Sustainable living....

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ramshackles

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 18, 2011
Messages
521
Location
Riorges, France
It has always been an ambition of mine and my wife to live in a sustainable home and take sustainability and self sufficiency as far as possible. The politics this year has also sparked a desire to simply run away from it all...

When the words 'off grid' or 'sustainable' are mentioned, I get the impression people often think of community 'living in the woods' projects such as Tinkers Bubble and the like.
While such projects are admirable, I often think that they can give a poor impression of the opportunities for sustainable living by entangling it with a rejection of modern life and 'simple living'.

I have often read articles about modern technologies, e.g modern electric cars, LED lighting, nanotechnologies, bioplastics, heat capture and reuse, bladeless wind turbines, energy producing homes, which coupled with sustainable building and living practices (simple stuff - using a bike, growing veg or baking bread) makes me believe the two desires - modern and sustainable life - are within reach.

What I don't read a lot about is more 'small scale' power consumption - e.g. your home appliances.
Is simply because electrical devices are constantly becoming more energy efficient in general and writing about it is boring?
Are any grand advances in something mundane as an oven on the horizon (or even possible?)
(When) will modern sustainable living become an affordable reality? Will it ever become just an accepted way of life?

How about audio? Are low-power/efficient devices possible without drastically compromising headroom, or other more subjective qualities?
 
I've been meaning to do a post like this - particularly about a energy monitor I installed in my house. I'm a big fan of reducing unnecessary consumption.  The monitor uses inductive clamps to measure instantaneous current flow so you can see usage. Installed on the main feeds into the house at the fuse box.  Picture attached showing one day and the whole month of Nov. It connects to the internet and uploads data continuously.
It takes a little detective work to figure out what's what. A plug in type monitor is perhaps more useful, which I have also used.
I don't think the energy use of audio equipment is significant when put in perspective of things like a refrigerator, dehumidifier, stove, heating, etc...  But it depends on what you're using and how much.
If possible natural gas is WAY better than electric for any heating purposes. When electricity is generated from natural gas, half is lost as waste heat to the exhaust. When you directly heat with natural gas at your house, you get 90%+. And natural gas is 90% cheaper on an energy content basis (using $.40/therm gas vs $.14/kwh elec).  Of course, if you want to be sustainable, you might want to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
 
I don't know if this fits but I just started composting... As a kid we used to have a compost pile in the nearby woods, but i bought one of the fancy plastic ones. Back in the 1950's our family pet got really sick from eating scraps from the compost pile so I don't just leave mine open to the critters.

I have noticed that an increasing fraction of my garbage was fruit peels, vegetable skins, coffee grounds, etc, so this will keep more biodegradable matter out of the local land fill and return it to the land.

I also planted 3 fruit trees this year....

the globe seems cooler already.

JR

PS: I switched from resistance heat to heat pump a few years ago, and use time of day thermostats so house gets cold at night for less heat loss which is a linear function of the temperature delta to outside temps and thermal resistance.
 
I switched from resistance heat to heat pump a few years ago

How does the electricity use for the heat pump compare?

I looked into a heat pump system and was told my yard was much too small to put one it. Problem with living in a city.
 
Heating is an interesting one, especially in the UK where there is a huge number of old/oldish terrace housing with terrible insulation.
When I was a student in Denmark, I stayed for a couple of years in a new student apartment building. I think it was put together from these prefab modular units. The insulation was incredible. A lot of wall space was given over to windows which were either triple glazed or double glazed with some plastic covering thing (dont remember). The rooms heated up easily whenever the sun was out...I remember days in winter (sub zero temps) when I *still* didnt need the radiators on.
Granted this was a tiny apartment (2 bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom, ~48m2).

Im now living in a new build house in the UK. The insulation is better than the old terraces, but not as good as that apartment.

Anyway, my point being that I think there is a lot more that can be done to simply keep heat in houses before seeking out better heating methods. It makes me wonder why some building methods are not more widely used. I believe (correct me if im wrong) the thermal properties of straw bale and even wooden housing out-does brick and breeze block and cheaper (to buy the raw materials at least), so why aren't more builders taking advantage of this?
 
Heating, cooling, lighting.

