Laid Waste
Posted: Thu 17 August, 2023 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Green 4 Comments »One of the (admittedly silly) things I’m generally proud of is how comparatively little non-recyclable waste I generate here. When it comes to my bin-collection days, I’m usually quite surprised by how full the bins of my neighbours are in comparison.
Now admittedly the other households usually have more people in, and I take that into account – but all the same, those bins are filled to the brim most fortnights.
Mine seems to generally work out as one bag per fortnight, so I generally (unless it’s been stupidly warm, in which case I’d rather be rid) actually only put that bin out every other fortnight – and even then, it’s nowhere near full. I could probably get away with only putting it out every six weeks, to be honest.
On the other hand, I’d be considerably more stuffed if I forgot to put the recycling stuff out for collection. (I base that on knowledge, I messed up one day and missed it when the collection came far earlier than usual, and it was a pain in the bits to catch up!)
I know that, all things considered, it means precisely cock-all. But I’m still happy that I’m not landfilling much stuff at all. (Obviously most of my carbon footprint is taken up with idiot drives, rather than the waste I generate)
Devices
Posted: Sun 26 February, 2023 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Technology, Television Leave a comment »Over the last few weeks, I’ve managed to get through two TVs – which is annoying, but thankfully hasn’t been hideously expensive.
Back in Tiny House, my TV was comparatively tiny, I think a 24″ screen. It was fine for the space I was in, and lasted me well. However, in New Place, the living room is considerably larger, so the comparatively tiny screen was less than ideal – but still worked.
This all came up in conversation with friends, and one of them offered a larger screen for free – they were moving, merging houses and so on, and had an extra 43″ screen that otherwise would just be going spare (or going to the tip) so I was happy to take that one. It meant I didn’t have to get a new one, and it was also a case of being a bit greener, rather than just trashing things. I collected it about a month ago, and it’s been fine until this week.
For some reason, it’s ended up throwing a complete wobbly – something to do with the sensor/receiver for the remote control, from what I can tell – and became a nightmare to use. If the remote worked at all, it was as if it was the key was staying down and repeating the input continuously. And it was with two different remotes (the actual TV remote, and the Sky remote that was also able to operate the TV) which is what makes me think it was the sensor/receiver. Regardless though, it made the entire thing into an absolute pain in the chuff, and even a hard reset didn’t fix things.
So… despite all my good intentions, I ended up ordering a new screen, the same size as the one I’d been given. (As I know it at least fits/works in the new living room) It got ordered on Friday and delivered on Sunday, which is pretty good – particularly as I was out for most of Saturday anyway – and it’s all now installed and set up, so I’m happy.
Obviously I’d rather that things had worked out better for that middle screen, but at the same time it’s been moved at least two (and probably three) times, so it’s at least vaguely understandable. Anyway, they’ll go to the tip tomorrow, in order to be as recyclable as possible, and all that jazz.
Tipped
Posted: Fri 23 December, 2022 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green 3 Comments »Earlier this week I finally took my (currently) last load of cardboard to the local recycling facility. (Or “tip” as it used to be known) It was, I think, the last stage of the whole moving process, although I’ve kept the cardboard moving boxes just in case.
All told it’s been four carloads, and I’ve spread that over a few weeks (mainly through my own idleness and disorganisation, admittedly) so it’s taken time, but it’s been good and pain-free, which is what matters. One thing you can say for Ikea – fucking hell they use a lot of cardboard! The packaging for three bookcases, a bed, a wardrobe, two chairs and a sofa takes up a fair amount of space.
Thankfully I’ve had the garage to hold the cardboard in the meantime, rather than it clogging up the house – although that also contributes to why it took longer to get done, as it was a case of “out of sight, out of mind”.
Anyway, I’m happy that the jobs are done. It’s a good feeling.
Refronted
Posted: Fri 4 February, 2022 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green 2 Comments »Over the last couple of years, both of my neighbours in our little terrace/block have updated their front doors to modern composite doors, with better security and so on. That’s left mine in the middle looking like the easiest target of the three, which is never something I’m entirely happy about. (The other two properties in the block also have the same older front doors, but mine being between two new ones made it feel like that weakest option)
I’ve always worked with the ethos that you don’t bother making your house the safest/strongest on the street (because that just makes people think you’ve got stuff worth stealing) but you do make it harder to get into than those of your neighbours. It can be a bit of an “arms race” scenario, and it can be a bit selfish (“I’m OK, others can sod off”) but it’s still not a bad structure to live by.
I talked about this a while back with my landlord, and he agreed that it would be a good idea to upgrade it – particularly as it’ll also be *way* more insulated and energy-efficient (which is a consideration for rented properties now, they need to pass a certain grade of energy efficiency) which makes it A Good Plan.
So – after several mis-fires of companies measuring up, assuring they could do it, and then pulling out – the new door went in yesterday. It was a fairly big job (most of a day to do) and I’m glad that it turned out to be on a day when the temperature was actually quite reasonable (for February) so it all went OK.
Already the differences are noticeable. It’s a lot quieter (better insulation, no gaps etc.) and noticeably warmer. Definitely A Good Thing.
Now I just need to get my replacement fridge (that’s a story for a different time) delivered tomorrow and sorted, and hopefully things will then run smoothly for a while again.
Exchange of Power
Posted: Sun 3 January, 2021 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, nPower, Utilities Leave a comment »Over the years I’ve been here, one thing I’ve truly slacked off on is my electricity/gas supplier.
Some of that has been due to my landlord initially asking me to not change things on that score – fair enough, I guess – and just transferred the energy account name from the previous tenant to mine. Not necessarily ideal, but there we go. And so, because of that, and it being something I just wasn’t overly faffed about, I’ve stayed with that supplier.
Anyway, that supplier was nPower, and while they’ve been a sack of shit throughout my time here, they’ve at least been a reliable sack of shit.
However. Back in the first week of December, I logged in to the nPower website to send in a meter reading, and got a redirect page, saying “We’ve transferred your account to E.On“. Which is… shit. It’s been done with no communication, no warning, nothing.
The following week, I got a confirmation from E.On that my account had been transferred over, and containing some basic information. Although there was nothing in it about what they’d be charging, or for how long, or… well… anything else, really.
So the key part of the email for me was this…
If you want to switch supplier within 30 days of your account moving to E.ON Next, we won’t charge any fixed tariff exit fees, but we’d love you to stick around and get to know us.
So that’s what I’ve done. Over New Year I sorted out a second transfer, moving over to Octopus Energy (which has a fixed-term contract, but no exit fees)
Amusingly, E.On then emailed as part of the process, and asked “let us know why you’re moving”. Which I did, in no uncertain terms. (Nothing rude or sweary, but a fairly constructive ‘With that attitude, why would I want to stay?!?’ message)
The response from their representative today just went to show that moving on was absolutely the right decision…
I appreciate you providing us with your feedback this will be forwarded to the appropriate department for future assessment.
The migration process is an automated process, which unfortunately we have no control over.
Wish you all the best with your new provider.
A pretty convincing version of “Yeah, we don’t care, just piss off”
It’ll be interesting to see how the switch goes, and how things work out with Octopus…
Petrol and Diesel
Posted: Fri 7 February, 2020 Filed under: Change, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Green, Green, Thoughts 1 Comment »This week, one of the main stories in the news was about the UK announcing it had brought forwards a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel-fuelled cars to 2035 from its initial target of 2040.
That’s all well and good, but it does have its problems as well. To my mind, the biggest of these is the necessary infrastructure.
You can tell that the great majority of the people proposing these requirements (and expecting everyone in the country to follow suit) live in houses with driveways – or at least off-road parking – as well as the funds to pay for a significant increase to their electricity usage.
However, lots of people don’t live in those situations. Those in blocks of flats, for example, wouldn’t necessarily have access to anything. For those who (like me) live in a house with on-street parking – and even then it’s not guaranteed or reserved parking, so I regularly end up parking a distance away from my place – but even if I were parked outside the house, an electric car would mean dangling a power cable out of the house, and across the pathway that’s regularly used. For that scenario, I’m honestly not sure what the infrastructure requirements would be – and I don’t think anyone else knows either.
The costs are another matter. Yes OK, you’re cutting out the costs of fuel, but if the demand for electricity shoots up that much, then so will the costs of it. Additionally, there are plenty of people who are on paid-supply meters, or high tariffs (whether because of laziness and not changing, or because that’s all they can get because of debt, income, whatever) and that can also be an issue.
Alongside those concerns – and just using myself as an example – there are plenty of drives that fall outside the range of all but the most expensive electric vehicles. An ‘affordable’ vehicle like the Nissan Leaf, for example, apparently has a range of 135 miles. So I could do a return journey from home to London, no worries. But I couldn’t do a trip down to see my friends in Somerset (which I can do in 3 hours currently) without a recharging stop each way. (And again, they don’t have a power point for charging a car down there) Same when I go to see friends in Manchester, or Newcastle.
Hell, I’ve even done daily commutes that would take me past that kind of mileage – and the office was (again) somewhere with no connection to a decent charger, it would’ve been power-cable-tastic – which would have been entirely impractical.
If that kind of target for everyone to have electric vehicles is to be realised, I think there need to be quantum leaps in several aspects, including (but not limited to)
- Infrastructure for charging vehicles
- Battery technology, to improve both the range of electric vehicles, and to improve the speed of charging
- and to improve at-home-storage, allowing the potential for using home-based renewable generation – solar, wind, whatever – that can be stored to provide the charging without draining the grid
- A huge review of the costs of that electricity, and to ensure increases to the supply that will handle all that extra demand
- Consideration of the impact on petrol and diesel industry – including the effects of all the staff who might then be in less demand at filling stations and so on
Personally, I think a lot of stuff round electric vehicles is a load of old cock. I’m not convinced that they’re any more efficient (among other things, there’s a lot of power lost in the transmission over cables, so it needs a *lot* more generation in order to provide the supply) and while they’re less polluting at the point of use, I’m not convinced that it’s doing anything more than moving that around. We don’t know what happens with the constituent parts of the car batteries, or what happens when they expire (or when a car crashes or whatever)
I don’t claim to know what the answer is – but I also don’t think that a wholesale change like this is necessarily the best plan. It needs a lot more thought, and a shitload more planning than currently seems to be happening.
Environmental
Posted: Sun 20 October, 2019 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Green, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »On my post about mileage and so on, BW commented “No environmental conscience chez toi, then, eh? 😉” And I can’t deny, that annoyed me a fair bit.
So…
-
- That weekend, I hired a car that was supposed to have a better Eco-profile than my current car. Sadly, that turned out to not be the case – it got a lot less MpG than mine, and generally wasn’t very good. But the intentions were there, at least. Even though I should’ve stuck to my usual car.
- Where possible – in this case, the run to and from Oxford – I carried friends, rather than everyone driving individually
- Taking public transport was simply not a realistic option, for a range of reasons, including
- I’d still have to drive to my nearest station, and (as I understand it) shorter journeys like that are the worst environmentally, as most of the nastys happen on start-up/warm-up, rather than on longer runs
- The runs to Oxford and Chichester would both have been over three hours each way, and cost more than the fuel for the entire weekend
- The journey to Kent wouldn’t have been possible at all
- Also, knowing the mileage etc., I make use of a carbon offset programme – it’s not perfect, but (I hope) it helps
- The Big Cat Experience in Kent use most of the money from the experience days and so on to go towards ecological and animal protection/preservation projects overseas.
Outside of those things, there’s also the following other little bits
- I’m still using a car that’s now ten years old (and passes the MoT emissions test with flying colours) rather than using up a load of resources with a new vehicle
- My domestic waste/rubbish is absolutely minimal – indeed, if I didn’t have cats, I’d be easily able to get away with one domestic waste collection per month – and I recycle far more than most people.
- I rarely fly anywhere – the last time was two years ago
- Most of my electric/electronic devices are recharged via a battery bank that charges off a solar panel, rather than via the mains.
There’s probably other stuff as well, but anyway, it’s a pretty good start.
I fully accept that my environmental profile isn’t perfect – my main downsides are electricity and driving. And I balance as much of that as possible. However, I’m also pretty sure that it’s a lot better than that of most people.
Even more importantly, no matter what I do to improve my profile, it’s utterly irrelevant in comparison to other environmental things. For example, if the new phase of advertising on video screens (particularly the stand-alone street-furniture versions) were deactivated/turned off overnight it would save more in a week than I could contribute in a lifetime.
