We are doing it all over again! Summer Solstice 2009 to Winter solstice 2009 we will be on the wagon again, coming off the consumer wheel and hopefully saving my bank balance!
There are a few more rules this time!
1. We can buy recyled things and handmade. This isn’t going to include all “ethical” products, otherwise, with the help of the many, many good websites out there, I will continue to consume at an unsustainable rate.
2. The e-Bay habit must be addressed. Yes, its all second hand, but it gets out of control. The new rule is I can only buy if I have earnt money by selling. Essentially I want to make spending a closed loop system.
So why? Spending money is starting to again become a comfort thing – feel bad? Buy something nice! Oh dear. Add to that the fact that I am losing my job at the end of July. Money is going back to being tight, not a great place to be at.
I also feel that there are more lessons to be learn’t and more experiences to be had. Six months is not long enough. Although this time there will be less of a steep learning curve as I know where to buy things from and how to swap for what I need.
I’m I shocked? I’m I appalled? Not in the least …… human nature is a tricky thing, mixed with power, often a complete disaster. Having said that I might cry if Caroline Lucas has been doing a big expenses fiddle, but apart from that.
Stephen Fry has said it best: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8045040.stm
We’ve finally gone solar! Well we did in Feb, but it has taken rather longer than I thought to get round to posting it (slap hand, will do better in the future, promise!).
So: pics!!!!
Starship Enterprise of control panels. Not sure what it does, except scare small children and prophesies the future in a weird Morgan Freeman style voice.
Up go the panels. Apparently the view was great from up there. I took their word for it.
All done and very shiny. And yes, there is one tube missing, ‘cos it broke….. to follow soon they assure me….
So does it work? Well yes, as long as you only shower and wash up in the evenings – which is fine. And yes the showers are very hot, not luke warm, so its all good. And we light the fire if there isn’t enough……
Wrote a lovely piece about my rather lovely solar alarm clock, but it got eaten somehow (the post, not the clock).
If memory serves me I said something like:
- gosh, not as daft as people on facebook were cruelly saying when I had problems getting it to work (all sorted now now – and no, putting it outside wasn’t really the problem, but thanks for the input!)
- nice not to have another gadget in the house eating power (reference to my old sony clock alarm) and zapping my head at night with electricity I dont need to use.
- and, er, it works, doesn’t make loud ticking noise near my head and glows when I hit the button at the top – nice!
The most exciting thing to emerge from Earth Hour was making our OWL electricity meter display zero – a never before achieved feat!
We enjoyed the whole thing so much, we are thinking about making Thursday nights “no power nights”, and do strange things like eat, talk and play games!
Showering, cooking dinner, recharging phone and finding candles before Earth Hour starts!
We live in the countryside, so we wont know if anyone else is doing it – a bit like a Zen Koan – If a tree falls, and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound? Oh well, should be fun never-the-less……..
You are really not going to believe this: the solar guys were installing the panels (yay!!) and went to make a cup of tea when I was out. Put my old fashioned style ELECTRIC kettle on the gas stove. Resulting in one embarrassed guy and one very melted kettle!
So we are on the look out for a new kettle! I want to go the eco route, but the question is what to go for?
There are a few ways to lower consumption of energy and water, one of the most obvious is making sure you only boil what you need. There are a series of ‘eco’ kettles on the market right now. Talk about Greenwash – my word! The only thing they have is a water indicator on the side that says ‘one cup’, ”two cups’ etc…
The real thing is The Eco Kettle: a great gadget. It focuses on making sure that you only boil what you need by having two water chambers – press the button to release one cup at a time into the water heating chamber. Friends have also told me it boils super fast. I think its a great idea, but we have that one sorted as we are very careful about how much water we put in.
So how else can we reduce our consumption (apart from not melting kettles!)?
I like the idea of a insulated kettle, so it keeps the water hot after boiling for more cups of coffee. The thing is, we are not huge hot-drink-drinkers, so we really wouldn’t use it. Great idea though, although according to Amazon, the only two available have poor feedback ratings. More design work required!
I also like the idea of the Tefal Quick Cup. Rapid boil, and only delivers one cup (does what says on tin). However it has a cartridge system inside that needs replacing. How do we recycle it? Is it another way for a company to get us to buy more things? I understand that something with complex design needs to be protected from limescale (we are in a very hard water area), but I think the solution is to buy a simpler gadget that can cope with the water. This means the Breville Hot Cup gadget is also out of the running.
I found a Philips Kettle with temperature control (HD4686) that has a button that will set the heating temperature of the kettle. It turns out that coffee and herbal tea don’t need 100 degree water to brew, 80 degrees is fine. Now this will make a difference to our power usage.
Keep your fingers crossed that its the right choice – eco decisions can get very complex. Very …. hurts my head ….
Why do people take the tube? Really? Why?
30 mins squished in a little metal box with a whole bunch of people, or strolling through Holburn looking at the amazing architecture? Seriously, walking took the same time! Rush hour on tube versus stroll in sunshine? No contest!
