Yearly Archives: 2011

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Takin’ it to the Streets…er, Schools.

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We are pleased to announce that the Eco-Thrifty Reno has busted out of Castlecliff all the way to Wanganui Intermediate School…

… and Wanganui High School.
At Wanganui Intermediate I am working with 18 classrooms to get the students thinking about using their own homes and sections as potential research projects for the upcoming science fair. The program is called, “The Science of Sustainability.”
At Wanganui High I am working with a senior level sustainability course to look at the Eco-Thrifty Renovation as a “sustainability initiative.” I have done two classroom presentations this week and tomorrow they come for a site visit.
If you know of schools, school districts, teachers or departments of education interested in high quality, practical, relevant sustainability education, please put them in contact with us at theecoschool@gmail.com
Peace, Estwing
Eco Thrifty Renovation

Raising the Roof

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National Public Radio told me this morning that the U.S. has surpassed its debt ceiling of 14.3 trillion dollars. And the most likely solution from Congress after some token bickering? Raise it. The unsustainability of that decision astounds me. It will not be long before the U.S. government will be selling public lands and national treasures to private entities as Greece is proceeding to do under pressure from lenders. (See previous two posts.)
Debt is dangerous.
I also heard on NPR this morning that student debt in the U.S. has surpassed credit card debt for the first time and will reach 1 trillion dollars this year. Again, astounding and unsustainable. As Mike Shedlock says, “What can’t be paid back won’t be.”
A degree in ethnomusicology with $98,000 (US) in loans?!?

Meanwhile at Arawa Place this week we have finished replacing our roof with no intensions of raising it anytime soon.

And, although the ceiling in our lounge sags a bit, it is now insulated. We like it that way and have no intensions of raising the ceiling either.

Peace, and pay-as-you-go, Estwing
Eco Thrifty Renovation

Oilier, Greecier…

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It’s been a long, busy week and will be another long, busy weekend. But in the spirit of making connections from the global to the local and from the unsustainable to the sustainable, I noticed that Greece and Oil and still in the news. This from Marketwatch, shows the top story for the day is, “Greece casts shadow over Street.” And in the table on the right it shows stocks down but oil up.
And this next headline from the Wall Street Journal should make sense to anyone who’s been paying attention to world events.

And so, here on Arawa Place we are trying to protect ourselves from the volatile effects of forces outside of our community. And we’re cutting our carbon footprint in the process.

We are renovating an old house for energy efficiency and growing as much of our own food as we can. And we’re sharing the experience with others. Today is an open house.
Drop by and check it out.
Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Oil and Greece

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I wrote about these topics a year ago on another blog, surf2survive, but they just don’t seem to go away. We are a year on from the Greece bailout and in the midst of more volatile oil price gyrations: up nearly $6 U.S. today.
Source: Marketwatch
Meanwhile, Greece celebrates it’s one year anniversary by preparing to sell state assets to pay back foolish German, French, British and U.S. banks who unwisely invested there chasing unrealistic returns.
Source: New York Times
I bring up these issues today because each one has implications for be eco-thrifty. First lets’ take a look at Greece. Greece is all about living beyond one’s means, going into debt, paying high interest rates, and then ending up with a liquidation sale. This, of course, is not unique to Greece. The pattern is repeated across the entire planet from Athens to Zimbabwe. In the beginning, living beyond one’s means and going into debt appears to be thrifty because it costs very little to do so. But in the long run, debt is not thrifty. As the Greeks, Irish and Portuguese know, it can be extremely expensive.
Source: Guardian
Now oil. Put simply, oil prices will remain volatile for the foreseeable future while trending ever upwards to new record highs. This is simple supply and demand. As supplies run short and demand grows, prices rise. But extremely high prices cause “demand destruction” which sends economies into recession which brings prices down again temporarily. And then the pattern is repeated. To put things into perspective, here is a graph of oil production over a 2500 year period.
Source: Steve Mayfeld
Failure to invest in energy-saving products is also not thrifty. But again, in the short run may appear to be. For example, incandescent light bulbs are cheaper in the shop than compact flourescent bulbs. But in the long run they are much more expensive to operate. This is not thrifty at all. Nor eco for that matter.
So what do Greece and oil have in common? They both show us clearly that short-term thinking is expensive in the long run. Here at the ECO School we recognize that debt is dangerous. Inefficiency is dangerous. Being eco-thrifty means living within your means while investing everything you can into energy efficiency without going into debt. For example, we are looking at a 7% to 10% return on our solar hot water system.
Money where my mouth is: solar hot water, north-facing glazing, super-insulation.
We paid $3,900 N.Z. cash for it installed. Had we borrowed that money, most of our savings would go to the bank. I have said it before, the best way that governments (if they are serious) can promote citizen investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency is to offer no-interest loans. Otherwise, we just continue to make bankers richer.
And that’s all I’ve got to say about that…for today, Estwing
Eco Thrifty Renovation