So – do I have an environmental conscience? I’ll let you decide – although I think the answer is generally yes.
Clearing Out
Posted: Fri 28 December, 2018 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Thoughts Leave a comment »In general, I’m pretty good at not being too wasteful – I try to recycle as much stuff as possible, and generally don’t over-buy or buy stuff I don’t want or won’t use.
However, I’ve amassed some things that now need to be got rid of, so that’s part of my plan between now and the start of the year.
It’s not a lot, in the great scheme of things – my house isn’t large enough to have room for storing a load of unused stuff – but it’s one of those “when I get round to it” jobs, and now is the time for me to get round to it.
I’ll still aim to get as much as possible to the local recycling centre, although I know that some will also end up going into normal rubbish, just because it’s stuff that isn’t actually recyclable.
Changing Plants
Posted: Tue 7 March, 2017 Filed under: Change, Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, House Work, Single Life, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the weekend, I spent some time changing the plants and pots I’ve got in the yard of my house.
Some of the things from last year had died off, most having only been expected to live a year, a couple of others just needed to be changed and a one needed to be replaced as the poxy cat had decided that pot was a spare litter tray. Additionally, I’d changed a bit on what I wanted to try out this year.
For example, last year I had a couple of small apple trees in patio pots. One had done OK, but ended the year overtaken by wooly aphid things that made it look like it was covered in frost/snow/cotton-wool, while the other hadn’t taken at all. So they were candidates for going as well.
This time, I went to a proper garden centre, and got a bundle of new things – two types of raspberry, a blueberry bush, and a couple of flowering currants. Once I’d got home, I emptied out the old pots, putting all the residue into garden sacks. Then all the new things got planted, and so far it’s all worked out pretty well.
The final stage was taking all the garden sacks to the local tip, and getting rid of them all in the garden waste.
So all told, quite the successful day – a near-complete change of the plants, and all the rubbish dealt with, leaving the place looking pretty much how it did before, just with new plants. I class that as a success.
More New Greenery
Posted: Sat 19 March, 2016 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, House Work, Shopping Leave a comment »Having sorted out some new pots and plants earlier this week, I’d been thinking about a couple of small trees to put in Big Pots, which should finish things off nicely.
Today, I got some – two ‘patio apple’ trees and pots for them to go in. They’ve been outside all the time anyway, so they’re now planted out and situated where I want them to be.
I’m done for now with plants, I think. I do want to find a more comfortable table and chair(s) next, although that can wait a while ’til I see what there is that I like. I’m not in a hurry – I’ve a chair that’s serviceable, but I do want to find something better. I just have to know it’s better before I buy it…
Illuminating
Posted: Tue 2 December, 2014 Filed under: B&Q, Domestic, Getting Organised, Green 1 Comment »When I moved here, I had a “mother and child” lamp, which I’ve used as the main illumination in my living room since.
Sadly, both bulbs in the lamp were halogens, so it’s been a bit of an energy hog – which I realised more once I’d bought my OWL energy monitor and saw the way the usage figures went up when I turned the lights on.
As a result, I said that when the bulb(s) finally blew, I’d replace the lamp with one that was more energy-efficient (or at least was able to use more energy-efficient bulbs) and that finally happened today.
So – a new lamp has now been purchased, assembled, and installed. It’s a similar style of ‘mother and child’, but both bulbs are non-halogen and standard-fitting, with eco-bulbs in.
The drop in power-usage is pretty noticable already, and it should result in a noticeable drop in the electricity bill.
All told, I see that as a success all round.
Skyline
Posted: Sun 16 March, 2014 Filed under: Central Bedfordshire Council, Domestic, Driving, Green Leave a comment »Last week, there was a new addition to the skyline at home – and for a fair dollop of the surrounding area.
It’s obviously been planned for a while, but it’s really only been in the last month that I’ve seen a new wind turbine being erected at the Forestry Centre. It went up mid-February, but the turbine blades were only added last week, which is when it became truly noticeable. (There are chimney stacks around the place, so the initial turbine stalk didn’t stand out as much)
And now it’s visible – for quite a distance. I can see it as I come in past Bedford, and also as I come over the hill in the other direction. It’s pretty impressive.
Fortunately, I like wind turbines – I like the sight of them, and the sound. But I’m willing to bet there’s some NIMBY bastards who’ll complain about it.
Organising and Recycling
Posted: Mon 13 January, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Leave a comment »Over the weekend, I got a couple of things done that’ve been on the to-do list for way too long, but I’d simply not got round to doing.
One of them, getting the batteries on two watches replaced, hadn’t happened because I hadn’t spotted a place in Milton Keynes where I could get it done. It turns out, I’d just not explored all of the shopping centre, because at the end I rarely go to I discovered last weekend there are two places that do it, virtually next door to each other. (Last weekend I had a proper wander, and found lots of bits I didn’t know about in central Milton Keynes, but that’s probably just my idiocy)
So – that got that done, and now for the first time in a couple of years I’m wearing a watch again. I should note they’ve not needed batteries for that long, but I got out of the habit of wearing watches, shoved them in a drawer, and re-discovered them recently – at which point I also found they needed batteries.
The other big task was also drawer-related (and yes, the two were connected) in that I wanted to do a clear-out of stuff I no longer wear, or don’t like. That one took a bit longer – there was a fair amount, particularly in the ‘don’t actually like‘ category. Again, it’s been put off mainly through having other stuff to do, and/or knowing it’s all part of a process, that once it was sorted, there’s no point leaving it hanging around.
So Sunday involved doing the whole thing: going through everything, deciding if I wanted/liked it (with one key point being ‘have I worn it since I moved here?’), sorting everything out, filling a couple of bags with stuff I didn’t want/need (or that was knackered) and then hoying it all to the local recycling centre (they used to be called tips, or dumps – now it’s ‘recycling centre’, go figure)
As always, the local tip recycling centre is a pig to get to, and invariably populated by ballbags in 4x4s with no idea how to drive, pack, or any idea of the width of their vehicle. It meant I got to have a laugh with the council guy directing everyone, generally abusing bad drivers, but it does amaze me how twunty so many people are.
All told though, it meant I got rid of a load of stuff, and recycled about 95% of it. I couldn’t recycle my old pillows – which is kind of understandable – but that was it.
It means I’ve got two watches that work again, some more hanging space for shirts, trousers etc., and about three drawers of empty space that I can store stuff in properly again. Pretty successful all round.
Union Street Urban Orchard
Posted: Sun 20 June, 2010 Filed under: Green, Green Garden, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »While I was in London last night, I had to take a walk to try and find the car park I had planned to use.
While doing so, I came across the (closed at the time) Union Street Urban Orchard. I think it’s a fantastic idea :
Designed by Heather Ring of the Wayward Plant Registry and built with the help of Bankside Open Spaces Trust and an array of other helpful volunteers the garden will regenerate a disused site in Bankside and create a place for exchange between local residents and visitors to the Festival.
As the above quote from the site says, they’ve taken a disused site on Union Street, and created an urban orchard in it. They’ve recycled pallets, tyres, wood, glass and more to make the orchard. Sadly it’s only in situ until the middle of August- although at that point the trees from the orchard will be transplanted to three or four other sites around Bankside.
Personally I’d like to see this done far more often, creating valuable green/growing space in disused plots and areas throughout cities. Of course I realise that London prices are huge and the cost of those plots is almost certainly prohibitive – but at the same time if you can make use of those disused plots that aren’t doing anything anyway, well why not?
If all else fails, I think that local authorities could/should do a CPO on some of these disused plots, and actually make solid use of those plots for the local community.
The Union Street Urban Orchard is a fantastic project. I hope it puts ideas in the heads of a lot more people.
Cat vs. Pond
Posted: Sun 6 June, 2010 Filed under: Animals, Green, Green Garden 1 Comment »One of the other events of the weekend was Psycho Cat finally discovering the pond – and being fascinated by it. The tadpoles intrigued him, but he can’t catch them.
Hunting Tadpoles
The frogs are interesting too, but disappear into the bits of the pond he can’t get into.
Of course, when he realises/remembers that he’s a Turkish Van (and thus quite adept at being a swimming cat) then he may spend more time in the pond than around it…
Frogs
Posted: Sat 5 June, 2010 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green, Green Garden Leave a comment »As well as the immense number of tadpoles in the pond, we’ve also got at least six frogs of various sizes/generations. All told, it’s been a remarkably successful wildlife pond, especially for having been in place for only a year.
Frog The First
Both the one above and the one below were sitting quite happy in the pond at the same time (and at opposite sides, so I know they’re different ones) – apparently they’ve decided that sitting still is one of the better defences, and they only move when you get too close.
Frog The Second
Tadpoles
Posted: Wed 2 June, 2010 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green, Green Garden 1 Comment »Just over a year ago (16th May, to be exact) we put a pond into the garden – nothing huge, but a little ‘nature pond’, with the intention of making it a useful home/habitat for the frogs/toads we seem to have all year round.
Over the Bank Holiday weekend we looked in the pond, and there’s loads of tadpoles in there. No idea whether they’re frog or toad tadpoles – I guess we’ll find out once they’ve changed state a bit, as currently they’re just classic tadpole-shape. There’s also a load of tiny bug things (can’t you tell I’m a specialist in this stuff?) and larvae that they’re feeding on, and stuff at the bottom for them to hide in, so it seems like it must be a pretty good layout.
I’m ridiculously chuffed about this, as I didn’t really expect it to get to this state ’til next year, and possibly the year after. But no, we’ve got a working nature pond on our first try.
Now if only we can get birds in the nextbox, and owls in the owlbox. Then I’ll be really happy. (Admittedly I don’t expect anything in the owl box until Hound pops her clogs, because she’s so bloody noisy and irritating)
Spillage
Posted: Fri 28 May, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Green, News Leave a comment »One of the things I find with all the news coverage about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the US is that you can’t really envision the scale of this oil slick.
via Twitter, I found this graphic which seems to really help
Most of the south of england would be covered, if the spill had happened off the coast of France
You can also go here to see it for yourself, or choose where else to center the map in order to get some scale on this disaster
Panels
Posted: Sun 16 May, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, House Work 1 Comment »Yesterday we got another couple of fence panels painted – only about another 85 to go. (We started off with 97 to do, and it’s a shitty boring job, but it’s going slowly)
One fence panel, half done
The wood is very dry, so it’s sucking in the treatment as soon as it’s applied. Probably means we’ll need to do a second coat at some point, but I need to get the lot done first.
Garden Produce
Posted: Thu 13 May, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »One of the better bits of this gardening thing- spuds growing in their buckets
Potato plants in their buckets on the patio
No idea what the particular types are – I lost the labels, in typical style – but they’re all growing well, and I’m really pleased with how things are progressing.
Last year the buckets weren’t that successful when we bought spuds from Suttons – this year they’re from Homebase, and seem to be doing much better.
Malvern Spring Show
Posted: Thu 13 May, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, People, Travel Leave a comment »One of our main reasons for coming to Malvern this week on our break was to go to the Malvern Spring Show. My mum’s always recommended it as a good plant/flower/garden show, so we thought we’d give it a thrash.
We went to Chelsea show a couple of years back, and hated the number of people crammed in to too small a space, and being unable to see what we wanted without fighting our way through the people first. The show was OK, the size and people were awful.
By contrast, Malvern was a really pleasant experience. There were still lots of people, and plenty of shitheads with sodding tugalong trollies, but it didn’t feel crowded. In the indoor exhibitions there was plenty of space between stands, wider aisles, all told there was just space to spare. There was tons to see, lots of stands, exhibitions, products and the like, and it was a really good day.
We came out of it with plenty of ideas for the garden, shitloads of brochures and information, and sore feet from walking. We’ll be going back next year.
Flowering Rhubarb
Posted: Sat 8 May, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Weirdness 1 Comment »One of the stranger sights in our garden this week…
Rhubarb Flower - click to embiggenify
I’ve never seen this before, but our main rhubarb plant has created what appears to be a flower. It’s kind of broccoli-like, but with (as you can see) red bits and pale green bits.
In short, very strange, and very alien-looking.
Cold Frame
Posted: Sat 10 April, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Norfolk Leave a comment »Today we’ve been assembling a cold-frame for the garden that Herself bought this week. It was OK in the end – Herself took the lead, which meant I was infinitely less annoyed/annoyable and sweary – but still a pig to put together.
While instructions usually prove to be sodding annoying, it’s still better to have some step-by-step instructions on how to build these things. In this case all we had was four pages with some drawings of how to put together certain bits of the cold frame. Other than that, we were on our own.
