Peter's Blog
Saturday 12th December 2009
As you can see it has been a long time since I've added to this blog - combination of work (OU tutor), the final stages of an environmental course (OU U316 Environmental Web) which I've been studying this year, holidays and life in general. So let me bring it up to date with some pertinent comments.Solar Water Heating. The bathroom work mentioned in the last post is nearly complete, with the hot water tank replacement and modifications (for solar connection) being the main outstanding item. I am planning to buy a panel and associated components from a small company called Solarproject who have an outlet at Sywell Aerodrome (Northampton) for roughly £500. When the plumber has finished I will have a spare hot water tank so am initially going to experiment with it connected to the solarpanel mounted on the roof of our garage. Watch this space for updates on progress.
The Wave. I enjoyed two days with the ClimateChains group who cycled to The Wave climate change march which took place on Saturday 5th December. I joined them for the last leg from Cambridge and for the mass cycle ride and march in London on the 5th. The group which included Mary who had just celebrated her 80th birthday, made a striking sight with banners streaming behind them.
Holiday travel. I've just discovered how problematic it is to be 'green' when booking a holiday at short notice. For a variety of reasons we both felt we needed a short break after Christmas. Having decided that we would like to spend ~10 days in Granada in southern Spain, I thought I might be able to salve my conscience about taking a holiday abroad by going one way at least by train rather than flying. This is perfectly possible, if expensive, via Paris and Madrid, using an overnight 'trainhotel' between these two intermediate points. The Raileurope website seemed to indicate availability on the dates of interest so on that basis I booked a small apartment in Granada, only then to find the Raileurope web booking system only checked actual availability on the final booking stages when it then showed both outward and return journey sleepers were fully booked! Thus thwarted I had no choice but to book flights (at ~25% of the cost of the supposedly low cost online train fares). So to partially ease my conscience the only option if we were to take the holiday, was to estimate the carbon footprint for our flights so as to 'offset' it. I've chosen to use the Equiclimate approach used by our gas and electricity supplier (Ebico) by which 'offsets' are aggregated and used to buy 'credits from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and withdraw(s) these credits from the market.' The idea is to (eventually) force large polluters to reduce their pollution rather than just buy credits in the Carbon trading market.
Friday 28th August 2009
Solar Water Heating. Well we had two visits in the end, the last one didn't turn up on the day arranged, which was something of a relief because by then my monitoring of our gas consumption was clearly showing that it was not going to be a long term economic investment. The monitoring figures showed we use something like £80 of gas per year (at current prices) for our water heating and cooking (hob). This is probably something of an underestimate since in winter, the cold water temperature would be lower and would require more heating. However solar only claims to provide ~70% of hot water needs over a complete year, so the £80 is I think a reasonable figure to use. On that basis the best estimate of £2700* would take about 34 years to recover. Energy prices will almost certainly rise steeply over the next few years but I think there are other better environmental savings we can achieve at the moment with the investment. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in solar water heating - at ~ £500 for a locally available diy pack, I am planning to ensure that the forthcoming bathroom plumbing work will also allow me or an installer, to connect a solar panel easily at a future date.* From Brian Sampson at Bass-Solar-Energy in Oakham who impressed us as being knowledgeable and straightforward.
Saturday 22nd August 2009
Solar Water
Heating. We had the first of three visits over the next
few days from solar water heating installers. When we had the
extension to the bungalow built a couple of years ago, I did explore
what solar options were available. Solar
PV (photovoltaic - electricity production) on one of
our south facing roofs was ruled out as requiring too large an
investment (the 50% grant had just been withdrawn) and too long a pay
back period (in excess of 20 years). Also solar water heating
was ruled out at that time because the new ensuite bathroom was a long
way from the main boiler, hot water tank and south facing roof.
So instead we decided on a low flow mains electric shower and
small under washbasin water heater. Now we have the main
bathroom to renovate so I'm looking again at solar water heating.
I haven't had a detailed estimate yet but the 'ball park'
figure I'm getting is around £3000, supplied and installed.
The suppliers talk about a typical 10 year pay back period
but I'm not sure that is realistic for the two of us in our bungalow,
so I've started to do some monitoring of our gas consumption which at
this time of year is just used by the condensing boiler for water
heating, and hob for cooking. I'll post some figures in a
week or two.