Much of this is New-Age problems. Here in Maine there was no "grid" until well into the 20th century, yet european people lived here for centuries and native people much longer. The sun is your light. You keep one room just above freezing with wood fire. Store food in cellar, by smoking, or by gorging when you can and going thin when food runs out. Surely more generations of your family lived this way than generations with light heat and reefers.

The household problem is that many appliances "assume" a sturdy utility source.

My well-pump sucks a 5,000W start-up and 1,300W cruise. Yet it really runs only 10 minutes a day! A truly right-sized pump would use 1 Watt 24/7, which is a small solar panel. But at 0.007 gallons a minute, I would have to space-out my water uses or add large storage. (Note that today many "civilized" islands rely on rooftop tanks for domestic water.)

Freon refrigerators pull large start-surge. (This may be DMP's spikes?) A gas reefer runs a small flame constantly (can be an electric element). It lacks the heavy cooling capacity to throw a warm turkey (or case of warm beer) in and expect quick chilling (assuming you favor cold beer, a necessity with many US brands).

I find I like my utility-dependent lifestyle.

The off-gridders who seem to do best, _IMHO_, are the ones who made a clean break. Move way out in the woods with a tent, lantern, bucket. Like your ancestors lived, except they had practice and were less spoiled. Here in Maine many people have done that. Many come crawling back. The ones who get into it eventually pick-out practical upgrades like LED lights and solar cellphone chargers.

> articles about modern technologies

Modern technology won't save your butt, except incidentally. No market to apply high-tech development to low-tech problems. The LED lamp is fall-out from rising Chinese fabs and our sorry electric grid. But you will find that windmills produce no power most days and tear themselves apart somewhere above "Power Wind". Likewise I could run my house on hydro the day after a dying hurricane dumped on us, but we just had 3 months of ZERO water in the gully.
--------------
I installed VI meters on my entrance. I was curious how much headroom I have between peak loads and a too-long line from the street. If I pulled the rated 100 Amps I would be down to 105V each side. In fact I rarely go past 50A and 114V. I have to go down cellar to read it.

My power company has a website where I can see my electric consumption in nearly the detail of your chart. Sadly they were bought, the website re-done, new log-ins offered but they do not work, and the company does not care.

> natural gas is WAY better than electric

Yes, with quibbles. You are on the end of the big pipe going north from Oklahoma through the prairie. A pipe cuts the Appalachians but not all the way to my house; and customer density is too low to ever justify gas in my street. Gas must be trucked to me. Truck cost justifies the expense to pull the crap out of Nat Gas, Propane is half the size/BTU of NG, but overall significantly more expensive. Propane competes near-parity with trucked Oil. Propane is a bit more per BTU but the burners are a little less first-cost and, for not much more, significantly more efficient. My propane bills are similar to my oil bills. And much higher than the same heat back when we lived on the gas mains.

In Ram's UK, most gas is imported, costs more than you see in the central 45 US states.

Electric is more efficient at the "burner" than fires. But as you say most electric now comes from fires (and stuff that competes marginally, decaying Nuclear and controvertial Hydro).

> resistance heat to heat pump

I hope you noticed when you bought your new "hot" water heater that you can buy one with more lights and a lump on top. These are heat-pump water heaters. Cost more, tho energy-policy rebates lessen the pain.

Heat pumping seems to always be marginal. DMP can't fit the acreage needed to pump-up from Wisconsin's cold soil. He could drill deep, but this may be improper and always expensive. The outfit pushing heat-pumps here in Maine (apparently to-air!) collapsed after field failures. There will always be some soft limit how much rise is affordable, and back-up heat (invariably costly electric) is needed for historic cold-snap (which has been a side-effect of warming averages).
 
JohnRoberts said:
I don't know if this fits but I just started composting... As a kid we used to have a compost pile in the nearby woods, but i bought one of the fancy plastic ones. Back in the 1950's our family pet got really sick from eating scraps from the compost pile so I don't just leave mine open to the critters.

Every little helps  ;)
Any effort is a good effort. Who knows...composting might turn into planting a few things...


 
PRR said:
Heating, cooling, lighting.

