Posts from — April 2008

Using Passive Solar enrgy os a great way to design a new home or use in a remodeling project. If you have no plans for doing any major remodeling or building a new home you can still use the passive approach to help heat and cool your home.

Though using passive techniques in an exhisting home without making structure changes is definetely possibble. To use it without making major changes to your home takes watching and learning how your home reacts during the year. Our home has a great cross breeze if we keep the first window in our living room open and the one in the bath open. This is true no matter how hot and stuffy it is outside as our house juts out from the other homes and is angled just right to catch the breeze coming up the road. In the winter our sliding glass door helps to keep the dining room around 70 when the sun is shining. We have learned these things by living in our home. Though our living room has over 80% of it’s exterior wall in windows or doors, which makes us keep our east facing windows shaded till the sun passes. So now we have made changes to help keep us comfortable without using our central air or furnance as much. We introduced a low enegy window fan to boost the air flow and are looking into adding stone or tile to the dining room to help retain the heat longer after the sun goes down. In the living room we needed light dampening shades and curtains to keep the heat of the sun out during summer months. These are just examples of what you can do as you start understanding the strenths and weaknesses of your home. Making them work for you can save you big on heating and cooling cost.

To use passive solar in your home you need to understand that it is based on the principal that heat moves from warmer materials to cooler ones until there is no longer a temperature difference between the two. Using heat-movement and heat-storage mechanisms you can move heat to different parts of your home. There are five types of mechanisims you can use, they are:

• Conduction -The way heat moves through materials by vibrating the molecules to spread the warmth. An example would be the hot cup of coffee you use to warn your hands in the winter.
• Convection -The way heat moves through liquids and gases by being lighter then cooler so always rising, while cooler sinks. An example would be the warm water at the top of the pool while freezing in the deep end.
• Radiation -The process of heat transferring from warm object to cooler ones. 2 types of radiation are important to passive solar design and use, they are solar and infrared radiation. Depending on properties of each object this radiation can be absorbed, reflected or transmitted.
• Thermal capacitance – Is the ability of materials to store heat. Thermal mass is the term often heard but that is referring to the actual object storing the heat, not it’s ability.

Understanding the principals being applied to passive solar design and use is an important aspect of using this type of heating and cooling. Once the principals are understood then trying different arrangements to make them all work together and not against each other will increase their effectiveness. We will be going in depth about passive solar over the next couple articles as it touches so many different areas in your home.

Missy Higgins – cooler than global cool

These artistes really walk the walk on Green issues reckons Billboard, and they are probably right.

MISSY HIGGINS

No stranger to keeping things eco-friendly while on tour, Australian singer/songwriter Missy Higgins is looking to further her green efforts on her current U.S. jaunt. Leading up to the Feb. 26 release of her latest album, “On a Clear Night,” Higgins spent two (more…)

Jassen Bowman explains why he decided (like many others) to live full-time in his car:

Jassen: in-car hero

As I sat across the breakfast bar from this lovely young couple in their beautiful, meticulously ordered home, they told me they were finally going to be able to build their dream home in the country. And I was going to be part of that process for them, in my small way, by helping them sell there current home in the suburbs. As I filled in blanks spaces on the listing agreement, I casually asked them about their new home. (more…)

Ken, Greenpeace CEO & Annie Lennox

The race for Mayor of London is very close. Why is it so important? Because whoever wins gets to be chief executive of the world’s No 1 capital city.

Why is it important to this web site? Because despite the blizzard of eco-promises from all parties, current Mayor Ken Livingstone is the only candidate who has said he wants to “take London off-grid.” (more…)

Every village in China has one, but Biodigesters are an unfashionable energy source — now they may be due for a comeback.

Pigs are power stations, too

As a system for getting energy from organic waste Biodigesters have two main components that people prefer not to discuss: human waste and methane. (more…)

Join the campaign

Germany has 200 times more solar power than England.

Why? Because German households and businesses get paid a renewable energy reward for the solar power they generate.

It’s known as the ‘feed-in tariff’ and has helped make Germany a world leader in renewable energy. These are the kinds of solutions we need to tackle climate change. And a Feed-in tarriff would help off-grid communities by building a large home power industry in thye UK and bringing down prices of goods and labour.

Meanwhile Britain is near the bottom of the European renewable energy league table.Now enoughsenough.org, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have come together to launch the Solar Playoff Campaign. (more…)

Keep on fighting

Earth day is in danger of being rendered meaningless by the weight of corporate messages attached to what was once a purely environmental celebration.

Take the New York Times so called Green Issue last Sunday. Key advertisers included Delta Airlines, Chevrolet and Starbucks – Starbucks – have they no shame? — now I know the paper has to keep making money, but isn’t that rather like having a Holocaust issue and featuring an ad from Daimler Benz? (more…)

Today is Earth Day. We hope that everyone has an enjoyable day and helps to spread the word that self-sustainable living is a great way to help save the world, your health and even your wallet.

