Tuesday 26 February 2013

Snow (again)

Plenty of snow this morning - around 100mm.  Very dry.  About the same fell on the hill.

Pictures are in dropbox under feb 2013.

Largely gone by 2pm.

Tuesday 19 February 2013

sharpened chainsaw

Well, more of a change the chain.  Chain too blunt to sharpen with a file.  
2 hours to strip and clean, changed air and petrol filter

Wednesday 6 February 2013

1 year with (grid) electricity

With a year of 24/7 (grid) power, we have averaged 1.28kWh/day.  That's about a fifth of our usage the last time we were on grid (2009), and about 1/10 of the UK average.
Some of the saving is made through the use of solar panels, which offset the sun against our usage.  This saves about 109kWh per year, or would change our average to about 1.6kWh/day.

To put this into context, our leccy bill is about €128/year with panels and €141/year without the panels, so not really worth the bother.

The bulk of our savings have been achieved very easily.  We sold our 'designer' fridge and an upright freezer, and bought a very energy efficient fridge freezer.  Whilst our freezer space is around half what it was, it is used 100%.  The old freezer was never full, which means it ran even less efficiently.  

Whilst we don't freeze that much summer produce, it does become diminishing returns if you fill a freezer with low value produce.  And besides which, where do you put another freezer.  You can't put it in a garage as they need to be kept +10C to +35C.  And not in a bedroom as they are noisy.