Hi Guys,

I hope that you have had a good day.

As follow up to my previous two posts here are some more ways to reduce our energy consumption.

Remember every reduction has to pay for itself in the long run and that every reduction in my energy consumption that I can make reduces my future energy storage requirements when I finally go off grid.

And so without any further ado lets get on with it.

Today we are going to talk about keeping temperature loss to a minimum as well as temperature control.

Thermostatic Radiator Valves

Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs) have to be fitted by Law on all new systems. TRV’s are cheap to buy and simple for a plumber to fit. The valves will soon pay for themselves in savings made on heating costs.

TRV’s let you control the temperature of individual rooms, so each room can be it’s optimal temperature and no more. TRV’s can sense the air temperature around them and regulate the flow of hot water entering the radiators to keep a set temperature within a room. They do not control the boiler – your thermostat does that.

They can help you save money and energy by allowing lower temperatures in some rooms than in others, and to provide background heating in rooms that are not used regularly or to even turn off the heating in rooms that aren’t used.

TRV’s, in the main, cannot turn off the boiler when the whole house has reached the right temperature. A room thermostat is normally used to control the boiler.

Radiators in the room containing the room thermostat do not normally have TRVs. But if they do, you should keep the TRVs on their highest possible settings, and set the room thermostat to the required temperature instead.

Prices for TRV’s, including VAT, vary between £9.00 to £23.00 per valve. And unless you can do the job yourself you will have to include the cost of a plumber.

Reflective Radiator Panels

Did you know that we loose nearly 70% of a radiator’s heat on warming the wall behind it. Reflective radiator panels are an ideal solution to help you to reduce your heating bills.

Reflective radiator panels consist of reflective material installed behind radiators to reduce heat loss through external walls. They generally come in two forms; rolls of foam approximately 3mm thick with a metallic film or more rigid profiled units shaped to provide turbulence to push air into the room rather than be absorbed into exterior walls.

If you have uninsulated exterior walls, the heat that would otherwise be lost through the walls, will be conserved within the property and will subsequently reduce your energy requirement.

The rolls of thin foam with a metallic coating need to be fitted with the radiator off the wall. The more rigid profiled variety can be fitted with the radiator in-situ. The panels are most effective when fitted behind radiators that are mounted on un-insulated external walls.

Each panel is 688mm high x 444mm wide. In general a standard sized radiator will require two panels. A pack of 10-panels will set you back approximately £40.00.

Homemade Fuel

An open fire is something I really enjoy during a cold winters evening. There is something magical in a fire, the red glow of embers, the crackling of the wood as it burns and a glass of wine.

A great way to quickly turn a portion of your household and garden waste into free fuel for your open fire or wood burning stove is through using a Logmaker. The Logmaker will produce compact newspaper encased logs in minutes. These can easily burn for up to 1-hour depending on their content.

You can turn up to 30% of your household waste and most of your garden waste into homemade fuel using the Logmaker. These include shredded paper, ripped up junk mail, ripped cardboard such as: cereal packets, egg boxes, toilet roll tubes (rip into small pieces first), teabags, nut shells, wood shavings and sawdust, dried leaves and twigs). The logmaker helps you recycle your waste while producing free bio-fuel for your fireplace.

A Logmaker will set you back an approximate £20.00.

Chimney Balloons

In winter, open chimneys, when not in use are a source of heat loss. A quick and effective way of reducing this heat loss is through the use of a chimney balloon.

Chimney balloons are a simple and effective way of blocking chimneys when not in use.

A room with a blocked chimney needs only about half the heat when compared with a similar room with an open chimney, so it makes sense to fit a chimney balloon in every chimney which is not in everyday use.

The balloon effectively stops cold draughts coming down your chimney and warm air escaping up your chimney.

The balloons are made in a special laminate to make them airtight, tear-resistant and long-lasting. It also has a special shape that allows a little ventilation on two corners to keep your chimney dry.

