Most shower heads at Christie Walk are WELS 3 standard, running at about 9L/minute. They were the best that were readily available when construction of our eco-village was completed in 2006. Older shower heads could be up to 22L/minute.
But the latest Ultra Low Flow shower heads run at 5L/min, and still give a satisfying shower.
So what is at stake here?
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This was the crisis year for so many people – bushfires, COVID, job losses – and it also happened to be the year of our most adventurous emissions-reduction planning, carrying out 2 major projects a few months apart.
The evacuated tube solar hot water boosters we had installed in 2018 were performing well, so it was time to build the second stage. We’d completed the design work in 2019 and had commenced the Development Application (DA) process with the City of Adelaide in September 2019. DA is required by Council if solar collectors are not mounted flat on the roof. After 9 weeks of back and forth, providing additional drawings and details, we finally received Planning Consent in mid-November.
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We started investigating the retrofit option for our hot water system: installing solar collectors as boosters to our existing heat pump hot water. One company stood out as a solid option: RunOnSun, based in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. Their website wouldn’t win a Webby Award for design, but the content is comprehensive and very educational. MD Andrew Butterworth has spent more than a decade applying Sydney University research on evacuated tube solar hot water and finessing it for efficiency and robust performance. The fixings supplied by RunOnSun are robust too; more than adequate to secure the system in cyclone conditions.
We decided to split the retrofit project into two stages. Stage 1 – 60 evacuated solar collector tubes – would be evaluated before moving onto Stage 2 – an additional 48 evacuated tubes.
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Our apartment building (Sturt Apartments at Christie Walk) was nearly ten years old. It was time to start thinking about sustainability upgrades to reduce our carbon footprint.
Lighting was an easy place to start.
We worked with Adelaide lighting maintenance specialists Globebusters, who replaced unreliable CFL lights in our atrium stairwell and entranceway with long-life LED oyster lights and floodlights. In the courtyard, twin LED sensor floodlights replaced the old energy-hungry incandescent lights.
Hot water; one of life’s great privileges. But our little luxury comes at a cost for us, and a carbon-cost for our warming planet. It’s a particular issue in our 4-level block of 13 apartments.
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BrianLoffler 