Transformations

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As farmland in the US is transformed into lakes and heathlands in England are transformed into charcoal, I thought we might highlight some positive transformations on Arawa Place. Recognize this image?


Now it looks like this.


And that old framing became…


…the back steps.

And some may recall an early picture of our lovely lounge…


…which now looks like this.


We removed all of the rotten studs and re-framed the entire wall, put in a new (second hand) window, and built a pelmet from a beautiful piece of native wood which had been a barge board on the exterior.

And with the curtains drawn.


Ah, the memories.


We’ve also started to transform some of the old rusticated weather boards…


…into pelmets. I find this one particularly attractive.


Ah, too many more images to show in one post. We’ll post more soon. Until then, please go out and transform your world for the better.

Peace, and change we can believe in, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Hold the Brushes!

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Thank you, Stacey, for commenting on the color scheme post. We have not yet made a decision. J.C. painted some swatches on the wall so we could get a better idea.


And then I brought over the flue for the Kiwiana coal range and one of the lead light cabinet doors.

Sample A

Sample B

And then we made a happy discovery. The gold curtains are not long enough to cover the French doors.


And we want to make sure that the French door curtains match those over the bench top which is along the same wall.


And so, the moral of the story is: Although the gold curtains were a good deal ($62 for 5 matching pairs), when compared to the time and effort and expense of painting, the formula changes. We can still use the gold curtains elsewhere in the house, or sell them on Trade Me. The key features of the kitchen will be: the Shacklock coal range, the lead light cabinet doors and the large hutch.


We will choose paint and curtain colors based on these three. Any suggestions?

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation, interior design

Getting Down to the Nitty Pretty

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This weekend I fought through a sinusitis induced haze to complete an important mission, buying test pots of the paint we will use in our kitchen and bathroom.

We are planning to use earth plaster to cover the walls in the majority of the house, but are using paint to cover the walls in the two “wet” areas. We are doing this out of the need to complete these areas fully before our building consent expires. The areas that can wait a bit longer will get the earth plaster treatment in due time. (Due time being within the next few months, or year, or 18 months…).

I know that MC already mentioned our addiction to Grand Designs. Thanks to a special delivery from our neighbor and the aforementioned sinus attack, we’ve been watching a lot of Grand Designs episodes lately. A lot, a lot. And I have to say that the major lesson I’ve learned from Kevin McCloud, as he gracefully talks us through projects that didn’t quite work out, and ones that were a great success, is that design is intentional.

Our approach to interior design thus far has been less than intentional. Gathering bits from op shops and auctions has left us with a rather eclectic bunch of materials to work with. We have gold curtains, a kiwiana mint green stove, and two beautiful leadlight cabinet doors with various shades of blue.

Once the idea of paint colors came to the foreground it became apparent that I would need to do some designing to pull together all of the elements. Otherwise, as Kevin says, it might come off looking like a “dog’s breakfast” or even worse a “pig’s ear”. Neither of which are desirable, by the way.

In my internet travels I came across a site called Pinterest. If you love inspiration boards (I do), if you love design (I do), or if you just simply love finding new random things on the internet (I do), then this is the site for you.

Scrolling through all sorts of inspiration I have created a folder about our kitchen. It features some of these beautiful ideas:


And even more if you can believe it. They have led me to create this mock up of our kitchen design:


Yes. I am a huge nerd.

So what do you think? Pig’s Ear? Dog’s Breakfast? or the sweet accomplishment of a successful design? Am I wrong in thinking that light blue is the tie together color for our kitchen? Is there another option that stands out to you? We’ll see once we get the sample up on the wall. But if you have any thoughts in the mean time, please share them.