Using a chimney balloon is completely safe: if it is accidentally heated, it shrivels and deflates.

The cost of a chimney baloon is approximately £20.00

Loft Insulation

Loft insulation decreases the amount of heat escaping through the roof. It acts as a blanket, trapping rising heat from the house below. Without it, you could be losing as much as 15% of your heating costs through your roof. If you currently have no insulation and you install the recommended depth (270mm for mineral wool) you could save around £205 a year on your heating bills.

Installing loft insulation is relatively quick, clean and free or inexpensive to install. You can easily save money on a professional installation by doing it yourself.

It’s never been more important to think about insulating your loft. Without proper insulation a lot of the valuable, expensive energy you use to heat your home will be lost through the loft. The recommended depth for mineral wool insulation is 270mm however there are other materials which require different depths.

In fact, by not insulating your loft you could be wasting as much as 15% of your heating costs.

Loft insulation is an effective way to save energy and money at home. A well insulated house keeps warmth exactly where you need it – indoors.

So, insulating your loft – or topping up any insulation you have already – will help to heat your home more efficiently. By using less energy you automatically reduces save money on your heating bills.

Loft insulation is effective for at least 40 years, and it will pay for itself over and over again in that time. The better insulated your home, the less energy you need to keep it warm – the more money you’ll save in the long run.

Loft insulation generally comes in three types – blown material (mineral wool or cellulose fibre), mineral wool quilt, and loose fill. A specialist contractor must install blown material, but installing mineral wool quilt or loose fill is fairly easy to do yourself.

Spray applied foam insulation normally exceeds U-values (also known as the U-factor or coefficient of heat transmission, which is a measure of the rate of non-solar heat loss or gain through a material or assembly) and air leakages targets, is very cost effective and can can provides additional strength to your roof and increased sound insulation. Prices vary greatly between companies carrying out spray applied foam insulation. However, if you go the DIY route the lowest price I could find after a limited search was around £5.00 per meter.

Multi Foil Insulation products comprise a series of extremely thin low emissivity, metallic or metalized films inter layered with low thermal conductivity wadding, or foam of various types. The various layers are then welded, glued or, more usually, sewn together to form an insulating blanket. These include extruded polystyrene (XPS), expanded polystyrene (EPS), polyurethane (PUR), polyisocyanurate (PIR), multi-foil insulation and glass and rock fiber. The prices of multi foil insulation is approximately £5.00 per m2.

Glasswool, or glass mineral wool for thermal and acoustic insulation is manufactured from sand, lime and soda ash, with recycled glass added. Glass mineral wool is one of the most environmentally friendly, stable and sustainable insulants available. Its raw material is silica sand, the earth’s most abundantly occurring natural material. The prices of 270mm of Glasswool loft insulation comes to approximately £7.25 per m2.

Sheepswool insulation has a unique advantage, its breathability. That is it’s ability to absorb and release moisture from the surrounding air, without compromising it’s thermal efficiency. When wool fibres absorbs moisture, they generate tiny amounts of heat. This warmth acts to prevent condensation in construction cavities by maintaining the temperature above the dew-point in damp conditions. The prices of sheepswool varies considerably from approximately £6.30 per m2 to £14.50 per m2.

However when comparing loft insulation it is a bit like comparing apples with oranges. It is up to you to do your due diligence and decide what you want to spend to achieve a thermal conductivity value equal to, or better than, the recommended depth of 270mm for mineral wool.

In the UK, when comparing the thermal values of insulating materials i.e. U-values, U-factor or coefficient of heat transmission, it is important to remember that the best performing material is the one with the lowest thermal conductivity value

Draft proofing

If you can feel cold air coming in around the windows in your home it means warm air is escaping. In a typical home this heat loss can accounts for up to 20% of the total heat lost.

Draft proofing is an easy DIY task. Simply fill the gaps and use draft excluders for your external doors thereby decreasing the amount of cold air entering your home.

