#MICRO HYDRO POWER FOR OFF GRID HOUSES HOW TO#
#MICRO HYDRO POWER FOR OFF GRID HOUSES PLUS#
#MICRO HYDRO POWER FOR OFF GRID HOUSES WINDOWS#

Our property has extensive syenite, a granite-like rock which often has beautiful large crystals of feldspar and colours varying from grey through creamy yellow to a dusky red. Some very large pine trees (weeds as far as we are concerned) were processed similarly and ended up making a lovely panelled ceiling in our large living room. Eighteen months before building started we had some large eucalypts felled and milled into cladding boards then stacked to dry.

The external cladding, both timber and stone, was sourced from our own land. We were fortunate to be able to use a lot of on-site materials. Warm air from above the wood heater convects via ducts to the bathroom immediately behind the chimney, making it very cosy indeed. Supplementary heating is via a wood heater set in a massive stone fireplace chosen partly for thermal mass and partly because it just looks awesome.

#MICRO HYDRO POWER FOR OFF GRID HOUSES WINDOWS#

All walls, floor and roof are well insulated, even the garage door, and all windows are double-glazed. A slight downside is that there is potential for it to be too warm in summer, but we’ve managed that with shade blinds and ventilation and so far it has not been a problem.

That allows huge solar input to the floor of polished concrete. The main living room is entirely glass-fronted, about 11 m long and up to 4 m high with wide eaves. The house sits high on a hill (for the views!) and faces north-east. There was never any doubt that we would make maximum use of renewable energy and alternative waste disposal methods.įrom the beginning we knew the house would be of passive solar thermal design. We have always been interested in sustainability, and renewable energy in particular, even before they became so obviously necessary: my engineering undergraduate thesis in 1975 was on a solar heater and Robyn worked for many years on wastewater treatment and stream water quality.

#MICRO HYDRO POWER FOR OFF GRID HOUSES HOW TO#

It was a fraction of the cost of a Sydney suburban lot.The decision to buy was in 2008 but building did not start until 2014 so we had plenty of time to think about what and how to build.

#MICRO HYDRO POWER FOR OFF GRID HOUSES PLUS#

And we were extraordinarily lucky to quickly find an 80 hectare lot which had all those elements plus extensive views over the Channel and Bruny Island to the Tasman Peninsula. It has lush forests and scattered pasture with the sheltered d’Entrecasteaux Channel on one side and tall hills behind-just beautiful. We narrowed the selection to somewhere within one hour‘s drive of Hobart, then on a reconnaissance trip narrowed it further to the Channel region to the south.

We had loved Tasmania since bushwalking there extensively in the 1970s and it has a lovely cool climate, so it was an obvious choice. Sydney’s natural environment is glorious but it is also much too busy, too hot and humid in summer, and our house was too cold and hard to heat in winter. This article was first published in Issue 137 (October-December 2016) of Renew magazine.Īs we approached retirement my wife Robyn and I knew we did not want to spend the rest of our lives in Sydney. Peter Tuft describes how they went about it. Given their distance from the nearest power pole, it made sense financially as well as philosophically for this Sydney couple to go off-grid in their new home in Tasmania.

Micro hydro power for off grid houses