Coolseat goes into Melbourne apartment
Coolseat into Melbourne apartment
By Lucy Bamford Intern with Coolseats and Sustainable House
• The assembled Coolseat outside the apartment in Melbourne. The perfect place for sitting, reading and doing work!
This past Friday, 11 April 2025, the newest design of the Coolseat was installed in an apartment garden in Melbourne, at Fishermans Bend beside the Yarra River.
Replacing an outdated, older composter, this update has increased the capacity of food waste and compost while providing a place to rest and a place to garden!
This Coolseat was constructed and placed with help from Mr. Fox In A Box, the fabrication business owned by Ciro, the manufacturer and fabricator of Coolseats.
Coolseats are Australian made and designed products and garden beds. Mrfoxinabox is based in the Melbourne area.
To prepare for the installation, the owner, Krystle, bought all the necessary materials for putting the Cooseat to work. This includes a box of worms, 100 kg of garden soil for the garden bed, plants of your - the buyer - choosing (eg basil, mint, rosemary, garlic chives; in this case, fruit trees) and a compost auger to turn the compost.
• The extra materials a coolseat owner buys to prepare for the install
• Krystle’s Coolseat being taken by Ciro out of the Mrfoxinabox van to be placed in the apartment garden
The Coolseat arrived assembled - it can be flat packed and freighted - and then it was just a matter of two people – Ciro and Krystle - carrying it to the apartment garden site. After the seat was levelled and moved it was time to add perlite to the wicking cells of the bottom of the system. Perlite, which comes with the Coolseat, goes into each of the water wicking squares and helps to draw up the moisture from the water storage cells into the soil - the cells are made by Waterups.
• Here is Ciro adding the perlite into the wicking system - perlite draws the water up directly to the plant roots
After the perlite is the soil! All the gardening soil that was purchased beforehand - 5 x 25 kg bags - was then added to the garden beds on either side of the seat..
• The Coolseat with the soil filled up and spread throughout
After the soil, the baskets were also put into space under the seat. Then, the plants were put to either side of structure and tanbark was put as a mulch on top of the soil as well.
Now with the plants in, it was time to add the water to the waterups system to start the water circulation. Water was added through the pipe at the top and then was measured using a water level device, also from WaterUps. By putting the level through the pipe at the top, you can see how full the levels are. After putting the device in the system, they were able to see that the Coolseat was adequately full since the red level was all the way at the top of the device.
• Putting the water level in the Coolseat to see the amount of water in the system.
One of the final and most important steps that was then completed was starting the warm farm and the composting. They were able to take the worms and compost matter from the old composter and put it into the Coolseat to begin the composting. With the worms added, fresh food waste could now be put in.
• Fresh food scraps being added to the new Coolseat. Let the composting begin!
With these steps now completed, this Coolseat is ready to start offsetting carbon emissions and start making a more positive environmental impact! We are so happy to be teaming up with Ciro and Mr. Fox In a Box to make this possible at this apartment and for furthering the reach and the positive impact of Coolseats!