Selfsufficientish.com

Hello James and Kate. I joined recently and have found this site to be very useful and friendly. Good luck in your adventure.

Thanks for the endorsement. This is our first year and we have 11 pupils taking it, starting in June. It will be taught by 3 teachers, 2 of which were Engineers in a previous life, and me who is really a frustrated Physicist who was badly advised at school. Not that I don't enjoy Physics, I really d...

I wish we could encourage more engineering at School. Where I am we have just introduced an engineering course made up of sections from Electrical, Electronic and mechanical Higher engineering courses. We are lucky to have enthusiastic staff to do it. We need to start manufacturing stuff again in th...

Thanks again. I have given myself 12 months to do up the house, allowing for extensions,planning permissions etc. You have confirmed what i was thinking. i just hope I can ecourage my kids to get involved with all the log collecting etc.

Martin thanks for the info. I noticed you are the man with contacts around the UK who deal with Solar stuff. The back up electric is to keep my wife happy. She doesn.y want to run out of hot water. I take your point, wood for winter, solar for summer. What a bout a heat pump and undersoil water pipe...

How did you guess? been doing it for 18 years. Now I want to put into practice all that theory I've learnt about.

Hi We don't have mains gas, and I want to avoid oil as i see the price going up for ever. An electric system could in the future be supplemented by a turbine if i could afford one. I am excited by the prospect. I have 2/3 acre which I want to plant willow on to coppice for wood. is this a good idea?...

I am in the process of buying a cottage which I want to live in as efficiently and cheaply as possible. My initial ideas include a combination of wood, Solar and electric heating which can be switched easily from one to the other. The combined system will have to satisfy the heating and hot water re...

Hi MKG thanks for the welcome. I am a newbie on forums, but I really want to get as much info as possible. Everyone seems friendly in their comments.

I am in the process of buying a cottage which I want to live in as efficiently and cheaply as possible. My initial ideas include a combination of wood, Solar and electric heating which can be switched easily from one to the other. The combined system will have to satisfy the heating and hot water re...