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Avon Electric

Sustainable House by Michael Mobbs

Australia > NSW > Sydney
Contact the owner

Property Details
Land area:   130 m2
Bedrooms:   3
Bathrooms:   1
 
 

Description

One of the inspirations for developing the Ecobob web site came from a book I read called ‘Sustainable House’ by Michael Mobbs. In this book, Michael describes how he converted his inner city town house into a sustainable, eco friendly home. His goal was to obtain his own water and energy from on-site and have as little waste as possible leave the site. Given that Sydney is a city with both an energy crisis and a water crisis this struck me as a very positive goal; the government in Australia spends billions of dollars on water treatment and energy generation every year.



The four main things Michael wanted to achieve are as follows:

• No rainwater would leave the site.
• No sewage would leave the site.
• They would meet all their water needs from rainwater collection.
• Over 12 months they would be a net exporter of solar electricity from their home.

Other things they wanted to achieve while renovating were:

• No use of rainforest timbers would be used, only plantation or timbers from re-growth forests.
• No use of timbers or building materials that discharge toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde.
• No use of building materials made of PVC plastics.

While the Mobb’s haven’t managed to become fully self sufficient in water collection and energy generation they have come very close to it. Their water and energy bills were $1600 a year (back in 1998, so allowing for the high growth in energy costs a lot more by today’s pricing) and through their renovations they managed to reduce this to less than $200 a year.

A summary of their renovations are as follows:

• Dual flush toilet.
• New ‘low water use’ front loading washing machine.
• New gas cooktop, gas overn, gas grill.
• Solar hot water system.
• Solar photovoltaic panels for electricity generation.
• Rain water collection for cooking, baths, showers, dishwashing and clothes washing.
• No storm water leaves the site – it is absorbed by a mini wetland.
• Grey water is reused for flushing toilets and watering the garden.

Here’s the results of the Mobb’s sustainable house (compared to before the renovations):

• They save 102,000 litres of water.
• They stop 100,000 litres of sewage going into the Pacific Ocean.
• Reduce carbon dioxide pollution from power stations by 8.3 tonnes.

For more details visit the web site: http://www.sustainablehouse.com.au/

OR

Click here to view a PDF with more information on the sustainable house

For more information on the Mobb’s house I highly recommend getting hold of a copy of the book. The ISBN is 1 877133 62 0 - if you are renovating to make your house more environmentally friendly this book is a must!

If you are in Christchurch, New Zealand, you can borrow a copy from Ecobob. Just email carlin@ecobob.com

Purchase the book online