Now this energy saving measure probably seems pretty tight to some people. Boiling water using an electric kettle has always annoyed me. It uses a lot of electricity – If you have ever ridden a bicycle to convert motive power into energy – to heat up water – you will know just how much it consumes. The power it uses is too highly rated for ‘onsite renewable sources’. I have longed to eradicate the electric kettle from my kitchen.
free hot water
Now we have a wood-burning stove we fill a kettle and place it on top during the evening fire.
Every time it boils we use the water to fill up large thermos flasks.
This means we get free hot water for hot drinks during the evening and hot water bottles for bed.
There is enough to wash up the dishes in the evening and if we don’t the water stays hot until the morning and one of us washes the dishes then.
Now this might seem a lot of work, walking to the kitchen with boiling water and such, but our electricity bills have gone down noticeably as a result of this single action. And I have a big smirk when I look at our nearly useless kettle.
What will we do in summer when there are no more fires?
Stereos and televisions can use as much energy on standby as they use when they are on. It is estimated that in the UK stereos on standby cost £290 million and create 1.6 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide. Televisions on standby cost £88 million and produce 480,000 of C02. Switching off at the plug is a simple action that over time reaps cumulative money saving and also conserves non-renewable energy sources for future generations.
2. Use timers and occupancy sensors
Timing devices for plugs and lights are cheaper than ever and can help to automate your home if programmed efficiently. Putting some of your domestic lighting onto timers can also be a deterrent to burglars who presume a dwelling is occupied when the lights are switched on. Special switches also exist that will turn lights off after a little time and these are most useful for hallways or stairwells that have occasional through traffic. Occupancy sensors are also useful for people who forget to turn lights off in a room. They monitor the room for activity and turn lights off when the room is empty.
3. TV use
Does your TV stay on as a ‘background’? Review your television use to see how much time it is on. Average television watching in the UK is about 4 hours a day. If you add all this together it means that many people spend fifteen years of their waking lives watching television. Isn’t there something better you could be doing? If you are replacing your television and going digital – please look carefully at the ‘greenest’ options for TV.
4. Use built-in generators
Generator technology for small devices such as radios and torches has come of age. The wind-up radio designed by Trevor Bayliss is a much-copied example and this technology is creeping into other consumer durables with a low power requirement. Watch out for wind-up lights (torches), personal mp3 players and even computers (as if they aren’t a wind-up already!)
5. Use a thermostat control
As I mentioned, just turning the heat down a bit and wearing an extra layer or two can reap swift savings. It’s also healthier because germs and viruses breed more quickly at warm temperatures. Many people suffer colds and flu regularly because they provide an ideal breeding place for germs with the warmth of central heating.
It is easy to check on your interior air temperature and keep a sure hand on the thermostat and timers. When does your heating go on in the morning and off at night? Even a small reduction in the amount of time the heating is on brings money savings and helps the planet. Nearly all thermostats have a manual override, which allows you to change the temperature without resetting the whole thing.
Simply by turning down the thermostat a little when you are away from home you can save between 10-15% of your heating bill every year. Adding a setback thermostat to your system will allow you to programme the heating to suit your lifestyle, low when you are out and higher when you are in.
6. Zone heating
Are you heating rooms or areas of the house you don’t really use? Check radiators and heat sources around the house to see where you can lower the temperature. Concentrate the heat in the places that you inhabit most frequently. Check that your zone heating is working efficiently as an old electric heater can cost you dear. Safety
7. Use ceiling fans for air conditioning
Although too much heat is an infrequent problem in the UK, many countries over-use air conditioning to reduce the temperature of the air. Often the use of an overhead fan is more efficient and economical in energy terms than air con. Ceiling fans run comparatively cheaply, about the same as a 100 watt light bulb, and by cycling the air they create a chill-factor effect that can seem around eight degrees cooler. During the cold months a ceiling fan can move warm air back to the middle of a room by pushing it down from the ceiling. Run the blades in a clockwise direction to do this.
We all know home energy costs are spiralling upwards and that global warming is a problem. I want to help you save energy now and save yourself a load of money in the process. Please start now by going to ‘Save Energy Expert‘ to save yourself a heap of energy and a load of money. You could find yourself a lot better off and I’ll be a whole lot happier.
I was using a 10 metre length of hose on the roof on a sunny day. I couldn’t help noticing how warm the water was that came from it. After all it had only been up there 10 minutes. I refilled the hose and left it for half an hour. 4.20pm now – I’ll wait until 4.50 and see if I can grab a quick hot shower before my girlfriend gets home.
