1. Accept higher fuel costs

Fuel is more expensive in Germany because of environmental taxes added to the per litre price of fuel so German motorists are used to higher fuel prices. While Australians don’t have this tax, we can’t get too complacent.

As of 2005, conventional oil production has declined, new sources of oil are getting harder to extract (shale oil, tar sands) and Australia has exhausted most of its oil supplies and now imports around 90% of its oil [3][4].

Even if Australian or foreign government intervention to prevent catastrophic climate change does not severely limit fuel supplies (or climate change itself), expect that fuel prices will trend higher in the future even if they continue to fluctuate.

The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has sent prices skyrocketing due to sanctions, yet Russia accounts for just 12% of the world’s oil supply [5]. This is worth keeping in mind if you have to buy another car in the future.

 

 

2. Buck the SUV trend and get a smaller car

If we had to describe SUVs in a word, it would be “disappointing”. On the odd occasion that we’ve been in one, we’ve found there’s hardly any extra interior or luggage space and they feel like a land yacht to drive in comparison to a good small/mid-sized vehicle.

Luggage space can be augmented in smaller vehicles by getting a wagon where possible or using a roof pod to carry extra luggage when needed.

The lack of SUVs is a big reason why German drivers used 6.2 litres/100km on average in 2019 compared to Australia’s 11.1 litres/100km in 2020 [6][7].

Whilst Germany does have a lot of small diesels, their fuel savings are marginal compared to the difference in vehicle size and weight [7].

Small cars pay you back in three ways:

• They cost half as much or even less to buy than a larger SUV so you’re in front already.
• They don’t need technology that has a high upfront cost or a long payback period that could be unfulfilled due to a part or system failure (as can potentially happen with EVs, PHEVs, hybrids, turbo diesels, turbo petrols, LPG engines and stop/start technology) [8].
• They use less fuel, need fewer resources to be manufactured and have simular C02 lifecycle emissions to a large EV sedan on Australia’s electricity grid [9]. Just to be clear, no car is green but a small car is a less-worse option.

 

 

3. fuel costs are a quarter of your running costs

It feels like the hyper focus on fuel prices distracts motorists from the fact that car based transport is expensive in general. Generally, registration and insurance make up a quarter of your car costs, fuel another quarter and depreciation, repairs and consumables make up the rest.

So in the grand scheme of things, the average Australian is paying $1000 a year or more on fuel which bites, but it can be easily outstripped by a vehicle price rise or a major component failure.

So what to do? As mentioned earlier, a smaller car can halve your depreciation costs (the money you have to put aside to get your next car as yours ages and wears out). This could save you $1500 a year quite easily.

Plus if you buy a smaller car for $25,000 (or less second hand) instead of $50,000 or more for an SUV, you might be able to buy it in cash saving you $500-$1000 in loan interest costs. The lower purchase price, fuel costs and interest saved can easily add up to $4000 a year or more.

 

 

4. Travel less

In 2008, one of us had a large car and traded it in for a mid-sized wagon which saved $1000 a year on fuel.

As great as that was, when we got rid of our last car in 2011, we jointly saved $15,000 a year compared to a two car household (including public transport costs, taxi fares, car hire and bike costs).

At the time of writing, this has added up to $170,000 making for a much shorter mortgage.

This is not as common in Australia but it is much more common in Germany. We have many friends there with one or no car and that includes friends with kids. Australia may be the land of the outback but in 2020, 77% of all kilometres travelled by passenger cars were in cities and urban areas because that’s where most people live [10].

So chances are you can sub out car trips for something cheaper like public transport, cycling, walking, doing something local instead, carpooling or combining your errands into fewer trips.

If the fresh air, exercise, company or time to read and relax isn’t enough motivation, the non-fixed car costs per kilometre (that is, everything besides registration, insurance and roadside assist) is about $0.50 a kilometre verses $0.05-$0.20 a kilometre for car alternatives.

As an example, to travel from our town to the nearest capital city and back costs $34-$50 depending on the time of day whereas it’s $120 by car. See going carfree for tips on how to free yourself from car costs altogether.

The price of fuel in Germany verses their lower real world fuel costs demonstrates that Australians have some buffer to play with in the face of rising fuel prices.

At one end, there’s the option of downsizing your car and at the other end there’s the option of reducing car based travel to the point of downsizing to a one or no car household.

Fluctuating oil prices are hiding the decline of cheap oil and the rise of disruptive climate change so it would be wise not to bank on cheap oil in the future and reap the benefits of cheaper travel now.

