Michael Green

Writer and producer

Working in the window, on the shutters

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I have been working with Michael Kelly less frequently lately and the finer details have taken longer. But we are nearly there. The courtyard studio is nearly complete. All that remains is its assembly.

As we finished the larger panels and began the smaller ones, we moved from the rear courtyard to the front of his shop, by the tall windows. Michael’s small workshop is set up in one window, with his bench, tools, coffee machine, stereo and books. Everything he needs for a day’s work.

The studio will have two entries and we are crafting them as saloon style shutter-doors. My role, for much of the project, has been to measure and saw the hundreds of strips of Oregon lath. When I began, my routine was without routine. The sawing bench was at right angles to the table where the uncut lath waited. I would swivel left to de-nail a length, return to the table to measure, then turn left again to saw.

Soon, I shifted the sawing bench in front of me – it fitted neatly underneath the table – so I didn’t need to turn at all. I began to de-nail in batches, measure in batches, saw in batches. I placed the pen, saw and hammer conveniently at hand. Honing this simple order was very satisfying.

Likewise, the simple pattern of our shutter-doors is very pleasing. The horizontal strips of lath are fortified by a rectangle frame and x-marks-the-spot crosspieces.

I recently borrowed the books of architect Christopher Alexander. In the 1970s, he wrote a trilogy outlining his design concepts: The Timeless Way of Building; A Pattern Language; and The Oregon Experiment.

I have only read a third of The Timeless Way, but our elegant shutter-doors seem open in concert with his argument. There is something whole about their design. Alexander writes that certain patterns of materials and behaviour bring life to buildings and their inhabitants:

“…the Alhambra, some tiny gothic church, an old New England house, an Alpine village, an ancient Zen temple, a seat by a mountain stream, a courtyard filled with blue and yellow tiles among the earth. What is it they have in common? They are beautiful, ordered, harmonious—yes, all these things. But especially, and what strikes to the heart, they live.”

On those days when we work in the window of the shop, it feels like we’re getting close to the timeless way. We toil there in the daylight, listening to Bob Dylan, waving and smiling to people who passed.

“Some kinds of physical and social circumstances help a person come to life. Others make it very difficult.

For instance, in some towns, the pattern of relationships between workplaces and families helps us to come to life. Workshops mix with houses, children run around the places where the work is going on, the members of the family help in the work, the family may possibly eat lunch together, or eat lunch together with the people who are working there.

The fact that family and play are part of one continuous stream helps nourish everyone.”

My experience matches Alexander’s words. Some towns, cities, neighbourhoods and homes can make my spirit sing, and so can certain patterns in my daily life. Days and months pass as I slowly take this in, notice what works for me, and what doesn’t, and seek that which fits. 


Lower-carbon concrete

In Architecture and building on

Concrete is ubiquitous. According to Dr Peter Duxson, chief operating officer of eco-concrete company Zeobond, it’s the second most used commodity in the world, behind only water. “Everywhere there is human activity, there is concrete being used. It’s versatile and cheap,” he says. “It just turns out that the base ingredient that makes concrete go hard is bad for the environment.”

Concrete is made up of sand, rock and water, bound together with cement. Conventional concrete uses Portland cement and although it comprises only 10 to 15 per cent of the total product, it accounts for about 70 per cent of its carbon footprint.

The high emissions come from burning limestone to create lime – from both the energy required to heat the kilns and the chemical reaction in which limestone releases carbon dioxide. “One kilo of CO2 is emitted per kilo of cement,” Duxson says. “So every concrete truck equals about two tonnes of CO2 in cement.”

The material’s saving grace is its usefulness as thermal mass in appropriate solar passive design – it can help to even out day and night time temperatures. According to Riccardo Zen, from Zen Architects in Melbourne, carefully placed high-density materials are essential to cut the energy needs of homes in temperate and cool climates. “It’s very hard to eliminate heating and cooling unless you have some form of thermal mass,” he says.

An exposed concrete slab floor is a classic example of thermal mass. Positioned in front of windows in a north-facing living room, the slab receives direct sun in winter. It absorbs the solar radiation and warms the house into the night. With appropriate shading, the sun won’t hit the concrete over summer, so the chill of the concrete will help the home stay cool.

Even so, given that concrete accounts for about five per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, the race is on make lower-carbon concrete.

The simplest way to do so is to substitute a proportion of the Portland cement for other products. Fly ash and slag (by-products of burning coal and smelting iron ore, respectively) can comfortably replace over one-fifth of the cement content without adversely affecting the quality of the product.