I dashed out into the garden and stripped off, hoping my next-door neighbour wasn’t watching from the window. I got 12 seconds of warm water and the temperature changed quite quickly back to cold – too quickly. Over the next few days I let the sun heat up the water a few times on the roof and experimented with nozzle attachments. The shower nozzle was ideal but it went through the hot water too quickly. The spray device nozzle made the water last longer but it didn’t stay as warm, probably because the water droplets became a mist that cooled quicker in the air. Also critical was the time of day – the higher and hotter the sun, the better.
It occurred to me that if I could get a 12 second shower from 10 metres of hose, then all I needed was more hose for a longer shower. I had another 40 metres elsewhere which I collected – although I did go and look in shops for all-black hosepipe which would absorb the heat more efficiently – I couldn’t find any.
I decided to spiral the hose on a black painted panel and got a bit carried away because I made three as you can see in the picture. I painted them black and put the home-made solar panels on the roof of the garage because it got more sun. I joined the panels into the gardening watering system, using plastic pipe sections with taps so I could isolate the panel to warm up and still use the garden hose if I needed.
In the mean time I found the black plastic water bags called ’20 litre solar camping shower bags’ that are quite popular and ordered one. According to the sales literature after an hour of full sun they give a shower of 26ºC, two hours gives 32ºC and three hours gives 40ºC – a nice warm shower. We still have to go camping and I am looking forwards to using it.
About a month later we finally got a warm day! 4.30 pm in May in Cornwall UK. There was a slight haze over the sun and an ambient temperature in the shade of 15ºC. I didn’t have a shower but filled up the washing-up bowl, about 2 gallons, to reveal water at a temperature of 43ºC – a full 115ºF (for old fashioned folk). Fantastic.
The next day was even sunnier, without a heat haze and the water reached 47ºC. We refilled the panel several times and had free washing up water. Sarah had a shower that went on for ages (sorry I didn’t time it – I was the shower bracket). As the summer progresses these showers are getting even warmer and our washing-up water is free on sunny days. I am going to make one out of copper pipe next.
We all know home energy costs are spiralling upwards and that global warming is a problem. I want to help you save energy now and save yourself a load of money in the process. Please start now by going to ‘Save Energy Expert‘ to save yourself a heap of energy and a load of money. You could find yourself a lot better off and I’ll be a whole lot happier.
Energy is defined in physics as: ‘the property of matter and radiation which is manifest as a capacity to perform work’. The word has its roots in the Greek ‘energeia’, from ‘ergon’, meaning ‘work’.
But the word ‘energy’ has a much greater meaning than just something that supplies ‘work’ – just look at the way children often spend it, in fun, in joy, in running about senselessly. Although this hardly seems like ‘work’ – in a physical sense it is. It takes energy to lift a leaping child from the ground just as it does the space shuttle.
Modern quantum physics tells us that the entire universe is made of energy. It shows links between the energy that makes atoms circle electrons in a molecule and that which make planets circle suns in a solar system – it’s just a matter of scale.
Some even go further and postulate that everything is made of light energy – some, evidently more solid light than others. But physics is still unable to tell us whether light itself is a wave form or a particle – because it holds the properties of both.
So – if we live in a universe made of energy – why are we supposedly ‘running out’?
We are rather young as a species. Our non-renewable sources of energy such as oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power are becoming scarce ( or too dangerous) just at the moment we have realised that everything is made of energy. We have been so stuck in a world of non-renewables that the groundwork on harvesting the infinite energy of the universe is still being done. Money and vested interest have their part to play in this slowed-down-process. Imagine – making us go out to work in jobs all day to pay for energy which is actually FREE and INFINITE and EVERYWHERE. What a shocker if people found out how to harvest their own!
There are many sources of renewable energy: wind, water, geothermal, solar, biomass, even natural electricity and hydrogen (secondary energy sources) –methods of harvesting them are getting easier – some people even make ‘harvesting devices’ for energy out of rubbish!
Energy is defined in physics in different ways. One type is called kinetic energy, the energy of a moving body. Another is called potential energy, which is energy possessed of a body by virtue of its position.
For example if I take a fish to the top of a high building and drop it – it uses kinetic energy to reach the ground. I go and fetch the fish and take it to an even higher building, and leave it there – hence giving it my energy. It now has potential energy – in fact more potential energy than it had at the top of the first building. And it smells more.
Then of course there is quantum energy. No fish here. In late 1900 Max Planck attempted to explain the idea of discrete energy. In Planck’s assumption radiant energy, known as ‘quanta’ is emitted in short bursts. Each of the bursts – called a ‘quantum’ – has energy E, that depends on the frequency ‘f’ of the electromagnetic radiation according to the formula:
E = h . f
H in this formula is Plank’s constant: 6.62618.10 –34 Js
So now you know !
