Powering down

Perhaps you are a person who is interested in domestic energy consumption. It's not a subject area that absolutely enthrals me, I will admit, but it does interest Mike and he has kept a record of our monthly energy consumption from our electricity meter since we moved in.

I did think it was worth sharing the graph he showed me today and making a few observations on it. Electricity is our only externally-supplied fuel: we don't use natural gas or heating oil, so this graph represents our entire energy usage except for the wood we harvest from our land (which so far has been mainly from fallen or dead trees). A cord of wood generates heat at approximately the equivalent of 6,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. We probably burn about five cords over the course of an average winter.

During February 2008 we ran out of wood to heat the house and our electricity consumption rose, peaking in March at 3,500 kilowatt hours as we had to use the electric baseboard heaters instead. In that month, the average temperature was -2.3°C/28°F and there were 29 days where the temperature dipped below the freezing point. The dip in consumption in the January of 2008 was a result of us starting to use the big woodstove in the kitchen in that month (which we had been warned not to, as it didn't meet current safety codes - but there comes a point where all risks are outweighed by benefits and we reached it!).

In the summer of 2008, the geothermal system went in. In the last two winters we've had plenty of wood to burn, which has been our main source of heat, with the geothermal kicking in when it is really cold overnight and in the early mornings. With the exception of August 2009, our electricity use has actually been lower in 2009/2010 than it was in the first year of having the geothermal system. A lot of this can be attributed to the improved layer of insulation in the attic (installed January 2009) and to the windows and doors we've gradually been replacing. It hasn't been as cold this winter, either: over the November to February months, the average temperature has been nearly four degrees Celsius (seven degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was in the 2008/2009 winter.

We've reached the point now where our solar panels are generating the same amount of electricity that we are using - so our domestic consumption is getting close to being self-sufficient (although we are still using fossil fuels in our car and in the tractor).

To put all of this into context, it might be helpful to compare our energy use here to that of our old house in Manchester. There, we were using natural gas for heating and stove-top cooking. In the course of a year we would use the equivalent of 15,000 kilowatt hours of gas and 5,500 kilowatt hours of electricity (so 20,500 in all). Our total electricity use in a year here is 12,000 kilowatt hours, or about two-thirds of our previous usage. Which is quite a big difference, when you consider that the Manchester house was about half the size of this one, and the climate was considerably more temperate!

And if you're wondering, no, we didn't sit in the dark with candles for Earth Hour on March the 27th and I doubt we'll be doing anything for Earth Day (or Week, or Month, or whatever's next). Just get on and do something that has an impact all year round, I say.

Hot

Summer has finally arrived in the last week, with temperatures getting above the 30°C/86°F mark for the first time this year and relative humidity levels of 70% or so. Needless to say, the cooling provided by the geothermal system that was installed this time last year has been very welcome!

Yesterday morning was ethereally misty when we woke up, allowing me to snatch a nice photograph of the sun as it came up through the trees and (looking in the opposite direction) a picture of the cannas that have grown from the rhizomes my step-mother and father bought us back in May.


Apparently the cannas in their own garden have not produced flowers yet, so I'm just putting this picture up to annoy them, really. ;-)


The heat and sunshine is helping to ripen the peppers and tomatoes. Here is tonight's harvest of sweetcorn, tomato peppers, various tomatoes and a couple of shallots. I turned most of this lot into a paella. I really like the size and shape of the tomato peppers. They're sweet, rather than hot, peppers and they're ripening thick and fast at the moment. Soon I'll be complaining about them, I expect!


Here's how the paella turned out. Hm, the last meal I featured on the blog was a risotto, now more rice. We do eat other starchy foods too, occasionally!

Green Homes Tour

We were invited to take part in the County Sustainability Group's Green Homes Tour this year, which forms part of the Quinte Sustainable Living Symposium event this weekend. Three bus parties turned up today (in wet and miserable weather, unfortunately) to get a tour of the solar hot water and geothermal systems in our basement, followed by a look at the greenhouse and at the solar panel set-up in the barn.

It was fantastic to meet so many people with similar interests to ours and Mike did a great job of transmitting his enthusiasm for the green energy projects that we've been undertaking over the last two years. There were a lot of pertinent questions and some good ideas for making the best use of the greenhouse and barns.

