Saturday, September 23, 2006

Autumn Almanac

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Once again we return to the transitional time of year between summer and autumn. After a hot, dry summer, the rain returned in August and h...
1 comment:

The Ice Man Cometh?

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The energy meter that I fitted to my fridge and freezer a year ago shows a consumption of 569 kWh in the last year - a little more than 1.55...
1 comment:
Saturday, August 19, 2006

This Ole House

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Yesterday, August 18th, 2006 was the 6th anniversary of Elaine and I moving to our house in Suburbia. This house was typical of those built...
2 comments:
Thursday, August 03, 2006

The Long Emergency

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The Long Emergency is the term given to a series of converging catastrophic events identified by author and analyst James Howard Kunstler. H...
1 comment:
Sunday, July 30, 2006

Summer Time - And the Livin's Easy!

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It' now a year since we built the extension onto the house and made several improvements to the downstairs. Our living room is not only ...
Saturday, July 01, 2006

Hotter Than July

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Today is July 1st and it is expected to be the hottest day so far this year. At 3pm I measured the temperature in the shade of my apple tree...
1 comment:

Start it Up!

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I have been busy fitting a starter motor to my veg oil fuelled Lister generator. I had managed to acquire a powerful 6kW dc permanent magnet...
Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Waste Vegetable Oil for Dummies - Part 3

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Well they said it was "Just Three Steps to Heaven", and here is the third installment in my own personal journey into using waste ...

Waste Vegetable Oil for Dummies - Part 2

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Here's the filter barrel that Tim and I made at the weekend. It took about an hour and within no time at all was filtering the oil to th...

Waste Vegetable Oil - For Dummies - Part 1

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On Saturday evening, fellow renewable fuel enthusiast, Tim from Tang arrived for the weekend, and we set about getting me properly set up fo...
Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Thought for the Day

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If each of Britain's 25 million households, saved a unit of electricity per day by fitting one low energy bulb and by turning off an idl...
Sunday, April 30, 2006

May to September

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Tomorrow is May 1st, or the ancient Pagan Festival of Beltane, which in my book is the day I officially try to turn off the central heating....
1 comment:
Sunday, April 23, 2006

DIY Vegetarian Electricity

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The day has finally arrived! Following a few test runs, my Lister engine and generator was now ready to be run on vegetable oil. The whole p...
8 comments:
Saturday, April 22, 2006

E-Plan Diet Update

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It's been about 210 days since I started my electricity diet, and there has been some successes and some failures. We have managed to re...
Friday, April 21, 2006

Bin Day, (Done That, Got the T-Shirt).

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Reduce, Reuse and Recycle - This is the underlying message of sustainable living. Reduce your consumption of energy, water, materials, packa...
Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Shed Power II

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The few days off over Easter allowed me to make some serious progress with my veg-oil fuelled generator set. My friend Paul and I cleared ou...
1 comment:
Sunday, April 16, 2006

We got Juice!

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Finally after several weeks of development, the Lister powered generator produced it's first power. That's not the alternator smokin...
Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Gas Up Again!

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Gas prices have been in the news for the last few months. Wholesale gas prices have risen sharply, as a result of them being unfairly pegge...
Monday, April 10, 2006

My Butt Overfloweth!

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Monday 7am - woke to bright sunshine, and clear skies, despite last night's snow. A friend in Yorkshire tipped me off at about 11pm tha...
2 comments:
Sunday, April 09, 2006

Here Comes the Rain Again

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Rain closed play at about 6pm in Redhill on Sunday night. Initally retreating to the shed and then finally indoors, I abandonned the improv...

Green Light on EcoStreet for a Green Revolution

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The BBC is asking the public for their green ideas and inventions for simple things that we can all do to reduce domestic energy consumption...
1 comment:

Less water than the Sudan?

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The media has coined a phrase over the last couple of weeks, that per head of population, the South East of England has less water than the ...
2 comments:
Friday, April 07, 2006

Alternators and Alternatives

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Tuesday started bright, sunny and frosty and at 8am I had picked up a Luton van from Leatherhead and was heading along the M25 at 15mph in t...
3 comments:
Monday, April 03, 2006

It Ain't Easy Being Green!

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This is a popular misconception, created by the media. Being green is very easy, it's all about reducing consumption and minimising wast...
6 comments:
Thursday, March 30, 2006

Brew your Own Power!

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It's been a couple of months since my last entry, but perhaps this is because I have been busy working on my DIY, vegetable oil fuelled ...
Sunday, December 04, 2005

Batteries Not Included.....

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Part of my renewable energy remit, has been to generate my own electricity using waste vegetable oil, using a modified diesel engine, and us...
1 comment:
Tuesday, November 29, 2005

As the sun sinks...

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I return to my blog after a week spent in southern Portugal. The occasion was to celebtrate my father's 75th birthday which fortunately ...
1 comment:
Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Economic Reality

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The weather recently has been poor, and so stuck indoors at my desk, I decided to catch up on some web research. Monday began by looking int...
3 comments:
Friday, October 28, 2005

Life's a Gas

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October has either been very mild, or my new gas boiler is fitted with a mega-efficient burner. Either way my gas consumption has plummeted ...
1 comment:
Monday, October 17, 2005

The Scrap Man Cometh!

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It's funny when things just happen by coincidence, and couldn't have been better organised by human intervention. This weekend I tid...
1 comment:
Sunday, October 16, 2005

Shed Power?

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Monty Python's Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson. - only had one garden shed, ironically - I now have 3, and small greenhouse. I a...
1 comment:
Saturday, October 15, 2005

Negawatts?

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Negawatts is a term first coined by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute describing how the saving of small, almost trivial, amounts...