Sebastian is a local expert passionate about supporting Northern Rivers residents. He began his working life as an archaeologist, with an Honours degree in Anthropology, before deviating into Disability Services with over 10 years’ experience as a Quality Assurance Manager. His deep underlying passion for sustainability and renewable energy then compelled him to channel his…
Author: Sasha Mainsbridge
Energy Saving Makeover – Step by Step
Sebastian Crangle is a Byron local, on the Zero Emissions Byron Buildings team and Lead Energy Coach at Enova. He made significant energy savings on the granny flat he rents out – between 19 to 76% – as shown in the table below. We applaud his commitment and encourage all local landlords to follow suit. …
Anne Caruana – Ocean Shores
I have got my household electricity use down low, installed solar, practice load shifting and am waiting for prices of home battery and EVs to come down, so what next to save the planet? Firstly I live off my super and am now researching where to move some of it – away from ‘sustainable’ investments…
Megan Wynne-Jones – Byron
Sewing day at a friends place today : mending and re-purposing our clothes, bedding and cushions – good for our planet and fun for us ! We fixed up two cushions, including one made by my son when he was 5 ( a long time ago!) – mended three dresses and a shirt, made a…
Seb Crangle – Ocean Shores
I recently joined the fabulous Library of STUFF Mullumbimby, motivated by being able to share useful equipment without us all needing to own it all separately. Of particular interest to me was the electric lawn mower because I wanted to “mow electric”😁, rather than use my polluting, petrol-powered lawnmower, and to charge the batteries from…
Kamala Rose – Wilsons Creek
Ever since moving here to Australia, I have dreamed of having solar panels for our home. We finally made that a reality this past month! I had studied the “greenhouse effect” at university back in the early 1980’s so this dream has taken a long time to manifest! It will help to offset our carbon…
Jean Osanz – Piora
We came to this house in June 2017. It is located in Piora, near Casino. We spent the first two weeks shivering with two electric oil heaters running flat out since there was no heating and no insulation. The first job I did was to open up the roof space and lay rock wool all…
Annett Welss – Byron
For the last three years, we have been transforming our food and toilet waste into cooking gas and liquid fertiliser concentrate (see Living tiny and green) The whole setup is carbon-neutral because biomaterial which was created through photosynthesis pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, and once burned as energy will go back as CO2. The…
Chris Sanderson – Bangalow
Hi everyone, In order to minimise our greenhouse gas emissions, we have a 10kW above ground solar array and two LG 9kW batteries. We use the power generated by the solar system to power the house, our home-based business (distributing vegetarian health foods) and our EV, and there’s leftover energy which we on-sell to Enova…
Ness Stewart – Montecollum
During COVID lockdown in 2020 we lived in an offish-grid cabin, surrounded by excess eucalyptus wood that our landlady deemed a fire hazard. Our desire to be active managers of our woodlands inspired our cob-rocket-stove-thermosiphon-bathtub-water-heater design! Rainwater is collected in a barrel and plumbed into and heated around the cob stove. Through the law of…