Our "Steamy" Adventure begins

Our “steamy adventure” is all about our desire to use a steam engine to provide backup power for our solar system. This dream began in our heads about 30 years ago but at last the real thing is getting underway.

Heather first became fascinated by the power of steam energy in her childhood. On holidays in the 1950’s, her family often set up their caravan near country rail lines. From these locations they frequently encountered steam locos being used to haul freight. Often, the family would make detours just to catch sight of a huffing and puffing train hauling its load along.

Much later (in the early 80’s), we read articles about innovative people using steam technology to generate electricity. A few years later, whilst visiting an alternative energy display, we came across Rod Mueller with a working version of his “Liberty” Steam Engine. By then we had purchased our bush block at Dixons Creek, and the dream of using our wood to drive one of Rod’s engines to generate power took shape.

A Liberty Stream engine in action

During this time, Heather and her friend Jean, decided to do a boiler attendant’s certificate with volunteer workers at the Puffing Billy Railway Society, in Belgrave. This involved hours and hours of theory as well as doing 300 hours of practical work operating steam engines to put the theory into practice. Although it was hard work, Heather enjoyed working with a variety of locos as well as the “Wattle” steam boat and steam engines being used for other purposes. Eventually we found out that Rod’s boilers did not need a qualification, as they had a surface area less than 40 square inches. But at least Heather developed a good understanding of how these machines work.

Rod builds the units at his engineering works in Goolwa, South Australia. Originally he started making boilers and engines for people who wished to install them in boats. Soon he was getting orders for machines to be set up to generate power, when people realised this potential use.  

Our boiler (with door) in Rod's workshop

Over the past 30 years we have not lost sight of our dream- however a multitude of things needed to be done first (building our house and setting up our gardens for starters). In more recent times one of the factors that held us up was the fact that setting up steam engines is quite complex and we were waiting for someone else to do it so we could call on their expertise if needed. Then last year some people in Healesville (about 30 min away) set one up. They kindly showed us their system and offered to help us if we needed it. At last we were ready. We took the plunge and ordered our very own steam engine. Over the next few months we will record our “steamy” story on our blog. Hopefully it will not take another 30 years to get it all set up.

For more information about Strath Steam’s products their web address is www.strathsteam.com  and Rod is very helpful.

National Sustainable House Day

National Sustainable House Day (NSHD) is celebrating its 10^th birthday this year on September 11. This annual event is held Australia wide and gives people the chance to visit houses that have been designed, built or fitted out with sustainability in mind and talk to owners, receiving unbiased advice.
For the first time we are running a tour of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm as an ancillary event to Sustainable House day. This occurred quite by accident. We had already set September 11 as our next tour date and a friend suggested we link up with the local Sustainable House Day activities. We followed up this great idea and this lead to one of the local papers (Yarra Ranges Weekly) asking if they could include our place in a promotional piece they are putting together. So last week the reporter, Natalie and Lucy, the photographer came out and had a chat, a coffee and a short tour. The article should appear in the week prior to September 11.

If you would like to join our tour on that day you are very welcome. Bookings are essential as we have a limit of 20 people. The tour runs from 1:30 to 4:30 and the $15 per adult cost includes afternoon tea. Email us for more information at tenderbreak@bigpond.com. If you cannot make it on that day email us and we will let you know when the next tour is on

Of course there are plenty of houses open on that day in every state in Australia. Details of open houses can be found on NSHD website www.sustainablehouseday.com. If you live in the western suburbs check out Gavin’s house, which is a terrific example of how to incorporate sustainable ideas in housing, the backyard and most importantly in the way we live. See Gavin’s blog at www.greeningofgavin.com for more information about his place.

For more details about the tour of Tenderbreak see the “Ancillery Events “ page of the Sustainable House Day  website.

Solatube skylights

It lights up the stove area

As mentioned in the last post, our verandah works well, but it does reduce the amount of light coming in through the kitchen window. We deliberately chose narrow strips of opaque laserlite for the verandah roof to make sure we were not going to get too much heat in the summer. We have overcome the decrease in window light by installing a “solatube” in the kitchen ceiling.


This clever device “captures” light in its dome on the roof, and efficiently transmits the light through the roof cavity into the kitchen. We placed the solatube above the stove so the cooking area is now bathed in good light even on a dull day. The kitchen has ended up with about the same amount of light as before, but more strategically located.

Excuse the mess but look at the light

We installed another one in the garage and it lights up the area in the middle, that doesn’t get much window light. Solatubes are so good they even capture enough moonlight (when the moon is bright) to bathe the area in subdued light in the middle of the night. This is handy because we store firewood in the garage and do not need to turn the light on some nights.