This past year we have completed the energy efficiency part of getting of our home off the grid plan. We have also starting purchasing our solar panels that will be installed hopefully before Earth Day 2009. We have been more vocal about our choice to become green and off grid. Started this blog to get information out about alternative/renewable energy, being energy efficient, going green. Even got to the Earth Day celebration by Green Apple Festivals in Washington D.C. Let Washington know that we wanted the environment to be on the front burner, not the back.

Using our information on green and sustainability and sharing it is one of the best ways to bring about change. If we can help one person to rethink the “normal” way of using resources to run their home then we have made a significant change. Have a great day!

See RecycleCindy bag she made for Earth Day

PS You cn help others this Earth Day by donating to the Make it Right 9 foundation. Click the link below to donate to the Eco Friendly Home. Help people in New Orleans rebuild to a more sustainable home.

First I want to thank everyone who joined the PTC sites from my links below, this will not only make money for you, it will help me tremendously, the money earned goes toward my internet expenses, it helps to keep me on line and posting here. :) If you have any questions about how to use the PTC sites, or want to know some tricks that I use to make more money (all LEGAL, I don’t do anything that would jeopardize my membership), just drop me a note via email

wretha @ gmail . com (remove the spaces)

and I’ll be more than happy to help. :)

Phone

I went ahead and ordered the Magic Jack, I figured it would be the best thing to do, if it works for me (and I hope it does), I can drop my cell phone and will not have that expense every month, I will have only one yearly charge for the phone service. The only problem with it so far is they do not have a local phone number for me, so I’ll just get a phone number that is local for my friends and family back in the DFW area, that will not be any different from what I have now with my cell phone. The startup cost on it was about $50.00, that paid for the unit, the shipping and the first year’s service. I did pay a bit extra to get the expedited shipping, I normally don’t do that, but it gave me a tracking number so I will know when it gets to my mail box, we don’t check our mail box very often, it’s a 12+ mile round trip to the mailbox, on twisty, winding, up and down rocky dirt roads. MJ is giving a 30 day free trial, they don’t charge your credit card until about day 31, I’m not sure if that is from the date ordered or the date delivered, either way I should know within a day or so when it shows up in my mail box so I can start using it as soon as possible. When we were in town the other day, I picked up a cheap corded phone, we left all of our phones in Irving when we moved, we didn’t figure we would need them out here, my how things can change… :)

The Garden

We have been working hard on the garden to get it ready to plant, I wish I could have planted before now, but we didn’t have the fencing complete, and I can’t run the risk that something would get in and tear things up.

We just got back in from working on the fencing for the last couple of hours, we were putting up the chicken wire over the top to keep the birds out. We got most of it covered, we have to go back and buy more chicken wire, bummer… oh well, that just means another trip into town, that’s not such a bad thing…

Got pix of the garden, don’t laugh, this is going to feed us soon! :)

Ok, I know this isn’t the garden, but I snapped a few pix of Bob and the new bedroom extension on the way to the garden.

This is the garden area, we are completely enclosing it to protect the veggies from the roving critters who would love to eat what I plant. We used concrete reinforcement wire around the fence posts, we used chicken wire over the top, the red panels on each end came from a Best Buy where I used to work, they were going from red wire panels to putty colored ones, (it showed less dust) so they were going to throw these away, I rescued them from the trash compactor. Along the bottom of the concrete wire, we are using fine mesh hardware cloth.

It’s hard to see, but there is a layer of straw inside the garden area where I am going to plant, that is the Ruth Stout method of gardening, her No Work Garden book is a real gem, I highly recommend it.

4 Comments

the texan said…

I like your blog and your Mtn. home looks neat. How thick are you making the concrete walls?

April 22, 2008 12:48 PM

Wretha said…

Hi the texan,

The walls are between 7 and 12 inches thick. Thanks for leaving a comment, I appreciate each and every one! :)

Wretha

April 22, 2008 2:05 PM

HOLLIS said…

Wretha,
I saw the post about the auger. Something that might be a good care package from your family is the Garden Claw. I use it at my house. I works great. Just little tid bit, might help.

May 22, 2008 10:39 AM

Wretha said…

Hi Hollis, yeah, I remember the commercials for the Garden Claw, they always demonstrated it on dirt that looked as if it didn’t need tilling (grin), I guess it wouldn’t have sold very well if they showed it on hard, rocky clay! I’m glad to hear it works great for you, how is your soil?

My dad is coming out this summer and is bringing me something that works great, a Mantis tiller, it’s light weight and easy to use.

Wretha

May 22, 2008 12:51 PM