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Further Reading:

[1] In the 2019/2020 financial year, the average Australian car travelled 11,100 kilometres:

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/tourism-and-transport/survey-motor-vehicle-use-australia/latest-release

[2] In 2019, the average German car travelled 13,602 kilometres:

https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-sector/transport/distance-travelled-by-car.html

[3] https://www.postcarbon.org/has-oil-peaked/

[4] https://www.ga.gov.au/digital-publication/aecr2021/oil

[5] https://www.statista.com/topics/5399/russian-oil-industry/#dossierKeyfigures

[6] https://www.ptua.org.au/myths/efficient/

[7] As shown on the graph, the average German diesel car was only 1 litre/100km better than the average German petrol car:

https://www.iea.org/articles/fuel-economy-in-germany

[8] The Dog and Lemon guide and Auto Expert have quite a lot of information on the myriad of things that can go wrong with these technologies. Both sites are in the business of selling something (car reviews and direct car sales) but at least they’re honest about what can go wrong with cars and the costs involved.

[9] A litre of petrol burned will produce 2.31kg of carbon dioxide (that seems unbelievable given that a litre of petrol weighs less than that, the reason is that when a molecule of carbon is released it combines with two molecules of oxygen to form carbon dioxide, hence it is heavier than the original amount of fuel burned).

So a small car averaging 7 litres/100km over a lifetime of 300,000km will produce 48.5 ton of C02 along with the estimated 12 ton to produce it, so we have a total of 60.5 ton. A long range electric car needs 20 ton of C02 for its manufacture and will produce 35 ton of C02 over a lifetime of 300,000km charging off the Australian grid for a total of 55 ton. This shows how close the two are, given that the original numbers are general estimates:

https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2019/10/27/are-electric-cars-greener-lets-crunch-the-numbers/

[10] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/tourism-and-transport/survey-motor-vehicle-use-australia/latest-release

First a couple of announcements (which will be of no surprise to our friends and family reading this):

In 2020, we went from Smart Renting as a couple to Smart Renting as a family. It was a very interesting test of how living on less works when there are more demands on your time, energy and finances.

We’ll write about this in more detail in a future post but needless to say, Smart Renting with a newborn worked pretty well.

The other big piece of news is that in early 2021 after a joint 13 years across 7 rental properties, we moved into our first home as owners.

This has given us an interesting insight into the pros and cons of home ownership, something that we’ll also write about in more detail for renters who might be thinking of buying.

 

 

In our home country of Australia (and in other parts of the world at the moment), there are big challenges including, higher energy costs, higher food costs, a post-Covid lockdown property price surge, rising inflation, rising interest rates and a rise in climate related disasters.

We can’t say with any certainty what the future will hold but we can say that being frugal and being connected with your wider community is always going to help in tough times.

In fact, as uncertainty is fast becoming the new normal, the energy and resource intense ways of living that have become the norm in the wealthier parts of the world since World War 2 are likely to give way to living more on less so we may as well get started now and beat the rush.

Thanks for reading, stay tuned for more posts and we hope that you are travelling ok in these turbulent times.

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Showerheads in Australia are now officially limited to 9 litres/min and Australian’s have taken up them up in large numbers. Given that hot water is still a big energy user we wanted to see if a comfortable shower could be had with less hot water.

Changing a showerhead is a low cost way for renters to save water and energy with the bonus that you can take the showerhead with you and reinstall the old one when you leave.

The only disadvantage is that showers typically have either a “showerhead rose”, pivot arm or handheld shower configuration meaning that what works in your current property may not work in the next one.

A well-known hardware store chain in Australia stocks 7.5 to 9 litre/min showerheads but a little online searching revealed two shower heads for our testing; a Methven Kiri Satinjet Graphite Low Flow 5 litre/min unit for $150 and an EZYFIX AIR 6 litre/min shower for $40.

 

 

We didn’t ask for or get any freebies; both showerheads were bought with our own money and the sellers had no idea that we are affiliated with this site. The same is true of the Flexispray showerhead mentioned further below.

Both prices include shipping, are for handheld showerheads and don’t include the price of installing a shower rail for handheld showers though the Methven also comes in a showerhead rose and a pivot arm configuration for a higher price.

As far as our research goes, these are the lowest flow shower heads that you can get in Australia (outside of our 2.5 litre/min pump shower used as a solar hot water system for renters).

We tested the flowrate of both showerheads on flat out using a bucket and a stop watch and they used exactly the amount of water per minute as advertised.

