6 MONTH

Well, today we had the maintenance guys turn up 10mins ahead of schedule, which was good, as I had to go to work as soon as we were finished.

We went through our list of warantee issues, then his tradesman guy turned up and started to working on the things he could. Some items had to be fixed by a plumber, capenter, electrician, window supplier, and garage installer. So I think the tradesman attended to about half of the minor problems. So we'll be waiting for the others to be fixed as soon as they can organise those contractors to do so. We have minor issues with appliances, and we were told to ring the appliance manufacturers to fix their waranty issues.

Can't say their were any major things that needed fixing up. The common things are fixing paint work in the cornices as the foundation settles and the house moves.

NEW HOME BUILDERS GRANT

On the 1st of July, the QLD government introduced the new home builders grant. If you have owned a house, and are wanting to build a new home. The state government will give you $10,000. If you are a first home owner and wish to build, you will be entitled to $17,000. I'm not sure if the first home buyer is still eempt from stamp duty either. What a bonus!

I'm so upset, we missed it by 5 and half months.

Rachel & Sandy, I wonder if you're eligible?

We have solar

Well we had the solar panels installed on the 22nd of June. Which was a few days less than the 8 weeks waiting period we had to queue for. We opted for a 1.5kW system, the reason we didn't go any larger was that the rebate isn't scaled up for a larger system. Whether you go 1.5 or 50kW, the rebate is the same, and it was way out of our budget. So we got the bear minimum, just so we could do our bit for the environment, that that it would do anything anyway.

Another reason was that we have checked our usage and it turns out, during the day we are only consuming on average 0.75kW, so we would be putting back half of what is generated. Which is still OK. Since the powering going back is worth more than is going in, we thought we'd see if we'd get any benefits without the huge expense.



 Look at the panels, we could have fitted almost 10times as many panels. Which would make us fairly self sufficient, not having to paying any power bills. Would mean we would have to invest in power storage batteries for the night time and rainy weather.

 This is the bright blue inverter that converts the power from the sun to usable 240V in the home.

They also added a circuit breaker for the unit (top left). That loose white thing-a-me-bob is our Climate Smart energy monitor.

Would you believe we have to wait an additional 6-8 weeks before we are connected to the grid. Be cautious guys, if you think you're going to generate power straight away. No, you must wait for a technician from the power company to come and connect you. I guess they can take their time, why would they want to be giving out solar credits straight away. It's the same as those banks who decide to increase rates as soon as the rate rise has been announced, and take their time to discount them when the official rates decrease. Same as petrol.