Community Sustainability Project (CSP) at 'The Linc'

Humble beginnings... The Linc before the retrofit

About the Community Sustainability Project at The Linc

parklands is the auspicing body for a 3 year grant from Sustainability Victoria that funds the operation of a Community Sustainability Project (CSP). The Project operates from a Wodonga City Council property known as The Linc. It is at 68 Lemke Road, Wodonga, and is accessed via the Lincoln Causeway opposite Gateway Village on Gateway Island. The CSP Co-ordinators invite interested individuals, groups and organisations to showcase practical ideas and products that can be used by people to reduce the ecological impact of their domestic lives. The Project office will be located at The Linc, along with a meeting and resource room available to a range of community groups. Part of the house and yard is used by an Iris Steiner playgroup.

Many environmental issues seem to be monumental and extremely daunting, so much so, that many people find it easier to ignore them rather than become involved in the solutions. We hope to show that there are many, sometimes small and simple things that we can do, which collectively make significant positive differences to our own back yards and beyond!

The Linc house

The Linc house and its ‘back yard’ on Gateway Island will be a demonstration and educational site showing that there are many small things that households can do to make a positive ecological difference. The Linc will be retrofitted with eco-friendly technologies, and the site will include examples of domestic-scale food production with permaculture gardens, along with a water-efficient and wildlife-friendly native garden. The 'back paddock' below the house and its 'home paddock' is part of a sensitive floodplain forest that once supported ephemeral wetlands. We're hoping to revegetate this area, making the CSP a carbon neutral operation, whilst also repairing degraded habitat for a range of threatened species.

The Linc house is a humble 1960s 3-bedroom, brick veneer dwelling that, like most suburban homes, faces the wrong direction in terms of optimum solar efficiency. The house faces the road, like most homes do, but this means that most of its living space faces south. Rooms that don't need solar heating, such as the laundry, toilet and bathroom, are unfortunately located on the northern side of the home. Whilst building a new eco-home is now a well-understood process, most people don't live in such efficient dwellings, instead needing to learn how to improve what are often older homes that were not built with any concern for energy efficiency. Most people also lack the budget to dramatically renovate a house by, for example, swapping rooms around so that living areas get the benefit of solar warmth in winter. The CSP doesn't have a big 'reno' budget either, so we have to work with many of the constraints faced by most owners of existing homes.

We are tenants in this Council-owned property, so like many residential tenants, we can only renovate the house in ways that have the landlord's consent. At least some of the renovations and techniques that we use will be relevant to renters, not just to owner-occupiers.

As a result of its role in an earlier project known as IMBY (In My Back Yard), The Linc house already has a solar hot water system and a small grid-connected solar electricity system. A 22,500L rainwater tank that was placed on the site during the IMBY project will soon be connected to the roof gutters.

Some of the features and ideas that we aim to demonstrate include: building insulation (ceiling, floor, and wall); a solar pergola (screens out hot summer sun but lets the sun into rooms during winter); safe rainwater collection and use; window insulation using double-glazing, magnetic double-glazing (attaches to existing windows), and pelmeted curtains made from sustainable fabrics that are recycled at the end of their use; evaporative cooling (uses very little electricity); panel heaters; solar powered air heating and ventilation; and the use of landscaping to improve building efficiency. We'd love to demonstrate a wider range of technologies and methods but we're limited by our modest budget and the need to engage in sponsorship agreements with suppliers and installers.

The Linc Festival

The festival will bring together a wide range of groups including manufacturers, installers, energy auditors, tertiary institutes, environmentalist groups, government departments, councils, scientists, farmers, inventors, builders, architects, engineers, and school children. The festival aims to provide easy access to some of the ideas, technologies, businesses, community groups, and skills that can help people to reduce their domestic ecological impacts.