Going conventional!

Dear old chest fridge lasted another week before giving up the ghost. It became clear that we really had to find an alternative. It's funny though. Trying to think of an alternative is what gave us the incentive to try the chest fridge in the first place!

To quote Clint who told us on a forum;

Great idea, but unless they have radicaly changed the construction materials in the 20+ years since I was a fridge mechanic, they are doomed to a relatively short lifespan.

You see, ice doesn't cause rusting, only liquid water does. So most of the chest freezers for the last 40+ years use "bundy" tubing (rolled steel), since they are always frozen.

After a few years of use, moisture from the foam and air builds up around the pipes. This is not a problem, so long as the pipes stay below 0 degrees C. But as soon as its above 0, they start corroding.

This is why turning off a chest freezer and storing it for a few months would often result in it springing gas leaks and irrepairably failing. The frost becomes water, and corrosion takes off.

..and that is exactly what we think happened.

So, we're conventional once again. I got a new little 210 litre fridge/freezer which uses 360 kWh/year.

Initially we thought that .2kWh per day (about 73 kWh per year) was pretty good, but we found that we still needed a freezer, so we've had a small chest freezer running as well. It claims to use 262 kWh per year, so that amounts to about 335 kWh per year in total.

So, if we turn off the chest freezer, our usage won't increase too much. Still, we both miss the chest fridge. It was very quiet! *sigh*

Another way we've become conventional lately is the recent purchase of a ride-on lawn mower. Our first mower! I'm mostly amazed it's taken us this long. The scythe will still be used for edging, but the bulk of the grass is getting far too thick to be enjoyable anymore. It may be a sign the chooks are adding some fertility to the back garden, since nothing but woody weeds would grow before. Now a thick covering of a running-style grass has taken over, and although it looks nice, it needs maintenance.

It's quite an old mower, somewhere between 1984 and 1986. It needed a few parts to get it working again, but now that it does, we're very happy. It's another project that we've jumped into the deep end with, learned a lot and had our hands in grease for. Lots of fun. :)

Oh, and one more thing! We've recently had professional help!

A plasterer! He's very quick, willing to work with our lime plaster, and Marty knows him from work. Brilliant! It's certainly looking more like a loungroom now. We have a few more "holes" to fill before he comes back to put down another layer, but he's very keen, so we'll have to do that this weekend.

Until next time!

Chest fridge, 3 years on.

It's 3 years to the month that we purchased our freezer and converted it into a chest fridge. It's been a good 3 years. We've become use to putting leftovers into lidded plastic containers so we can stack them up (plates with plastic wrap don't work too well in it), and everything has been running smoothly. Our electricity bills are tiny, and I really to think we have the chest fridge to thank for at least part of that!

I wanted to let you all know what happens when things stop running smoothly in a chest fridge. We noticed a few weeks ago that ice was beginning to form at the top of the fridge. We also noticed that it was spending more time working than usual. The temperature probe showed the fridge was too warm, but the ice at the top confused us a great deal. After checking the seals, defrosting and cleaning it, using the air compressor to make sure the motor was all dust-free, we finally called the manufacturer.

Although the warranty period has been over for a year now, they sent around someone to look at it. Turns out that the freezer has a leak and the refrigerant is almost gone. He filled it up again for us, but we're aware that we're going to have to look for a replacement sometime soon. We were told that this is quite a common problem. Since it's not repairable, we'll have to buy another one. How sad, and what a waste! It's still shiny, with no scratches or dents.

Still, I suppose we can always make another garden bed out of it..

Plodding along..

Can you spot the commercial egg?



We've started getting a few eggs from the girls. The little ones are the first ones from a dorking pullet who has started laying far earlier than the others! These last few days both the australorp / black chooks have started laying again, too. They're very reliable layers, laying almost every day, where the dorkings usually lay every other day.

Just for something different, we received an electricity bill in the mail! I'm serious, we havn't really had a real bill since we had the solar system installed. It's winter, so it's expected that the system won't produce as much power as usual.. but I think we can handle this bill. How much, you ask?

$1.44

Yep, they don't even want us to pay. :) I couldn't be happier.

Otherwise, everything is plodding along as usual. Looking forward to longer days and Spring just around the corner. :)

Our old miners cottage, 1 year on

It's now been a full year since we moved in to the Old Miners Cottage. The garden looks a million times better than it did, and the house? Not quite so much, but we're definitely going to work on that soon.

