We believe that we are all facing an uncertain future and everyone needs to play their part in looking after the environment.
Following are the areas where we have taken steps to reduce, reuse, recycle in our home life. Where possible we utilise these resources on our rental properties as well.
We own a Toyota Prius. This uses approx half the petrol of most cars on the road. Typical fuel consumption we get from this car is 3.8 l/100km (in summer months) up to 4.0 l/100kmin winter months. This variation is due to increased use of headlights other accessories like windscreen wipers during winter months. This additional energy having to be sourced by keeping the petrol engine running longer to generate the power.
One of the biggest things that impacts fuel economy is tyre selection. The right fuel saving tyre is well worth the expense and will pay for itself.
If you really want to know the technical details on how a Prius works click on the engine:
We have installed a Solar Hot Water System. It's a Solar Genius system, with 30 heating tubes (two banks of 15 as shown in the photo.) I had to have a custom made cylinder made to fit in the space I had available.
This system does live up to its promise of heating water, even on cloudy days. There are still times however where the system does fall back to using electricity.
This was provided by Leap Ltd in Seaview. Click on the photo of the Solar Collectors for more information.
In addition to the Solar Hot water we also have a photovoltaic system generating electricity.
This system uses a 2kW EnaSolar Grid Tied Inverter. This means that surplus energy is exported to the National Grid. For my installation this 2kW array generates an average of 8.5kWh per day (3100 kWh per year), about half of which is exported to the grid. The 2kW system is smaller than average since we also have a solar water heater as well.
The EnaSolar inverter comes with a wifi accessible web server, which in my opinion is a must to get statistics on what the system is doing. Click on the solar panels for details about the Inverter.
In 2009 we started to harvest our own water by installing a gutter tank. It took a few weeks to fill up, but since then the tank has always been full. Using this water has reduced our dependancy on council supplied water. This will also reduce the drain on the twin lakes that supply the Upper Hutt area with water.
It gives us a good supply of water should we need it in a natural disaster.
For more information about the Gutter Tank click on the water tank.