By draft proofing your home you could save around £30 a year on your heating bills.

I hope that I’ve given you something to think about. As I’ve said before, if your home consumes less energy you will be able to reduce the amount of energy you have to generate as well as store.

Save on your energy bills by generating your own power at home with solar and wind energy to reduce or eliminate your power bill. Get our complete guide at DIY Power System

As always, I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

Check out my review of the top 3 products for renewable home enegy solution
Check out my review of the Home Made Power Plant product
Check out my review of DIY Power System product

Hi Guys,

I hope that you have had a good day.

If you are like me you probably would like to reduce the size of your energy bills. After all the less energy we consume the less we pay.

However there is also another reason I would like to reduce my energy consumption and that is to reduce my energy storage requirements when I finally go off the grid.

And so today I would like to discuss ways to reduce our energy consumption.

The world is faced with an energy crisis now and none of us remain unaffected anymore. I personally think that this crisis is artificial in order to force up the prices of energy and to exert control over us.

I don’t think that we can expect anything from governments expect lip service. Government is more often than not part of the problem; for instance to tax component for a litre of diesel in the UK is 65%. The higher the price per litre of fuel the more money enters government coffers.

Ultimately it is up to us to do something to reduce our energy needs and to generate our own energy to power our homes.

It costs me on average £45.00 to fill up my car on a weekly basis. This means that my weekly contribution to government coffers is £29.25, which comes to £351.00. With three cars at home, as a family we contribute around £1053.00 to government coffers to get to work.

Once electric cars have become efficient and are able to travel longer distances than they can at present without the need for constant charging and no longer cost the earth, I will definitely get one. Who knows we may even have cars that recharge themselves with solar cells incorporated in the body of the car.

But what happens to our energy tax contribution to government coffers if this were the case. It probably explains their plan to try to charge us for every mile we drive instead of charging us road tax.

So what can we do, if anything, to reduce our current level of energy requirements?

There are some relatively easy steps can be taken to reduce our energy needs. However, we do need to consider the benefit of carrying out such energy saving measures. After all what good are they to you if you land up paying more than what you are already paying.

One must balance the cost to benefit requirements for each element of our energy reduction programme.

Quite a few cost saving measures mentioned below are associated to standby power. Standby power is also known as vampire power, vampire draw, phantom load, or leaking electricity, and refers to electric power consumed by electronic appliances while they are switched off or in a standby mode.

So let us look at how you can save power at home.

Computers:

At the vary least you should set the power settings on your computer to automatically go into Sleep or Standby mode after 15 minutes or so of inactivity.

Turn your computer and its monitor off when you’re done for the day.

If you use a desktop, use an LCD monitor. They use lots less energy than CRT’s.

You could always use a power strip so you can easily turn off all your computer accessories at once.

I personally turn off my laptop along with all accessories off at the wall switch when I’m done for the day. As everything is connected together through a power strip I know that everything is switched off at the same time.

Air Conditioner:

Set the temperature at the maximum or minimum you are comfortable with, depending on the season. The operative word here is comfortable.

Try not to set it at too high or too low temperatures. In our house I’ve got to keep checking the thermostat as our teenager keep changing the temperature settings.

Setting the air conditioner at reasonable temperatures helps save a lot of energy.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve got to keep checking our thermostat as our teenagers keep changing the temperature levels to what they feel is right for them.

Washing Machines:

Minimize the number of washes by washing full load of clothes every time. Also, if washing machine packs up you could buy a new machine with a better energy rating than your old one had.

You could also try to wash your clothing at a lower temperature setting or on a reduced wash cycle.

Television:

Switch off your television at the wall plug when not in use. Take off the power plug of your television set when not using it. This may not sound a big deal but this tiny step will help save power.

Power adapters:

Power adapters are very common “electricity vampires” as they have no power-off switches. These include mobile telephone chargers, electric toothbrush chargers and the like. I am quite sure that you may have touched one of these adapters when not in use and discovered that it was warm to the touch. Switch them off at the wall plug. Better yet, keep them unplugged until you need them.