Boral’s Envirocrete is available with either 30 or 60 per cent less Portland cement – the difference made up with fly ash, slag and chemical admixtures. The company also sells Envirocrete with one-fifth recycled crushed aggregate. Although it saves virgin resources, it doesn’t significantly reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of the product.

Duxson’s business, Zeobond, makes Ecrete, a kind of concrete that completely replaces Portland cement with fly ash and slag. Known as a geopolymer or alkali-activated concrete, Ecrete produces two-thirds fewer carbon dioxide emissions than the conventional product. It uses other chemicals to kick-start the binding process and ensure the curing time is fast.

The first Ecrete supplier is located in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs, but Duxson anticipates that it will soon spread interstate. The product is also available in pavers and pre-cast panels. “The cost premium is between 10 and 15 per cent, but as we get to scale, we expect that price to come down quite significantly,” he says.

Magnesia-based concretes are another kind of lower-carbon concrete. Tasmanian company TecEco sells blended cements that include reactive magnesia as well as Portland cement and waste materials. When used in permeable concrete blocks, pavers and pavements, the company’s Eco-Cement absorbs carbon dioxide over the lifespan of the material.

This article was published in Sanctuary Magazine.

Community-supported agriculture

In Greener Homes on

Get the dirt on your vegies, and your farmer, with community-supported agriculture.

On Saturday mornings, somewhere in Ashwood in Melbourne’s south-east, a front yard looks like this: flocks of neighbours swap their backyard produce and chirp to one another over tea and cake. Kids buzz around. Then they all chat with their farmer.

It’s the Damper Creek Co-operative. About fifty families collect a box of organic vegetables, weekly or fortnightly, for $28 each. The boxes are delivered by the farmer, Rod May, from Captain’s Creek Farm near Daylesford. “He comes and hangs out with us for morning tea,” says co-op founder Katie Greaves. “People get to ask him questions about the food. The kids call him Our Farmer Rod.”

The vegie box group is a type of community-supported agriculture (CSA), where growers sell directly, and regularly, to eaters. “We want to know where our food comes from and we want to build a relationship with the people who grow it,” Ms Greaves says.

The co-op, run by volunteer members, began buying boxes in January. “We were concerned about our climate impact and dependence on fossil fuels,” she says. “I wanted food that hadn’t travelled halfway around the planet. I wanted to ride my bike to collect it, and to create a world where my young children get to know their neighbours.”

Members receive produce according to season. “We get vegies pulled straight from the ground, covered in dirt. We never know what we’re going to get, and people have really embraced that,” Ms Greaves says, noting the keen cookery discussion that followed delivery of daikon, an East Asian radish.

The co-op held an excursion to Captain’s Creek Farm, and plans to return for a spring feast and working bee. “Rod took us on a tramping tour around the vegie paddocks. The kids were hanging off his legs and asking questions about beetroot,” she says.

Ms Greaves is full of encouragement for people who want to create or join a CSA. “The key thing is to start small and keep it simple. Just go ahead – gather a group of interested people and begin making contacts.”

The Farm Gateway website, coordinated by Michelle Yang, is a great place to start. You can use the site to find active groups around the city or register your interest.

“The term ‘community-supported agriculture’ came out of America in the eighties,” Ms Yang says. There, it refers to groups that pay their farmer upfront for a season’s produce, rather than buying week-to-week. “It’s about supporting the farmer financially when they need it most.”

That kind of structure is less common in Australia, but can be invaluable for growers starting a scheme from scratch. However, vegie box groups such as the Damper Creek Co-op also give farmers a guaranteed market and close contact with their customers.

Ms Yang argues that CSAs bring householders benefits in spades: cheap, fresh, healthy food, with proof of its provenance, plus friendlier neighbourhoods and less transport, waste and packaging. “It re-establishes that sense of community around food, which we’ve lost in our society,” she says.

If a co-op isn’t for you, CERES Food Connect will soon offer a similar distribution scheme. They’ll buy and sort local, organic produce, then deliver boxes to a designated ‘city cousin’. Neighbours will pick up their produce from that house.

Swann’s Small Appliance Repair

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David Swann lives at the end of a hilly no-through road in Montmorency. By his driveway there is a sign that says Swann’s Small Appliance Repair. It lists the opening times: standard business hours, but on Fridays he knocks off at 4.30 pm. Last Friday he placed a large black CLOSED sticker across the sign and knocked off for good.

I had called up out of the blue the day before, and told him I’d like to learn how to fix appliances. It was an odd request, but David gave me advice. “You need to know how electricity works. Once you get the basics, there’s a lot you can do,” he said. “The repair industry isn’t quite dead, but it’s in the death throes. We need new blood in the system and I’d be happy to give any help I can.”

I asked if I could visit.