Still, it’s up now – it took the best part of three damn hours to construct, but it’s done now. Happy Day.
Resources and Consequences
Posted: Tue 8 December, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »Following on from yesterday’s post about Global Warming, Claire commented
Yes, the planet will happily survive, but are you implying that we shouldn’t be going out of our way to prevent the millions of deaths that will be caused by Climate Change in the very near future?
And to be honest, I don’t know.
On my more cynical days, I wonder whether Climate Change isn’t just another case of Darwinism and/or that Gaia hypothesis. We’re working so hard to save everyone, but does the planet have enough resources to support all the people that are saved? And if we don’t have the resources in the first place, what’s the answer?
As an example, one of Comic Relief’s big aims this year was about tackling malaria. According to Comic Relief, Malaria kills a child every 30 seconds – so the money raised for this project was primarily aimed at providing mosquito nets, and thus stopping those children from being infected in the first place. But for all those people who now survive, rather than die of malaria (or other disease of choice) will they take up extra resources? Will we see Uganda (and Africa in general) in droughts and famines in ten years time because there are so many extra mouths to feed than there used to be?
If Climate Change and Global Warming are going to be as world-changing as they’re purported to be, planetary resources are going to be reduced from their current levels anyway. So how will we plan on feeding/watering/housing everyone?
I don’t know the answers – I don’t even pretend to know the answers – and this is just shit I think about on cynical days.
Global Warming
Posted: Mon 7 December, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Thoughts 4 Comments »The Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference starts today, with delegates from 192 countries and leaders of 100 countries planning to attend.
The irony that none of the media seems to be mentioning is that the massive majority of those delegates and leaders will be flying in – thus contributing to the carbon emissions they’re all purportedly wanting to cut. Oops.
The thing that annoys me about the entire “Global warming” thing is this – whatever we do, the planet will survive. Saying that we’re going to destroy the planet is – to be blunt – simply egotistical bullshit. Even a nuclear war wouldn’t destroy the planet. What people actually mean when they talk about global warming is “we might wipe ourselves off the face of the planet”. And that’s a bit different to the overly-emotive “destroy the planet”.
Higher temperatures and higher levels of CO² etc. will have an effect, certainly. And it might damage or destroy “civilisation as we know it”. But those things will really just create different environments, and different ecospheres that evolution will deal with if technology doesn’t. The planet won’t die – but it will change, as it has done for billions of years previously. (The Gaia Hypothesis is one interesting theory on this)
Yes, we might end up with a new Desert Age. It might swing back to a new Ice Age. It might do one and then the other. But it won’t destroy the planet.
Even in all these changes, the odds are that humanity won’t be wiped out. (unless it all becomes an event similar to that/those which killed off the Dinosaurs – yet another example of “this stuff has happened before”) It’ll be reduced, almost certainly – but I suspect there’d still be pockets of humanity going through, restarting, evolving, and dealing with new living conditions and environments.
Even if we were to go to entirely sustainable ‘green energy, we don’t know what the long-term effects would be. We don’t know what happens if – for example – we pull energy from the sea (wave turbines/power). That energy isn’t magicked out of nothing – there are systems that exist, and we simply don’t know what long-term effect any of our supposedly green plans might have.
This doesn’t mean I think we should all leave lights on all the time and consume as much power as possible – but equally I don’t think we should worry about it as much as politicians think we should. Sure, things will change – but the oil supply is likely to run out well before the greenhouse effect or global warming get us. At that point, who knows? We might have stretched our way to using nuclear power (which I personally think is still the only real alternative to oil/carbon-based energy) but somehow I doubt it – the politicians will biffle on about global warming and reducing carbon emissions without actually doing anything that’ll replace the things that generate those carbon emissions.
10:10 – Buying Yourself Green
Posted: Sat 5 September, 2009 Filed under: 10:10, 1BEM, Cynicism, Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »Looking at the list of the Guardian’s 10:10 suggestions from yesterday’s post, I couldn’t help but think that there was an awfully high number of those pointers that suggested buying/installing something new. Sure, they then (usually) said to recycle the old ones, but still, there was some significant investment involved in reducing that carbon footprint.
So, being a geek, I put the list into a table, and estimated some prices for those items with a cost…
(Click on the more link to see the table – it’s a biggie…)
10:10 – Realistic Chance?
Posted: Fri 4 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Domestic, Green, Thoughts 9 Comments »My initial thoughts on the Guardian’s 10:10 Campaign were pretty non-committal, but yesterday I read Charlie Stross’s full-size and well thought-out piece, so I thought I’d do something similar to his post, but based on my own life and/or carbon footprint, which might help fill out my own thoughts and ideas on it.
So, using The Guardian’s own “How to reduce your carbon emissions” list, here we go… (Click on the more link below)
Incandescent
Posted: Tue 1 September, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Thoughts 8 Comments »From today, traditional 100W incandescent light-bulbs are no longer being sold. Under new EU rules the manufacture and import of 100 watt bulbs and all frosted bulbs will be banned in favour of the energy-saving variety.
I’m still in two minds about this, although we don’t actually use 100W bulbs around the house at all and we’re not prone to the health-issues that are being laid at the door of CFL (Compact Fluourescent Light) bulbs. But in certain cases, I’m still to be convinced about CFL bulbs as a replacement for incandescent ‘traditional’ light bulbs.
One of the things we made a slight mistake with when we moved in here was that we had spotlight downlighters fitted in most of the rooms, which use GU10 halogen bulbs. The light fittings are fine, and help with making the rooms feel like they’re a decent height (Which hanging light-fittings didn’t) But they do result in a significant use of energy, which is what we didn’t think about at the time.
We’ve looked at replacing the bulbs with CFL-replacements, but they most certainly do have a “warm-up” time. The ones we’ve used in the kitchen take a noticeable time to come on properly. In addition, they’re longer than the standard GU10s, so if/when we put them in to replace the ceiling lights, we’re going to have little humps of protruding light bulbs in all the positions.
As time goes on, and the current GU10s burn out, I’m sure we will replace them with CFL equivalents – but we’ll also keep on looking for better developments in those bulbs, rather than buying them all at once – particularly when they’re still at £8 or £9 per bulb – that’s a noticeable amount of money to be spending on lighting…
Cutting Down on Waste
Posted: Thu 6 August, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Green, Stupidity, Thoughts 3 Comments »In the news today, there’s a piece about a Plymouth dairy that’s encouraging its customers to use “Milk Bags” – recyclable bags of milk, and a reusable ‘jug’ holding the bags.
According to the story,
Dairy spokesman Richard Pryor said customer research showed people wanted inexpensive and convenient ways to reduce the amount of rubbish they put in their dustbins.
“This development is another important step in reducing the environmental burden of the 130,000 tonnes of plastic used in milk packaging every year,” he said.
Obviously, Dairy Crest in Devon are using plastic bottles for delivering milk.
But it occurs to me, surely the single best way of reducing that tonnage of plastic used in milk packaging is to go back to using glass bottles instead of plastic ones?
Our milk gets delivered every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) to the door in glass bottles. At the same time, the driver collects our used (and washed) bottles, and takes them to be reused. No ‘rubbish’ relating to the milk – the foil bottle tops go in the recycling bin.
On the (exceptionally rare) occasions when a bottle breaks, it gets put into the glass box, to go to the local bottle bank next time we’re in that direction. Again, no landfill, no waste – it’ll get recycled into a glass ‘something else’.
So, who is it who does our milk deliveries? Yep, it’s Dairy Crest – the same ones who deliver in plastic in Plymouth.
Playing with Concrete
Posted: Sun 26 July, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, House Work 3 Comments »Regular readers already know that when it comes to DIY I’m pretty much a total bell-end. It’s a thing I’ve inherited from my father, who is a world-renowned DIY bell-end, and tales of his idiocies have been used for me and my brother to dine out on many times.
Anyway, about two years ago, I put in a thing for the rotary drier/airer in the garden. At the time it was fairly straight, but over time it’s got more and more wonky.
So this time we got another fitting (this time with a built-in spirit level – genius!) and a bag of Postmix cement. You can see already where this might go horribly wrong, can’t you?
Only it didn’t – the holder is now cemented in properly (and absolutely straight!) and the airer’s post fits in it fine.
At the same time (i.e. while waiting for the postmix to set) we’ve also put up a hosereel thingy on the wall of the house, which’ll hold a 25m hose-reel – enough to get almost halfway down the garden – which should make for a tidier garden without sodding hosepipe coiled up in random places.
Sometimes, a day can be quite successful. Of course, I’m now waiting to find something to screw up in order to balance things out again…
Pick Your Own
Posted: Sun 5 July, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Norfolk 1 Comment »Today, we went to one of the local pick-your-own farms, spent about an hour there, and collected enough raspberries and strawberries to make up more than 12lb of jam, for the princely amount of £15.
Yes, the fruit in our own patch will cost even less, but that won’t mature ’til next year, I suspect. It’s getting there, and we’ve got some small fruits on the stuff there, but these things take time. The PYO place was fantastically stocked, and you can be sure we’ll be going back there for more this year.
We’ve still got some fruit spare as well, so that’s going in some puds for the week. Can’t be bad.
Hail
Posted: Tue 16 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Weather Leave a comment »When I said we had epic hail yesterday, I really wasn’t kidding.
This was what remained around some of our flower pots two hours after it’d fallen – most of it stayed on the ground right through ’til at least half ten at night (having fallen at four or so in the afternoon) although it was gone this morning
Hailstones
Pretty impressive, really.
Of course, they hail has beaten the shit out of most of the plants outside – all the broad bean plants are bent over and have been beaten up, as have the strawberries, french beans, courgettes and pumpkins as well as the bamboo and lilac trees/bushes that we bought recently. But all of that should heal over time, so it could be a lot worse.
Mower RIP
Posted: Fri 22 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Green Garden Leave a comment »Longer-term readers may recall that back in August last year, we bought a second-hand ride-on mower from the friend of a friend. At the time this was A Good Thing, as it meant that a) we didn’t need to have the nice man mowing the lawn again this year (as in 2009) and b) that I wouldn’t have to slog my arse off mowing the entire bloody garden with the petrol-driven mower.
Over the winter, we got it serviced (supposedly- that’s a post for another day, I think) and the engine electrics repaired from where I knackered it when the battery fell off the back of the cunting thing, pulling various bits of connected enginery with it.
This year we tried starting it – nothing. The battery was flat, so that got charged up, having borrowed a battery charger from the out-laws. Once that was done, it ran. For about twenty minutes. It then went bang, chucked out a cloud of smoke, and wouldn’t start again.
Today, we got a different person to come out and have a look. Turns out the starter motor was fucked sticking , so he cleaned it out and lo, it started.
So I ran it round the garden again. Put it in gear to start mowing. And it went bang, chucked out a shitload of evil-smelling grey smoke, stopped, and wouldn’t start again.
So all told, I give up. The poxy thing’s knackered, and showing no signs of recovery. I think we’re just going to write it off as a total lemon, and one day get a new ride-on with a long fucking guarantee.
In the meantime, it’s back to the petrol-mower again. We spent £100 on that three years ago, and it’s never given us any serious hassle. Sure, it’s a pig to start the first time each year, but after that it runs just fine.
I’ve come to realise that I truly fucking hate garden machinery.
More Garden Guff
Posted: Mon 18 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden, House Work Leave a comment »Yesterday was emphatically not a day of rest – primarily because we spent most of it in the garden. Again.
The first surprise came when I went up to let the chickens out in the morning – and found three peacocks (OK, technically one peacock and two peahens) in the chicken run. They quickly fluttered up on to the fence, and then next door, but returned a couple of times more before finally being scared off by Hound. There’s a colony of peacocks over by the church (probably half a mile from us) so it wasn’t a complete “Where the hell did they come from” moment, but it’s still the first time we’ve had them in our garden since we moved here.
From there we got a bundle of work done, including finishing filling the remaining three raised beds on the veg plot (using the best part of another ton of earth) and finally planting stuff in the bloody things. So we now have raised beds containing :
- Broad Beans
- Peas
- Strawberries
- Pumpkins
- Courgettes
In addition, scattered round the rest of the veg patch we’ve got :
- Raspberries (18 canes’ worth)
- Gooseberries (4 bushes)
- Blackberry (1 plant)
- Rhubarb (4 plants)
- Garlic (2 rows)
- Onions (3 rows – although they’re not doing much)
- Beetroot (1 row of white, 1 of red)
- Potatoes (3 buckets, two of which have so far been successful)
- Various herbs and odds-n-sods
Bear in mind, this is actually a reduced list from last year, due to us not actually managing much garden-wise last year. *ahem*
Anyway, with that little lot sorted, Herself also planted a bundle of stuff round the new pond (Hound was being a pain in the arse by this time, and got dragged indoors by Yours Truly) including foxgloves, lambs ears (it’s a plant, we’re not that cruel!), salvias, and other stuff I now can’t remember the name of.
