Selfsufficientish.com

Since all this talk on global warming is in the minds of those who care and those who want to exploit it, I have thought many times how I should go about being selfsufficient-ish without burning a hole in my pocket and lining others.
I have for a while been looking at being greener with regards to my gas and electric, like using solar panels or a wind turbine. O.k. so wind turnbines are great, (but I'll need wind), and so are solar panels but yet so expensive. I could get my chicken muck I suppose and collect the methane produced from it, but then I only have four chickens. Can anyone suggest a cheaper and if possible a greener alternative?

In temperate regions like the UK, the biggest proportion of domestic energy goes into space and water heating. So the most efficient use of your money (as well as being the most environmentally conscious choice) is to insulate and draught-proof everything as much as you can, and remedy any damp problems in the walls, too. Doing this means you won't need so much energy in the first place.

Then look into ways of reducing consumption.

As for rolling you own - for most people, solar hot water panels must be one of the most effective things to install, probably followed by wind generation (subject to suitable conditions), with photovoltaic panels still quite far down the list. You could also look into ground-source and air-source heat pumps, though installation costs, particularly for the former, are pretty high.

As our gas is from bottles it has been quite tangible how much less we use now that we have a solar hot water heater - we´ve gone from 1 bottle every 3 weeks (17 or 18 a year) to 1 every 3 months (4 a year) - can´t do the percentages, but that´s a massive reduction.

The solar cooker and pot-in-pot fridge are cheap and easy places to start too.

That is amazing Clara, pretty obvious savings when you put it that way.

What is a pot-in-pot fridge ?

We haven't had enough sun this year to do a solar cooker, but I think I will next year... Ahhh 'next year' where the sun is always shining, the bank account is always full, the baby is always content and I don't need to sleep. My list of wht I am going to 'next year' just gets longer and longer *sigh*

Yeah, what's a pot-in-pot fridge, and can you get a chest-in-chest freezer?

Shed Head, you're best bet would be to start by switching to a green energy supplier. Then work on reducing your consumption (by the techniques discussed all over this forum.)

contadino wrote:Yeah, what's a pot-in-pot fridge..?

http://www.selfsufficientish.com/fridge.htm#pot

I have made a couple of these and they work pretty well.

I still intend to get around to making a solar hot water heater from an old radiator painted black. This thread should help you as it could be a cheap option for you to try out.

this design has quite a few fans

http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-T ... Five-Doll/

I did have great results from an old radiator years back

I'm with Muddypause. Insulate to the max first.

After that, solar hot water heating makes good sense.

Then analyse your electricity consumption and cut that.

To give some idea of what can be achieved, we bought 1,000 litres of heating oil back in March and still have 300 litres left. We're in NE Scotland, have had a cool, mainly overcast spring, summer and early autumn but reasonable insulation and solar hot water heating have kept the lid on our oil consumption.

The previous owners used to go through 1,000 litres of heating oil a quarter in spring, summer and autumn and 1,500 in winter.

On electricity consumption, we've been cutting 10-15% of consumption each quarter compared with the previous quarter (for three years). The only problem is that we're running out of areas to trim back, so this is when micro-generation starts becoming a possibility, possibly going for 12v lighting etc to reduce losses.

I don't have much to add here it seems that everyone else has covered it pretty well. The only two comments I will make are -

Start growing food, and
Consider making a haybox cooker.

Nev

Cow muck is the supposed way to go! Any way, for the time being and depending on your finances well, which is a reflection upon mine, I did a little searching and although you might pay a little more, the extra cash paid to the greener energy providers, goes to more research for finding alternative ways to supply energy without costing the earth. I came across website, that gave info on this subject although I am still looking.

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/utiliti ... icity.aspx