What’s a good sewage system?

A beaut question lobbed into my inbox this week and here it is: ‘Hi Michael, First up let me tell you how much I have enjoyed your book.  It is a permanent coffee table fixture in our home at present as we are planning a new house and endeavouring to implement many of the same principles you have adopted.  Infact it has been so popular on the coffee table that three guests have asked to borrow it and all now have their own copies. We are currently building a home in... Read More

Sewage and more sewage

Several questions have come in about sewage. I like that.  We all excrete and the more of us who think about what to do with it the better, I hope, for our Earth’s water, soil and energy. Here’s one: “Hello Michael , A  very good book ………. a lot of information and I will try to do what you have done Yesterday  I  went  to  a home show …. they had a sewerage treatment system but it was only good enough for watering the garden. He... Read More

Making ice without electricity

An ice house in Iran - Image from Gardens of Persia, Penelope Hobhouse, photo by Jerry Harpur, published by Floriligium (yes, the same wonderful gardening bookshop in Glebe) Four hundred or so years ago Persian engineers made ice without electricity. Ice houses (yakhchal in Farsi, or icehouse) kept ice in the burning heat of the Iran plateau.  They’re rarely used today. They’re up to 20 metres high and 6 or so metres below ground.  A single door is insulated with thick,... Read More

Spectacular 2 min vid about water, muck and little critters

It’s by the wonderful film-maker Emma: www.bing.com…   Wow; how good is that! Thanks, Emma. May the little critters be with you, M  Read More

Over 100 signatures and 19 cities have signed up . . .

? @sustaintheplan Luke has tweeted that over 100 people from over 19 cities around Earth have signed the petition to make the Plan for a sustainable suburb. That’s in the  first week before we’ve widely publicised the petition and the new web site. Great to know, for example, that people in Copenhagen love the Plan and want it made – it applies to any city on Earth – if we can get it made here in Sydney anyone anywhere may use that example to more easily... Read More

Drinking rainwater and staying alive

Spring on the way, and spring in us if we choose it Fellow water imbibers: I’ve been asked this lengthy, well-informed and valuable question: ‘Michael, I’m planning a new house with two 20,000L rainwater tanks, possibly of stainless steel, and I’m trying to decide what roof and gutter and downpipe materials to use.  I’ve read the reports of Mirela Magyar’s studies on metal contaminants in rain water tanks in Melbourne, and I’m reading... Read More

Free Estimator for Solutions for Construction Pollution

Free Carbon Calculator   Here is a free estimator.  It’s an excel spreadsheet. Any developer, builder, designer, consultant, council or person may use it to estimate the pollution and impact caused by their project. Once you’ve estimated the impact the estimator suggests how you may offset the impact by investing in carbon farming and by turning food waste into soil. When we build projects we use water, energy, food and other resources.  We sometimes use more... Read More

Waverley Council poisons our food, kids, insects and waterways

Waverley Council's poison truck and poison sprayers Well, there we are trying to get on with our life, us and the little critters and along comes a Council and poisons things. Here’s an email by Vera, a resident of Bronte in Waverley Council’s area, NSW, to her Councillors about recent spraying of poison by the Council. Has anyone noticed today’s rain?  You’d reckon it’d be doing some good, unless you swam at Bronte beach after the poisoning... Read More

Using underground water

A reader has sent me this question: ‘Dear Michael I may have a spring (h2o) or some form of h2o course running through my front yard under the middle of my house & than exiting from the northern corner of the rear of the house. This has been confirmed by a builder who has taken the ‘levels’ to level the house where the house has ‘sank’ in these areas. The house is a 1950′s weatherboard constructed on piers whereby due to the land sloping... Read More

A magic puddin’ pump

Glockeman pump in creek On Thursday I went to Melbourne and got a gift. I saw the most wonderful, inspiring, “I can’t believe that’ pump. (Yes, I know, I love water and sometimes my passion gets the better of me, but wait.) This pump uses no electricity. It was pumping water up over 60 metres.  It pumps day and night.  During the day one household on one side of the creek gets the water.  During the night the household on the other side of the creek gets the... Read More