Geysers:

Keep the geyser thermostat at the minimum heat. You do not need to heat the water at a very high temperature or for too long.

Refrigerators and freezers:

Bring hot food to room temperatures before putting it into the refrigerator. You can also save power by taking cold or frozen food out of the refrigerator much before the mealtime, thereby saving power in heating it.

Car:

For an air-conditioner equipped car, pull up the windows of your car before switching on the air-conditioner.

Save on your energy bills by generating your own power at home with solar and wind energy to reduce or eliminate your power bill. Get our complete guide at DIY Power System

As always, I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

Check out my review of the top 3 products for renewable home enegy solution
Check out my review of the Home Made Power Plant product
Check out my review of DIY Power System product

Hi Guys,

I hope that you have had a good day.

Today, 29th June 2009, I was browsing the Internet when I came across an article from the Guardian, a British newspaper. The article’s title was Energy bills ‘too low’ to combat climate change and its subtitle was Royal Society report says current government policy is not enough to pay for green technology. That said it all for me.

I refer to my previous articles from the 18th June 2009 – Renewable Home Energy Solutions – The Case Against Commercial Industrial Wind Power and 23rd June 2009 – Cost Implication of Going Green respectively, which explain the reason why energy prices are as high as they are in the United Kingdom. It all boils down to the captive consumer being forced to subsidize energy policies that don’t even work.

While I agree that more research is required to improve the efficacy of solar panels, energy storage and other renewable energy solutions I believe that the science should stand or fail without the general public being screwed over by the vested interest of the climate-industrial complex.

Let’s face it, such policies always hit the poorer segments of society.

Renewable home energy solutions are totally viable but government and the rest of the climate-industrial complex keep getting in the way.

Planning regulations in the United Kingdom has often stopped small turbines designed specifically for micro-generation from being mounted directly onto existing buildings and also denied planning permission to those who want solar panels on their houses.

It would appear that many of these policies are aimed at discouraging you the home owner from being self-sufficient in energy and the more we demonstrate that these practices are at odds with so-called government and EU policy the better. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to get rid of the politicians and petty bureaucratic jobsworths that get in our way to self-sufficiency in energy.

As always, I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

Check out my review of the top 3 products for renewable home enegy solution
Check out my review of the Home Made Power Plant product
Check out my review of DIY Power System product

• Passive solar energy
• Hot water heating solar panels
• Electricity generating solar panels
• Photovoltaic cells
• Electricity generating wind turbines for the home
• Building your own home electricity generating power plant
• House design
• Calculating your energy requirements
• Energy storage including battery types
• The case against commercial industrial wind power
• The case against commercial industrial bio diesel

I’ll start with an explanation of where I stand on some of the issue that in effect affect the above.

My paradigm or worldview provides me with a framework to organize new thoughts and information. This is how we all “make sense of the world around us.” Our paradigms filter out what doesn’t fit from our worldview. However it appears that for some reason or other we cannot seem to be able to learn what doesn’t conform to our paradigm and because of this, our paradigms can either liberate us or imprison us, depending on how true to our reality they are.

My paradigm has shifted many times in the past. At times the shift is slow and gradual, whilst at other times the shift has been rather sudden and violent. Some 13-years or so ago I had a series of paradigm shifts. I have always been an avid reader and to some extent I have always known that governments, religion, mainstream media, big business & the education system were actively sabotaging society.

With these paradigm shifts I learned not to ever take anything for granted, to cross reference any story, to see through the propaganda and most crucially to follow the money i.e. who benefits.

Repeatedly, through time, some grand fraud or other is concocted by the unholy alliance of governments, religion, mainstream media, big business & the education system, each with its own agenda and vested interest.