Along the way there was also other bits and bobs, but it was a pretty busy day all told.
And that’s why I didn’t update yesterday…
Pond Life
Posted: Sat 16 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden 1 Comment »This morning, our lovely garden maintenance man came round, and we now have a small pond in the garden.
It’s been part of the plan for a while, but we hadn’t got round to getting it done. And now it is.
It’s not really planned to be a decorative/ornamental pond, more of a wild-life one, so we’ve had to think about the best ways to make it work. As it is, it’s got railway sleepers round the edges (which we’ll then probably cover with wire in order to stop Hound getting into it) with gaps so that animals can find their way in/out without too much hassle.
The main things we expect to use it will be the copious numbers of frogs and toads we’ve got in the area – I’d be very happy to have it get populated with frogspawn every year, but have no idea how long that may take – and possibly the odd hedgehog or whatever. That’s the plan, anyway.
Of course, now we also need to buy some plants to put in it – again, nothing massive, but enough to keep it oxygenated and clean. I don’t know whether we’ll bother with fish in it – we might, we might not.
But all the same, we now have a pond. That’s quite cool by any estimation.
Rain
Posted: Fri 15 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden Leave a comment »Out of interest, am I the only person who’s been pleased that it’s rained this week?
There’s a reason for this, rather than me just being a grumpy anti-sun person – it’s that our water-butts were beginning to run low on water. I’ve written before about our collection of water butts – enough to hold about 1,850 litres (roughly 400 gallons) of water all told – but the levels were getting pretty low all round, due to not having had any rain in a while.
So yes, I’m generally happy to have had a couple of days of rain – all the water-butts connected to proper drainpipes had completely refilled, although the ones linked to the greenhouse didn’t do so well. We obviously still need to work on that a bit.
Anyway, with the water-butts happily full again, I spent some time this evening moving water up to the butts by the greenhouse, two watering-cans at a time. It means that the larger butts are back to being about half empty again, but if /when we get more rain (which is the current prediction) then the larger ones attached to drainpipes will fill up again a lot ore easily.
But still, yes, I’m happy that it’s been raining. Go figure.
More Garden Activities
Posted: Sun 26 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden, Plots & Green Stuff Leave a comment »Following a (much-needed) lazy day on Saturday where very little at all got done, we’ve been a lot busier today. Continuing on from last weekend’s work, we’ve done…
- Built two small(ish) raised beds (2m x 1m x 20cm)
- Put together one higher raised bed (2m x 60cm x 90cm)
- Moved two tons of bark-chip to cover the rest of the veg patch (and some of the chicken run)
So another productive day. The new version of the veg patch is pretty much complete now, with the exception of actually planting stuff. That’s most likely the work next weekend (as well as filling the new raised beds with earth, so that’ll be another ton of dirt moved) and then we’ll be done.
There’s still other stuff to do, of course – but the new version of the veg patch has been one of the big jobs on the list for this year, so it’s good to be nearly done with it.
Mind you, we’re both knackered now.
Bark Chip
Posted: Thu 23 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden 1 Comment »As part of our ongoing alterations to the garden and veg-patch (primarily based around using raised beds for growing stuff, rather than the main veg-patch underneath) we’d also ordered about 2 tons of barkchip to cover the bits unused by raised beds.
It got delivered yesterday – slap-bang in the middle of the entrance to the driveway, so no vehicles can get past it. A bike might be able to, but nothing else.
Thankfully we’ve got a horse-shoe drive, so can use the other (much narrower) entrance to it. But you do have to wonder at the sense of leaving it there, rather than on the 20-odd-foot long length of verge between the two drive entrances.
Still, it defines what we’ll we be doing this weekend. Happiness, Joy etc. etc.
Upside-Down
Posted: Tue 21 April, 2009 Filed under: Green, Green Garden 1 Comment »I don’t think we’ll be getting any this year, but I love this idea – growing tomatoes upside down, using a hanging-basket bracket, and letting gravity do the work instead of needing to use canes etc to support the growing plants…
Garden Work
Posted: Sun 19 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden Leave a comment »So this weekend, the workload between us has involved…
- Making of two raised beds, as detailed yesterday
- Filling both raised beds with earth/manure etc. (Pretty much a ton between the two)
- Redistribution of water from the massive water-butt down to smaller (emptier) ones around the place.
- Painting of the garden shed
- The first grass-mow of the season for the prairie (AKA the back garden)
- Strimming round the edges
So, not really all that busy then. *ahem*
Raised Beds
Posted: Sat 18 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden Leave a comment »Among other things, today we’ve built two raised beds (technically three, but two have been joined together to make a double-height one) for the veg patch.
It didn’t start well, but i the end everything combined OK and the last two went together in about 45 minutes each.
They’ve been made from 7″ x 1″ planks (so the double-height is 14″ high) and will work to be part of our new plan for the veg patch – reducing the workload by covering most of the patch in weedproof membrane, and using the raised beds for our crops/veg.
It means we won’t be using all the space, but it does mean we should be able to get on with growing stuff, rather than ending up with a patch that’s primarily great for growing weeds…
The Chicken Run
Posted: Wed 1 April, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, Green Garden, Thoughts 2 Comments »It’s coming up for a year now since we enlarged the chicken run (well, we did it at the end of July, so it’s about 8 or 9 months) and I’m debating what to do with the thing.
The problem is, of course, that the three chickens have pretty much pecked the place to death, so there’s not much except dirt and nettles in there at the moment. There’s a couple of bits in there for the amusement of the chickens (hay bales etc.) but I’m still thinking about what we should do with the ground in there.
I suppose there’s three options really…
- Leave it as it is
- Put new turf in the entire area of the run
- Cover the run in bark-chip or similar (wood mulch, whatever)
With the exception of “leave it like it is”, both the other options would also involve setting up a smaller temporary run (possibly on the veg patch, let ’em peck away at the weeds and mare’s tail) for a couple of weeks, while we got the work done.
I know that Blue Witch recently re-turfed her chicken run but I haven’t yet decided between turf and bark-chip/wood mulch. I suspect that over time, the wood mulch would give them something they could keep on pecking into etc., but it’d still have to be replaced/cleared up every so often, due to the quantity of crap that chickens produce.
It’s something that’ll be decided sometime in April, I’m sure.
Yesterday
Posted: Sun 22 March, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, House Work Leave a comment »Well, as it turns out, the problem with the cooker was actually an issue with the gas supply stuff outside the house – the low-pressure thingy had been triggered somehow, and was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
Luckily, the cooker engineer who came out was lovely, and willing to talk to the guy who had done the original install (who also knew we were more than slightly fucked off by the entire thing) so between them they got it sorted out. Even better, because it was something we didn’t know about – allbeit had looked at, when it looked fine – we didn’t get charged anything for them fixing the problem.
And as well as now having a working cooker again – for which happy, happy day – we’ve also managed to get a number of jobs done round the house.
- Kitchen wall tiles are now all grouted in. (Floor tiles will be done on Monday, most likely)
- Appointment has been made with an accountant to see what’s going to happen.
- I’ve started painting the wooden fence panels. Six down, ninety-one to go.
- We’ve started laying a bundle of weed-proof membrane over bits of the veg patch, for work over the next few weeks
- The fruit trees have had a trim/prune
- We’ve done a bundle of other stuff too. I just can’t remember it right now.
So yes, while we’re not “on holiday” as such, it’s looking like it’ll be fairly productive and get a bundle of outstanding jobs out the way. (Which will, of course, just make room for other jobs instead)
Cooling Towers
Posted: Tue 10 February, 2009 Filed under: Green, News, Photography, Thoughts 1 Comment »Having lived near(ish) to Didcot when I grew up, and having worked a couple of times in the shadow of the towers themselves, I thought this BBC piece about Didcot power station and its cooling towers was really interesting.
It’s relevant to the entire energy, power, and pollution thing too, of course – but I can’t deny, it’s relevance to me was more about the location.
I’d love to go inside these towers one day and take photos – although from the sound of it, the photos would just be grey mist.
Semi-Green
Posted: Tue 10 February, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Thoughts Leave a comment »Apparently, a town in Norfolk is to take part in a trial of a “green” oil that can be used in boilers to heat homes.
Supposedly this oil has a lower “carbon footprint” than normal fuel oil, and is thus “greener”.
However, there’s also this in the story…
The fuel being used is a biodiesel manufactured by Argent Energy, in Motherwell, Scotland, from used vegetable oil and tallow, which is blended with conventional oil by Pace Fuelcare, in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, before the company delivers it to the properties.
So this biodiesel is going to be transported from Motherwell to Kings Lynn (some 350 miles) by truck before being added to normal fuel oil, and then delivered – again by truck – to houses and schools.
All of which makes the entire ‘green’ carbon footprint of the stuff slightly more suspect than it perhaps should be…
Green Bulbs
Posted: Sun 8 February, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Thoughts Leave a comment »When we moved in, one of our (admittedly small) mistakes was the lights that we bought for the kitchen. There are two fittings, and each of those holds four halogen bulbs. Oops.
They’re obviously fairly power-consuming, with 4x60watt bulbs in each fitting. So we spent some time today looking at more eco-friendly low-wattage bulbs in a GU10 fitting for these light fittings. And bloody hell, they’re expensive. A normal GU10 bulb will set us back about £1.50 to £2.50, depending on where you go.
So far, the cheapest we’ve found for a green GU10 energy-saving bulb is about £7, while the normal price for them appears to be around £10 each.
So to replace the bulbs in our two kitchen light fittings is going to cost something like £60 at a minimum, and actually closer to £80-90.
I don’t mind paying a bit extra for an energy-saving bulb – although today we picked up a 100W bulb for £1, which is awesome – but to be paying 300-400% more for an energy-saving bulb than the normal GU10 bulbs means they’ve got to save one hell of a alot before they’ve paid for themselves.
I’m sure they will in the long run, but it’s a pain in the arse right now, it has to be said…
Green Fuels, New Problems
Posted: Mon 29 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Green, Thoughts 1 Comment »This story on BBC News raises an interesting issue – as more cars get converted to dual fuel, and use LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas), crashes and vehicle fires are starting to carry significantly more risk.
After all, LPG is carried in cylinders under pressure, which make it very similar to the acetylene cylinders which always make the Fire Service pap themselves (and for good reason) due to the possibility of explosion if they get too hot in a fire. If you’ve ever put an aerosol can on a fire, think of the effects of that and multiply it by a thousand. Explosion, fireball, etc. etc. In short, Ka-boom.
The same is true (and even possibly exacerbated) with LPG canisters – after all, petrol escaping from pressure and turning back into gas is going to cause one heck of a bang.
So I suspect we’re going to see more road closures for relatively minor accidents and/or vehicle fires where LPG-powered vehicles are involved.
Think I’ll stick with diesel, myself…
The Girls
Posted: Sat 29 November, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green, Green Garden, Photography 3 Comments »When it snowed last weekend, I finally got round to taking photos of our hens. It’s taken a year, but I knew I’d get there in the end…
Gladys
Elsie
Flo
And that’s the girls.
SkyTV, Carbon Neutral?
Posted: Wed 29 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, General, Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »Travelling behind a Sky TV van (sorry, their proper name is BSkyB, but who remembers that?) I noticed that they’re now saying that Sky is “Carbon Neutral”, according to the Carbon Neutral Trust.
And that’s just left me incredulous. Thankfully, I’m not the only one – as can be seen here, among other places. From that story, the following :
Sky’s carbon footprint has been calculated by measuring the CO2 equivalent emissions from its premises, company owned vehicles, business travel and waste to landfill. It claims to have lowered its site-related operational emissions by 47 per cent in the last 18 months and has also negotiated discounts for staff wanting to buy low emission hybrid cars
© Tech Digest 2008
So it’s not actually taking into account all the Sky boxes that are left on Standby overnight, let alone the Sky+ boxes etc. – and until it does, I for one would dispute the true “Carbon Neutral” status of Sky.