One thing that came up which we hadn't heard about before was a concern about using the rainwater from the house roof as drinking water, as the roof has asphalt shingles on it. People in two different groups mentioned that the asphalt can leach out unpleasant chemicals (including oestrogen-like ones) into the water. We hadn't come across this potential problem, so immediately turned to the Internet for answers when the last bus had gone. It turns out that the best way of ensuring that oestrogens are removed from water is to use a reverse osmosis system. Which is what we have, so that's quite a relief!

First sprinkling

Back home and it is cold. Not above 0°C yet and it's lunchtime. Any standing water has a thin film of ice over it. This morning we've had a few flurries of snow: enough to coat the pond with white.


The geothermal system is keeping the house a lot warmer than it was last year, although we're keeping it set at a fairly low temperature and are using the wood-burning stoves as our main source of heat. It really feels luxurious (and rather decadent) not to have to get out of bed into a cold house.

Berms and bulbs

The geothermal pipes were a bit too close to the surface in places, so a load of topsoil was delivered while I was away to cover it up sufficiently. This man-made heap is known as a berm over here: a word I've never heard before. I checked the Oxford English Dictionary just now and it doesn't seem to have caught up with this use either. It talks about a berm as a terrace or flat piece of land next to a fortification or river and comes up with an American use of the word in the phrase berm-bank, which is the bank opposite the tow-path of a canal, but doesn't mention a berm as a simple mound of earth.

So, anyway, thanks to the geothermal system I now have a whole new bed to fill with plants (and to keep clear of weeds. Sigh.). I started on it yesterday with my mother-in-law and we planted 100 spring-flowering bulbs (tulips, daffodils, freesias and hyacinths). Longer-term I plan on making it a bed full of native flowers that will attract butterflies and hummingbirds.

Up and down

I notice from an earlier post that it's been almost exactly a year since our last trip to Kingston. We went there this weekend on a new-kitchen-related mission (the kitchen seems to occasioning a fair bit of mileage at the moment) and, as last year, we came back on the Glenora Ferry. It isn't quite as hair-raising a trip as the picture might suggest!

Work began again on the geothermal system this morning. I had just started a load of washing when the men and machine arrived, so had to use the dryer for once as putting it on the washing line would have caused the driver of this digger a few problems. They are linking up the holes that were drilled last week with the unit in the basement. The forecast for next week is for it to get very hot again, so I'm hoping they'll have it all hooked up by then so that we can test its cooling capabilities.

This is how the trench looked by the evening:

Where it certainly confused the dog.

Bolts into the earth

The geothermal drilling guys were back at work today and managed to drill three out of the five holes that we need for our system. The holes are 150 feet deep and progress on the drilling was pretty rapid - the rock beneath us is mostly shaley, rather than thick slabs of limestone, so they were pleased with how quickly their carbide drill got through it. In the video you can see how steadily the drill is descending.



Lucky we're not the type of people to worry about having a perfect lawn, I think.

Here's the piping that goes into the hole:
And here's the end piece, which the piping is attached to (not in this picture, but it was later) and which is weighed down with a long metal rod to ensure that it reaches the bottom of the hole:


The pipes are filled with water for the moment, which will be replaced with a glycol/water mix later. They've nearly finished for today, which is just as well because the satellite picture is showing a beefy line of thunderstorms heading our way (we're on the sticky-out bit of land between Peterborough and Kingston).

The sky is already looking a bit peculiar - rather the texture of a brain, I thought.


Ah, here it comes. Over and out.

Geothermal progress

There have been guys in the house on and off for a couple of weeks now, putting in the ducting for the geothermal system. Today the drilling rig turned up and started on the first of the five deep wells that will be needed to sink the pipes down into the rock (we don't have enough depth of soil to lay the pipes horizontally). They needed 300 gallons of water to do the drilling, which they took from our well. It's lucky they weren't trying to do this last year, as there wouldn't have been 300 gallons in there then.
Unfortunately the weather decided to bring a slow-moving thunderstorm to the Bay of Quinte area this morning, so they didn't get very far before deciding to give up for the day (being understandably reluctant to stand next to a tall metal post in such conditions). The Weather Network's satellite picture shows it pretty clearly:
Inside the house, conversely, the work is continuing apace - there are now grilles like the one below in the floors of the downstairs as well as vents in the ceilings of the upper floor (those look a bit like smoke alarms). In the picture below you can see through to the window in the basement, but they're busily connecting all the grilles up to ducting and the geothermal unit in the basement, so that won't be the case for long.


Here's the view in the basement. Very shiny. The big silver box in the lower middle of the shot is the geothermal unit.