Much of this is New-Age problems. Here in Maine there was no "grid" until well into the 20th century, yet european people lived here for centuries and native people much longer. The sun is your light. You keep one room just above freezing with wood fire. Store food in cellar, by smoking, or by gorging when you can and going thin when food runs out. Surely more generations of your family lived this way than generations with light heat and reefers.

Absolutely. But I like my modern lifestyle too. I just am convinced that you don't necessarily have to compromise it in order to live sustainably.



PRR said:
Modern technology won't save your butt, except incidentally. No market to apply high-tech development to low-tech problems.
A pessimistic view? I think it is good practice to strive to do better and believe it is possible, even if it isn't realistic...yet...
Right now, the technologies are too expensive absolutely. It is cheaper for me to buy a 2nd hand Seat Ibiza than a 2nd hand Toyota Prius. Its' cheaper for me to buy my electricity from the grid than to cover my house in solar tiles. Even if it saves money in the long run, the average guy doesn't have that much cash lying around (especially us late 80's - 90's kids who are being hit with impossible living costs and low wages).  There aren't enough builders able to use environmental materials so the price of that is high. And so on.
But all new technologies were at some point, expensive. The first Apple computer cost $666 in 1976.... etc etc...

PRR said:
In Ram's UK, most gas is imported, costs more than you see in the central 45 US states.
Yup. Still 3-4 times cheaper than electricity I think. Although the best gas boilers are 'only' about 90% efficient, so you will end up using more gas to heat (still cheaper though...)

PRR said:
But as you say most electric now comes from fires (and stuff that competes marginally, decaying Nuclear and controvertial Hydro).

Yup but renewables are still on the up, despite funding cuts in the uk. In the UK 21% is nuclear and ~20% renewable, expected to be 30% by 2020...bringing it to 51% non burning stuff :D.

Wind in scotland could power the whole country (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-35277045). I find that amusing.
As ever, Scandinavians seem to lead the way on stuff like this. Sweden is already 75% 'clean and low carbon energy'
Although even Sweden has been eclipsed by Germany's recent efforts
Which makes the UK efforts look miserable.

 
It makes me wonder why some building methods are not more widely used. I believe (correct me if im wrong) the thermal properties of straw bale and even wooden housing out-does brick and breeze block and cheaper

Fire I would guess? Conventional insulation is cheap and a better insulator.  The R value of insulation is the material thickness divided by the thermal conductivity. The higher the R value the more resistant it is to heat loss. So for a 2x4 wall, you get R 13 for fiberglass - R 17 for foam - R 3 for wood. An 8" concrete block is R 1
A straw bale is much wider (12"?) and wikipedia says the R value ranges from 17-55.
The rating for windows is U factor, which is 1/R. So a single pain window has an R ~0.9 and a modern window has R ~3.3 if you look up typical U factors. Yes, they let in the solar energy but they are pretty terrible for conduction. An easy thing to do is to make up insulating quilts to act as window shades that you put over the window in the night. You get the solar heat during the day but block the heat conduction at night.

Another thing I've probably said before - when I moved into my house I added two layers of R19 fiberglass to the attic and that winter I got the cost back in only 2 months! Here in the north you can see the houses without much attic insulation because the snow melts on the roof and it is painful to see. Just throwing money out the window. The spray foam cans they sell at home improvement stores does wonders for drafts as well.

Absolutely. But I like my modern lifestyle too.
+1
But I think we could be much more sustainable just by getting the low hanging fruit - insulation, etc...
 
If you can believe it, straw bale homes are incredibly fire resistant:

http://www.somaearth.com/natural-building-faq/straw-bale-fire-ratings/
https://www.strawbale.com/straw-bale-fire-resistant-southern-california/
 
dmp said:
But I think we could be much more sustainable just by getting the low hanging fruit - insulation, etc...
Little steps are good. Our roof was pretty well insulated, but not as well as it could be. I threw a load more insulation in last winter.
My parents house has all LED lighting and they say it has made a noticeable difference to the bills. The problem is again, the initial outlay. At £5-10 per bulb, I cant replace all 15-20 odd lights at once. Up to 5 now, although we have slowed since deciding to (hopefully) move to France next summer. I supposed I could always just take the bulbs with me though!

 
> the best gas boilers are 'only' about 90% efficient
> the thermal properties of straw bale and even wooden housing out-does brick and breeze block


I do not understand some UK customs.

