{"id":16256,"date":"2020-11-24T21:54:02","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T10:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/?p=16256"},"modified":"2022-05-27T08:06:35","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T22:06:35","slug":"building-a-power-plant-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/?p=16256","title":{"rendered":"building a power plant 1."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

when we bought our bush block in st helens we knew it had hundreds of trees, more kunzea that you could wave a torch at, amazing views of the town, the bay and out to sea, and access to the george river. we also knew it had no buildings, no water, no sewer connection and no power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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rather than see this as a challenge we look at it as a great opportunity: 80% of australia’s electricity still comes from coal fired power stations, and while our federal government seems to think that’s ok, we don’t. time to put our money where our mouth is, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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rather than spend money on building a connection to the grid (yes, we’d have to pay for the poles & wires to our property) we decide to go off grid: we’ll have a serious amount of solar panels on the roof and enough batteries in the shed to create all the power we need for our house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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step 1: get the foundations for the shed ready. i’d done a bit of work myself with my little 1.7 ton excavator, mainly removing shrub and create an access strip, but the guys with their 15 ton machine move a lot more dirt a lot more quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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not to mention the incredible number of sizeable rocks they pulled out of the ground, some of those bigger than my entire digger. amazingly even with their big excavator they still had to leave some in the ground. luckily those won’t interfere with the foundations, however, they will come in very handy for the retaining wall behind the driveway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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once the rocks were removed (or buried) the the area was quickly flattened and then levelled to within less than one centimeter – quite an achievement really, with just a bucket. i hope i’ll be that good an excavator driver at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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two more layers of gravel – one a bit coarser, the last finer – were spread, trenches dug for the reinforcement around the perimeter and holes under the beams. if everything goes well – and it should from here – that will all be done by tomorrow, then another day to place the steel mesh before the concrete will be poured. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

the foundations of our own power plant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

when we bought our bush block in st helens we knew it had hundreds of trees, more kunzea that you could wave a torch at, amazing views of the town, the bay and out to sea, and access to the george river. we also knew it had no buildings, no water, no sewer connection and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-blog","category-sustainable-living"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/power-plant-1-1-5.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7MvER-4ec","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16263,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16256\/revisions\/16263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}