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.

6 MONTH MAINTENANCE

So we have reached our 6month maintenance period. Yes it's 6 months as opposed to 3months in some southern states. Although I thought it was 6 months from handover, it's actually 6months from PCI. Oh well, it just means we won't get through the actual 6months of wear and tear. There haven't been any major fix ups, just mainly minor adjustments/repairs or small things missing.

Let's see how long it takes for them to get through the list.