Bad bad things are going on in Norway these days. Please spread the word.

[Woody girl]

As I've said reducing our electric consumption on a personal level means a few tweaks in the way you live. I have lived off grid for a couple of years on and off. Sometimes through choice other times through nessesity .
Cooking. Try a haybox. Easy to make and you can prepare the food the day before. Heat to a boil in the morning while you have breakfast. Put into haybox. Toddle off to work and come back to a nice cooked stew that only requires a short heat up to temp before serving. So you can throw out the slow cooker. These were in common use in ww2.
Light. I have several Philips life light solar lanterns. One I use all year round as a bedside light. It is charged during the day from a small solar pannel in the window.

Phone I use solar charged power banks to charge my phone.
Water. I use two solar showers to heat enough water for all my daily needs apart from clothes washing .
Heating is a multi fuel stove I need it or want it in the winter plus an air source heat pump. The burner is supposed to be back up heating but is usualy my main source of heating unless it gets realy cold.
That is my small personal contribution to lower energy consumption. Not perfect but every little helps even if it means some days I cannot do certain things because the weather isn't playing ball.. mainly the solar shower water heating. I can use all else the entire year round as a rule.
It may seem stupidly pointless to some but I'm happy with what I do and the way I do it. I know I tread as lightly as I can on this world. It's never going to be completely carbon neutral but it's the best I can do for now. I'm always looking for a way to make life less consumtive ( is that a word?)

 

[santaman2000]

Just had a look at some of those small domestic turbines Toddy mentioned . As I suspected they don't chuck out much wattage between 20 and 50 watts. Fine for a shed caravan or small yacht. You'd need much more to power a modern house. You can get 1000 watt ones. Much more of a backup than fully powering a house. The cost of batteries would be the main worry. But they are getting better and cheaper all the time.

Those small domestic turbines were in use in Texas some 30+ years ago when I was stationed there. They produced so much electricity there was a surplus (which the power companies had to buy from the homeowner by Texas law)

 

[santaman2000]

Its summertime, so these things are possible, what about in the winter?, obviously in winter time everyone uses more electricity, last time I drove through Texas, I was quite surprised how many farms had little windmills driving water pumps, generators etc, maybe we are just too modern nowadays......

Ummm. No. My electricity use doubles in the summer when the air conditioner comes on. In the winter I rarely use it at all and the heat is gas.

 

[Fadcode]

Ummm. No. My electricity use doubles in the summer when the air conditioner comes on. In the winter I rarely use it at all and the heat is gas.

We are fortunate here in that we rarely get temperatures like you do in Florida, and not many homes have air conditioning here, its the winter here when we tend to use more electricity to heat our homes,in summer we eat more salads and less cooked meals, so our bills are usually less in the summer months. a lot of homes here in Cornwall do not have mains gas so buying propane or other gases to heat your home in the winter can be quite costly.

 

[santaman2000]

I remember a safety class from university. One of th points was that every technological solution for a hazard brings a new hazard:
- Discovering fire alleviated two hazards (freezing and eating raw food) but created the new hazard of burn injuries
- The automobile alleviated pollution (vast quantities of horse manure on the streets) but created another pollution that took more than a generation to discover
- Etc.

The power production methods we’re trying are no different in that respect. Wind turbines kill birds (how much remains to be seen) Atomic energy has an inherent radiation risk (although the record so far has been good) Large hydroelectric dams devastate flow based ecosystems. Photo-electric panels require the strip mining of raw materials and the panels have a limited usable life before needing replacement.

Petrochemicals touched on one of the problems, the vast population itself. Just a century ago we had less than half the population of today?

Yet we stll try our best to cure illnesses and lower mortality rates. Even if we decrease per capital consumption by 50% it means nothing if we double the population.

 

[santaman2000]

We are fortunate here in that we rarely get temperatures like you do in Florida, and not many homes have air conditioning here, its the winter here when we tend to use more electricity to heat our homes,in summer we eat more salads and less cooked meals, so our bills are usually less in the summer months. a lot of homes here in Cornwall do not have mains gas so buying propane or other gases to heat your home in the winter can be quite costly.

Yes, but the issue is a worldwide issue. This shows the world population as distributed by latitude and longitude https://slate.com/news-and-politics...is-distributed-by-longitude-and-latitude.html

And don’t forget, your climate is warming too.

 

[Janne]

When we built the house here, we insulated it to Scandinavian standards, but flipped the layers, as the heat is outside.
The builders have never seen anything like what I wanted.
Our electricity bill is about 20% of what houses built with the (then) standard insulation.
Most newly built private homes are very well insulated today here.

