Blogs

Hi,

This is just a quick note to say that I'm moving my blog to my own website: http://jack-kelly.com/tags/1010_diary

Short intro before we start:

This will be a diary of our family's journey from unmodernised & uninspiring,

difficult to heat and hard to treat (solid walls etc) Victorian 2up/2down terrace in Peckham to into warm & cosy contemporary compact eco house.

It will cut 80% of its current carbon emissions by utilising passive haus design principles (with few extras) and will also use natural or recycled materials throughout.

 "the real thing... insulating Victorian houses" session, which had been scheduled for Thurs 19 August, needs to be re-scheduled.  Sorry for any convenience!  We'll let you know as soon as we have a new date.

 Peckham Power: the real thing… solar hot water

Wednesday 12 May 6.30pm

Present: David Byrne, Josephine, Clyde Watson, Jack Kelly, Benedict O’Looney, Lukasz Gruszczynski (and toddler!), Gill, Yvonne Killen, Anna Plodowski, (Eileen Conn attended very briefly)

Starting note

 Finally, FINALLY got round to tidying up our little storage area.  I found so many things I completely forgotten I'd had.  Not only that, I found that I'd bought multiples of quite a few things (why do we have so many hammers?!?) because I'd forgotten what we already had!  It feels pretty good having it all tidied up and it's made DIY less of a pain in the ass (because I don't have to spend 10 minutes trying to find tools).  Save money and resources: tidy up!

I stupidly didn't take any photos before tidying up but here's the result:

  We have two 100 litre water butts: one in the back garden, one in the front garden.  Before today, the one in the back garden had a distressing amount of stinky sludge at the bottom (which was partially blocking the tap) and the waterbutt at the front wasn't plumbed in at all.  So today I cleaned the back waterbutt (emptying the gunk onto the garden and digging it in; I assume it's good stuff for the plants?!).  I made a bodged filter out of chicken wire in an attempt to stop so many fallen leaves entering the tank.

For the past few weeks, I've been keeping a detailed spreadsheet of our electricity and gas usage.  My main aim is to figure out how much energy individual actions require (having a shower, running the dishwasher etc).

What I wasn't expecting to find is that we have a gas leak!  I noticed that our gas meter was continuing to turn even when everything was off.  I was a bit sceptical that we actually had a leak because we couldn't smell any gas.   I called British Gas who sent a gas engineer within an hour.  He confirmed that we do have a leak, turned off our gas and we're now in the process of getting this fixed.  If I hadn't been keeping a close eye on our meter readings then we wouldn't have found the leak.

Today I finally figured out how to get our Home Theatre PC (a home-built digital video recorder running Windows Vista Media Centre) to send itself to sleep correctly.  Prior to figuring this out, the system would stay on indefinitely in the situation where you're watching TV, you press the "off" button on the remote control but the system is recording a programme (the desired behaviour in this situation is to automatically turn off after it's finished recording but it would just stay on indefinitely).

The solution was actually really obvious and I'm somewhat ashamed I didn't figure it out previously.  All that's required is to go to Control Panel > Power Settings and set the system to suspend after a few minutes (it was previously configured never to suspend).

The HTPC draws 60-70 Watts when awake and 3 Watts when sleeping.

My measurements, prior to figuring out how to turn it off properly:

•  average for a 24hr period (measured over 50 hours) = about 0.6kWh per day
• = about 220 kWh per year
• = about £40 per year (at 18p per kWh)
• = about 118 kgCO₂ per year

After configuring it to shut down correctly, the stats are:

• average for 24 hours period (measured over 42 hours) = about 0.47 kWh per day
• = about 170 kWh per year
• = about £31 per year
• = about 93 kgCO₂ per year
• a 25% saving (not bad for two minutes' work)

So, from these (rather short) measurements, it looks like the tweak is saving £9 and 25kg CO₂ per year.  So yes, it's a saving, but it's hardly gonna prevent catastrophic climate change on its own (an average person in the UK produces 10,000 kg CO₂ per year and total human activities produce 27,000,000,000,000 kg of CO₂ per year).

(update: a good friend has pointed out that the numbers sound a little suspect.  So I'll keep monitoring the HTPC for a week or two to get a more representative sample)

 It's a bit late in the day but I'm going to start keeping a log of my attempts to manage my CO₂ emissions here on the blog.  I'll try to log both successful and unsuccessful things and provide links to more information where appropriate.

 A very positive article from The Guardian!  Here's a quick quote:

 The public overwhelmingly support a much more ambitious scheme to push renewable energy for homes and communities, a new poll shows today ahead of a key government announcement next week.

Government officials are putting the finishing touches to plans to boost the take-up of renewable energy in Britain - which is the lowest in Europe - through a system known as the "clean energy cashback", or feed-in tariff.

Read the rest of the article on the Guardian website: Public supports ambitious scheme for micro-scale renewable energy, Guardian 27th January 2010