Planet Savers blog

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.

I opened the front door and there was my Mother holding a spider plant. “This is for you,” she said.

It turned out that she had heard/seen a programme where they were discussing the use of formaldehyde in practically everything we have in our homes.

Having plants in the house is the best way to counteract the effect. I found this article rather informative: Plants for Clean Air inside Buildings

As mentioned on March 3rd, I have been trying to find out why insects keel over when they cross my new carpet.

Talking to my Mother about it she said, “Well, they have to treat carpets with insecticide or they might get eaten by moths and bugs in the warehouse.”

Doh! It all sounded rather obvious when she said that. However, it made me wonder how this affected pets who tend to spend a lot of time with their noses much nearer the floor than us. This thought led me to find many warnings about caged birds and air quality.

I then discovered an interesting debate about carpets, vocs (volatile organic compounds) and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).

Some say carpets harbour dirt and bugs which we then breath in, others say carpets actually trap dirt and bugs thus protecting us. I found this article on The Effects of Carpet on Indoor Air Quality rather informative.

We have a very small bathroom and decided that it was more appropriate as a shower room. This would also cut down on the amount of water we use for washing. A very good idea since we are metered and we will be heating the water with our solar panel.

The bathroom does not get much light so I want to put in a light tube. We need one in the kitchen as well because part of it is a walk through area that is not well lit. It makes sense to me to have the night time lighting as part of the same feature so I have asked Pat, who is doing a lot of the work for us (more about Pat when his website is up and running), to come up with a way of fitting led lights around the tube. I’m looking forward to seeing what he comes up with.

Exciting day on Wednesday. Bobbie and I went up to Earl’s Court for the Ecobuild exhibition. I’ve been sizing up the solar panels and had come down in favour of Solar Twin.

The reason is that their system includes a PV cell which generates the electricity you need to run the pump, so the system is completely self contained. They are also a UK company and the system is designed to work with UK weather. It helped that they also offered a big discount at the show for the DIY installation! So, I placed the order.

It was great having the exhibition to look around and see working examples of all the stuff I have been staring at on websites. PV cells were the other thing I wanted more information on. There are so many out there and I didn’t know how to start looking.

We saw all shapes and sizes from panels that fit on to the roof through to those designed to fit into the tiling. There were some that were designed to look like slate tiles, you had trouble telling them apart. Ideal if you need to get around conservation restrictions. However, the larger panels will probably be the right way for us. We are going to need an area for our cars which is under cover. Bobbie had the brainwave of using this roof space for the PV cells.

They need a roof slant of 15 to 30 degrees so we will need to bear this in mind when we come to design the roof. That’s on hold for the time being. I need to work out whether I want a 1KW, 2KW or 3KW system. This is based, obviously, on the amout of energy we actually need.

We also looked at options on rainwater harvesting. I’m looking forward to digging out a pit to put one of those huge storage tanks underground. First, I need to find out how much water we are likely to be able to store based on roof size. All good fun.

There was loads to see at the show, so it was well worth a visit. Some of the stands were aimed at the commercial and public sector but many were happy to chat about sustainability.

One stand looked beautifully lit and it turned out that they were promoting LED lighting. The light they generated was so different from all the others, it felt much more natural, I really liked it.

The stand Bobbie and I really loved was about wood. Wood framed buildings. They are so scrummy. I really must get around to designing my garden shed…

When you have just had a carpet laid, it seems.

It turns out that we have a bit of an infestation of woodlice in our bedroom. I need to find out where they currently regard as home.

However, their demise all over our newly laid carpet highlighted another problem. In my quest for all things natural, I had insisted on a wool carpet. It didn’t cross my mind to ask about the fire retardants that they undoubtedly have to dowse over all soft furnishings. I’m assuming that is what is causing it.

I didn’t think to ask about underlay either. Maybe we are being given double dose. Whatever it is, I am really glad I am not sleeping in there at the moment. If it is killing off woodlice so easily, I don’t feel too happy about what it will do to us.

Yerrell were unable to find any information about any fire retardant treatment on the carpet. It’s all wool, so it shouldn’t really need it. They confirmed that the underlay was Cloud 9 Cirrus.

So I sent Ball & Young, who make the Cloud 9  products, an email, enquiring what it could be and got a very prompt reply from Stephen Wilkinson. He said that he wasn’t sure why but that this was a common fact with many new carpets laid in older homes regardless of manufacturer. He wondered if it was the dryness since woodlice like damp conditions. I’d wondered that, too, until I found a curled up spider. He went on to say that the foam used in the production is the same type as that used in furniture and car seats.

I am still not happy about this. New carpets should not be killing off insects.

I’ve sent my query to the New Scientist Last Word page.

Thos nice people at Yerrell came to lay the carpet today. I haven’t seen it yet but Bobbie says it looks great.

Because of this, we have been varnishing the wooden skirting, door and frame. I had opted to use Osmo polyx hardwax-oil for this task as it is made from natural oils and waxes. It came highly recommended from several sources. As with all the other products I’ve used thus far, it has no nasty smell and goes on just great with a brush. We’re very pleased with the result.

Once upon a time, we made doors out of beautiful wood. Then we covered them in varnish that, over the years got darker and darker so that we could no longer see the grain. In the sixties, wood was no longer fashionable, everything was bright and colourful and plastic we really ‘hip’. So we  painted over the dull, dark varnish with bright colours we called ‘tangerine’,  ‘melon’, and ‘avacado’.

Nowadays, we can buy all manor of moulded doors and the idea of a wooden one is a luxury.

So, I was very happy to see good old fashioned wooden doors in our new home. Sure enough, under the paint was a layer of dark varnish. I’m glad to say that this has been removed very easily with the assistance of Eco-solutions paint stripper. It smells nice and doesn’t burn off your skin. Paint it  on and get on with something else for a hour. Then, with the assistance of a stainless steel or copper scourer, it all rubs off very easily. Wash off the gunk and let it dry.

We also fitted skirting and managed to find a water based wood dye the same colour. All we need to do now is varnish it all readu fo the carpet fitting next Tuesday.

Having carried out all this work in the bedroom, I was looking forward to trying out the eco-paint. We had elected to use earthBorn Paint after trying the samples we picked up at Eco St in Wendover.

Last night we got the room ready and applied a watered down base coat to the plaster. It went on like any other emulsion but with one fantastically noticeable difference: THERE WAS NO SMELL!!

It really doesn’t smell at all. We did not have to open the windows to clear the air of chemicals. It was wonderful :>)

We have a wood burning stove in the house so, with good insulation, the right double glazing and curtains, I hope this will provide most of our room heating requirements.

Hot water, though, is another issue. We have a roof with an uninterrupted south westerly view which just cries out for a solar panel.

I’ve been looking around and discovered that many of the systems require an electric pump. This seems to defeat the object to me. My object being a certain level of self sufficiency and as low a carbon footprint as possible.

Solartwin seem to be saying all the right things on this score, so I shall be following up on this one.

Before that, however, I have to solve a conundrum. A solar panel infers the need to store hot water, which means I can’t get rid of the hot water tank currently taking up too much room in my bathroom. A condensing boiler would have got around this but I am convinced of solar powered hot water.

The bathroom would currently show up as bright red on an imaging photo on account of having very little wall lining and much of the external brickwork being openly displayed along with the floor boards and plumbing. Yes, it’s a tad leaky on the heating front.

Before I can install the solar panel I need to sell my flat to raise the funds, but I can’t sell the flat until I move out of it. And it seems daft to move in to the cottage without getting the bathroom finished. So… I think I need to move the hot water tank before I can move on…

…at least, I think that’s where I am!