Down the gravel path at the side of the house there is a wooden shed, with a front counter and a workroom behind. When I arrived, David was packing boxes.

He had already cleared out the spare parts from his many shelves, removing the bits and bobs, motors and mechanisms he’d gathered over two decades. Some tools remained: a torch, a multimeter, multigrips, files, and a soldering iron with the finest tip you can get. There were screwdrivers of all shapes and sizes, some with special Torx heads, which have a tip like a six-pointed star.

He needs strange screwdrivers because most appliances now have tamper-proof screws. They stop people from inadvertently electrocuting themselves, but also from repairing the appliances.

It’s just one sign of the times. Coffee machines and vacuum cleaners are becoming rocket ships, with sensors controlling myriad functions. Kettles used to have separate elements, but now they’re moulded in place. New irons and toasters are no longer fixable. “A toaster is not a toaster anymore,” David said. “It’s electronic gadgetry.”

Five years ago, he would fix twenty microwaves a week, now he does a few a fortnight. Now most appliances come from China, and they’re throwaway cheap.

But David says there’s still plenty that can be mended. He used to fix aeroplanes. With repair work, he told me, he’s like a dog with a bone. Sometimes he wakes in the night puzzling on problems. “If you’re not an investigative soul, it’s not the right job for you. You’ll just throw your hands up and stop.”

He suggested I dismantle some appliances to see how they work. So here goes:

Green’s Guess Appliance Repair is now open for business*. This is the inscription I’ve placed by my workshop (with thanks to the Statue of Liberty):

Give me your tired toasters, your poor gadgets

Your huddled microwaves yearning to cook freely

The wretched refuse of your teeming kitchen

Send these, the homeless, trash-tossed to me…

Swann’s Small Appliance Repair will soon re-open in Apollo Bay. In the meantime, bring your damaged goods to me. 

* Preliminary slogan: ‘Green’s Guess is as good as yours!’ 

Green renovation advice

In Greener Homes on

Plan your reno well, from design to details.

IF YOU’RE thinking about a green renovation, you need the right advice. Where should you begin?

There are many websites and workshops to help you turn the right sod. For an overview of the issues, the Your Home Renovator’s Guide is a great place to start. Also, you can still book in for a free home sustainability assessment through the federal government’s Green Loans program.

Architect David Hallett, from Archicentre, says the first step is to choose between moving, building or renovating. “Increasingly, people are deciding to knock down their house and build a new one on the same block. Renovating is often a more sustainable alternative, because you’re not building a whole new dwelling.”

Archicentre is the building advisory service of the Australian Institute of Architects. It runs regular free seminars on home renovation, covering topics such as design, construction and permits. The next one will be on June 15, in Hawthorn.

The organisation also offers a ‘design concept’ service. “It’s a feasibility study for people who want to know what’s possible,” he says. For between $1000 and $2000, an architect will visit your home, draw up concept plans and, most importantly, give you a cost estimate.

Over the last five years, Mr Hallet has observed among clients a growing appetite for sustainable add-ons. “But by and large,” he says, “people haven’t fully grasped the value of passive solar design.”

He recommends would-be renovators learn the basic concepts – such as placing living areas to the north to admit winter sun, minimising windows to the south, shading west windows and insulating heavily. “You can add solar panels or heavy curtains later, but you can’t add passive solar design. You have to build it into the house.

“It’s sometimes challenging with a renovation, because you can get buildings that face exactly the wrong way. That’s where the fun starts, and where good design skills come in,” Mr Hallett says.

Judy Glick agrees. Last year, she led the renovation of the EcoHouse at CERES Community Environment Park. “I can’t emphasise enough the value of clever design,” she says. “You can achieve what you want without making the house larger.”

The EcoHouse is a 1920s weatherboard home, relocated to the Brunswick East site in the mid-1980s as a sustainability education facility. The recent makeover set out to prove that older homes could be retrofitted to be sustainable, affordable and appealing. It included an internal reshuffle to create an open-plan kitchen and living area, as well as a refurb of fittings and furnishings.

Wherever possible, Ms Glick opted for local, natural, non-toxic, second-hand, renewable or recyclable materials. “You can examine the environmental impact of every decision, from the broad to the very fine,” she says.

But that’s an agony of issues to grapple with. To make things simpler, she recommends seeking out products bearing the Good Environmental Choice Australia tick. “If you get guidance from third-party accreditation, you can make decisions without having to go through all the research yourself.”

The EcoHouse is open every Saturday morning, from 10 am until 1 pm, with staff on hand to answer questions. “We have before and after photos, so you can see what it looked like,” Ms Glick says. “It’s a fantastic place to start, and to see what you can achieve.”