Ride-On
Posted: Sun 24 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »With the size of our garden, mowing them has always been an issue for us. It’s a good two hours of work to do the lot, and neither of us is a great fan of mowing. In fact, with the size of it we need a petrol mower, and that’s proven too heavy for Herself to use. Over the last couple of months, we’ve had a gardener doing the mowing instead of us.
Over the weekend, though, we took delivery of a ride-on mower. We haven’t spent loads on it, it’s come second-hand from a friend of a friend, but it should do us just fine. It’s a Stiga Park 105, for those of you to who it means anything, and it’s a fantastic bit of kit.
Of course, today has (so far) utterly pissed it down, so I haven’t been able to go out for a proper play on the thing, but it should make the entire mowing effort one hell of a lot quicker and easier. I’ll know more once I’ve tried it out properly.
Clean
Posted: Sat 23 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden 3 Comments »Yay, we now have a clean water supply once more. It’s only taken four months…
And it’s also meant that we’ve been up on the veg patch all day, doing more weeding as well as harvesting all the potatoes and onions, as well as one bucket of blue potatoes, and another bucket-load of apples.
But it’s been a successful day. Of course, we’re both completely knackered now, but it’s all been worthwhile.
Weeding
Posted: Sun 17 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden 4 Comments »The weather over the last few weekends has been bloody horrible (well, unless you’re a duck) which has meant that we couldn’t get out into the garden to do any weeding etc. As a result, at least half the veg patch was looking more like we were cultivating nettles rather than vegetables.
Yesterday was – at last – a dry day, which meant I was out in the garden for about three hours all told, just clearing out one small section of the patch, clearing the earth around the courgettes and pumpkins. Just that one patch has filled up the brown ‘garden waste’ bin – and in a fit of piss-poor timing, that won’t be collected until next Wednesday (the 27th) which is a bit of a pain in the tits. There’s still a lot to do out there – not least bringing in all the potatoes and onions, which all need to be sorted before long – but at least having got one part cleared, it’s beginning to feel more manageable again.
Of course, today started with four hours of heavy rain again, which kind of nulls out the entire weeding and gardening thing for the moment. But at least I’ve made a start on it. And if we get any dry evenings this week, I think I know where I’m going to be…
Insulated Cavities
Posted: Tue 5 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, House Work 2 Comments »Today we’ve been getting cavity-wall insulation sorted.
For whatever reason, the previous occupants never bothered with it, so it was something that needed to be done and as a result we got a quote from the HEAT project for doing the cavity-wall, and upgrading the loft insulation.
Theoretically, today was the day for getting both things done, but a small incident with Herself (of which more later) meant that we’ve put off the loft insulation upgrade for a while, but still got the cavity-wall stuff done.
It’s taken a couple of hours, and been bloody noisy, but at least the job’s done now. And once the loft’s upgraded as well, the house should be much warmer (or at least lose a lot less heat) than it did last winter. It’ll be interesting to see what difference it makes, anyway.
Herb Garden
Posted: Sun 27 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden 2 Comments »Another day, another job at the house completed.
Why is it that we always pick the hottest days to do the hardest work? Today it’s been about carrying railway sleepers round to the back of the house, and screwing them together to make a raised bed for a herb garden for Herself. Get me, Mr Domestic.
It’ll be worth it, though – it looks good, and now we just need to plant all the herbs.
We’ve got chives, lemon verbena, thyme, mint, rosemary, catmint (should keep the animals away from the rest of it) and oregano for starters, so we’ll just see how they get on. Should be fine in their new home, I’m sure, and it’ll be good to see them all growing.
Chicken Run – Enlarged
Posted: Sat 26 July, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »Today we’ve been sorting out a new bigger, better chicken run. Putting in the metposts and fence posts, and lining the perimeter with 6 foot high chicken wire.
All told, it’s (roughly) 40′ x 20′. I haven’t measured it exactly, so that’ll have to do you.
Of course, the downside of them having this much larger fully-enclosed run is that Herself now wants two or three more chickens…
Demolition, Gardening
Posted: Sat 12 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden 1 Comment »One of the jobs that’s been hanging around for a while at home (OK, since we bought the house) is that there was a little dividing wall between patio and garden – and that wall was shot. There were various cracks and wobbles in the wall, and it wasn’t really all that safe to sit on, for example.
This weekend, we’ve hired (yet another) skip, with the aim of getting rid of the wall, and various other large bits of garden stuff (masses of willow branches, for example, and a couple of unruly bushes that just need killing) that we just can’t be arsed to also take to the local tip etc. So a skip it is.
The wall came down in two hours flat, and in that time it was only the bottom two rows of bricks that required any real input from the 4lb lump hammer. The rest came apart by hand – which, when you think about it, is pretty scary in itself. It’s all gone, and the patio area’s appearance has changed massively without it.
The garden stuff took a bit longer, but we’ll still be able to get rid of the skip on Monday morning, which helps minimise the costs of having it.
All told, a pretty productive Saturday.
Zeroed Owl – Update
Posted: Tue 8 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Leave a comment »Following on from yesterday’s post about the OWL monitor, it looks like it was the batteries in the transmitter part that’d gone. (Annoying after only six months, but they were crappy cheap-ass Maxell batteries after all)
They got replaced last night, and things so far look to be OK again. We’ll see.
Zeroed Owl
Posted: Mon 7 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green Leave a comment »Back at Christmas-time, we bought an OWL electricity-supply monitor, which I’ve written about in brief since.
It’s still a good piece of kit, and has made us very aware of our electricity usage over the last six months.
Recently though, it’s been a bit annoying. For some reason, every so often it drops off-line, and just displays “0:00” for a while. It always comes back, and there’s no reason for it to do this – the monitor’s battery levels are fine, and the transmitter seems to be working fine except for these intermittent issues. (Although I do need to double-check the batteries in the transmitter unit, which I haven’t done yet)
Even with this minor glitch though, it’s still a useful device, and comes well recommended.
Mowing
Posted: Wed 14 May, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, House Work 5 Comments »Last week, we decided to get someone in to do the mowing of the grass in our garden. It’s something I’ve been doing, but it takes up a large amount of time on a weekend when we could be doing other things – sorting out the veg patch, for example. The entire garden is something like 8,000ft² (roughly 165′ x 65′, which is just over 10,000ft², but there’s other stuff in there than just grass, so I reckon it comes down to about 8,000ft²)
So we got a guy round on Friday to have a look, and he quoted us £30 to do the entire thing – mow it, strim the edges, and clear it all up. Not bad at all – yes sure, we could get someone cheaper (as Lionel pointed out elsewhere) but for the moment we’ll see how we do with this guy.
He turned up yesterday when we were both out, so I came home to a fully mowed garden. And he’s done a fantastic job – everything’s been done, the mowing, the strimming – even the dog toys were tidied away, (with the exception of one tennis ball that died – hardly a worry) and all the clippings plonked into our compost bins.
All in all, £30 well spent, in my opinion. Although we may need to buy a couple more compost bins before long.
Bugfood
Posted: Tue 13 May, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »One of the things I hate about summer is that I turn into a buffet bar for mosquitos. (and other bugs as well, but mainly mosquitos) There’s something about me that obviously tastes good to the little bloodsucking fuckers, and they just dive in for a chomp.
After having a meal outside on Sunday evening, I’ve got no less than five bites on my legs already, three of which have swollen up unpleasantly.
We’ve got a mosquito-repellent in the bedroom which seems to work OK, and we’ve got a UV anti-bug lamp, although I really need to sort that out and put it somewhere so it’ll actually do something to the little vampiric bastards. However, the UV thing can’t really go outside (not long-term, anyway) so I’m also considering an outdoor version like this one which might help zap the buzzing little tossers.
Ah, the joys of summer.
Garden Work
Posted: Sun 11 May, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden 2 Comments »Most of the weekend’s been spent out in the garden, which has been really nice. There’s been some hard work – finishing off the extension to the woodshed, so it’s about another eight foot long and will take another six months worth of wood. (at least)
Over the summer, we’ll be ordering another trailerload of wood, so it can season properly- we’ve got enough for a couple of months once it gets cold again, but we want to have more in stock than that, and be able to have it used in rotation – some of the wood we buy this summer may not get used ’til Winter ’09, by which time it’ll be good and seasoned. That’s the plan, anyway.
We’ve also been doing a buttload of weeding – it’s nowhere near completed, but we’re getting there and will continue with it during the week as well.
So that’s been the weekend, really. Not much else happened (except for seeing Iron Man, of which more in another past) but it’ll be good to go back to work for a rest…
Selling Seeds
Posted: Wed 23 April, 2008 Filed under: Getting Organised, Green, Green Garden, Health, News 4 Comments »It’s good to see that apparently more and more people are buying vegetable seeds, and growing their own veg, particularly in light of rising costs and growing awareness of the environmental impact of various imported fruit and veg.
We’re doing this more and more now that the garden is getting a bit more sorted – so far this year we’ve planted:
- Three rows of potatoes
- Leeks
- Carrots
- Onions
- Bell peppers
- Chilli peppers
- Runner beans
- Peas
- Rhubarb
- Tomatoes
and - Parsnips
We’ve still got plans for broccoli/calabrese, courgettes, pumpkins, cauliflower, more leeks and parsnips for over-winter, and a couple more tubs of potatoes as well as gooseberries, blackberries and (probably) strawberries on the fruit side. And even then, as we get more organised next year we’ll do even more.
It’s just good to see people doing more for themselves in this way – I suspect it’s something that’s going to keep on happening. I certainly hope so.
Norfolk Weekend
Posted: Sun 13 April, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, Green Garden, House Work, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s been a funny weekend, really – I haven’t had the time (or inclination) to be writing stuff for D4D™, as we’ve been fairly busy, yet it doesn’t feel like we’ve been busy enough to have a decent excuse.
Still, we’ve been getting a fair amount done.
Friday night was a social evening for a local charity connected (tangentially) to Herself’s work, doing a wine-tasting event – although it was a bit of a bummer to be the designated driver for the evening, as it meant I didn’t get to do any of the tasting!
Saturday sort of slipped away, really – doing a number of housey things, including fitting a new doorbell (we haven’t had one since we moved in, although the old bell-push was still on the door, which led to lots of annoyed delivery people) and just general domestic rubbish – shopping, sorting out plans for the weekend, that kind of thing.
Today we’ve been doing more stuff in the garden, including planting a whole bundle of veg in the veg patch (admittedly, that was mainly Herself) and sorting out some issues with our various water butts and the like. Oh, and I’ve spent some time putting together the basics for a new site, getting it all set up and ready to go.
So – busy, but not massively so. Just a fairly occupied weekend.
Eco-Towns
Posted: Fri 4 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Thoughts Leave a comment »While I don’t agree with all the new locations for the proposed ‘eco-towns’, I do think that they’re (in general) a good idea. If we are so in need of new housing, I’d far rather that it was housing that was done with some decent thought towards green power, water recycling, insulation and the like.
I wouldn’t necessarily want to live in one of the houses – although that’s mainly because I like being out here in the country, rather than in a giant housing-estate, as well as the fact we’re going to keep on working on our own green lifestyle/credentials. but I do think they’re a good thing, and if I had to live in a modern giant housing estate, I’d rather it was one of the eco-towns.
Local Discoveries.
Posted: Wed 23 January, 2008 Filed under: Green, News Leave a comment »Isn’t it bizarre sometimes, the way you find out about things?
For instance, despite having been here a year now, and being fairly interested in Green/Ethical energy sources and the like, I had no idea that the local poultry company was also creating a power station fuelled by chicken carcasses.
While I can’t deny that I have certain issues about an industry that’s producing enough chicken “by-products” (as they call them) to provide a power station with enough raw material to power the town of Attleborough year-round, I’d rather see it going to this use than others. For example, as the site says, these by-products used to go into cattle feed and the like, although that process was stopped with the event of BSE. And if the choice is between just incinerating everything, or using the generated heat to create power, well I suppose that’s better than nothing.
Almost Lost
Posted: Tue 22 January, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Getting Organised, Green 2 Comments »Over the weekend, I thought we’d lost one of our hens. We’d let the hens out of their run to have a wander about for an hour or so, and then sort of forgot that they were out.
So it was dark when I went up to see if they’d found their way back into the run, and into the nestbox – and of course, being thick chickens, they hadn’t. Two were asleep on the ground (so much for all the books saying they’ll try and get up to a perch before going to sleep) and I couldn’t find the third (Elsie) at all.
