Thornleigh Passivhaus

Rain. Lots of rain! As of midnight last night we have recorded: 1352mm for the year, and counting at the rain comes down today. Already passed 3 of the last 7 years andclosing quickly closing in on the most rain recorded. The water tank is beyond full and has been overflowing for the last month. Rain data from my backyard gauge... Year annual total (mm) Year to date (mm) % of annual total 2022 >1340 1340   2021 1382 740 53% 2020 1475 675 46% 2019 1439 647 45% 2018 1187 246 21% 2017 1059 650 61% 2016 1332 526 39% 2015 1363 338 25% Mean 1320 556 41%

It has been a while since I've done a water update... Sydney Water: based on data from the last 8 water bills we have used 122kL over 646 days or an average of 189L/day. We have four people living here so individually we average 47 L/day. Comparing those numbers is a little tricky. Sydney Water data indicates that an average dwelling uses 623L/day . They also provide water efficiency targets by season , number of people and property size. For our property the comparison is > 900m² with 4 people. Sydney Water efficiency targets by quarter (L/day). Quarter Sydney Water Target TPH actual Aug - Oct 556 253 Nov - Jan 572 195 Feb - Apr 576 187 May - Jul 535 167 Despite by best intentions I have not yet put into place the software to measure the rain water tank usage directly, but I do have a system that measures the water height in the tank (Vegetronics) and a NetAtmo rain gauge.  The rainwater tank sensor reports full slightly below the actual full mark, so there...

We've recieved three water bills since moving in (how time flies)... for about half that time we have been working from home and even had the kids at home for six weeks. Even with all that we've done really well.  City water: the quarterly bill from the "old normal" was 172L/day, the lock down quarter was 198L/day, and the working from home quarter was 180L/day. So not too much variance really, and 183L/day over three quarters is good and puts us at 46L per person per day... about 20% of the typical Sydney resident.  Rain water: Since moving in we have been able to supply our laundry, toilet and garden needs for all but one week in January... without having to water some of the new plants we probably could have made it 100% on rain water for those needs. I plotted rain fall (from the NetAtmo rain gauge which is excellent) and water level in the rain water tank (using a Vegetronix AquaPlumb sensor, which the individual measurements (hou...

Our first quarterly water bill in the new house means water usage data! While water usage is not a "passive house" criterion, it is certainly related to the general principles of trying to live sustainably. From 14 October 2019 through 15 January 2020 we used 16,000L of water supplied from Sydney water (173L/day). While I don't have super precise numbers from the rainwater tank we probably used about the same about from the rainwater tank over the same period. Possibly the amount of rainwater used was a little bit more than that, but it could not have been much more. The reasoning behind estimating 16000 - 20000L from the rainwater tank... We had ~176mm of rain in mid-September which filled the tank (and then some), we had an additional ~22mm of rain the week before the water bill period started, so it would have been full at the start of the billing period (17500L capacity). On November 3rd we received 14mm of rain which would have topped it up a bit. In December w...