Not only does the bills go down substantially, you also avoid cold air blowing forcefully from every vent.
The latest interesting tech is to build a house using Styrofoam blocks, with internal steel reinforcement and cavities where the concrete is poured.
Called Insulated Concrete Forms or ICF.
Is that also being used in UK these days?


That tech is fantastic, easy to build, and decent insulation. If I did another house here, I would use that tech, and add extra insulation on the inside to make it even better.

I think some very interesting info has surfaced here. I had no clue about storing the excess electricity!

 

[Billy-o]

Light. I have several Philips life light solar lanterns. One I use all year round as a bedside light. It is charged during the day from a small solar pannel in the window)

Oh, that's excellent. I had never seen these ones. But I think getting one (or something like) for not only bedside reading, but charging phone and bike lights is now very high on my list. I wonder if it can charge a laptop and some 18650s too

 

[Paul_B]

Glass and window tech is improving. Our windows are still only double glazed but they're A+8 or +10 rated. They reflect heat back in but let radiated heat into the room. A weird sensation touching the window on a cold February day that had blue skies and the sun shining weakly into the room. The glass felt warm! Since getting them put in our bills dropped a lot because the heating got turned off a lot earlier in the evening and generally even when it's on the radiators were cold.

My point being that wall or roof insulation isn't the whole story, windows are important too. Good, airtight windows with double or triple glazing at the highest rating you can afford will make a big difference.

 

[Toddy]

We had our roof redone last year. New sarking and tiles, etc., and the difference in the heat loss, and the useability of the loft is really noticeable.
I didn't know about the windows though, and will look into that since ours are now over 20 years old and starting to need replacing.

M

 

[Janne]

There is some amazing tech today for widows.
For our new house in Norway, I need to choose the windows. Incredibly many options. Confusing. And with every feature the cost skyrockets....
Various E values, reflecting here there and everywhere, hardened, thinner, thicker, shading, colours and tints, internal sun shades......
Nightmare!

The question is - how much energy ( = money) can be saved with the various options?

But the first question I would ask myself, Toddy is - are the old windows drafty ( frames finished) or not?
If the frames are perfect, it should be possible to just replace the glass cassettes. I think they make three glass cassettes that fit in a two glass frame these days.

 

[Tengu]

Where is the OP?

 

[Janne]

I have one this afternoon. OP removal of an impacted lower left wisdom tooth.
Not fun, as I have had an excruitiating lower back pain for two weeks, sice I dug up the old banana plants..

Getting old. No fun.

 

[Fadcode]

There is some amazing tech today for widows.
........

Sounds like the motto for a scam artist.......LOL.

 

[Fadcode]

Yes, but the issue is a worldwide issue. This shows the world population as distributed by latitude and longitude https://slate.com/news-and-politics...is-distributed-by-longitude-and-latitude.html

And don’t forget, your climate is warming too.

Our climate has been warming since the whole of the UK was under one mile of Ice 10,000 years ago

 

[Glass-Wood-Steel]

Where is the OP?

Unfortunately the thread degenerated into a sensible (ish) discussion

 

[Janne]

Sounds like the motto for a scam artist.......LOL.

Oops..... innuendo laden, but purely by accident!

 

[Janne]

Our climate has been warming since the whole of the UK was under one mile of Ice 10,000 years ago

I had a teacher once, he was the guy that found out about a mini ice age that happened a couple of Millenia ago in northern Europe( analyzed pollen in a southern Swedish bog) that said that as long as there is ANY frozen water above ground that is there over summer, we are still technically in the Ice age.
It will warm up for several more Millennia, then get cold again, until we reach a new Ice Age.

 

[Broch]

I was told exactly the same thing (by my wife actually, she's a geologist); we are still in an ice age. The environment was destined to warm up with or without the industrial revolution, it's a constant cycle - how much we have affected it no one will ever know. I personally believe that it's our habitat destruction that is more damaging to the world and the species that live on it than our effect on global warming - destroying forests to put up wind turbines is probably not a good balance. However, I am aware that this is not a popular view

 

[Glass-Wood-Steel]

Funny how these inter-glacial periods are not really ever talked about in the media.
I learned abot them in a book at primary school. The UK and parts of Northern European were warm enough for a time for hippos and other animals to make here their home. Then back to ice age, all change. I wholeheartedly believe that we are in an inter-glacial period. The last thaw was only about 12 to 15 thousand years ago. This is a very short time in terms of ice ages and geology.