Woodburners

We are about to start on gutting the sitting room and insulating its walls and replacing the woodburner and a whole lot more stuff.  

 So today we had a trip out to look at new woodburners at the Gloucestershire Stove Centre. We currently have a rather useless metal box of a woodburner which really is so hopeless that it is not much better than an open fire...

I was certain we would be going for a Clearview to replace it but Compostman suggested a trip out, so off we went.

The shop and staff were lovely and happily lit a number of the stoves for us to see. We saw a number of makes and are now deliberating between two brands. Both are lovely ( and neither are a Clearview!) Both are more efficient than a Clearview and a lot less money as well!

here is the link to one of them

http://www.navitron.org.uk/product_detail.php?proID=501&catID=85

The Burley was astoundingly good in demonstration and actually cheaper that a "conventional" equivalent woodburner with air wash and cleanburn, a la Clearview...which it also has, of course

Also very clean, unfussy lines, which we liked...I was SO impressed by it...


Given that we fell, cut, split and stack all our wood, getting max efficiency from it for heating is of considerable importance!

‎89% is the 5 kW, 85 % is the 8 kW and the 12 kW The 12 kW is astonishingly hot, even in a huge industrial unit, it is hard to stand nearer than 6 ft away.....the flame pattern is amazing, think "Northern Lights" effect with sheets of burning gas dropping down from the top of the glass door to meet the gouts of flame shooting up from the wood in the grate.

I was mesmerised....

The Burley turns 100 Kg of wood into a pt beer glass of ash...

The Burley does primary, secondary combustion ( as does a Clearview) but also goes on into gasification territory to do tertiary and quaternary...as you adjust the air intake you see astonishing flame fronts.

Closest thing I have ever seen to compare it to, was looking into furnaces !

I really thought we were Clearview buyers...we have been waiting to do this room for a couple of years while we do other stuff to the house and had money put aside for a Clearview, but now we are blown away by the Burley

 

Vestas factory workers campaign - new song from Seize the Day

For those of you who have never had the joy of seeing/hearing them, Seize The Day are a radical English acoustic band with global roots. They write songs to celebrate, inspire and support the liberation of life. Whatever needs to change or be defended in this world, they sing to make you laugh about it, cry about it, dance about it – maybe even inspire you to believe that you can DO something about it!

Seize the Day are currently camped out at the Vestas factory in the Isle of Wight in support of the workers. With the (free) help of locals and a recording studio they have written and recorded a new song about the 'Boys on the Balcony' which is now available FOR FREE on their website. Go here : http://www.seizetheday.org/index.cfm download it, play it and pass it on !

There is more info here about what the Vestas workers are after, but basically Vestas plan to close the UK's only wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight, transferring the work to the US and China . Workers are fighting back against the bosses, OCCUPYING THE FACTORY to pressure the government to nationalise the factories and continue production under new management.

Our Study

Several of you have commented on how nice our study/office is recently and I thank you for that.

It USED TO BE a horrible room, it is North facing and West facing, so gets the worst of the rain laden winds here and the walls ( solid, not cavity!) were letting in the damp for many years before we moved in. Although Compostman stopped all that by re-pointing the outside when we first got the house it left the inside still prone to getting mould growth in cold spots on the walls...not nice!



It had a horrible old carpet in, it was dingy, and damp... and despite being a big room it was so poorly laid out we could never find stuff and had no space to store things.




so...Compostman started on "The Great Renovation".

This involved replacing the single glazed windows with modern double glazed, FSC soft wood frames, which he painted. Then he lined the interior walls with plaster board, with damp proof membrane and air gaps and thermal film ( as per best practice) to minimise heat loss through the walls.

He then took up the old floorboards, sadly they were in too poor a state to re use, so we have been burning them and very good tinder they are, too! He laid a lovely new floor and then a new FSC wooden floor on top of that, with insulation under the new floor to ( again) minimise heat loss. We chose a nice, calming blue for the walls and roller blinds for ease of use and for shade (as we ae working in there a fair bit and the room gets the sun all afternoon and evening.

I bought a new computer desk and a matching long table for me (I tried to get stuff from Freecycle, but failed...), this maximises the usable space, but the table has folding legs so can be moved out if we ever need the floor space for guests! we have a sofe bed which could be used if needed.

Compostman has a lovely long desk and we re instated the large bookshelves on the wall. These hold a huge number of reference books, manuals, box files of reference stuff etc etc ...



I also bought a huge cupboard which takes all my Environmental Education/Forest School stuff, rucksacks, kit etc etc AND lots of craft supplies, paper, and other stuff...its like the TARDIS in there!

