Posts by Hebe
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Those in NZ who don’t see the need to clean up our environmental act may wish to consider what kind of environment they’d be living in if NZ had anything close to China’s population density.
A cesspit: Kiwis are bigger trash producers per capita than US Americans. The only reason we get away with it is the tiny population.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to James Green,
Try the cheap plastic double-glazing kits for a few weeks and you will figure out if it is the windows. The kits need to go on before the condensation season starts. If you have no crawl space in the ceiling, it is likely to be losing a lot of heat, especially with old downlights. If the extension has aluminium windows, consider the acrylic sheet/magnetic strip style of double glazing, which with some googling and creativity you can do relatively cheaply. The strip is sold here for $300 a roll -- in the US it is $US40.
The everyday detail of energy efficiency interests me way more than the big picture and politics of it.
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Jos,
piwakawaka
Nice! I love the word piwakawaka -- it sounds like it says.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to James Green,
a $700 heat exchanger under their shower would be about as effective as solar hot water.
Gosh; I have never heard of that; thank you.
I am also very keen on the floor-vented fridge cupboard I have seen in some permaculture publications.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to James Green,
infrared imaging is not more used to assess houses
The Christchurch City council did this thermal mapping of the city that enable you to assess roughly how well your property holds the heat. Though it's difficult to tell if it is a cold house or a very well insulated house; still it is a start.
http://thermals.ccc.govt.nz/framesetup.asp
I have also found difficulty finding good independent advice. As I am not at all mechanically inclined I am looking for an easy option; battery banks and the like are way too complicated for me.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
Environment Commissioner Jan Wright certainly came down on the side of heat pumps. I disagree with her reasoning to some degree. My preference would be solar/PV power for fine days with woodburner for heat on cold days and a hot water heat pump (which if a radiator or underfloor piped system was added could heat the house too). However, many of us are retrofitting, slowly,rather than having 50K or so to double glaze, insulate all over, put in solar and or a HW heat pump, and chuck in a trombe wall so in that sense I think she is right about HW heat pumps being the most affordable option with the best returns overall.
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Seeing stars: I noticed the stars in the Norfolk pines for the first time not long ago
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What it says. Dunno why I took it; it's blue.
A wee spot I have loved and played in all my life, taken last spring.
A birthday party.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Russell Brown,
we had to let go of solar water heating -- it was just such a big investment
Ditto, and our little old house's roofline does not align north so it would cost megabucks. My next best option I am now looking at is is a hot-water heat pump: the right one can save 50 per cent of water heating costs, which for this house are 75 per cent of the electricity bill.
If enough people could do a good-enough (rather than solar perfection) measure like hot water heat pumps, the demand must on the electricity supply must decrease. And $4000 to $6000 -- depending on the whether it is a split cycle or all-in-one unit -- they are much more affordable than solar without the scariness for many people of maintenance.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Richard Aston,
What if a distributed retail power company was set up purely to buy excess power from thousands of consumers with solar/wind setups? That company could sell that power back to the main retail power companies. That company would have some skin in the game and be motivated to treat their thousands of small power suppliers well, consistent pricing etc. It could even make sense they helped with capital costs.
That sounds rather, er, socialist. The kind of thing that could happen in the people's Republic of Christchurch if they put that guy from Orion in charge. Hang on, he is in charge...Bugger.