In the US we have a choice. Oil burners used to be >60% but are now commonly sold as 80% efficient. There is some doubt what this really means. Considerable mis-adjustment is possible. Gas burners at 80% efficiency are common in the South. I have a 80% gas fireplace. But here, for my main heat, I got 95% efficient (<$200 more). There are also 92% and 96% models, just to keep the customer confused. I have little doubt about my "95%". Where the old oil-fire stack would burn my hand, the gas-fume stack runs "hardly warm". Only a couple degrees warmer than the warm (not hot) air to the house. It is sucking out essentially all the heat possible if I want "room temp" without a duct as big as the room.

In a hasty search, I did not see any UK whole-house hot-air furnaces. And the hot water house heat systems look awful small. No central heating?

Am I correct that houses are brick walls? In the US, above the South, since the 1930s, a "brick" house is veneer over stud frame stuffed with fiberglass. No reasonable thickness of masonry, even hollow, would meet residential building standards.

Straw bale is OK if you like mice and much more roofing. In Kansas they long cut-up the feet-deep sod and made walls of decent insulating value, at least for the time. Here in Maine we commonly use 2x6 (5.5" stud) walls with fiberglass. "R21". Parts of Canada lean to 2x8 or foam, "R35" or more. ("R" is heat flow relative to a board. Say my chicken-shed needs 20,000BTU on a cold day. If I put R20 on all walls doors and windows, 1,000BTU.)

I have a post-WWI UK book on rammed-earth housing. It goes back centuries but was forgotten in the rise of brick-yards. Post-WWI was a materials shortage. The number of ox-cart loads (motor lorries were scarce) needed to re-build neglected housing was staggering.

> Wind in scotland could power the whole country

If you moved to Scotland, maybe. Maine's hills and bays have wind similar to Scotland. We have mills, but truly effective long distance transmission lines drown in cost, both basic technology and land use squabbles. Nominally Maine wind power offsets Boston's use of fire. In fact nearly all those electrons go to Maine towns and the Boston offset is just paperwork. Yes, California has developed even longer transmission lines of fair efficiency (in less populated reaches). But the cost-apportioning of those dams and lines has become a major "game", driving up bills and driving down reliability for all California customers.

And "they kill birds and bats". Just like the hydro-dam is chopping fish.

> LED lighting ..At £5-10 per bulb, I cant replace all 15-20 odd lights at once

I pay $3/bulb (3-pack or 8-pack) and in any long-hours socket I think pay-back is under 1 year. Figure both electric and bulb-replacement costs. (Also self-cost to go up ladders.) Just do it. (OTOH, my garage gets 10 hours a year, electric bill cost is trivial, replacement is easy, and I am just starting to see replacement costs. For "1,000W equiv" light, it will be basic incandescent until LED prices come a lot lower.)
 
dmp said:
How does the electricity use for the heat pump compare?

I looked into a heat pump system and was told my yard was much too small to put one it. Problem with living in a city.
It dropped a bunch between adding a time of day thermostat driving a  small baseboard resistance unit for my small bedroom (the previous in-wall resistance heater had crappy temperature regulation and ran 24x7 (and made noise when cycling).  On warm days the heat would be too much, and on cold days not warm enough,  due to the crude mechanical thermostat. The modest 1kW baseboard heater is dead silent , precise temp control, and only heats the room at night when I sleep.

The main room had a big in-wall air conditioner that I replaced with an air conditioner/heat pump. In theory it uses a fraction of the electricity for same BTU output.... I turn it off at night and use a delayed on to turn it back on an hour or two before I rise in the morning. Forced air can heat the room more quickly than other schemes.

There are different types of heat pumps, ground source heat pumps buries pipes under ground to pull head from below the frost line, but gets expensive. If you have a body of water nearby that would work to as your heat sink/source. 

In MS the air temperature is moderate enough that air based heat pump works, and so far after a few years it has never had trouble keeping up with my needs. (I actually ordered my unit from CA, and paid a bunch for shipping because the technology was not common locally here in no-where MS. )

My electric bill started dropping nicely until the new "clean" (cough) coal plant started running up extra charges.  I really hate revisiting this but the new plant is something like 2 years late and $4B+ over budget. I just looked this up and apparently it is just now coming on line. (was supposed to be online in May 2014).