– June Cleverer

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Down-Sizing

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The south winds are blowing now, and even the insects have come in from the cold.

Praying for warmth.

When we bought the cheapest house in Wanganui, we knew we were getting a lot of space (110 square meters) for the money (less than a Ford F-150), but that NZ villas are notoriously cold and drafty.

Yes, this was our house in October.

A large house with high ceilings is a great asset for half of the year, but now that the equinox is behind us and we’re closing in on the winter solstice, the amount of indoor space becomes a liability. So what I’ve been doing this week is cutting our losses. Heat loss, that is.

Yes, this was also our house in October.


While I’ve written about insulation and draft-proofing in previous posts, I have not yet addressed one of the simplest and most elegant forms of energy conservation in a home: shrinking it. I learned and lived this in Ladakh during the winter of 2006.


Ladakhis have big, beautiful houses, but they live in a desert at 3000 meters (9000 feet).


Traditional building in Ladakh was relatively cheap because houses were made mostly of earth and straw. Labor was cheap because your family and neighbors built the house with you.


But because of the cold climate, the entire house was used for less than half of the year. Fuel (dung or wood) is scarce in Ladakh, so during the winters the entire family lived in one room: the kitchen. Cooking also heated the living space while the rest of the house literally froze. Both eco and thrifty. Right on!


While we won’t be restricting ourselves to the kitchen just yet, we have cut the size of our interior living space by 40 percent for the winter. Here’s how:

Step 1: Frame a doorway in the central hall.

Step 2: Carefully install door purchased for $5 at local auction.

Step 3: Use leftover GIB around frame.

All that remains for step 4 is to paint and put up the trim. Step 5: curtains.

Note that we have cut off the south (poleward) side while we have increased solar gain on the north (toward the equator) side. The two large bedrooms on the south side where our interns John and Amy stayed over the summer are now secure storage for surf boards, bicycles and tools. These rooms will buffer our living space from the cold southern winds and provide dead air space (insulation). Also, they’re a great space to store our great pumpkin harvest.


Come spring, we’ll open the door again.

Peace and perspective, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation

Sustaining the Unsustainable

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By all reasonable, quantitative measures, the global financial system is spinning out of control. Those of you familiar with fiat currency know that it is a giant Ponzi scheme where everything appears to be functioning well until it all comes tumbling down.
We all know that happened in 2008, but the numbers show we are due for another go-round soon. Of course clowns like Bernanke and Geitner will deny it and do everything in their power to build the pyramid higher and higher – making the inevitable crash even worse. Take the U.S. debt, the Greek debt, the Irish debt, for example. As Mike Shedlock says, “What can’t be paid back, won’t be paid back.” But in the meantime, the financial policies coming out of Washington and New York just keep kicking the can down the road.
In other words, they are sustaining the unsustainable and doing it with more and more debt. We are destroying the planet at an accelerated rate on credit. And why? Maybe this headline has something to do with it.
(Source: The Wall Street Journal)
It is a disturbing and unsustainable trend.

Over the last 5 decades the share of food and energy as a percentage of consumer spending have decreased. Meanwhile, wages have remained stagnant for the last decade when considering inflation. At the same time, state and local cut-backs (aka “austerity measures”) require individuals and families to spend more on what were formerly public services. Ultimately, a combination of debt, loan repayments, government cut-backs and higher food and energy prices will force “consumers” to cut back. That is when the unsustainable cannot be sustained anymore, although I suspect Bernanke will continue to “print money” and keep interest rates ridiculously low as those seem to be his only strategies.
So the moral of the story is, if you have any money in an American bank, 1) you are not earning any interest on it, and 2) it is becoming worth less and less every day through Bernanke’s policies of “monetary easing.” So get your money out of a bank and put it…
…under your mattress. Not exactly. Put in in your ceiling, in your walls and on your roof.
Insulation and solar hot water are about the best investments you can possible make at the moment. They will return more in savings that any bank, and they cannot be de-valued by the Federal Reserve. Being eco-thrifty is not about not spending money, it is about spending it in the right places. Along with immediate energy savings, these types of investments will add to the long-term value of you home more than any other “home-improvement” project.
Peace, and preparation, Estwing