The dome looks small but provides plenty of light

The solatube works so well, it took a few days to get used to the amount of light that came through the diffuser that is mounted on the ceiling. At a glance it looks like someone had left a light on, and our first reaction was to “turn off the light”. But of course the solatube is completely passive and works purely by capturing sunlight. If you are interested in looking at their display their website is www.diamondskylights.com.au .

A New Verandah

We always intended to have an undercover area outside the kitchen door. It is shown on our original plans as a future sunroom. However, time and money constraints meant it was put on hold when we started constructing our house in 1999. So up until this year we have existed without this key part of our house design.

Over the past 12 months we have focussed on developing a design for this undercover area that meets our needs (described in a previous post). The result is a multipurpose verandah (and pergola- yet to be built) attached to the northern and western walls of the house. We decided on steel construction largely because of the reduced fire risk but also because of the low maintenance, the wider spans that can be achieved and the ease of getting permits.

The verandah looks like it was always there.

As owner builders of our mudbrick house we gave serious consideration to doing the construction ourselves. However after thinking it through, we eventually decided to use a company that specialises in steel verandahs. Mike and Ken from Custombuilt Verandahs in Bayswater, did a great job. They worked with us to solve some of the complexities of the job and completed construction in a week (whereas it would have taken us several months). We are happy to recommend them.

We are now enjoying the benefits of the verandah (and wished we had built it years ago). Even now, in the middle of winter, it is very enjoyable sitting outside eating lunch or having a cup of tea as we look out over our garden and dam. The thermal mass of the mudbrick wall and the concrete patterned paving keeps the temperature mild (unless it is a cold wind). There are always dozens of birds to attract our attention in the garden, and our dog “Blue” enjoys watching them too as he reclines on the front door mat.

It looks spacious - but we have lots of ideas for using the area

The large undercover area has already proved to be quite handy as the weather gets colder and wetter. We have rigged up a temporary clothes line for drying sheets and given Blue plenty of exercise playing “fetch” with his ball.
We know that our verandah design works well in winter. We are now looking forward to seeing how it works in summer when temperatures climb to over 40 degrees. In the meantime we are working out the detail of the other ways to put this new space to work- but we will take our time doing that (between tea breaks).

Good ideas badly implemented

Over the past few years we have been trying to get a new project off the ground. We are trying to convert our partly constructed barn into an “Interpretation Centre”. The term “Interpretation Centre” is not of our choosing. Construction projects in Victoria can only proceed if they are a “permitted use” within a particular land use zoning. We want to use our project to promote and teach Permaculture (topics to include energy efficient buildings, renewable energies, growing food, designing fire defences, sustainable behaviours etc). However, teaching facilities are not a permitted use in our particular zone, nor are host farms. After some searching we found the only heading that vaguely covered what we wanted to do, and that was “Interpretation Centre” – so that is what the project became defined as- on paper.

The planning scheme concept is an excellent idea. It aims to avoid inappropriate development eg. factories in residential areas, or high rise buildings shading out neighbours, or high density housing in conservation zones etc. To make sure clever developers do not “bend the rules”, all terms and concepts are precisely defined, and this has the unfortunate result of “locking out” good developments that do not fit the mould. Luckily for us there was an escape clause in the bureaucratic jungle and that was the magical term “Interpretation Centre”.

Of course bigger developers can often get around these restrictions because they have the resources (money) to spend on lawyers and planning staff who specialise in searching for ways to get around restrictions or know how to get them overturned.

The lesson we took away from this exercise was not to be put off by what looks like a barrier- dig deeper and you may find a way past the blockage.

The next hurdle we came across was Victoria’s 5 Star Energy Rating Scheme, which aims to ensure all new buildings reach minimal energy standards. Our planned “Interpretation centre” uses the same construction as our passive solar house, which has excellent thermal performance. Right now I am writing this at 10pm in June (early winter). The temperature inside is 19.8, whilst outside it is only 9 and we have not had our wood heater on for several days now. Even when it drops below zero outside, it never falls below 15 inside.

Generally we use our wood heater occasionally in May, more frequently in June, July and August and hardly at all in September. When we do use it, it is often just in the evenings and usually to create a cosier atmosphere when it is very bleak outside. The house does not need a lot of heating because of its large amount of thermal mass. The stored “heat” in the slab and internal mudbrick walls keeps internal temperatures from varying a great deal.

Our experience and the widely known performance characteristics of buildings of this type show that our “Interpretation Centre” will perform equally well thermally. We will be using very little energy to warm it (compared to conventional houses) and that energy will be renewable (using a wood heater) with fuel sourced from the forest area around our house (thereby reducing fuel levels for potential future wildfires). In summer, cooling will be via cross and stack ventilation. A well designed energy rating system would give our project full marks for its thermal performance and bonus marks because our systems are based on renewable sources. Not the Victorian system though. Its computer model takes into account the separate thermal performance of each type of building material, but gives very little consideration to the value of thermal mass. Nor does it appear to give adequate credit to other ways of reducing non renewable energy use such as shading of walls in summer, natural ventilation, using renewable fuel, gravity water systems, etc.