Then there was drama about their ability to bill for the cost over runs. The rates went up, then people complained because we were paying more but it wasn't making power yet, so they rolled back the rates, and approved borrowing to cover the cost over run's. As if we rate payers won't pay even more back later with interest for the borrowed funds. Politicians tends to be really short term thinkers and not always prudent, but always willing to kick the can down the road. The people who screwed up can never be made to pay the $B in waste (can't get blood from a stone). 

Too much incompetence to blame on just one group, lots to go around. Sorry about the veer.... If it was possible I'd just switch the clean coal plant to burn natural gas, but not my decision.

(maybe I should have switched to gas....  ;D ). Or move further south. The latter will probably happen before the former.

JR

PS: I've been messing with this for years and one trick I did before getting the heat pump, was to point a box fan at the in-wall resistance unit for my main room, with one of those 24 hr lamp timers, and set the thermostat lower. At night when the fan was off, the room would be cooler. In the day time when the fan blew cold air directly at the heater the room warmed up nicely... but still resistance and lacking the thermostat precision and of the heat pump. 

PPS: I also built and added DIY double layer storm window frames  inside all my windows to reduce heat loss.  The storm windows isolate so well that I get zero condensation inside even in the coldest weather (two layers of plastic film stretched over a  1/2" thick wood frame , mounted inside the exterior glass windows, so two air pockets get trapped, between room air and outside. Air is a pretty good thermal insulator.) 
 
I know we are a bit behind the US here in the UK but yes we do have central heating. My Dad had central heating fitted to our house in the 1960s and I have never lived in a house without it since (apart from a couple of years whilst at university). Brick built houses have been constructed with two walls of bricks separated by a cavity since at least the 1930s. In the 70s/80s there was a surge in cavity wall insulation where the government did and still does pay half the price of having the cavity filled with insulation in houses that don't already have it. Building regulations have driven improvements in thermal efficiency and for at least the last 20 years, all houses have had cavity wall and loft insulation as standard.

For our part, we Brits find it hard to understand why you guys want to live in flimsy wooden boxes. The only advantage seems to be it allows programs like Extreme Makeover to exist.

There are alternatives to oil and gas. We looked at a new house yesterday that is fitted with an air source heat pump for heating the house and water. It is about 300% efficient so, although it runs on electricity, it removes more heat from the atmosphere than was created in making it. If everyone used ground or air sourced heat pumps we could probably create an ice age.

Cheers

Ian

Cheers

Ian
 
The air based heat pump, extracts heat from the cold outside air, so the colder that outside air is the less heat available to harvest.

My heat pump has a back-up resistance heat element to support marginal conditions, and the resistance heat comes on when it first turns on and temp is well below thermostat target. When I ran the heat the first time this season my smoke alarm went off from the smoke of a season's worth of accumulated dust burning off. Not visible smoke but I smelled it, and the smoke alarm detected it, (a good way to test the smoke alarm once a year). 

I heat my entire (small) house during the day time with the one in-wall air conditioner/heat pump unit. I keep some rooms that I don't spend time in closed off and unheated. In really cold weather if the heat pump can't keep up, I can always turn on the old in-wall resistance heater but rarely do.

My 1kW baseboard unit in my bedroom keeps up for all but the coldest nights, and if the temp sags a few degrees in the middle of the night while I'm in bed under the covers is no big deal. I have a 1.5kW baseboard unit that doesn't sag but it is not as quiet as the 1kW unit so I don't use it much.

I probably mentioned this before I also mounted small bathroom light fixture with 3x60W incandescent bulbs under my computer desk as a spot heater/leg warmer. I use it occasionally for a few hours on very cold mornings. Its plugged into a dimmer so I can vary heat output.

I will second the suggestion to plug up air leaks... especially around your doors. I added two layers of soft sealing strips. Just move a damp hand around the door frame in cold weather and you will feel the air gaps.

The spray foam is good for sealing up around plumbing, keeps out the mice too...

