The container and all it's contents arrived safely at Thor's Hammer today. It's a strategic placement actually, because I hope to use Thor's amazing selections of recycled timbers to modify the container and build the house - saving a little on transport and time.
I lost my job, ending 23 December (thanks UC). So, we bought a shipping container and filled it with our stuff. We'll store it and hit the road until we know where we are.
Very strange. Chris has jumped here before, and there were 8 people jumping the afternoon we arrived. Chris jumped holding a camera on his head, which might have meant he went deeper, and it might have been he didn't jump out, either way he clipped a rock, compound fracture in the foot.
Took him to emergency (7:30pm), then took Sunshine and Eve home. I uploaded all the photos and videos and fell asleep. Woke at 1:30am and went in to find him sitting in the waiting room, wound not cleaned, needing stitches, still in pain, with a basic bandage compressing on his swelling (no ice), foot not elevated.
I hit the roof! In no time he was in getting xrayed, given stronger pain killers, and the whole waiting room (about 15 people) were put through in the 30 minutes Chris was being seen to. Someone there at reception had completely fucked up. Everyone was very apologetic, explaining that their triage system wasn't working... I will get to the bottom of that story.
Chris arriving at Calvary
Because he'd gone 7 hours with an uncleaned wound over a fracture, they checked him in on an antibiotic drip for the risk of infection. Next morning we went in to see him at 7:30. They had just decided to transfer him to another hospital because they couldn't deal with compound fractures. He waited until 11:30 before being transfered to Canberra Hospital, and waited there until 2:30pm before being wheeled into a room... he still awaits specialist consultation, his wound is not stitched or cleaned.
Update: 6pm, almost 24hrs since checking in at Calvary, 8 hours since being transfered to Canberra, and Chris has still not been seen by a specialist at Canberra. I have spoken to the manager of Emergency Department Canberra Hospital who seemed to be initially unaware of Chris' ordeal at Calvary the night before. He assured me that a specialist would see Chris tonight and that he would go into surgery to clean and stitch the wound. Unfortunately this means another 48hrs stay over at Canberra, after surgery. He made no offer to keep me updated.
I also spoke to the Coordinator at Calvary, June Mo and made her aware of the saga, and to see if there was anything she could do to make Canberra more aware of Chris' history at Calvary, and to speed up the consultation. All June could do is look into the Calvary notes, and shared concern at the 7 hour wait before xray or adequate primary care. She couldn't comment on the 8 hour wait so far at Canberra, or why Chris was transfered to Canberra so late.
Update: 11:30am, Wednesday 19 January. Chris is out of surgery, wound has been cleaned but he will be held for at least 48hours while they test swabs for bacteria and infection.
After the operation
Update: 9:20am, Saturday 22 January. Chris came home last night, with a bag of antibiotics and pain killers. Got a call last night however, to go back to the hospital and get a different set of antibiotics of something.
James and I took Eve looking for Gorilla Mountain yesterday afternoon. Off track walking and difficulties with magnetic rock affecting our compass saw us all climb the wrong spur, putting us 1km short of reaching the mountain. Our little climb was hard and thick, resulting is obscured views, mozzies and scratches. I could be dreaming, but I heard a new cry for Eve.. one that seemed to be apprehensive, nervous, even a little scared. She came good when we found our way off our mistake, and was back to her gurgling self when we found the track again.
On the way back we saw a snake. Not sure if its a Red Belly or a Copperhead...?
We did get to see Gorilla Mountain at a distance, and saw where we went wrong. The GPS tracker on the phone reveals exactly where we lost it.
Sunshine works very hard at mothering, and does a great job. But it leaves her tired most of the time. I've taken a back seat in the parenting so far, helping any way I can. Now Eve is a little older, she can go 4 hours or more without her mum. This means adventures with daddy start. 2011 is the year we get out and about more. Yesterday, I packed little one in the car, drove an hour south to Namadgi National Park, to walk up to Booroomba Rocks. Its a place I've wanted to see since arriving in Canberra, a can't believe it took me so long to get there! Eve was a champ, so happy and well behaved. Thanks Eve. Photos
For a few years now, Sunshine and I have been researching shipping container houses as an alternative means to affordable housing. The key to a container based house is the portability. Our 60m2 free standing design retains that portability, with all external elements such as roofing, doors and walls, fitting inside a container ready for transport, quick setup and quick break down.