A quick way of evaluating whether the 5 star rating scheme is effective, is to measure the real life performance of some 5 star buildings. If they are using heaters frequently during autumn and spring or if they have an air conditioner, their thermal performance is questionable and so is the scheme.

So there we have it, two good ideas in principle but not always working too well in practice.

Getting the Timing Right

The last few blogs have outlined our dreams for 2011. Over the past few days we have learned how important “timing” is, to successfully completing complex projects. Saving up the pennies, developing a design, planning the details and organising different facets of a construction are important steps, but when the work actually starts, timing can be a critical component too.

At the moment we are focussing on building our verandah, and setting up a clay pad for our garage slab to sit on. All the contractors (concreters, excavator and builders) were lined up well over a month ago, but  our bad timing started months earlier. Foolishly we thought that if we put our planning application in at the start of summer, we would be working on the projects in autumn (normally a dry time of year). However the wheels of the planning bureaucracy move very slowly. When we finally obtained the “magic piece of paper” 4 months later, each contractor then had to slot us into their work schedule. The builders were able to start quite soon, but the concreters had a backlog of jobs. Day after day of fine weather passed by, until at last the concreters were ready to do their thing.

The weather on 11^th May, 2011 made it a memorable day. As storm clouds gathered, light rain began to fall. Kevin, our excavator driver, was going flat out to finish the clay pad before it became too sticky. Whilst trying to retrieve a log for part of a retaining wall he discovered a boggy patch that quickly turned into a substance like quicksand. The more he tried to “claw” his way out with the machine, the deeper it went. Using all his skills with the scoop, and by embedding the sought after log under the tracks of the machine, he managed to avoid becoming a permanent feature of our landscape. After this lucky escape, he did a bit more work to make sure rain would drain off the site and then shared lunch with us before packing up for the day.

The concreters turned up late (during the earthmover drama) because of two flat tyres on their machinery. They got to work setting out levels and using an electric jackhammer to chop back excess bits of the house slab that were in the way. As the cloudy conditions were putting very little solar power into our system we started up our generator. Unfortunately there was so much noise from the jackhammer and the excavator that we did not notice the generator cut out (due to low oil levels). For the next hour or so, the jackhammer happily ate into our precious store of power until the rain got too heavy. By now the concreters had had enough. So they packed up and went home too and we had to run the generator all afternoon to get some power back into the batteries.

The third minor disaster occurred in the afternoon. A glazier arrived to repair the windscreen (broken on another job) of Kevin’s Drott. He not only accidentally broke the new sheet of glass, but due to the wet slippery conditions dropped the original badly cracked pane on our drive. It took about an hour for us to pick up all the small slivers of glass.

By now the rain had really set in. We had also had enough of the conditions and retreated inside. Three days later it is still raining and work has ground to a halt.

The moral of this saga is to try and make allowances for all the potential holdups that could delay a project. In other words, “get the ball rolling” early, so wintry conditions won’t throw a whole lot of “spanners into the works”. With a bit of luck and good timing, holdups and muck-ups won’t be a big problem. At least for us, current predictions are for reasonably fine weather for most of this week before the next weather front moves in with an extended period of heavy rain. We’ll be flat out making the most of the blue skies if they do come our way!!!

2011 Dreaming -House Progress Report

This year we were going to get back on to the job of finishing off our owner built house. We have half-heartedly said this a few times before, but this year we have actually started. The first room to get the treatment was our bedroom. The job turned out bigger than we expected (don’t they always), because a close look our timber beams and wall cladding revealed that they needed further sanding before we could get underway. A full day was spent rectifying this situation before we could start the main game. Choosing colours is not one of our strong points so our bedroom was to be the site of the great colour “experiment”. We had a long chat with the folk at Grimes & Sons who are well known local manufacturers of stains and paints with a particular knowledge about mud brick construction.

We started off with a range of several “off the shelf” colours and these worked well for most of the room. However, it was not quite so easy choosing the wall colour and we ended up developing our very own tinted colour with the help and expertise from Alan Grimes. Our rather primitive method involved measuring out a quarter litre of the base colour and then adding drops of tint with an eye dropper until the colour was just right. The magical number was 50 drops. After that we used an old medicine glass to work out how many ml equalled 50 drops. As the final colour was a result of Heather’s experiments we have christened this colour “Heather”. Another colour that had a great name was the one that we used for the upright posts and main beams. It is called “beer”. We did not choose it because of its name, but because it is a rich mellow colour that makes the timber grain look really beautiful.

We have now finished our bedroom and are really happy with the result. Unfortunately the cooler weather is not conducive to painting and staining so we will try the next room when the warm weather returns. It is great that at last we have made a start.

Grimes & Sons have a web site www.grimesandsons.com