Next, we tried a few showers with both showerheads. Long story short, the Methven is a pretty trick showerhead with it mist design and it wets the skin and warms the body. Still, it just didn’t feel like a proper shower to us maybe because there’s the lack of the sensation of water hitting your skin.

That said, there are plenty of positive user reviews online so we’re not saying that it’s a bad showerhead, it just didn’t feel right to us so we sent it back.

 

 

The EZYFIX on the other hand felt nicer. Even though it only flows at 6 litres/min on full, the spread of water is decent and there was plenty of water with the tap on at two thirds of its maximum pressure. We kept this one and it’s a bonus that it’s much cheaper too.

There’s just two drawbacks with this showerhead; it is a little noisy though this didn’t bother us and as you turn the pressure up, you need to add a bit more hot water to compensate for heat loss through the aeration process though not much.

Conclusion

If you switch from a 9 litre/min showerhead to a 6 litre/min showerhead, you’ll go from using 45-50 litres per shower to 33-35 litres per shower for a five minute shower (including 3-5 litres for warm up water).

If you like the experience of a low flow misting showerhead like the Methven we tested, you can get as low as 28-30 litres per shower.

If you are on a tight budget, there’s one of two things you can do:

• You can buy a Flexispray Cayman head for $32 if you have a rose or pivot shower installation. They flow at 7.5 litres/min and give a decent shower.
• You can buy an EZIFIX AIR shower head if you have handheld shower installation.
• If you need to move, you haven’t spent a lot and can keep the showerhead if you end up with the same type of shower again.

Hope this helps if you want to use much less hot water but don’t want to go with a portable solar hot water for renters system. Don’t forget to look at the Hot Water section for easy ways to get your hot water down to 50-75% less than the average Australian home.

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Some background information

• 2 adult occupants.
• Two bedroom unit, 65m2 (interior), part of 3 ground level units. Estimated build date, late 1980s. Relatively draught free with single glaze windows.
• Located in Melbourne (classified as a temperate oceanic climate).
• Occupants spent 5 weeks away from home in 2019 on holiday.
• One occupant worked one day a week from home and the house was occupied for 50% of all waking hours.

Costs and usage for 2019

Energy

• Electricity use was 2kWh a day on average
• 3kWh produced on average by backup solar system, 1.7kWh supplied by 100% GreenPower mains electricity.
• No gas usage.
• Energy cost for the year was $600.
• Internet and mobile costs for the year were $800
• Power usage when home was vacant was 0.15kWh per day to power our chest fridge, an electric garage door and wired in smoke detectors.

 

 

Main appliances

• 90% of lighting provided by solar powered lights.
• Solar hot water provided by portable solar hot water system with a sealed shower cubicle.
• Two induction hotplates and an occasionally used electric oven.
• Reverse cycle heater, required for approximately 200 hours in winter for heating (approximately one third of all our electricity use)
• No air conditioning used, only fan based cooling, portable evaporative cooler and exterior blinds. Total estimated cooling energy, under 2kWh or less than 1% of total energy use.
• Chest freezer converted to run as a fridge.
• Top loader washing machine with “eco” rinse mode, 70 litres per wash with a full load.
• Small back up power solar system with 120Watt solar panel and a decommissioned 1.2kWh ex-generator starter battery for storage.
• Two 200Wh batteries allow the solar power to be “carried” inside and they are used to power a laptop, solar lighting, mobile phones, an internet router, a stereo and a portable evaporative cooler.

 

 

Water use

• Water usage was 100 litres a day on average/50 litres per person including the garden.
• Water bill was $130 for the year.

Food production

• 50kg of fruit, vegetables and herbs were harvested from our home garden.
• 10kg of fruit, vegetables and herbs were acquired through bartering or foraged from elsewhere.
• Less than a few kg of food was wasted.
• Approximately 500kg of compost was produced.
• We estimate that the garden produced $1000 worth of produce.

 

 

Local and regional transport

• One quarter of all travel was on foot.
• One quarter of all travel was on public transport.
• Almost 40% of transport was by bicycle.
• 10% of transport was by car.
• Transport costs were $4000 for the year.

How was life using 5% of the energy of an average Australian home, 17% of the average water consumption, living car free and growing some food?

• Our house was comfortable all year round. We were warm in winter, cool in summer and had all the lighting and conveniences we needed.
• Lower ambient lighting combined with task lighting enabled us to have better sleeping patterns.
• Our back up solar system provided cooling during a hot weather blackout.
• Our garden only required an hour a week of work on average.
• Even though all of the above around the house required some extra effort, it only amounted to around 15 minutes a day (including the garden) which was well worth it for what we saved in home running costs.
• The vast majority of travel was convenient enough providing exercise and time for reading on public transport. The extra time spent travelling was easily offset by the savings.

