Sustainability

One of our goals at the Painted Fish is to reduce our impact on the environment while maintaining a beautiful place to live.

At the moment a 1.12 kilowatt gird connected photovoltaic array produces a great deal of our own power and an evacuated tube solar hot water system with gas booster allows for continuous hot water. Two large rainwater tanks collect water for garden and household use.

We provide bikes to encourage guests to avoid car use around town and vegetable gardens provide food for us and guests (and the bobtail lizards who love our strawberries!) We use low impact appliances and cleaning products and promote local, family run businesses.

Tim has made modifications to the buildings that include triple insulated ceilings, temperature sensitive vents, the use of louvres to take advantage of cooling south westerlies, northern windows to capture light and heat in winter, solar pergolas and removable shade cloth to reduce the impact of the sun in summer, window tinting on western windows, the use of thermal mass in the studio, recycling of building materials where possible and appropriate, ball valves fitted to outdoor showers to make use of the cold water in the line to water the  before it is heated, air cooling pond systems, and a solarium to the north of the house . . . .and the list goes on every time Tim hears of a new idea!

While we are far from perfect we have endeavoured to make some reasonable inroads into reducing our impact on the planet. Hopefully the whole place will grow and improve as we learn more!