I put the other two into the nest box, and then looked all round the garden – but couldn’t see Elsie at all. I even looked over the end fence – although getting the idiot bird back from there would’ve been interesting, to say the least.
Eventually, we did find her. She was snugged right up in the corner of the garden, in the tiny gap between tool-shed and fence. It was a gap so narrow that I hadn’t actually thought she could get in there, which was why I hadn’t looked there properly. I still don’t know quite how she’d managed to get in there, and turn round (she was facing back out to the front, and I’m sure she didn’t reverse in!) but it’s certainly somewhere I’ll bear in mind as and when we “lose” her again – something which is likely to happen, as they’re going to (hopefully) spend more time outside their run as the days grow longer.
But I must admit to a fair amount of relief when we did find her – it would’ve been a very silly way to end up losing one of them.
Power Watching
Posted: Wed 2 January, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Green Leave a comment »One of the things we got during the Festering Season was an OWL Electricity Monitor as part of our “Good Life” way of life. Yes, as BW said, it was £50 for the kit, but well, we’ll see how much it saves us.
Installation of the kit was remarkably simple – particularly bearing in mind that I’m really quite useless on these things, and that it involves putting the sensor around the live supply to the electricity meter, it was still easy to do, and took less than ten minutes all told.
Calibration and set-up took a little longer, but I’d say that everything was set up (except the actual electricity price, as I can’t find the supply price for our new account at the moment, which is fucking annoying) within half an hour.
It’ll take some getting used to, and a little bit of time to understand what’s actually being reported – but it basically monitors electricity usage through the day, so you can see how much is being used, particularly when everything is “off”. (i.e. left in standby, or with things plugged in but unconnected – phone chargers, I’m looking at you here) It also displays that data in terms of carbon emissions, either in kg per hour or tonnes per year, and the amount that the current load is costing you in pence per hour.
In non-electrical data, you also get to see the current temperature in the room where the monitor is sitting, and the humidity. I’m not quite sure of the use of those bits of information – although I guess that the temperature part at least is going to be useful to compare with the thermostat, so we can see if they produce the same results.
All gone, All gone
Posted: Sun 30 December, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Festering Season, Green Leave a comment »
While I’m fairly well-known now as someone who doesn’t like the Festering Season, Herself is rather more enthusiastic about the season, so we’ve had the decorated tree and so on while people have been here.
We bought the tree locally, and it has to be said that it was one of the worst trees I’ve ever seen or had – the needles started dropping pretty much immediately, and then didn’t stop. By today it was just about half bald.
Anyway, this weekend we’ve been taking the stuff down again, committing the tree to compostable waste (except for the trunk, which will be committed to the wood-burner at some point) and the decorations taken down. The cards will be shredded and probably composted (or used as firelighters, I haven’t decided yet) but that’s it, chez Lyle, the Festering Season is well and truly over.
And not a moment too soon.
Environmentally Friendly?
Posted: Sat 15 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Green Leave a comment »Is it just me that ends up with a certain bemused cynicism to see that the UN Conference on Climate Change which is currently all over the news is in – um – Bali ?
So every attendee is going to have had to fly in to Bali. And OK, I realise that people would have to travel in order to get to the conference wherever it was held – although surely that would be where something virtual like Second Life should be able to come into its own? Or is it just me that thinks it would make more sense to have something like this use an on-line way of doing all this shit, rather than adding umpteen thousands of air/carbon miles for a conference about global warming?
Free Rice
Posted: Tue 13 November, 2007 Filed under: Green, Health, News Leave a comment »
(via Blue Witch)
The FreeRice website has recently started as a spin-off from Poverty.com, and as of the time of writing has already donated some 1,330,639,890 grains of rice to be distributed through the United Nations’ World Food Programme. Read the FAQs for more information
FreeRice has two goals:
- Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
- Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.
Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.
Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.
Yes, it’s advertising-sponsored, but it’s not intrusive and hell, it’s what pays for the rice.
My average literacy level so far is 40-42, (mainly because I had occasional moments of twonkdom) which is apparently pretty good. Still, it’s fun, and it’s for a decent cause, so go on, participate, have a bit of bobble-hatted fun, and do some donation of rice via the UN. You know you want to.
Fowl Play
Posted: Wed 31 October, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »I know, it’s a clichéd title – but hey ho. Live with it.
Anyway, we’ve had contact from the person supplying us with our chickens, coop, and all the guff for starting us off with three chickens. We pick them up on Sunday – just in time for my birthday. The coop is fuckin’ huge – 3′ x 2′ x 8′, so I’m hiring a van for the day to pick everything up.
In a bizarre way I’m actually looking forward to getting them – it’s going to make for some interesting times, having three chickens as well as Hound and Psycho Cat…
Windbelt
Posted: Wed 17 October, 2007 Filed under: Green Leave a comment »I think that this is a fantastic idea – basically, it’s just a micro-generator in a similar vein to a wind-turbine, but far simpler. It’s not going to power a city, but it’ll power small appliances, such as replacements for kerosene-lamps and the like. It could even be used to charge laptops, phones etc.
More importantly, it’s simple, easy to maintain, and doesn’t have all the extra necessary maintenance and infrastructure that a wind-turbine farm would require.
Absolutely brilliant.
Garden Organisation
Posted: Sat 6 October, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, Plots & Green Stuff Leave a comment »Currently, we’re looking at what we’re going to be doing next year in the garden. Yes, I know, getting scarily organised. We’re going to be doing a lot of work in there during ’08, so we need to have a plan.
There’s going to be a fair amount of veg growing, for sure – we’ve already bought sweet and chilli peppers, sweetcorn, onions, garlic, as well as a couple of others, and we’ve still got some other stuff to buy – as well as generally sorting out more of the layout, getting rid of some (most) of the roses, putting in some more structure, and putting in a decking area around the already-existing pergola thingy.
So we’re starting to plan what’s going to be done when, and how, and why. And by who, of course.
It’s a bit odd to be planning some of the stuff for 2008 already, but there’s going to be so much going on at the time, it’s going to be better to know beforehand what we’re up to, rather than getting to Saturday morning and wondering what needs doing next…
Got Wood?
Posted: Sun 23 September, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »Not content with the amount we cut up earlier this week for the woodpile, I’ve been cutting up the remaining bits today. Once that’s done, I’ll be able to use the tarpaulin it’s all laid on (well, one of the two tarps – one’s for ‘big wood’, one’s for ‘kindling wood’) to use as a cover for the front of the woodpile, and protect it all a bit from rain/damp. (There’s plenty of ventilation round the sides and bottom of the woodpile, so it’s not going to get damp inside anyway)
So far it’s taken four hours. And there’s still the stuff for kindling to go. I suspect that lot may wait ’til one evening this week, because it has to be said, I’m right bored with it now.
Still, it’ll be good to have the job completed and done…
Wood Pile
Posted: Thu 20 September, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Photography 1 Comment »So, all the wood from the delivery on Monday is now stored in the wood pile. Twenty wheelbarrow loads, and this is what it looks like. (Apologies for the ropy cameraphone image, but there we go)
I have to say, I’m really quite pleased with it. And yes, I so need to get out more…
Getting the chopper out
Posted: Sun 16 September, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Leave a comment »As predicted yesterday, today has been mainly about getting our existing wood chopped up and sorted out for the woodpile before tomorrow’s delivery of yet more logs.
We bought a Bosch electric saw for doing a lot of the work – yes, we could’ve done it with a normal handsaw, but well, there was a huge load of wood to do, so chuff it. Anyway, it’s made life a lot easier – we’ve got through about 80-85% of the wood that needed chopping.
So yes, there’s still some more to do. But we’ve broken the back of it – and stuffed my own back into the bargain – so I can get the rest sorted over the coming week, along with all the logs that’re being delivered tomorrow.
And from now on, well, we’ll just have to be more organised, and chop the stuff as it arrives – or soon after, so that we don’t get in this situation again.
Fuel to the pyre
Posted: Sat 15 September, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden 1 Comment »This weekend, it looks like we’re getting prepared for winter.
We’ve made an order for oil through Boiler Juice, which seems to get a decent price for purchases of heating oil, so that’ll arrive next week.
In addition, we’ve also ordered a load of logs from a local supplier, which’ll turn up on Monday. Not bad – £75 for a full load, which can then be stuck onto our wood pile while the stuff we’ve already received (from a number of sources) and chopped, which is slowly seasoning on the pile already. With luck it’ll keep us going through the winter, but if not well, we can always get another load delivered. Happy day.
And before the delivery of logs, we need to chop up the remaining wood to go on the pile first. Joy. That’s most of tomorrow sorted out then…
Plucking Hell
Posted: Mon 10 September, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green 1 Comment »So yes, after yesterday’s visit to the chicken place, it looks almost certain that we’ll be getting some chickens before the end of the year – and quite probably some time in October.
Whether we buy them from the place we visited, or (as Lionel suggests) we try to get some ex-battery hens that’re in need of rehoming (and that would then just have to be called Duracell, Ever Ready, and Energiser) is something that has yet to be decided. Ethically, we’d like to go for the latter, but there’re also the issues about a) finding the ex-battery hens, and b) the fact we’ve never done this before.
Perhaps on that score we’re better off starting off with new birds, rather than ones that’ve already had a crap start, and (in our case) will certainly have “issues”. Mind you, the ones with “issues” would fit in with our other animals… Then again, it’d be nice to have at least one sane creature in the house. (Not literally “in” the house, in the case of chickens, but ohhhh, you get what I mean)
It’s certainly going to be interesting, though.
Fowl Play
Posted: Sun 9 September, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden 2 Comments »Today, we’re off to look at chickens.
We won’t be buying any (not today, anyway) but it seems like as good a time as any to start doing the research. We found a place that looks promising, they do all the necessary gubbins as well as the birds, so it seems like a good place to get some information.
This could be interesting…
New Seeds
Posted: Sun 2 September, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, House Work 1 Comment »We’re already getting organised for next year when it comes to the veg garden, greenhouse, and the decision about getting chickens.
Last week I went to the Real Seed Company, and ordered (among other things) some chocolate brown sweet peppers and some fluorescent purple chilli peppers. They should both be interesting – this year we’ve had massive success with normal chillis, and did OK on the bell peppers, although they weren’t great, and had a nasty reaction to sporadic watering.
Over the winter, we’re going to be making some additions and alterations to the greenhouse we inherited from the previous owners. It needs new shading put up, the automatic vent openers need replacing, and all that kind of general maintenance guff. Should be fun.
And yes, we’re even thinking of getting some chickens. It won’t be ’til Spring now, but that gives us some time to do some planning, get things in place, and all that kind of thing. We got a couple of books this week, so it should be interesting to see how things go.
Butt Monkey
Posted: Thu 23 August, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Green 2 Comments »One thing I forgot to mention while whittling on about our current garden set up is the sheer number of water butts we’ve now got scattered about the place.
Near the house we’ve currently got two 100L water butts connected to the garage on one side, and a 750L butt on the other side. All these are currently full, and we’ve another 100L one on order at the moment.
Down at the other end, by the greenhouse, we’ve got another four standard 200L water butts – again, all full.
All told, that makes 1,750 litres of rainwater that we’ve currently got stored. I make that 385 gallons of water. I think we might be OK in a drought – not that one’s going to happen this year…
Mind you, I still don’t see the point in water butts shaped like tree stumps and the like.
The Good Life
Posted: Mon 20 August, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green 2 Comments »Ye Gods, we’re going to have to change our names to Tom and Barbara if we’re not careful.
The garden at the new house is turning out to be very productive. Considering that we’ve done close to bugger all in the garden this year (well, since moving in three months ago) it’s really quite surprising.
The greenhouse has produced – OK, for the pedantic, the veg in the greenhouse has produced – five or six cucumbers, about 50 chilli peppers, a bundle of tomatos (both cherry toms and larger plum toms) and a selection of normal sweet peppers, although they haven’t been great. We’ll try a different type next year.
The veg patch produced three full rows of spuds, of which we’ve currently only harvested one row. The rest’ll be coming up soon, believe me. It also produced more radishes than we could use, and about four or five meals-worth of broad beans. There’ve also been plenty of courgettes (and a couple that’ve grown into marrows) as well as some pumpkins that’re developing well.
And then we get to the fruit trees. The plum tree is awash with fruit, even though we’ve already taken about eight Kg off it. The two apple trees are equally laden- we’ve taken about 5Kg of fruit already, and there’s probably three or four times that on the two trees. The pears are still growing, so hopefully they’ll take a couple of weeks to sort themselves out before we have to set to with them as well.