We all know home energy costs are spiralling upwards and that global warming is a problem. I want to help you save energy now and save yourself a load of money in the process. Please start now by going to ‘Save Energy Expert‘ to save yourself a heap of energy and a load of money. You could find yourself a lot better off and I’ll be a whole lot happier.
I came across Earthships on the internet and was immediately fascinated. Not only did these homes seem totally energy efficient, they were also constructed from recycled materials. From my research I found out there was one in Scotland in the UK, and one in Brighton. Fortunately I was to visit Brighton and resolved to seek the building out.
Here is the video about the Earthship I saw:
Recently modern homes are having energy efficiency built into them from the outset – even to the extent of requiring little or no heating at all. Earthships came into being as ‘off the grid’ homes in remote places, with little or no need of public utilities. Experiments with these and other sustainable forms of building are teaching us a lot about making energy efficient homes.
The one in Brighton shown in these photographs was the first Earthship to be made in the UK. It was built as a Community Centre for Stanmer Organics on a Soil Association accredited site near Brighton. It took me a while to find as we parked a car (sorry) off site and walked into the 17 acre site of Stanmer Park. There was a lot of gardening going on all over the site and it was a treat to see some cooperative economy at work. The site has a not-for-profit consortium with 12 or so groups of expanding membership.
Earthships have been quietly developing for 30 years from communities in Taos, New Mexico and most notably the pioneering work of Michael Reynolds. They have come a long way from handling just the ‘hot and dry’ of Mexico and can now cope with even Scottish weather. Water is carefully collected and used water is just as carefully filtered back into the environment.
The buildings are made to harvest the natural resources around them – sun, rain, wind – and recycle as much as possible. Even the plants around them benefit from carefully filtered and treated ‘waste’ water. Due to their construction, aspect and insulation they maintain a constant temperature with little fluctuation. The buildings maximise the use of sunlight for heating and lighting. The windows are specially angled to maximise sunlight in the winter and reflect it in the summer.
All sorts of ‘rubbish’ goes into building them but it doesn’t show. The walls of this Earthship are made from soil impacted into 1000 rubber tyres, 2 tons of old bottles and cans and 90 reclaimed granite blocks (with some cement also). Wherever possible the building uses renewable, local and recycled, natural and waste materials in construction.
The buildings consume no fossil fuels and generate their own power for electricity and water heating as you can see by the solar panel array in the image. They store heat by using the ground, similarly to the sun warming up a rock. This is still a far more efficient way of storing heat than any type of battery we can yet make! This is why the Brighton Earthship has as many as 40 batteries to store the solar and wind power it harvests for occasional heat, pumps and lights.
We all know home energy costs are spiralling upwards and that global warming is a problem. I want to help you save energy now and save yourself a load of money in the process. Please start now by going to ‘Save Energy Expert‘ to save yourself a heap of energy and a load of money. You could find yourself a lot better off and I’ll be a whole lot happier.
Our planet is rich in energy. Enough energy simply falls on the planet from the sun in 40 minutes to supply all of our needs for a year. We are running out of several forms of energy at present, hence the discussion of ‘peak oil’ and the like. Energy produced from oil, gas, coal and other natural resources has reached its ‘peak’ – supplies are dwindling while our need for energy is increasing to work our homes, our transport and our industries.
You might think that with all this energy falling from the sun, tidal power, wind power and other renewable sources that the solution to our energy problems would be easy – simply switch over. The problem is that vested interest has kept the development of alternatives ‘quiet’ over the last 25 years or so. We are not ready to switch yet as the technologies are not where they need to be. Even James Lovelock, instigator of the Gaia hypothesis, an alternative theory about life on earth, suggests that in the short term we will have to rely on increased nuclear power to feed our expensive energy habits.
Mostly our homes run on 240 volt systems whereas many of our devices can now run on 12volts – certainly lighting technology is easily able to run at this lower energy requirement. Look around the house and I expect you will find a plethora of devices running at 15, 12, 9, 6, 4.5, even three volts – all with ugly black plastic transformers to ramp the supply down enough. But rewiring our homes and devices to run on 12 volts is too huge a job – unless we voluntarily undertake it as individuals. This means that some of high power devices – kettles, washing machines, dryers and so on will not work (yet).
The decentralisation of energy supply is another issue in the economies of energy. The power that pays for governments often comes from large industry; centralised monopolies are a large part of the capitalism that runs our economy. Harvesting our own energy supplies ‘from the wild’ still runs counter to the interests of a culture based on ‘consuming’ what is supplied to them in order to create a money stream.