Compostman also took advantage of having the floor up to finally do the clever 3 zone central heating zoning he has wanted to do for ages, so we also now have a much more energy efficient way of heating only the bits of the house we need to heat, rather than doing the whole lot and relying on the radiator thermostatic valves to turn off individual rooms. We still have the thermostatic valves as well, but the house is divided up and there are separate controllers switching on/off the heating depending on the temperature and the time of day. We have noticed a big drop in our oil consumption! and we can make it work when we have the woodburner on, so we are using our wood rather than oil...

:-))



The Study has been transformed by hard work on the part of Compostman from a nasty, cold, damp, mouldy room (which I hated working in) to one which is warm, needs little heating, is cool in summer, is comfortable, well designed to work in and has lots of space to do stuff. I can lay out sewing and use my sewing machine, I can prepare for a Forest school session and have lots of space to spread stuff out, he can practice his guitar, we both can work at our desks, Compostgirl can write her stories in there with us, or use the computer and we can get lots of stuff done as a family.

I am a lucky woman to be married to such a helpful, useful man! And we have been married now for 24 years and we have been "together" for 25 ish years....

He is a wonderful man and I am a very lucky woman to have him in my life.

More Slow food.

Slow Cooker did its stuff again tonight, we had spare rib chops with onion, apple, leek, carrot, celery, mushrooms and peppers, cooked in home made cider and some sage...

It used 0.75 Kwh and took just under 4 hours, 2 hours on high and the rest on low heat. Food miles either feet (from our garden) OR 5 miles away for the Pork!

YUM!

Slow Cooker

Last week I went into Hereford for an appointment and popped in to Sainsbury. I spotted that they were selling off their own brand Stainless Steel Slow Cooker for £ 9.98, less than half price.

I had been thinking about getting one recently, in previous years we have had the Aga on all winter so cooking slow food was never a problem, but we only use the Aga now in the very depth of winter or if there is a prolonged power outage as it uses far too much oil and our wallet AND our conscience tell us not to use it.


So a 4.2 litre Crock Pot for less than a tenner seemed like a bargain, so I bought one.

Mid afternoon on Saturday we put in a couple of small lamb shanks from our local butcher Wallers in Ledbury, half a glass of our homemade Damson wine, some stock, shallots and carrots from the garden, and some local celery and button mushrooms.

5 hours and 1 KWh later and it had turned into this....

And when we added some of our beans and spuds, this is what we had for dinner on Saturday night. I can honestly say it was delicious, and we normally eat very well! We thoroughly enjoyed it, along with some more of our home made wine.

I can see us eating a lot of food cooked in the Slow Cooker this winter..........good job we like Casseroles and Stews!

A thought provoking post!

I had a very odd conversation with an energy supplier not so long ago who wanted us to switch from our current supplier ( Good Energy) and quized me as to why we had such a LARGE useage! Cheeky mare!

Well thinking about it I would say we actually have qute a SMALL electicity consumption considering what we have which needs electricity! And this got me thinking...and then the next day I read a post by one of the bloggers I admire ENORMOUSLY, Stonehead.

He had posted on a similar theme about his electrcity useage. We have similar energy consumption as Stonehead, have similar workshop/tool use and store our home grown produce in much the same way. Ok he does it on a bigger scale, but the principle is similar!

Like him, we cook our food from scratch, make home made booze from our own produce, jams , chutneys, bottle and freeze fruit and veg…we are mostly self sufficient in fruit and veg and I can’t remember the last time I bought jam or chutney! We, too have our own borehole and sewerage system.

Our total electricity LOOKS like a high consumption…..BUT, we actually consume very little which is optional ( TV, etc) nearly all our so called higher consumption is essential, to store food, cook from sctatch, preserve food, pump water, remove sewerage and treat it, run tools which help us to be more self sufficient etc!

as Stonehead so brilliantly posted on this very issue, other people don’t actually pay for a lot of the energy they consume…they don't use their own electicity to get their water piped in or their sewerage taken away ( they pay as part of their water rates, true, but not in with their electricity bill!)

They don't actually pay for all that energy/fossil fuel used to grow, harvest, transport, pack, transport, cook, pack, transport to the shop. They just travel to and from the shop to buy it…

and all they see is the cost of the small amount of electricity they use to heat up the ready meal….

( bangs head on wall…)

We effectively are the producer,transport, packer, transport, supermarket AND consumer of the food we eat, so no wonder we APPEAR to have a high energy usage!

So in reply to the twit from the power company, I would actually say more that we have a REALISTIC energy useage for our lifestyle! And that if all this is actually taken into account, our energy use MUST be quite small!