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It all happened in a split second; the bike’s brakes locked up hard on a path made extra slippery by a mix of bushfire ash and light rain. This caused the front wheel to skid which made the handlebars suddenly turn and caused the bike to go out from under me.

In that split second, my right hand shot out instinctively to grab the stone wall next to the path and unfortunately succeeded in getting a hold just as the bike went down. To my surprise and the many swear words uttered, the pain hit and this new kind of pain wasn’t normal.

A trip to hospital and an x-ray confirmed that my right shoulder had been dislocated and relocated but in the process had been fractured, taking off a 20 cent piece of bone.

Everything that was planned for the week was going to change. There would be surgery and a lengthy period off work because you can’t drive 26 metre long trucks with a busted shoulder.

The instructions from the emergency doctor and later the surgeon and physio were clear: For the 2 weeks before surgery and the 6 weeks after, you are not to use your right arm and then only use it for light duties for the next 8 weeks after that. And definitely, no bike riding for the next few months.

 

 

Upon arriving home, I realised that some of the things that I do around the home were going to be tricky especially that Rabea at this stage was 6 months pregnant. Here’s how things worked out:

• We are a gas free household so using a normal shower is not an option for us.
• Our portable solar hot water system was off the table as it required lifting a 10 litre bucket in and out of a solar oven and then later pouring it into a pump shower.
• The pump shower worked surprisingly well for one handed operation and I filled it using an electric kettle which still uses just a 25% of the energy that our hot water heater needed.
• We put the garden into maintenance mode by just tending to the main tasks (watering, harvesting, preserving) and still collected 20kg of produce in the first three months of this year.
• Maintaining a car free lifestyle has been fairly easy as I have used more walking and public transport instead of riding a bike.
• Most of our fresh produce is delivered from a grocer and we discovered a bulk food supplier who delivers to our area. Although the food is a bit pricier than dry goods and legumes bought from a supermarket, they are organic and don’t add much to our grocery bills.
• Instead of buying 7 litres of rice milk a week (and having to bring it home), we now buy half a kilo of rice flour and a few other small ingredients to make our own, saving money, packaging and effort.
• Outside of these changes, there were no noticeable impacts. All the other things that we normally do were manageable.

 

 

Help from friends and neighbours

• Getting to know the neighbours has been great for many reasons and we can now add that we had lots of offers for help.
• Neighbours and friends offered to give us a hand to move heavy items if need be, something that we were grateful for when the odd wicking box (30kg+) needed to be shifted or when we bought a change table from our next door neighbour.
• On two occasions, family and friends gave us a lift to the supermarket just after the accident to stock up on some goods which we’d normally do on the bike (or by taxi if need be).
• It’s good to know that in a time of crisis people have your back.

Bike insurance

• If you regularly ride a bike in Victoria, it is important to remember that bike riders are only insured against a loss of income if another motored vehicle is involved which falls under the TAC (Transport Accident Commission).
• WorkSafe in Victoria hasn’t covered injuries travelling to or from work for commuters since 1998.
• Eligibility for transport accident insurance or workplace insurance when commuting may vary from state to state so check your local state.
• We are both members of Bicycle Network Australia which has an insurance component. They have covered most of the loss of my income starting from two weeks after the accident up to when I can return to work.

Although living large on less sometimes requires a little more physical effort to achieve, we were quite surprised at how well our energy, food and transport systems held up in the face of an unexpected crisis.

 

 

A final point

Australia’s public healthcare system may not be perfect (I waited for 11 hours in Emergency due to a very bad night for the hospital) but the nurses, doctors, surgeons, physio and all the other staff I encountered were highly dedicated and did an excellent job.

My shoulder is now getting better with each day, I can do more around the house and I am expecting to return to full duties at work in a month. It’s humbling to know that without a decent public health system, a bad luck situation could have permanently left me with a bad right shoulder or a very expensive private operation.

It’s easy to focus on individual actions and say in a non-fussed manner that one day the modern health system will collapse due to a variety of reasons (antibiotic resistance, energy descent and climate change) but if you’ve ever needed it, you’ll appreciate what it can do. We shouldn’t take it for granted.

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As a disclaimer, the temperatures below where not measured with calibrated instruments under scientific conditions, they are just a guide which we used alongside the reports from the Bureau of Meteorology for our region.

