Ecoliving Narara Ecovillage

This episode is about giving an older home a sustainable makeover — and it’s not just any home.



We’ll be talking about: it’s Bellbird House, a Heritage-listed home and B&B here at Narara Ecovillage that’s over 100 years old. Owner Mark O’Brien talked about what it takes to bring a classic Australian home into the 21st century without risking its original charm.



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With Sustainable House Day happening here at the ecovillage and across Australia in March, we wanted to focus this episode on one type of sustainable house that we have several of here at the ecovillage: a strawbale-insulated home.



Straw has been used for insulation for all of human history, but that doesn’t mean that a straw-insulated house has to look or feel like it was made using old technology. The guest for this episode has been involved in building dozens of straw-insulated homes, including a number here at the ecovillage.



Sam Vivers is the founder of Viva Homes, and Viva specializes in straw-insulated construction. Viva does both more traditional strawbale construction, and now also builds with their own prefabricated straw-insulated panels that can cut weeks off of the construction time for a sustainable home — and cut a big chunk off the cost as well.



Resources




Your Home (website)



Straw Bale construction Manual by Gernot Minke



Building With Straw by Gernot Minke



Strawbale Home Building from Earth Garden Magazine



The Strawbale House by Bill & Athen Steen



Earthen Floors by Sukita Crimmel




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Pink Oyster Mushrooms from Shed 30 Mushrooms (photo courtesy of Lincoln DeKalb)



Want to move beyond fruit and vegetables in your garden? How about mushrooms?



Lincoln DeKalb



This episode features Lincoln DeKalb, a Narara Ecovillage resident who runs Shed 30 Mushrooms, a small mushroom-growing business based at the ecovillage. Lincoln started cultivating mushrooms at home (and in the forest that surrounds the village), then relatively recently started growing and selling gourmet mushrooms at a larger scale — currently to ecovillage residents, but hopefully one day to the general public.



If you're interested in getting started with mushroom-growing yourself, check out these links to things Lincoln mentioned in the episode:



Aussie Mushroom Supplies: https://aussiemushroomsupplies.com.au/Urban Culture: https://www.urbankulture.co/Milkwood Mushroom Cultivation Courses: https://www.milkwood.net/category/mushroom-cultivation/Little Acre Mushrooms: https://littleacre.com.au/



And in you're interested in attending Lincoln's workshop at our upcoming Ecovillage Experience Weekend, click this link for more information: https://nararaecovillage.com/narara-ecovillage-experience-weekend-april-2023/



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Federal MP Gordon Reid and NEV Power member Dave Parris cut the "ribbon" to celebrate the battery launch



We just celebrated the official launch of our Narara Ecovillage community battery and microgrid, and Toby Roxburgh came up from Canberra to launch the system, which he helped design.



Toby is the founder and executive director of Carbon Neutral Delivery Partners, and he joined Adam to talk about the differences between smartgrids and microgrids, and the benefits of batteries for local energy storage.



Here are some links related to the episode:



NEV Power, our village-owned energy providerNEV Smartgrid: a page about the function and efficiencies of our microgrid.Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), for information about government support for emissions reduction technologies.



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An Envirotecture-Designed Passive House



After a bit of a hiatus, our second podcast episode is ready – we'll be more consistent in the future.



This episode features Andy Marlow from Envirotecture, a Sydney sustainable design firm. Andy is also involved in Passivhaus Design & Construct, and joins Adam for a conversation about the Passive House (also known as Passivhaus) concept, how it works, and what it means.



Links from this episode:



EnvirotecturePassivhaus Design & ConstructAustralian Passive House Association (APHA)The International Passive House Open Days



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We've launched a podcast!



Ecoliving will look at ways to reduce your impact on the earth, from cutting your greenhouse gas emissions to minimizing land and water use. Our first episode features Narara Ecovillage resident Chris Wenban, who lives full time in her tiny house on wheels.



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