Come and visit Christie Walk

On Sustainable House Day – Sunday October 17th 2021, 10am to 4pm – come and visit Christie Walk. This unique urban community of 27 dwellings includes apartments, standalone strawbale houses, and townhouses. Sustainable design features include: passive solar design photovoltaic … Continued

Episode 9 – Battery storage – adding a second Tesla PowerWall

2021 – Battery options modelling In September 2020 we installed our first battery at Sturt Apartments, Christie Walk. You can read the story of our modelling, battery choices and lessons learned in Episode 7 – Battery storage – Tesla PowerWall 2 … Continued

Episode 8 – We need to talk about shower heads

How sustainable is your daily shower? Most shower heads at Christie Walk are WELS 3 standard, running at about 9L/minute. They were the best that were readily available when construction of our eco-village was completed in 2006. Older shower heads … Continued

Episode 7 – Battery storage – Tesla Powerwall 2

2020 – Battery options modelling In the middle of all that work on evacuated tubes, we learned that change was imminent in the SA Government Home Battery Scheme. To qualify for the maximum $6k subsidy, applications had to be lodged … Continued

Episode 6 – More evacuated tube solar hot water boosters

Adventures with an environment-conscious inner-urban community 2020 This was the crisis year for so many people – bushfires, COVID, job losses – and it also happened to be the year of our most adventurous emissions-reduction planning, carrying out 2 major … Continued

Episode 5 – Finalist – Carbon Neutral Adelaide Awards

Adventures with an environment-conscious inner-urban community 2016 to 2019 – Carbon Neutral Adelaide Since 2016 we’d had regular contact with the Carbon Neutral Adelaide team, culminating in our carbon emission inventory for the 2017 year. I’d also attended the Carbon … Continued

Episode 4 – Major PV upgrade

2019 For years we’d been tossing around options for increasing our solar performance without losing our high feed-in tariff (56c/kWh) for the 4.8kW PVs that were installed when the Christie Walk community built the Sturt Apartments in 2006.  But by … Continued

Episode 3 – Evacuated tube solar hot water boosters

Adventures with an environment-conscious inner-urban community May 2018 We started investigating the retrofit option for our hot water system: installing solar collectors as boosters to our existing heat pump hot water. One company stood out as a solid option: RunOnSun, … Continued