Planning regulations in many areas disallow windmills on domestic properties. While this is certainly reasonable it is a disincentive to invest for many people. Add to this a lack of regulation and standardisation and it becomes easy to see why slowing down global warming by diminishing our energy supplies is more complex than it looks.
The oft (mis)quoted ‘Nobody changes until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change’ would seem to apply to our energy habits in the Western World. But this quote is evidently for people who’s lives know only pain. Many people are happily changing to a new economy of energy that goes way beyond physics. Many people are discovering the joys of frugalism in which the responsible use of our resource of energy is just one aspect of walking gently on the face of the earth.
We all know home energy costs are spiralling upwards and that global warming is a problem. I want to help you save energy now and save yourself a load of money in the process. Please start now by going to ‘Save Energy Expert‘ to save yourself a heap of energy and a load of money. You could find yourself a lot better off and I’ll be a whole lot happier.
Solar panel technology is certainly growing up – although it is quite an expensive investment to start with. PV (photovoltaic) cells convert sunlight into energy that can be stored or used directly. They are made by taking silicon crystals (grown from sand) and impregnating them with a chemical substance called a semi-conductor to create oppositely charged layers. The layers are covered with glass to make a PV panel. The sun hits the layers and frees electrons that make an electric current. Several PV panels can be linked together to increase a local energy supply.
Some of the energy gets lost in this process and the most common PV panels still only convert somewhere between 4% – 13% of the sun’s energy into electrical energy, although this is improving with the technology. PV solar panels are ideal for lighting needs and can even supply 25% of a household’s needs in the winter and about 75% in the summer. Although they can be expensive to buy and install, there are sometimes sizeable grants available to help with this. Be careful about installing your own panels if you are applying for a grant.
Solar Water heaters
Solar water heaters use the sun’s energy to pre-heat cold water that is then stored. Even raising the temperature of your water a few degrees using ‘free energy’ creates a saving on your domestic fuel bill. Solar water systems can supply about half the energy needs for hot water in an average household. It is quite easy to make and install your own.
Passive Solar Energy
Passive solar energy is created by the way your house is laid out. It is a ‘new consideration’ in energy efficient homes although it can be incorporated into existent builds. One way to do this is to add on a greenhouse or conservatory to a south facing wall. The sun heats the air in the greenhouse and you open the door between the house and the greenhouse and let the warmth flood in.
Purpose-built, passive solar windows are windows installed at a carefully chosen angle. These reflect the excess heat in the summer and absorb the maximum in winter. The space between the front and internal windows acts as a buffer zone, insulating the inside. These spaces are sometimes used to grow plants that process waste water from the building.
Wind power
You must have seen small windmills on boats and vans by now. The micro-generation of energy through wind is ideal for 12 volt lighting systems and once again this is a free energy source that nearly anyone can tap into. Wind power is used to turn an electricity-generating turbine, from huge windmills on the landscape to smaller localised versions; they can vary from a few hundred watts up to several megawatts. Household sized wind systems are usually two or three kilowatts. Once again grants are available to help install localised wind turbines but there are other issues such as efficient siting, localised noise and planning regulations to consider.
Heat exchangers
In some areas of the world heat from under the ground is captured (thermodynamic energy) and used to provide central heating and hot water. An electric pump is used to bring up the heat and for every energy unit this pump costs to run, it gives up to 6 units of heat. This is still a very expensive technology to set-up and is used for large buildings or building complexes and designed in at the building stage.
Some people who live by water use heat exchanger technology to extract and store heat from streams or rivers, a sort of modern equivalent of a water wheel. Others actually have heat exchangers fitted to their baths to reclaim heat from bathwater before pulling the plug. Some properties have a very warm roof cavity at various times of the year and heat exchangers can be used to redistribute this heat around the house or store it to water.
We all know home energy costs are spiralling upwards and that global warming is a problem. I want to help you save energy now and save yourself a load of money in the process. Please start now by going to ‘Save Energy Expert‘ to save yourself a heap of energy and a load of money. You could find yourself a lot better off and I’ll be a whole lot happier.
Hi. I am simonthescribe. I write about green things.
I am fascinated that the universe is made of energy and here we are talking about it running out!
This blog is here to record some of my energy saving measures for you to share. We all know home energy costs are spiralling upwards and that global warming is a problem.
I want to help you save energy now and save yourself a load of money in the process. I will try things out and let you know what works !
We all know home energy costs are spiralling upwards and that global warming is a problem. I want to help you save energy now and save yourself a load of money in the process. Please start now by going to ‘
So – if we live in a universe made of energy – why are we supposedly ‘running out’?