Over the weekend we ended up buying a decent preserving pan, as a lot of the fruit is going to be made into jam. Should be fun.
And then at the start of next year, we’re considering getting some chickens. (If nothing else, it’ll be amusing to see how Hound and Psycho Cat handle that development!) And yes, Razorhead, I’ll be asking for advice on that one sometime soon, bearing in mind your copious knowledge…
So yes, it looks like we may somehow be becoming refugees from “The Good Life“. Oh dear….
Rain at last
Posted: Mon 7 May, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Green Leave a comment »Ah, May happens, Bank Holiday happens, and bang, it’s raining again. Happy, happy day.
The downside of it is that we haven’t got all the water-butts set up and connected in to the guttering and downpipes at the new place, so we’re going to be wasting a lot of the current downpours. Bummer.
But at least a lot of it will be going on the garden, the veg patch, and the couple of water butts that we do have set up, so it could be worse.
And well, at least it’s proper rain. That’s definitely good…
Motorway Energy
Posted: Wed 2 May, 2007 Filed under: Green, Travel 2 Comments »There’s an interesting idea talked about here, creating a windfarm in the middle of a motorway (sorry, freeway) that uses the draught created by passing cars to generate power.
In this instance (in New Jersey, USA) they reckon it could power a light railway, thus enabling more commuters to get to work in a greener fashion.
Advance Warning
Posted: Wed 25 April, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Green, House Work, Thoughts 4 Comments »Now here’s a thing that’ll strike fear in the hearts of any sane individuals who read D4D™ on a regular basis…
Because we’ve bought a wood burner, over time we’re going to need logs. It’s a logical thing, I know. Now, obviously it’s better if you can source your own supply of logs, or combine with other people in the area, in order to source that supply. Apparently, these groups are called ‘chainsaw groups’ who will go out, and deal with a tree between them.
You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Yes, at some point this year I’m going to be taking a course to learn how to properly use a chainsaw. And, probably, buying one.
And if that concept isn’t enough to engender fear in your heart, you probably need to go see someone.
Guilt Art
Posted: Sat 21 April, 2007 Filed under: Green, Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »(via Gordon)
I’d love to see these pictures/prints/paintings at the true life-size – they must make an impact on you similar to the way some of Andreas Gursky’s ones do.
Basically, they’re artworks displaying our conspicuous consumption, and when done to life-size must be truly huge/impressive.
In fact, Chris Jordan’s entire site is pretty phenomenal.
Gotcha
Posted: Mon 29 January, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Green Leave a comment »Ah, the joys of seeing someone hoist on their own petard – in this case, a former environmental advisor to President Blair, who now commutes 500 miles weekly by plane, going from Gloucestershire to Edinburgh.
To coin a phrase from the Government’s rulebook
Do as I say, not as I do
New Links
Posted: Mon 29 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Leave a comment »Somewhere over there on the right, I’ve added a new category of links – Organic Gardening.
It’s something that we’re aiming to be doing a lot of in the new place, growing our own veg and plants, so it seems like a good plan to be building up some links, some back-up, and some ideas.
Self-Generating
Posted: Mon 15 January, 2007 Filed under: Getting Organised, Green, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the weekend, Dragon was questioning why people talk about saving the planet and so on.
Personally, I don’t talk about “saving the planet”. However, I do believe in working to live ethically, and as greenly as possible. With the new place, we aim to get some solar panels and/or solar tubes for hot water, and (if possible) a wind turbine for some electricity generation as well. We (well, mainly Herself, but I’ll be involved along the way) will also aim to be growing a fair amount of our own vegetables again too, and even possibly some chickens too. Who knows?
But I’m not doing any of it to “save the planet”. I do believe in lowering my impact, and doing what I can. But there’s a variety of reasons, and “saving the planet” isn’t one of them.
I like the idea of being more self-sufficient. I like the idea of generating our own power, so that we’re less reliant on the National Grid, and also on getting power from non-renewable sources. In a selfish way, I don’t want to see us in the shit as and when the power-stations start to run out of fuel, and I believe in being an example. If we start up our own micro-generation stuff, and (if necessary) fight the battles with planning officers and the like, that’s fine – particularly if it makes life easier for other people who come along afterwards.
I also like the idea of getting paid for any spare electricity we happen to generate. We’ve already made some contacts with a local electrician who is cool with our plans, and has the knowledge for doing it all. That’s a promising start. And if we can get the solar panels and/or wind turbine connected in to the National Grid then they pay us for any power we put in to the system. Again, I reckon that’s worthwhile.
Saving the planet? Nope. Helping our own little world along with a minimum of hassle – well, probably with a lot of hassle along the way, but you know what I mean – and also live in a way that allows us to be at least fairly ethical about things, that’s good with me. Really it’s about trying to find a way to live in balance, and maybe finding ways to give things back as well as just taking.
Decisions Made?
Posted: Sun 14 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Green, House Purchase Leave a comment »So, we ended up seeing two ore properties today, even though we’d already made a decision about the place we’re going to make an offer on. Why did we still see other places? Because by the time we’d seen the one we wanted, it was too late to cancel today’s viewings, the relevant estate agents had closed, and so we decided to be decent human beings, and still go see them.
Thankfully, neither of the properties today changed our minds about the ones yesterday.
However.
Now, I could gloss over this, and make out it never happened. But I won’t.
So, yesterday we saw two properties (Well, we saw way more than two, but we saw two particular ones) that we really liked. We’d made a decision on one, a fantastic place we both loved. We also had a second choice, which would be a bit more of a project, needs more work, but also ticked all the boxes. The difference between the two?
Property One is the more expensive one, by about £15,000 at the max price – but that puts it over the £250,000 stamp-duty threshold – which means we’d pay £7,800 in stamp duty instead of £2,500 on Property Two. Property One would need a small amount of work, but it would’ve been done quickly, whereas Two needs a lot more work – it’s fine to live in, but there’s a lot we’d want to do. Property One is an old place, whereas Porperty Two is 60s/70s, and has all the ‘character’ of a dead sponge. Oh, and Property One’s garden is OK, but small – and Property Two’s one is feckin’ huge, and sits on a plot of about 1/3rd of an acre…
We revisited both properties today, and did a lot of thinking.
And while last night it was Property One that was going to get the offer made on it, it’s now going to be Property Two. With it we get a huge garden, and a massive potential to expand on the place, increase its value, and make some serious changes. It also gives us the opportunity to add in some green energy stuff, as well as doing a lot more of our own vegetables etc., which Property One just wouldn’t have had.
So yes, we’ve made a decision, and Herself will be making the offer in the morning.
Local Cooling – One Week On
Posted: Fri 8 December, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Green Leave a comment »Well, it’s a week since I talked about Local Cooling, and in that week, I’ve apparently saved 5KWh of electricity, which works out as quarter of a tree, or 2.3 barrels of oil.
In that week, Local Cooling has gained about 9,000 users – and while obviously some users will be better than others when it comes to saving energy, it still makes for a lot of people starting to get the idea about saving energy.
And that’s got to be a good thing!
Local Cooling
Posted: Thu 30 November, 2006 Filed under: Getting Organised, Green 1 Comment »A company called UniBlue have released a product called LocalCooling.com, a small application that makes power management on your PC or laptop a lot easier.
Yes, I know a lot of this can be done via the Windows power management stuff – but the application makes it a lot easier to do, without needing to ferret around in Control Panel etc. (As per usual, I’d already changed a lot of the settings in order to reduce power consumption etc., but most people don’t)
It’ll take some time to see how it all pans out, but yeah, initially at least, I’d say it’s worth checking out.
Wanker
Posted: Sun 17 September, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Sweary, Thinking About..., Thoughts 3 Comments »I wrote about this fucking idiot before. A man “addicted” to branded clothes, he’s now going to burn all his branded possessions, and then write a book about his experiences of trying to live brand-free.
What an utter, utter cunt.
There are plenty of ways that this tosser could use to get rid of these items instead of burning them. He could give them away to charty shops. He could sell them off to one of the companies that re-sell second-hand clothes, particularly those with designer labels. Hell, he could just go and shove them all in a clothing recycling bin.
But no, this fucker has to make a show of it, so he’s going to burn them. Not content with being a shallow-minded cunt in the first place, he’s now tagged himself as an egotistical self-centred cunt who’s still shallow-minded as well.
Tosser.
Truth
Posted: Tue 8 August, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »I just saw this (sadly unattributed) quote, and thought it summed up a lot of the problem (in corporate terms) for green energy in general…
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem — how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
Carriers
Posted: Mon 7 August, 2006 Filed under: Green, Sweary, Thoughts 6 Comments »First of all, it’d help if when you do the (supposedly greener, as you’re not driving to the supermarket, and they can do multiple deliveries on one run) shopping online, they don’t deliver everything in fucking plastic bags. Particularly when you end up with so many bags with just one bloody item in them. That’d help a lot more.
And why not “just” make bags that actually, you know, biodegrade? Rather than lasting for the next 150 years in a sodding landfill? Waitrose had them at least fifteen years ago, and they were photodegradeable – slight flaw, as on sunny days they did have a nasty habit of breaking before you got home – but still, it was done fifteen sodding years ago.
If Tesco (and all the others) were actually bothered, instead of just paying lip service to the entire Green thing, then they’d buy in degradeable plastic bags, or do a far better job of promoting their “bag for life” scheme. (which seems to have done a bit of a disappearing act of late) But as it is, well, it’s just a buzzword, a theme for the moment, and so long as they’re seen to be paying lip service to it, and so long as it doesn’t actually cost them a fucking penny, then they’ll be all for this kind of bullshit PR stunt…
You’ll Never Put A Better Bit Of Butter On Your Knife
Posted: Sun 23 July, 2006 Filed under: Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »One of the best print adverts I’ve seen recently is for Country Life butter. (Most people will probably best remember Country Life for it’s slogan that’s the title for this post, and the “buttermen” adverts)
The Ad points out that Anchor (their nearest rival in the market) is made in New Zealand, then shipped over in frozen containers across half the world. It’s a bloody good point…
Critical Mass
Posted: Tue 27 June, 2006 Filed under: Green, News 1 Comment »Nice to see that Critical Mass , a monthly event in London, has been judged to be lawful by the High Court, finding against the Metroplitan Police’s claim that it was an unlawful event.
The London ride is part of a worldwide phenomenon and has taken place on the last Friday of the month, every month, for the past 12 years, with riders gathering on the South Bank from 6pm.
But last September, before the start of that month’s ride, cycle police, who always accompany the cyclists, distributed a letter to participants stating the Critical Mass demonstrations were not lawful.
Water Butts
Posted: Mon 26 June, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, General, Green 2 Comments »A while ago, we bought a couple of water butts, in order to save some rainwater for the garden, and all that jazz. (In fact, we now have three water butts, including one that was getting used (and probably will again) for “grey water” – ie washing-up water etc.)
Anyway, out of the three we’ve got, only one has a tap that doesn’t leak. Turns out, two of them were supplied without all the parts for the taps, so they didn’t seal properly – we ended up fixing it with silicone sealant, but all the same, on one it still drips.
Eventually I got round to emailing Sankey, the people who made the butts in the first place, and asked about getting a couple of the missing nuts for the taps.
I got an email today (which had been filtered into “junk mail” because of the subject line – “Butt Taps”) saying they’re going to send out the spare parts. Woo, and indeed Yay.
Drip, Drip, Drip – Extra
Posted: Thu 22 June, 2006 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Green Leave a comment »Ah, I do like annoying people.
I’ve just emailed the following to Thames Water’s customer services.
To whom it may concern,
If, as your current news story puts it, “Approximately a quarter of all leakage is on customers’ pipes.�, that still means that three-quarters of all leakage is on TW’s side of the pipes.
How does a utility company justify selling people a product, and then telling them they can’t use it?
How does a utility company justify leaks that amount to the equivalent of 6.6 million people’s daily usage ( using the DFID’s estimate of 135 litres per person per day ) every day ?
I’m just interested to know.
Sincerely
Lyle
Should be interesting to see what they come up with…
Drip, Drip, Drip
Posted: Thu 22 June, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Thoughts, Weirdness 17 Comments »How on earth can a water company justify losing 894 million litres per day of water? That’s something like 675,000 litres per second.