This unholy partnership of self interested businesses, so-called scientists, grandstanding politicians, alarmist campaigners and a main stream media pushing their sponsors agendas provide a new twist on a very old practice; companies and individuals using public policy to line their own pockets.

This loose grouping, to put them in the same category as the military-industrial complex, can I supposed, be called the climate-industrial complex. A grouping that does not promote any discussion or free thoughts on environmental matters but will attack and vilify any detractor or person not on message. They would really make the Spanish Inquisition proud by their labeling of any and all dissenters as heretics.

This loose grouping however have their own vested interests and agendas and will at times work against each other, which in my mind is a blessing in disguise.

For the last few years, they’ve been trying to terrorize us into accepting that human society was on the brink of extinction because of man-made global warming. We are warned that, unless we take drastic action to reverse it – then islands will disappear, whole cities will be destroyed and polar bears will drown. However, when the universe conspired against the global warmists by giving us rather cool summers and a really long and cold winter it quickly became climate change.

Climate change has occurred long before man made his apparition on this planet and will continue to do so long after we will disappear from this earth. As this planet has been considerably hotter and colder than it is at the moment, is it not rather egotistical of man to assume that he has an effect upon the earth’s temperature?

The climate-industrial complex / environmentalist movement has taken on a religious like fervour with saint Al Bore as its spokes person.

When it comes to so-called carbon trading, an industry created out of thin air that produces nothing but is going to cost the general public and taxpayer an arm and a leg one should follow the money and check out who will benefit from such a scheme. Interestingly enough Al Bore’s name pops up. He buys his carbon credit from, wait for it, his own carbon trading company. A company he conveniently started in 2004 two years before he brought out the fictional film “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. The man whose home uses up as much energy as 20 average US homes. In 2006 he used over 191000 kWh of electricity whilst the average American home only used less than 11000 kWh. How’s this for an inconvenient truth!

Carbon trading is a scam used by the climate-industrial complex to redistribute even more of the taxpayer’s and general public’s wealth into their own coffers and the same as always: the control over our lives for its own sake, thinly disguised by phoney self-righteous posturing.

Hey! If you feel guilty about your so-called carbon footprint or if you believe in this sh1t I’ve got some pet rocks to sell you or even better you can buy your carbon credits from me… For more information email me at… Aw, forget it, I’d be scamming you too wouldn’t I.

The vested interest of climate-industrial complex / environmental movement cares little for the people of this planet. They don’t care that there policies sentences the poorest in Africa, Asia and South America to death just as long as they have done their bit for the “planet”.

Now back to my interest in renewable home energy solutions.

About 13-years ago a friend of mine who worked in photovoltaic (PV) research told me that I would not believe the amount of political interference in their research. And that at that time, keeping in mind that this was 13-years ago, every single home could be self-sufficient in energy. The only thing that was stopping this was the vested interest of energy suppliers and government interference.

The vested interest of the power companies which, apart from the electricity supply companies, also include the gas and oil companies, have kept this virtually free energy away from the general public.

However, various researchers, engineers and enthusiasts have continuously worked on private projects and the information has rippled out into the wider community.

Other advances in the manufacture of improved electrical and electronic equipment as well as in lighting technology has helped to reduce our energy consumption.

Another area that was and to a certain extent still is problematic is the storage of energy, especially electrical energy. However, battery technology is improving and can make a substantially difference to renewable home energy solutions.

This revolution has been long in coming. I believe that we have reached critical mass and that it will be our choice whether we continue paying exorbitant prices to the energy suppliers or we spend a bit of capital up front and enjoy vastly reduced energy bills or even go off-grid altogether.

I believe that there is a place for solar and wind energy, though, probably not in an industrial scale but certainly for home use.

The choice is ours.

Large industrial complexes will still require energy from energy suppliers but we no longer have to help subsidize them.

I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain
Check out my review of the top 3 products for renewable home enegy solution
Check out my review of the Home Made Power Plant product
Check out my review of DIY Power System product