JR
 
What about a compostable Mic Pre? Or just 100% recyclable or toxic free.
Whats the most nasty stuff we are having in our builds?
Is it the caps?

best,
Stephan
 
PRR said:
My well-pump sucks a 5,000W start-up and 1,300W cruise. Yet it really runs only 10 minutes a day! A truly right-sized pump would use 1 Watt 24/7, which is a small solar panel. But at 0.007 gallons a minute, I would have to space-out my water uses or add large storage. (Note that today many "civilized" islands rely on rooftop tanks for domestic water.)

I had a well installed this year. I ended up going with a standard pump like yours. 4000W at startup 1200W running. I did some research and they make pumps like you describe. They are called solar water pumps. They are about the same price as a regular pump. In the $2000 range. To make sense it would  have to be integrated into an overall solar system which I wasn't going to do.

It has been my experience that propane powered appliances suck. I've run across a few propane refrigerators and stoves. They never seemed like they worked very well.
 
Where I live is quite rural ..  well, very rural infact  :)  The local 'big city' of Hobart is around 1hr drive.

I have high quality water, piped in, but sewerage is on-site. My heating is wood burning, mostly from local tree 'harvesting' waste  :)  These are old school with a large flue, not too efficient, most heat goes up the flue! Kind of like ClLass A amplification  :)

On the power front, when I'm not busy expending a lot electrically-sourced heat in my music room, (what with all the Class A amplification and tubes and what not,)  I'm pretty low energy  :)

...

It costs me something like 1Kusd yearly for electricity supply, which is around 11KWhr or so per day. 2/3 is general usage, and the hot water heater is around 1/3.

Electricity costs are around 17c/KWhr for electricity consumed and fixed supply costs are about 22% of the annual total bill.

What's great is that although the cost of electricity has doubled in the last 7 years,  the cost for a small home solar off grid, with batteries, has reduced markedly reduced.

I am planning to do an install of something with a 5KW system for around 4500usd, including the legally mandated licensed contractor install (excluding the battery bank installation).

It would need the equivalent of 2.5 'strong sunshine' hours a day to cover my usage.  Plus another 0.5hrs to cover losses.

Of course, one needs to factor in some back-up generation. In my case, primary a 1.5KW diesel gen-set.

That adds another 1.5Kus to the system cost, including a couple of 33gallon drums filled with diesel (which lasts a long time without spoilage).

For the really keen, some small scale wind generation is the other back up. Something like 250W or so. That adds another 0.5Kusd to the cost.

And finally, a rooftop passive hot water heating system is around another 1.2Kusd.

With some luck, in the next year or two, I'll be going to an off-grid for electricity  :)  for a total cost of  around 8.0Kusd.

Electricity supply costs are increasing rapidly - they'll just about double in another 7years!

The 8Kusd for a complete off-grid electricity capability thus  represents a 'payback' period of around 7 years, with a bit of slack included for maintenance etc.

Where I live is a popular area for big city escapees, so home power generation, nicely executed and well maintained, is a big draw card. The system will also add a decent amount to the value of the house when the time comes for me to downsize. Kind of like a cash-back feature.

...

This year, I'm finishing establishing a small orchard, hot house and chicken shed :)

Next year, I start on the off-grid electrical system  :)
 
JohnRoberts said:
The air based heat pump, extracts heat from the cold outside air, so the colder that outside air is the less heat available to harvest.
JR

Fortunately, as the UK is an island, we have a maritime climate, which means it rarely gets very cold. Air source heat pump efficiency depends on the boiling point of the fluid used but generally they can extract more than enough heat even when the temperature falls well below freezing point.

Cheers

Ian
 
Oil burners used to be >60% but are now commonly sold as 80% efficient

Learned a lot about staying warm when we lived in Maine for a decade or so. We bought a house with an oil furnace and IIRC a Beckett burner that made it a little bit more efficient.  Being used to only natural gas before this, I admit I was freaked out about having an oil tank in my basement, but the furnace served us well and it was really quite reliable - oil delivery was reliable too.  Quite a few of our neighbors had additional reserve oil tanks so they didn't need to worry about running out of oil.  Most homes there are insulated better than most that we were used to in the midwest and newer homes usually had R21 with 2X6 construction.  We also leaned to have a backup heat source of some sort (we burned 3-4 cords of wood in my wood stove insert each year).  This also made it affordable  to stay warm considering that 60 percent oil forced air furnace.
 

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