BAD HOUSES, Cloudbursts and clay 4 June 2005
Yesterday I started digging 2 holes for 2 Px Cnary date palms I have. They are bursting out of their tyre-pots and will need cutting out of them with powertools.
One proposed hole is in very compacted clay soil in an area of council owned land across the road (where I have planted hardy natives to give me a windbreak hedge when they mature)
I especially rigged it so that rainwater running off the road will water this palm. I barely started the hole and the compacted clay soil was rock-hard so I added a bucket of water and after half a day was able to dig out a little more. There was still some water standing in the hole first thing this morning
I went to nearby small town to collect my Saturday newspaper and just after getting home the skies opened up and we had a cloudburst, a great big dump of rain in just a few minutes. there was water overflowing everywhere. only a small fraction actually got into the rainwater storagetank
Will the water collection aspect worked fine for that hole with 50 or 100 litres of water in it, plus the water overflowed a little dyke of dirt I had created and spilled over further
However now it'll take a-g-e-s for all that water to soak in, so I can dig out the hole to the required size for planting that palm
Looking at the front page ot today's West Australian newspaper I see house builders grizzling that govt law changes will soon require new houses to achieve a 5 star energy rating instead of the 4 star rating demanded about 2 years ago.
They claim that this will add $2,000 to $3,000 to the price of a basic house, utter crap I say.
For years owner builders, often using alternative construction methods (including but not limited to, strawbale, mudbrick, rammed earth, recycled materials etc) have not only been building houses for less than $15,000 (approx one tenth what a "professional" charges) but these houses often achieve what SHOULD be and 8 star rating in energy efficiency
My whinge is that the govt made the star ratings system artificially low, so that poor quality professionally built homes wouldn't appear to be as bad as they, when compared to their cheaper owner built cousins.
Strawbale houses are renknowned for scoring 7 or 8 stars, in the 5 star maximum system.....so that's all they get officially accredited with
Look I've lived in both Australia and New Zealand and it really peeves me that the vast majority of houses are built so very poorly with respect to energy efficiency and comfort for their occupants (they're only made livable by consuming massive amounts of eletric lighting, and artificial heating and air conditioning)
Oh didums poor professional builders grizzling that in their $150,000 "basic" houses they have to now meet a 4 star energy rating standard and from next year will have to meet 5 star standard.
What about all the hippies and alternative greeny types out there. their $15,000 houses have been meeting 7 and 8 star standards for years
I really do wish that most professional house builders would just take a running jump into the nearest lake. I know of architects that specialise in energy and materials efficient housing and they are scratching to get enough work, because the poorest architects, tradesmen and designers have got a stranglehold on the marketplace. Unfortunately the public don't know enough to demand more from these "professional"
Perhaps every person buying a new house should tell the builder, "If my electricity and gas bills combined, come to more than $ 30 each month, then I'll be on your doorstep with a crowbar smashing you across the chops until *YOU* pay my bill, and you can expect that to occur EVERY month for the life of the house (100 years for a wood and corrugated iron house, 60 years for a brick-and-tile house)
Don't even get me started about how poorly the land plots are laid out. Wastage of 1/4 of the land is commonplace, simply by poor thought, or none at all more likely, in the location of the driveway area. Plus folks often manage to locate driveway entrances in such a way as to MAXIMISE THE DANGER when pulling out onto the road, well derr !
Oh well I could fill a book on these subjects but I'd better post this now before my computer runs out of steam for the day
One proposed hole is in very compacted clay soil in an area of council owned land across the road (where I have planted hardy natives to give me a windbreak hedge when they mature)
I especially rigged it so that rainwater running off the road will water this palm. I barely started the hole and the compacted clay soil was rock-hard so I added a bucket of water and after half a day was able to dig out a little more. There was still some water standing in the hole first thing this morning
I went to nearby small town to collect my Saturday newspaper and just after getting home the skies opened up and we had a cloudburst, a great big dump of rain in just a few minutes. there was water overflowing everywhere. only a small fraction actually got into the rainwater storagetank
Will the water collection aspect worked fine for that hole with 50 or 100 litres of water in it, plus the water overflowed a little dyke of dirt I had created and spilled over further
However now it'll take a-g-e-s for all that water to soak in, so I can dig out the hole to the required size for planting that palm
Looking at the front page ot today's West Australian newspaper I see house builders grizzling that govt law changes will soon require new houses to achieve a 5 star energy rating instead of the 4 star rating demanded about 2 years ago.
They claim that this will add $2,000 to $3,000 to the price of a basic house, utter crap I say.
For years owner builders, often using alternative construction methods (including but not limited to, strawbale, mudbrick, rammed earth, recycled materials etc) have not only been building houses for less than $15,000 (approx one tenth what a "professional" charges) but these houses often achieve what SHOULD be and 8 star rating in energy efficiency
My whinge is that the govt made the star ratings system artificially low, so that poor quality professionally built homes wouldn't appear to be as bad as they, when compared to their cheaper owner built cousins.
Strawbale houses are renknowned for scoring 7 or 8 stars, in the 5 star maximum system.....so that's all they get officially accredited with
Look I've lived in both Australia and New Zealand and it really peeves me that the vast majority of houses are built so very poorly with respect to energy efficiency and comfort for their occupants (they're only made livable by consuming massive amounts of eletric lighting, and artificial heating and air conditioning)
Oh didums poor professional builders grizzling that in their $150,000 "basic" houses they have to now meet a 4 star energy rating standard and from next year will have to meet 5 star standard.
What about all the hippies and alternative greeny types out there. their $15,000 houses have been meeting 7 and 8 star standards for years
I really do wish that most professional house builders would just take a running jump into the nearest lake. I know of architects that specialise in energy and materials efficient housing and they are scratching to get enough work, because the poorest architects, tradesmen and designers have got a stranglehold on the marketplace. Unfortunately the public don't know enough to demand more from these "professional"
Perhaps every person buying a new house should tell the builder, "If my electricity and gas bills combined, come to more than $ 30 each month, then I'll be on your doorstep with a crowbar smashing you across the chops until *YOU* pay my bill, and you can expect that to occur EVERY month for the life of the house (100 years for a wood and corrugated iron house, 60 years for a brick-and-tile house)
Don't even get me started about how poorly the land plots are laid out. Wastage of 1/4 of the land is commonplace, simply by poor thought, or none at all more likely, in the location of the driveway area. Plus folks often manage to locate driveway entrances in such a way as to MAXIMISE THE DANGER when pulling out onto the road, well derr !
Oh well I could fill a book on these subjects but I'd better post this now before my computer runs out of steam for the day
posted by Catherine Jemma at 11:44 am
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