Sustainable House Day 2015, Sunday 13th September and my brother's home

Although we are not ready for our house to be open for Sustainable House Day in 2015, I encourage all to get out and visit some of the properties out there. It's a great way to get some tips and tricks if you are planning to build, wanting to improve the efficiency of your property or make cost-effective improvements in your rental home. A bit of research now can save you money later.

I really hope our place will be open for next year. The reason being, if it is not, I may well just cry!

It looks like Melbourne is going to put on a fine day tomorrow. My brother, Paul is opening his house up tomorrow for Sustainable House Day. If you are planning on going to SHD I believe you need to register, by doing so you will given the individual addresses and give people an idea of how many people to expect. 

One of the difficulties of living in Mt Macedon is the Winter, it is cold and long. Paul imported the internals of a masonry heater from Canada (that is a story in itself) and it has made an enormous difference to the comfort level of his family home. 

His first winter when they bought their home was very warm until they got their first electricity bill. Then they froze! Since that time they have been retrofitting the house little by little, chipping away at it's inefficiencies. If you are interested in a Masonry heater in particular, I encourage you to visit and see and feel one in action. Grant and I are going tomorrow to help Paul and family out with the day.

We made it into the local rag (twice)

The article at the bottom is the 'hard' version of the Melbourne Leader it was dated 17 August and the Leader corrected a few errors, so thanks for that. Here is the link to it.

Last week a local journalist for the Melbourne Leader (local paper) contacted Grant and I about doing an article on our house. Here is a link to the article and below is a screen shot. I tend not to wear lippy or necklaces while working with lime but sometimes you have to glam up a tad for the sake of publicity and promotion of this amazing product. Just for the record I go by my birth name -Shelley Hosking, why, because it is the name I received at birth.

Ceilings complete with MgO Boards and hemp insulation

The ceiling in the living area, kitchen and even the link are now complete. They all have the MgO board and hempcrete insulation. You will see the lines on the boards, that is just the process of the hemp insulation drying out. The boards will need to be finished by a plasterer before they are lime wash painted.  It has been a relatively trauma-free experience. I should say trauma-free for me as I have not done a great deal of this part of the build, unless you include me being 'supportive'. I went to my friend's birthday party the other week and had a hoot. Everyone asked how the renovation was going, made me worry what I would have to talk about when all is complete! Might have to do something equally crazy.

We are in the process of finding a renderer, hopefully, that will be sorted out soon.