23 July

If you’re getting solar, do a shade analysis before buying (good installers will do it for you). For example this mighty tree in my street was factored into our system. By 3.30 most winter days, it shades our entire roof. Without it we’d have solar production until dinner time. I’m a big fan of trees, and this one is magnificent, but also now far too dangerous. I’ve asked Lithgow City Council twice to think about removing it, a sister tree to this one fell in a storm last year and took out power to the entire street, while destroying the neighbour’s fence and also kerb and guttering. And it was smaller than this one, which if it fell could smash the front half of ours or the neighbour’s houses. Its base sits in a tiny bit of nature strip barely a metre wide, overflowing it and ripping up the concrete. It’s dangerous, a huge tree totally out of proportion to its context. Replace it with something more sensible as a street tree.