We've planted another 11 trees out the back just recently. They were donated by the council to try and stop some of the spray drift from herbicides coming onto our property. They're planted about 2 metres apart and a metre away from the back fence on the council's side. We've supplemented this by planting 6 native climbers on the fence.



Our tallest tree is one of the she-oaks we planted about 6 months ago. The soil down the back is quite a heavy clay with plenty of rocks, so we're happy with their progress!



We've been collecting the rocks from around the garden, and the rocks from the council land that were being bulldozed. They've always got plenty of bugs under them, and hopefully will provide some habitat for the local lizards and skinks.

The last couple of days we've been working on the new worm farm. Last summer we nearly lost all our worms in the heatwave, so this is a must before next summer! We got the bath for $20, and the rest is recycled from around here. The corners are being held up by star-pickets, the bricks under the bath are a little extra support, and it won't be visible once we're done with it. :)

The lid is made up of the boards that were on the wall in the loungeroom! I knew they'd come in handy one day. We expect to be finished by tomorrow, but of course, if I tell you that, we'll have something come up and it'll be a week! :p



This is Marty working on the second half of the lid!



Being cast iron, the bath should be a nice cool home for the worms all year round. We've got it located under the big deciduous tree, too, which was the coolest place to be in last summers 40°C weather.

So, at last count, we have 39 young plants in the backyard along the fence, and we're gearing up for spring planting of potatoes and pumpkin (and marrow!). The solar hot water system may be a couple of weeks off, depending on the plumber's availability.. and we've checked our electricity usage. If what I read was correct, in roughly 26 hours, the hot water system used around 12.4kWh and everything else used 1.7kWh (the bill says our average use is 11.4kWh per day). I'll keep checking, though, because it seems like an awful lot of electricity for hot water! Either way, it'll be great to finally ditch it! :)

Until next time!

Solar hot water news!

We've got the solar hot water system delivered! At the moment, it just looks like boxes in the shed. :)



That's the storage tank. Despite the description on the box, it won't need any electricity for our solar. It's the same size as our current system, which we've never used all of anyway.



The tubes! It's pretty exciting. Oh, in the background is the oven we pulled out of the kitchen. It doesn't work, but the baker's oven is more than making up for it's loss!



The gas boosted system. The tubes will heat the water in the storage tank, and if the water hasn't heated up enough, the gas boost will kick in and heat up only the water that we're needing it to.

Hopefully it'll be installed in a week or so. That should bring our electricity bill down a peg or two! Looking forward to the bills. Well, kinda! ;)

Action and Activity!

It rained last night, which gives me enough time this morning to post a little update instead of watering the garden.

We're lucky enough to be eating from the garden a little! Well, little isn't what I'd call this beetroot (and the biggest is still in the ground!)...



The beans are quite flavourful and have a nice texture - as long as we keep picking them small! The large ones are not really edible. :p



Something we've been aiming towards for some time now, has been getting rid of our old inefficient fridge and replacing it with a chest-fridge instead. The power savings are suppose to be well worth a little inconvenience. Now, generally we can't just go out and buy chest-fridges from the local shop, so we had to convert a chest freezer.

The unit that controls the temperature is a Fridgemate, and we followed the assembly instructions given in Rob's blog. The unit is in the background, and the hobby box is in the fore.



While I cut the hobby box to fit the unit..



..Marty stripped the wires of an extension cord.



A fair amount of fiddling around later (it was all-consuming and we forgot to take pictures of the process!!), we ended up with this box sitting on the new fridge!! We attached it with velcro so it doesn't fall off when we open the lid.



That's the "pretty" shot, and this is how it looks like now we've been at it!



It looks like our old fridge, but squat! As well as the significant power savings, it also makes the kitchen seem bigger (which is always welcome!) and we're both very happy with it. I'm keeping tabs on the power usage, and I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes.

Other news in Stawell: Last night we attended a meeting by the Stawell Climate Action Group. They would like to get as many people within a 50km radius of Stawell to sign up for solar power before June 30th. (After June 30th the Australian Government rebate will change from offering upto $8,000 for installation for people earning under $100,000 a year, to a lesser rebate offered to everyone regardless of income - we would like to take advantage of the current scheme).

We expressed our interest along with quite a few others in town. We just hope that enough people sign up to make it happen! So, if anyone living around this area would like to be involved, send us an email and we'll give you the contact details to find out more information.

Until next time!