Taking the assumption that a person uses about 135 litres of water per day, that loss is equal to the water supply for 6.6million people. Considering that Thames Water only supplies 8 million people all told, that’s a pretty fucking big loss, I’d say. In fact, if you take into account the people they do supply, as well as the amount they’re losing, if they were an efficient company, they could supply 14.5 million people. That’d make the shareholders happy.
So how come it’s the users of Thames Water who are penalised by drought orders and hosepipe bans, when Thames Water themselves are the biggest water wasters of all?
Packaging
Posted: Tue 20 June, 2006 Filed under: Getting Organised, Green 1 Comment »It’s good to see that at last a fairly large domestic organisation is starting to protest to supermarkets about the excessive amount of food packaging they use.
Yes, the Women’s Institute (WI) is going green! And about time too.
Food packaging has also been one of the goals of Generous.org.uk – another great resource for this kind of green information…
Green? Or PR?
Posted: Thu 15 June, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, News 5 Comments »Isn’t it interesting how all of a sudden, a lot of media stories – and government policies – are becoming more ecologically-based?
Two this week came to my attention – first the “green rating” of houses when they go up for sale, as part of the HIP (Home Information Pack) concept that’s being introduced in June 2007. Of course, it’s a bit half-arsed, as there’d be no financial incentives to home-buyers for buying a house that was more ecological/green than another.
The second one, which interested me more, was about the possibility of charging people more for rubbish collection if they don’t sort their recyclable stuff from the normal household crap.
To me, that’s a good idea – we need to increase the amount we recycle, and anything that works to persuade people to do so is, to me, a good thing. It still amazes me on our refuse collection day, seeing how much recyclable stuff we have in comparison to the other people on our street. Maybe we end up with a lot more packaging etc. that is able to be recycled, but I don’t think so – I think that at the moment most people still see it as “easier” to just chuck everything into one bin, instead of sorting it out.
Rubber Roads
Posted: Fri 9 June, 2006 Filed under: Green, Travel 3 Comments »Interesting idea in this story from the BBC about a company with plans to use old disused/decommisioned railway lines, and create a road made from recycled rubber car tyres along them, which may go some way to helping relieve congestion.
So – a green option for helping to recycle rubber tyres instead of flinging them on landfill, and a way to make certain roads quicker and (possibly) cheaper than normal methods. And that uses less water etc. than the concrete that’s used in roads?
Sounds like a plan to me…
Just Because I Eat…
Posted: Thu 11 May, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Green 1 Comment »Good to see the BBC news site today having a feature about composting and wormeries.
As regular readers will know, our first attempt of using a wormery was a disaster – and quite honestly I’m not convinced about the second attempt, currently under way – but the compost bins we’ve used, along with the giant version we’ve now got, seem to be doing pretty well.
All the same, it’s good to see this kind of idea getting more mainstream acceptance and information.
Not Easy Being Green
Posted: Sun 9 April, 2006 Filed under: Green, Thoughts 4 Comments »At the moment BBC is showing a programme (no link, because I can’t find one, although there’s a small piece about the series here) called “It’s Not Easy Being Green”. No, it’s not about the Muppets, but instead about a family, the Strawbridges, who have moved to Cornwall and are working to live in an ecologically sound manner.
It’s a strange programme in a number of ways, because while it contains some good ideas and good advice, it also helps to do more damage to the Green and Ecological lifestyles than it should, because frankly Mr and Mrs Strawbridge (as opposed to the children) spend half the time looking like nutters.
In the most recent episode, for instance, they managed to merge some excellent ideas about glass recycling and heatsinks, solar-heated showers etc., with a visit to the Big Green Gathering, or whatever it was called, which had an awful lot of hippies in a field, and some of the most manky “recycled” tat in existence.
Now, I don’t mind hippies per se, nor do I overly object to the Big Green Gathering and its like. I do, however, have a problem with the way that hippie-type people seem to always become the enthusiastic/lunatic fringe for things to do with Green and Ecological living, and thus become the poster-children for all this kind of thing.
I don’t know, this entire mental process hasn’t yet been fully thought-out by me, but if we are to start living in a way that encourages things like recycling, sustainable power, self-sufficiency and so on, perhaps the first step on the way to mainstream acceptance of these concepts is to have some sane non-hippies taking in the lifestyle, and becoming a better advert than the current crop of users?
Hosepipe
Posted: Mon 3 April, 2006 Filed under: Green, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »There’s something that seems distinctly bizarre about the hosepipe bans that are coming in to force today across a lot of the south of England.
For one thing, it specifies that you can’t use a hosepipe to wash the car, or water the garden. You can still use one to fill a swimming pool, or a hot-tub. In theory we could get away with using one to play with Hound, who loves being zapped with the hose, and runs round the garden like a mad thing as a game. No idea why she likes it so much, but she does. Bizarre creature.
And despite the fact that it’s necessary for the hosepipe ban in order to preserve levels of water, I bet that every golf course is still allowed to use sprinkler systems etc. in order to keep the greens all beautiful. They seem to be exempt from every other water conservation method, so I bet they don’t get hit by this one. Fuckers.
If the water boards were serious about water conservation, the first thing they’d do is sort out their own leaking pipes. Yes, I know that Thames Water (and others) say they’re doing their best, and that they’re spending more than ever on repairing leaks, but they also said that ten years ago when I worked for their customer services department. They haven’t changed their story in a decade, and will continue to get away with doing as little as possible for as long as they can.
Oh, and the second thing the water boards should do is offer discounts to people who conserve water, who have water butts to store rain water for garden or domestic use, and perhaps even subsidise the purchase of those water butts. Now that would be doing something to help the situation…
Repulsive
Posted: Mon 3 April, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Green 1 Comment »Last year, we bought a wormery for helping with composting our household waste, so we could use it on the garden. We’d already got one big compost bin, but the wormery was also supposed to be able to deal with food scraps and so on, which you’re not supposed to put on a normal compost heap.
Over the last six months or so, we’ve been using it a lot – but obviously not properly. I’m not sure how so much water got in (possibly rain, but I’m not certain) but it obviously managed to drown/kill all the worms, and so the entire thing was just a festering pile of scum.
We cleaned it out this weekend – I’d been considering taking photos of “how not to do it”, but once the covers came off, in all honesty I just wanted to get the entire lot into black bags, and dispose of it all as quickly as possible. Photos would’ve taken too long.
The first layer was OK, just lots of mould, fur, and standard stuff. The second one, bluntly, stank. It was gross. Flies all over the place (luckily we’d been prepared, and had bought stuff like fly spray already – we’d opened it last weekend, so we knew what it was going to be like) and the smell was just unbelievable. Truly, truly manky.
The third layer didn’t smell as bad, but seemed to be entirely populated by worm corpses and maggot larvae.
So all in all, it was a bit of a disaster. We’ve got rid of it all – and I pity the poor fucker who opens those binbags, I tell you – and will start again from scratch once the new pack arrives. Only time will tell how we do this time…
We Are What We Do
Posted: Wed 29 March, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, Health, Thoughts 1 Comment »via a fairly convoluted route (that I can’t be arsed to repeat right now) I came across a site called We Are What We Do, which falls into line with a lot of my own feelings about life.
We’re not another charity. We’re not an institution. We Are What We Do is a movement. We’d like to inspire people to use their everyday actions to change the world. Whoever they are. And wherever they are. And that includes you.
We’ve created 50 simple, everyday actions that can improve our environment, our health, and our communities, making our planet and the people on it much happier. We started by putting these actions in a book, but the whole movement is getting bigger. And bigger.
The 50 actions aren’t anything hugely strenuous, but they’re ideas on what can be done to help out. As it turns out, I’ve done about half of them already, and regularly do a third of the list. So I’m well on the way.
But it’s a great idea, and one that should go a long way…
Rubbish and Recycling
Posted: Wed 8 March, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Thoughts 3 Comments »Over the last year or two I’ve got more and more into being Green, recycling as much as possible, and all that eco-friendly gubbins.
A lot of our recycling is collected by the local council, who have a bizarre timescale involving collecting the recycling once a fortnight, garden waste once a fortnight, and domestic household rubbish once a week. In light of this, it’s sometimes interesting for me to look at what’s being collected from other houses, and how much recycling waste they accumulate as opposed to just chucking it all in the bin to be collected weekly.
And the simple result is that most people do just chuck it all in the standard bin, despite the provision of recycling collection bins/tubs etc. Since we started doing the recycling properly, we normally chuck away one bag of “normal” domestic rubbish a week. That’s it. All the rest is recyclable.
I think that probably the best basic way to get people recycling in our area is to swap things around again. Collect the recycling every week, and the household rubbish fortnightly. That way you’re making it harder for people to just chuck it away, and instead making it “easier” to recycle instead.
Now I “just” need to figure out a way to persuade the local council that this is a better way to do things. What’re the chances?
Floating Wind Farms
Posted: Mon 7 November, 2005 Filed under: Green Leave a comment »I saw an interesting idea the other day, and kind of kept it over for while we were away. Sad, but true.
Anyway, this piece details the invention of a floating wind-turbine farm, which seems to be a pretty good idea. It means it doesn’t have to create/build the expensive moorings for the wind-turbines, and that they could be sited further away from the coast.
In addition, they could be moved should they need to (for example, in the US during hurricane season) and generally just seem to be a pretty good idea. The only thing I wonder about is how well they’d need to be anchored in order to not topple over at some point…
Windage
Posted: Wed 26 October, 2005 Filed under: Green 2 Comments »The BBC has a couple of interesting features at the moment about wind-power and green energy.
The first concerns whether having a wind-turbine at home can make financial sense as well as ecological sense. It’s something that we’ve been looking at, particularly for once we’ve moved – there’s no point spending *cough*thousand pounds on a wind-turbine etc. only to sod off twelve months later. I also think we’ll be making use of grants and so on from organisations such as Clear Skies, and taking advice from the British Wind Energy Association. There’s a lot of other stuff that’ll go into the process, and in that context the article makes for interesting reading.
The second piece details the story of one installation of a domestic wind-turbine, and the trials and tribulations of the process – again, something interesting for future reference.
Energy Transfer
Posted: Wed 12 October, 2005 Filed under: Green, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the weekend, we looked at USwitch for some comparisons on changing our electricity supplier to one who uses renewable energy. It’s a bit of a complex thing really, but basically what happens is that the energy provider promises to provide the National Grid with “clean” energy (i.e. from a renewable source, such as hydroelectric, or wind-farm) for the amount that’s been used by us. Not perfect, but better than nowt.
In the end we’ve changed over to Npower‘s Juice programme, which uses power generated at the North Hoyle wind farm.
It’s going to be interesting seeing how the transfer goes etc., but it stands to save us about £50 over the year, as well as being part of our “Green” objectives…
Recycling
Posted: Fri 7 October, 2005 Filed under: Domestic, General, Green 1 Comment »Over the course of this year, I’ve got more and more into recycling and general Green stuff. I’ve always been into it to a degree, but I found that while living in Manchester it was something that was seriously difficult to do, as there were no decent local recycling banks, and the paper-recycling collection was – well, sporadic, to say the least. In fact, there was little to no chance to recycle stuff while I lived there – something I hope has changed a bit now, but while I was there it was definitely difficult to do.
Since moving to Bracknell though, it’s become a lot easier. First of all, the council actually do a regular collection of recyclable stuff, and just that simple fact makes it all a lot easier. We can get rid of all our cardboard, paper, and plastics in this way, and they collect once a fortnight. On the alternate weeks, they do a “garden waste” collection, which goes off to be composted – although they charge for the bags in which to put the waste, which always strikes me as a bit of a scam, considering the amount we’re already paying for council tax, which includes rubbish collection. Still, we don’t use that one that much, as most of our garden waste goes back on the compost heap anyway.
Herself is also a fairly avid recycler and so on, so the garden already had a serious compost heap (well, one of the plastic compost bins, which then ended up being two bins as one was always full, and has now become a proper heap in its own container) where most of the garden waste and raw food waste went (veg peelings and the like) and the basic stuff was already in place, containers for the plastics, papers, etc., so in that way as well it’s now a lot easier to do the recycling stuff than before.
Of late, we’ve also been watching the BBC series “No Waste Like Home“, which has made for interesting viewing, and helped to show just how much people in general chuck away that can be recycled.
As a result, we’ve also just bought a wormery from a company called Wiggly Wigglers (I swear I’m not making this up) which will also help on breaking down food waste (both cooked and raw) into decent compost. We set it up last night, and so far it’s all looking pretty good.
I’m sure there’ll be more posts about this kind of thing as time goes on, so I’m also going to add in a new category, just titled “Green”.