimates range from 3-7 years for the bubblewrap, depending on use (some people leave it up year round) and how much direct sun your window gets
• It adds privacy – the appearance from outside is a bit like frosted glass…..
• It’s easy to see how effective it is – put some bubblewrap on one window and leave an adjacent one bare. Put one hand on each window – see the difference?
• It REALLY makes a difference, and you might be able to cut back on the use of your heaters

The only downside is that it does impact on your view outside. The photo on the left shows the bedroom windows half complete. However it doesn’t reduce light into a room, and for areas like bedrooms, laundries and bathrooms where a view isn’t a primary consideration, then the trade off for warmth is well worth it when it’s Beechworth cold outside. I quite like the slightly impressionistic feel it gives to the world outside.

Over the past month or so we have “bubble-glazed” most of our thin windows, with the exception of the upper living and dining room windows so we can still enjoy the view to the rainy days outside. We don’t have central heating, just a  wood burning stove and a ceiling fan. All other heaters are electric (no reticulated gas or bottle gas heaters). Last winter we had an electric heater on in the bedroom every night and morning for about 21/2 months of the year, as it got just too cold to sleep (the bedroom has a wall of floor to almost ceiling windows). This year after bubble-glazing the windows we have used the electric heater in the bedroom 3-4 times so far, and as you know it’s been pretty cold around here of late. Bubble-glazing in the bathroom and toilet have made a large difference to the temperature of those unheated rooms on cold mornings, and it’s no longer the same degree of icy torture to get up in the middle of the night to visit the loo.

If you decide to go the “whole hog” as we’ve done and bubble-glaze a lot of windows it’s worth looking online for bubble-wrap suppliers. We bought a 50m x 1.5m roll online from a supplier in Melbourne for $65 including free postage (and they sent it airmail !) and it arrived in less than 48 hours. Just google bubble-wrap and look for the company offering free postage.

If you’re interested in finding out more about bubble-glazing here are a few links to get you started:

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Conservation/bubblewrap.htm

http://mtbest.net/bubble_glazing.html