Photo Gallery
Plot #6 Fencing and Clearing
Community Drive North - Remediation to all weather access
Equipment and pipes for our underground utilities (Power and Water)
Power for the Garden Centre and Mudding Station
The Start of the Garden Centre - 12m3 loads of Gravel, Sand and Cow Pooh.
Images of some of our gardens
Fencing and Preparing Plot #1
Building our FIRST Earthen Kitchen
Devastating Hail storm 30th of December 2023
Community helping Community
Directing water to the Kirra Common Pond with a French Drain
Excavating the hand-dug Pond and making it about 4 times larger
Building the 50kW Steam Engine Power Plant
Building the FIRST Earthen Bathroom
Adding new battery capacity and a new shed to our Solar Generation and Storage
Although we can go for days or weeks without rain, when it does come it tends to come in waves of inclement days, with periodic rain and days of total cloud cover. Like all other places in Queensland, we can also get down pours of 100 mm to 200 mm (or more) in a 24 hour period and go for 5 to 7 days, with total cloud cover, rendering most solar systems fairly useless, although they do operate at a reduced capacity due to ambient light.
We started with 19,440 watts (19.4 kWh) of storage, purchased an additional 24,000 watts (24 kWh) of storage giving us a total of 43,440 watts (43.4 kWh) of storage. We deliberately purchased a different chemistry for our second bank of batteries as we are building and testing our own mixed chemistry automatic charging device, specifically for systems that utilise mixed chemistry battery storage. The device allows large banks of mixed chemistry batteries to be swapped in and out of both charging and discharging cycles, while also adjusting the charging and discharging to more suitably match the requirements of the chemistry.
As the community and its power needs grow so will our generation and storage capacities. Our target for storage is 100 kWh. Currently, there are 68 solar panels @ 250 watts per panel peak, giving us a maximum generation capacity of 17 kWh, for an average daily total (based on 5 hours of peak production) of 85 kW per day, around half of which we can store. Our inclement support system (fallback) is total generation capacity of 11 kWh using generators. Our ability to generate enough power to fully recharge our battery storage in 5 hours meets our objective.
Starting the North Hamlet Garden Amenities Block
Building the Outdoor Kitchen
The outdoor kitchen was mode almost entirely from up-cycled materials. The Exception was the 6 sheets of new poly-carbonate roofing (Yellow), the 5 H2 Yellow Tongue flooring panels, and the screws and nails. All up for a total cost of less than $800 we achieved a 36m2 outdoor kitchen and deck area.
The floor substructure is Shipping Container pallets, and the floor boards are some of the other packing material from those pallets. We finished with floor substructure and floor boards with used diesel sump oil. This gave the floor a lovely red stain while vermin and weather proofing the timber.
