Barnone Posted July 16, 2006 Report Share Posted July 16, 2006 After our LSD to Melbourne, Sydney & Perth and the all confusion about where to settle, caused by the mire of information supplied by well meaning friends & aquaintances (all trying to convince us & themselves that theirs was the best city), we were almost convinced that Melbourne was the place to be (we don't have family or jobs & will be going on a business owner visa to start a business so we hoped to choose a city where there is a good mix of good weather, business prospects and a reasonable cost of living)...then the comments about the infamous Melbourne weather started & this got me researching the subject ...The Great Australian Weather debate put the facts on the table & has quite an amusing preamble too...We stiill haven't decided on either Sydney or Melbourne but Perth it seems is to remote from the rest of Australia in so far as interstate business is concerned but who knows, we may yet go there due to the smaller time difference with SA as we are battling to find an outright buyer for our business here in SA and may need to act on a consultancy basis to the new owners/partners. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riekie Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 What a GREAT link!!! Like large parts of Australia, Sydney has a drought and we have stage 3 water restrictions. My garden looks like a "droë ranskikking" and I absolutely HATE that (I LOVE gardening!!) The councils water the parks & public gardens etc. so it is not as if it looks like a desert here, but I would have loved to have a lush green garden..... Apart from the drought, Sydney has very moderate weather - typical Johannesburg weather in winter - without the frost and typical Pretoria weather in summer - without the rain...... No extremes, although it can get in the 40's in summer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindylou Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 Okey dokey - we're moving to Darwin!Thanx for the link _0 and good luck with the decision making!C'Lou Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annette Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 And then there's Adelaide, the most competitive city to start a business .... and the one with the lowest cost of living, most restaurants per capita etc. etc...... Jokes aside, Barnone, this is a brilliant link, thanks. I might just borrow it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindylou Posted January 31, 2007 Report Share Posted January 31, 2007 HiI'm bumping this thread - there have been quite a few queries about weather in the different states/cities lately, and I really enjoyed this article.Cindylou Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starfish Posted January 31, 2007 Report Share Posted January 31, 2007 Hi allGiven the current drought, and the water restrictions that are in place in several states, does anyone in Aus have wellpoints or boreholes like we do here in some parts of Cape Town ?Regards,Scott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annette Posted January 31, 2007 Report Share Posted January 31, 2007 Not too often, Scott, as a lot of Australia's ground water is saline (brak!) and the water table is too low. A lot of people have rainwater tanks though, but not much use without the rain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barnone Posted January 31, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2007 HiI'm bumping this thread - there have been quite a few queries about weather in the different states/cities lately, and I really enjoyed this article.CindylouThanks for the "bump" Cindy ... I'd like to steer the direction of this string away from the weather issues and chat about water saving/recycling devices and methods. We all know the residents of Queensland are spitting their their dummies at having to consume "recycled" water, has anyone else come across any usefull & helpfull hints or methods of saving water over there (other than rainwater tanks which SA is sadly lagging in). Could SA learn anything from Australia in this department or do you think we are pretty advanced in water recycling/saving/education ?I look forward to reading your opinions.keep cool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindylou Posted January 31, 2007 Report Share Posted January 31, 2007 The one thing that I found really interesting in Perth (not sure if it applies elsewhere) is that you have allocated watering times, so everyone has a "retic" (AKA water reticulation) on a timer and if your house number is X then you set your retic to water your garden for an hour from 5am on Tuesday and Thursday. Anyone with any other experiences?C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mara Posted January 31, 2007 Report Share Posted January 31, 2007 Hi BarnoneWe built a new home two years ago. It is piped for grey water and we also have an 18000 litre rain water tank. Believe me, you would be surprised how little rain you actually need to fall on your house roof in order for the tank to fill! Works like a dream. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starfish Posted January 31, 2007 Report Share Posted January 31, 2007 We had quite a water shortage in Cape Town in the summer of 2004, and heavy water restrictions were imposed. Quite a few small companies "sprang up", almost overnight, offering various ways of conserving water. Many of them entailed re-using water which you'd already paid for - i.e. bath and shower water, hand-basin water and washing machine water could all be rerouted to a system comprising a filter, a tank and a pump. This is known as greywater filtering, and the water obtained can be used to irrigate your garden, or piped into your toilets for flushing. More exotic systems did this with toilet water (yuk!), and your pool backwash water.If you're interested in more info, have a look at www.water-rhapsody.co.za or www.biosystemssa.co.za/greywater.htmI'm pretty sure you would have this sort of thing in Australia too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Posted February 1, 2007 Report Share Posted February 1, 2007 You don't need to panic on this one. As Mara's already said, quite rightly, you don't need much of a roof to collect enough rainwater to fill a decent sized rainwater tank to see you through the tough times.If you are anything of an Australian (or a South African, for that matter!) you will see the importance of a verandah . . . or a "stoep" if you don't speak "Strine" (Australian).These magic bits of household additions not only give you shade in the hottest time of year / time of the day, they give you more living area to entertain, sit and have brekkie outside, have mates round for a braai, etc., and can nearly double your roof area to catch precious raindrops that will keep you watering your lawn and washing your car on a Sunday arvo while all the neighbours are looking enviously on.Verandahs are cheap to knock up and only need a few posts and rafters with corrugated iron on top to do a reasonable job, so don't add much to the overall cost of a place, yet are worth their weight in gold if you're lucky enough to have a decent sized one.Even I can put a verandah up . . . . and nobody has shown me how. . . . so the average bloke should be able to tackle putting one up with some degree of expertise.In Adelaide, the rainfall is pretty unreliable from October to May. That amounts to seven months of the year that the average South Australian has to look forward to without much water supply. Rain mostly, if not all, comes in the other five months of the year.I have a 30 000 gallon (135 000 litre) concrete tank with a 7 000 gallon (31 000 litre) poly tank stuck alongside my work shed. That has never seen me run dry and we have been a family of five for most years.You don't need an enormous rainwater tank to see you through the driest months of the year, and it amazes me why local councils (who oversee all building projects in their local district) can't insist on new homes having at least a 5 000 gallon (22 000 litre) tank alongside the house with it plumbed into the laundry at the very least!Australia's water "crisis" would be solved overnight.Instead, I drive around new housing estates in the Adelaide suburbs regularly witnessing new homes going up with no verandahs, no eaves on their rooves, the sun pouring full into the rooms, and huge air conditioners put alongside the homes to cope with the design shortcomings.The architects of these "homes" might come from Tuscany (Italy), but they no nothing of Australia and its climate and living conditions.People buying these sort of places deserve to be hit with enormous power bills every month for the air conditioning of their homes alone, let alone future water cost increases.It strikes me that they are selling "image" rather than "practical convenience". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindylou Posted February 1, 2007 Report Share Posted February 1, 2007 Hey Bob, I'm with you on this one. It amazes me that "architects" are allowed to get away with this nonsense, they are the first people who should know better. Mara, municipal bylaws in JHB prohibit the use of rainwater tanks but I lived in Port Alfred for three and a half years and there the municipal water is not fit for consumption, so most houses have rainwater tanks to supply drinking and cooking water. Some of the houses are even built with huge underground tanks and don't even make use of municipal water at all!C'Lou Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starfish Posted February 1, 2007 Report Share Posted February 1, 2007 Hi BobMuch the same thing is hapening here - I think that it is cost-saving on the part of the property developers, who are more out to maximise their profit than to build a decent house. Even in the really expensive sububs here, we are seeing houses with no eaves, verhandas etc.Our major electricity provider here is running short of power, so we are facing power outages (again!) in summer, and one of the reasons they give is that more businesses and home are using air conditioning than ever before.It would be nice if municipalities could be proactive, and encourage more environmentally-friendly building alternatives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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