Planet Savers blog

Exciting stuff today! I wanted to see how the corn starch bags were getting on in the compost heap. These are the bags Sally uses to bring over the bunny poo with the hay and newspaper as mentioned earlier. They have been under the pile for several months now, the pile has reduced by about half so it was a good day to pull it out and turn it over.

Some of the earlier bags that must be around a year old have broken down pretty well but are still very obvious looking like strips of plastic bag in the pile. The more recent ones, probably about four months in the pile were pretty much intact and their contents still contained. It is very obvious that pricking them with the fork is not enough, I need to slash them open in order for the contents to be able to compost down more quickly.

On the good side, there was a lot of worm activity, not as much as I’d hoped for, but they were there. Hopefully, the weather is warming up enough for them to start increasing in number.

I can’t think of a better way to spend a Bank Holiday than by building a composting area. Seriously!  I’ve been itching to get this part of the garden sorted out, compost being close to my heart:>) I had been creating piles of ’stuff’ all over the garden ready for the day I had a compost area. And it just arrived!

We were lucky enough to get hold of some palletts, so we have been recycling into the bargain. Since we are so close to the chalk on this hillside, driving anything into the ground is a lot of hard graft for Bobbie. We needed eight support posts and this meant that the sledge hammer had another outing to push the metposts into the ground.

Thanks to the stalwart work of Sally and Mark’s bunnies, Delilah and Harry (see Sally’s blog for pictures of said bunnies), the first heap is almost complete.

This also means that we are able to conduct something of an experiment on the cornstarch bag front. Sally is collecting all the bunny droppings along with the rest of the bedding and putting it into cornstarch compostable bags which she brings over once a week. Having just moved a pile of them, we found that the bottom of the pile was rotting down rather nicely. However, it is obvious that the bags need to be wet in order to break down into good compost.

The heap is a layered platter of bunny muck, mown grass, and wet cardboard interspersed with kitchen and garden waste as available. Delicious! I’m looking forward to seeing the results:>)

Before the Autumn takes hold, I wanted to get our polytunnel constructed. Hopefully, this means I will be able to get some seeds up and ready for planting next year but, most of all, I’ll stand a good chance of having some tomatoes that turn red before the weather turns. England must be the home of green tomato chutney!
All we had to do(!) was bury six poles into the ground a couple of feet, connect the frame parts together, and push them into the pole supports. If you have a nice flat garden with a good layer of soil this is probably not too much to ask. When you have a garden on a slope with topsoil of about twelve inches before hitting the chalk bedrock, this is a little more tricky.
Bobbie had spent a couple of days creating the level base before the weather broke. So, with good weather this weekend, he wanted to make the frame.
This involved sledge-hammering an iron spike into the ground in order to make a hole that he stood a chance of sledge-hammering the support into. It was a hard day’s work but he was well chuffed at the end to find that the frame was pretty much level.
I think the least I can do is imortalise his efforts in this blog :>)

I’m getting used to SolarTwin hot water now. On sunny days we get up to 60 degrees in the tank without any external asistance. The bottom of the tank might be ten degrees cooler, so there is plenty for showers and washing up.
On cloudy days it will be around 28 to 35 depending on how much the sun got through. I check the temperature when I get home from work and flip the heating on for half and hour of so and heat up the tank. Then off again until next evening’s check.
It’s fab :>)

Here’s a view of our roof at around 21:00 this evening. Solartwin panel at the top with its little PV cell generating all the electrticity it needs. Two solar tubes underneath giving us enough light to work with until around this time of day.

The sun has just about slipped over the horizon and yet the panel is still registering input. We’ve both had our evening shower and look at the temperature of our tank.

Fab, isn’t it – more information gizmos to look at :>)

OK, let’s get the anorak. It’s now 23:15 and we’ve done the washing up. It’s now recording 31.9c. Now, I’d like to know if this is what we should be expecting. Anyone else got some stats?

Over the passed couple (or maybe more) of weeks, Bobbie has been constructing our new shed. When we looked at the price of off-the-shelf offerings, he said: “I can build one of those for less than half of that!”

And so he has:>)

There is still a little bit of trimming to do and we are going to line it with OSB and give it some insulation. Then a good coat of Osmo. So a 7′ by 7′6″ shed with solid frame and lining has cost us around £350. Admitedly, the expertise to design and build it came free!

A friend has just bought us an Efergy Elite Wireless Energy Monitor. He came over at the weekend to fit it.

It clips over the main electricity supply cable and monitors everything. It’ll be interesting to see how it compares with the bill readout but, since I am in the IT logging business, I don’t expect it to coincide.

It shows what you are drawing in real time and calculates your daily average. After four days we are up to 4.62kWh

This has now given rise to a new game:

Every time you turn on (or off) some electrical item, you have to  look at the monitor to see how much the reading has changed. It’s compulsive viewing!

I love Solartubes. Pat has now fitted the second light tunnel in our kitchen. It was a particularly dark area between bedroom and bathroom walls with no windows. Even on bright sunny days, it was too dim to work. Now that the ‘tube is in there, I just don’t think about turning on the light.

The SolarTwin hot water panel has now been fitted it to the roof and Pat  is currently connecting it to the boiler. It’s all getting quite exciting:>)

Our new home has gas central heating and gas hot water. The solar panel will soon replace most of our hot water requirement with top up, if required, from electricity (courtesy of Ecotricity). In Winter we will have the wood burning stove and we can top up on cooler days with electric heating.

That will leave me with an old gas cooker whose evergy efficiency is seriously in doubt! As soon as I can afford it, I am planning to replace it and get away from gas altogether.

I shall, however, be sad to see it go. I’ve got used to its foibles and I have to say that everything I cook tastes heaps better on gas than it did on my previous halogen hob and fan assised oven. So I’m not sue, as yet, what to replace it with.

However, gas is another natural resource we should not be frittering away. If not for that reason, this latest bid by the Russians should persuade us to wean ourselves off the stuff.

We are deeply grateful to all our friends for helping us move into our new home. Bobbie and I were extremely glazed by the end of it and your help was invaluable and much appreciated. With four of us opening up all the boxes marked ‘books’ and throwing them at the empty book shelves, we soon had some room to move around in.

Pat, who has been converting our bathroom into a shower room, was kind enough to make sure our water softener was installed and got us serviceable just as the removal guys arrived:>) We needed to install the water softener before we can set up use the solar panel as we are in a hard water area. We chose one from Harvey as it does not need any electricity to work. They are pricey but Pat was able to get us a much better deal on it than the manufacturers offered over the phone.

Pat has bought my concept into being. I call it contemporary cottage style! A modern shower room with mid height wainscoating which conceals the cystern and pipework and gives extra cupboard space. He did all the plumbing and electrical work as well as the carpentry and tiling. He also fitted out solar tube. I don’t think there is anything Pat won’t turn his had to, which is just as well, as there is some work in the garden I might need him for…! His website is still in the making but I don’t think he’ll mind if I mention it here: PatGlavin.co.uk