The reason we want a portable house is so we can move it temporarily onto rented land, save up for our own land, and relocate it to settle and extend. Our plan is a two stage approach to home and land ownership, attempting to keep our weekly payments as low as possible while we go.
If you have a small section of land you could rent us, we can offer you between $50-100 rent per week. We'd then secure a loan of $40 000 for the prefabrication, additions and delivery of our container house. The weekly repayments on such a loan would be $250 over 5 years. The land rent and house repayments together would total $350 per week. We think we could save between $100-200 per week, or $5-10,000 per year, $15-30,000 over 3. That's a deposit for our own land, and once we had our own land, we'd move off yours, leaving behind a little fruit orchard, a herb garden, and a small rammed earth pad, where we once stayed.
Patrick Blampied is doing a great job with the media and PR for the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, and sent out a press release about me after we met through Youtube. I'm more than happy to help build their profile in Canberra, although between the journalist, Pat's press release, and me seeing the story in print, some minor corrections and clarifications are needed:
I don't start each day with a warm feeling about environmental sustainability. I get that feeling working towards conviviality.
The correct order for being inspired to try this started with a Youtube video by Permascience, leading to information about Jean Pain, eventually seeing a video by Patrick that the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia were using the method too.
My pile (version 3 that is) is made of horse manure, straw and woodchip, not paper. Paper is a good suggestion - but slightly harder to come by around here.
I don't think or imply this system is for everyone, and I don't think it would reasonably replace existing systems.. not before a bit more research and development was done. I have concerns about the HDPE pipe possibly putting a chemical into the water for a start, and I think the biomass needs to be semi sealed to keep flies away. Patrick and I reckon something like a wheelie bin would probably be good, hooked up to a storage tank, with a replacement bin at the ready each week or so. Either that, or use the V3 system for room heating instead of shower water.
Apart from those minor points, it was great to get some interest from the local paper, and I hope it helps lead me to good local connections for progressing this and other projects. Thanks Patrick.
Its getting cold in Canberra. The fire place in our house is smokey and cold. The gas heating is too easy and expensive. Its time we learned how to build a rocket fire!
Since that visit, Sunshine and I have been busy selling our house in NZ, moving to Australia, and having a baby. Now in a rental, its difficult to commit to a full build, but I've found a bit of time to study the method.
Basically, a rocket stove thermal mass heater is a super efficient wood fuel heater that can be built by just about anyone, using waste and/or easily collectible materials. To give you an idea, in Dunedin we used an efficient and certified wood burner that used about 4-6 cubic metres of wood per year. Erica and Ernie told us they use about 1-2 cubic metres in their rocket heater, and their house was less insulated than ours!
If you want to get a sense of what a full rocket stove thermal mass heater is, this is a great introductory video:
And here's a really good illustration by Erica, of the critical design of the rocket stove. At that link are a series of photos documenting a full build, including the thermal mass heater.
My attempts so far
So begins my attempts to study and learn this technique for heating. After the usual terrible time trying to source materials in Canberra, here's a series of videos of my first mock up.
Canberra is an incredibly difficult find out about anything online. The websites are crappy and the search results are worse. As a result, sourcing materials is frustrating. All we needed was some short lengths of steal pipe at varying diameters, a few steal drums of varying sizes, about 10 fire bricks, and 10 normal bricks. So I baled the family into the care and drove around looking for word of mouth. The main waste recycle facility was useless. We found private waste recycle yards that looked promising, but were all locked up with no one around. Everyone we spoke to directed us out to Fyshwick, the industrial hub of Canberra. There we found some materials, but all set at exorbitant prices :( It seems what useful materials is recycled, is pretty well stitched up by business. But we did manage to scrape together a few bricks and some guttering just to get this first mock up made.
We moved to Canberra on 1st October. Renting a nice old house in Turner, have a vege garden in already, living round the corner from old friends. Canberra is easy living if you can afford it.
