Energy efficiency and sustainability

We are half way down on our big tank now with watering each evening. There is still 2/3 in the top tank, so we are moving to another electricity efficiency measure - changing over from town water to our tank supply late afternoon to 8 am. This way we have rainwater showers and can water the garden, but not use the pump during our peak generating hours when we sell into the grid at a premium price.
We recently had a free home sustainability assessment - part of the Federal government's Green Loans initiative. I had hoped for a rating, but it was more about saving cents than dollars.
No mention was made of window drapes, areas of glass and shading of walls, or aspect. Incandescent bulbs were noted and loss of heat into the roof cavity through our extract fans in the bathrooms - which also keep our bathrooms free of steam, although we have never used the fans themselves.
We could get a loan to replace our 10 year old fridge to save a star or so of electricity, likewise with the 10 year old washing machine which also works very well, and being a top loader suits us for reusing bath water.
So I suspect it is another stimulus package to encourage people to spend more money to reduce their excessive power bills. It will be interesting to see the report. Will they lend us interest-free money to get more photovoltaic panels? We can only fit two more with our inverter anyway.
I am still in favour of it as it provides jobs for assessors - money from Canberra to Toowoomba. And we did get something out of it so far - we put a timer on our beer fridge so it turns off during peak generating hours, when it is usually not opened anyway. Ten days on we seem to have an automatic defrosting beer fridge, working better than ever.
With our new off-peak water pump program we may be saving a couple of units a day to sell to the grid.

Replenished

I thought I was kidding myself when I used to say that we would need a major event to replenish our soil moisture after these dry years, but last week we received the monthly average of 93 mm in 24 hours. We had already reached the average with 103 mm - something which has only happened 16 times in the past 4 years. Our previous maximum monthly rainfall was 130 on November 2005.
Although we had no damage from the storms, hail and heavy rain, we did suffer a slump in the fill behind the tank, as predicted by the plumber. I had poured all my grey laundry water for over a month into this area, but obviously this was a different scale of wetting and the area dropped over 20 cm, resulting in the input pipes from the roof dropping and disconnecting. A great deal of water then flowed around the tank with some wash of soil and mulch. Fortunately they did not break and we were able to put things back together before the next lot of rain.
Also, fortunately, we have a bit more dirt to move from below the tank area, so we are able to restore the top area to its previous level.
It was nice to see the overflow pipe spreading the water across the lower paddock.
The top tank has also overflowed so we are fully replete in tank storage.

An independent water supply

Carers of the Murray Darling catchment may disagree but all rainfall collected on our block is returned to it, unless it evaporates from bird baths and washing or transpires from vegetation.
Our house is now connected to our new concrete reservoir and we have transferred 7000 litres from our plastic tank. This should last us until the next rain event, which is forecast for the end of August. There are many rocks scattered along the trenches, now being filled, so there is plenty of physical work to do to restore the lawn areas and complete the landscaping around the new tank.

water levels

Last weekend we moved to our benchmark water level of "below the shed tap". Since the tank was installed in August 2005, we have only gone this low twice - both times due to accidentally leaving the lower tap running with a hose attached. The first was probably around mid 2006 and then again more recently on 28 November 2007.

The other benchmark level is when it overflows. We got close in November 07 but I can't remember when it did overflow and it has only occurred about once.

We recorded 23 mm of rainfall in January on 9 days - nothing worthwhile. The 11 year average at Toowoomba airport is 66mm.