To give you an idea of what we are working with, our home is a late 1980s build and though it’s well built, it wouldn’t achieve better than a 2 star energy rating based on its age and features. It has east and west facing windows and no summer shading between 8am and 7pm.

In preparation for Friday’s hot weather, we charged up our back-up system battery from our back up solar system and pre-cooled the house by leaving a couple of windows open on the previous night.

We used the screen doors to let in cool air whilst watering the garden at 7am. At this time, the indoor temperature was 17 degrees.

When the outdoor temperature reached 17 degrees before 8am, we closed everything up to keep the indoors cool for as long as possible.

We also shut the exterior and interior blinds to keep the sun out as most of the heat that gets indoors in summer comes through the windows. At this point, we were both a little cold which is a good start for a hot day.

 

 

Throughout the morning, the temperature slowly climbed and by 3pm, the indoor temperature was 26 degrees while the outdoor temperature was 44 degrees.

At this point, we needed some personal cooling to maintain thermal comfort so we switched on our personal evaporative cooler. It has multiple vents, so when placed on an object like a coffee table, it can easily cool several people sitting on a couch which is how we used it.

By 6pm, the maximum outdoor temperature of 45 degrees had been reached and the maximum indoor temperature hit 29 degrees and stayed there until 11pm when it slowly began to decline.

The personal evaporative cooler kept us nice and cool under these conditions and continued to do so while we slept (following a refreshing cold shower). A fan would also have worked fine under these conditions.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, a cool change came through. The interior temperature was still 26 degrees at 6am though it quickly fell to 23 degrees after some windows were opened.  The evaporative cooler consumed a measly 6 Watts, or a total of 0.09kWh for the whole day and 4 litres of water.

A personal fan would have used 0.5kWh (5 times as much) and our air conditioner would have used 13.5kWh (roughly 30 times as much as the fan and 150 times as much as the evaporative cooler).

 

 

Here’s what we can share from our experience:

• If you’ve got a reasonably cool night or morning beforehand, open some windows to pre-cool your home as it helps to keep it cooler for longer.
• Postpone strenuous tasks if possible or do them in the cool of the morning or evening.
• Keep cooking to minimum as it makes no sense to produce unnecessary heat in the kitchen or even make up some meals the day before that taste delicious cold.
• Cool water from the fridge can be refreshing.
• If you find yourself getting a bit warm from an unavoidable task in the heat, a cold or cool shower is a great way to cool down and freshen up (as is a swim if you live near water).
• We have found personal cooling like fans and personal evaporative coolers to be effective in indoor temperatures of up to 30-32 degrees (the cooling limit of any fan based cooling is 35 degrees [1]).
• The other advantage of personal cooling is that it can be adjusted to suit the temperature requirements of each individual rather than a pre-determined temperature that suits only one person the most.
• You can use air conditioning for indoor temperatures above 30 degrees to bring your most important one or two rooms back to 26 degrees and combine it with personal cooling to slash your air conditioning needs.
• Keep an eye on the weather report to see when a cool change is coming and when it does, you can switch off your cooling and throw open the windows to cool the house down.
• Keep an eye out for neighbours, especially neighbours vulnerable to heat stress as you can help them out in the case of a blackout, or if the indoor temperature of their home becomes unsafe.
• Learning to keep your house cool with little to no grid energy means that you are insulated against blackouts.
• You are also a benefit to others by helping to reduce stress when the grid experiences peak demand in hot weather and can even assist vulnerable neighbours.

 

 

Of course, no system is perfect. The one change we would make is to use a fan for sleeping instead of the portable evaporative cooler (as the noise of a fan is more pleasant to sleep to) and just use the portable evaporative cooler to sleep to if there is a blackout.

There’s also the option of using a 12 volt DC fan to keep the whole thing running on our solar system.

Our biggest challenge will be on a hot day that follows a hot night where pre-cooling is harder to achieve.

We made this work in Germany where we experienced a 2 month heatwave without air conditioning where every day had a maximum temperature of 30-40 degrees and the nights were warm.

The next time this happens, we’ll let you know how it goes. Until then, stay cool and enjoy the festive season.

Post script 29/03/20: We continued to use this system all the way through summer and it worked really well; our air conditioner wasn’t needed at all and we had a 2 hour blackout on a hot day where our cooling system continued to work.

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Further Reading:

[1] If you want to learn something interesting, here’s an in depth article on how fans work for personal cooling and why they are better bang for your cooling buck than air conditioning:

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/09/circulating-fans-air-conditioning.html