Just imagine- bike for an hour and power the house lights for a week! This is a reality for a man who found a solution to stay fit and solve a power crisis.
Check out the free plans to design bicycle energy systems for your home. You may be able to save some money this winter.
Oops, I mean it's hailing down like dogs and cats. I was so exciting that I rushed out barefooted with my camera!! The next thing, I felt my feet hurting - it felt like I was walking on ice (which I was!!) I simply couldn't contain my excitement. Next thing I knew, I ran to my neighbor's place, and invited her out to play in the ice with me. Oh oh, I could see my footprints. I felt like a child jumping up and down in joy after receiving a most precious present!!
One of the things I enjoy is taking a nice luke-warm or hot shower depending on the season. In my house, it takes a while for the hot water to come through and I always thought that it was such a great waste to let all that good water go down the drain. Well, we finally did something about that last night. We directed the shower water to a 10 litre bucket whilst waiting for it to heat up. It came up to 8 litres of water before the water got hot enough to not make one jump in cold shock! Wow, that’s a lot of good water wasted which could be used in the laundry, toilet or garden.
Matt and I have replaced commercial soaps and shampoo with baking soda and vinegar since 2006, so the grey water is effectively useful for the above purpose too. With that in mind, I put another bucket in the shower with me, standing above it (it really is easier than you imagine) I managed to collect another 8 litres after a 7-minute shower (longer then my usual 3-minute shower as we were covered in salt and sand after a great swim at Foxton beach). Between Matt & I, we collected a descent amount of recycled water to water my extremely dry flower garden in the front garden last night, and it felt good!! Another added advantage, we now have reason to visit the neglected front garden every day.
We've been quiet for a long while because we were away on holiday- burnt some fossil fuel to visit my family and friends in Singapore. The holiday was fabulous as we had some great quality time with people we love and missed dearly. Nevertheless we couldn't help but made a few observations.
Firstly, we've changed.
We used to buy lots of nice fashionable cheap clothes whenever we were in Singapore. We also packed our luggage full of local goodies that I still enjoy eating. But this round, we didn't do much shopping as we didn't want anything apart from the odd items that we needed during the trip. We were content with we've got, and didn't see the need to buy any thing because they were cheap. It wasn't even something we thought about. We simply didn't have any desire or whatsoever. Very interesting eh!!
Conversations usually revolved around our newly found mission of eating off our garden. It's such a novalty to all our friends especially their children. Topics of conversation included "Do you need a rooster in order to get eggs?" "How do one hatch a chicken egg?" "What do you grow in your garden?" etc. We had hours of fun talking about the things we do in our garden.
Singapore has changed too
During the last visit a year and a half ago, there weren't many recycling bins. But we see them in most public places this round. And overall, there are a lot more public awareness with regards to recycling and plastic usage. Food scraps are being recycled too. We are very pleased to see that children are being educated in this respect through children programmes on TV. Generally a very positive effort and very heart warming to see. Whenever we turned down the extra plastic bags, we would receive positive feedback such as a smile or a comment about us being kind to the planet.
Two big buzzwords in the media at the moment are eco-footprint and carbon-footprint.
But they are just buzzwords with no real meaning for most people. Take the eco-footprint. We have this idea that ideally we should be consuming resources no bigger than the plot of land we own. Sounds sensible? But it misses the point.
We should not be consuming everything in a set area. Instead, we should be looking to "close
the loop". Every input that comes into our home is usually consumed and then exits usually as waste. We need to be looking to use those inputs more efficiently and where it might normally be a waste, instead it's fed back into our homes as another input.
For example, all those vegetable wastes can become food for the chickens, or the compost heap.
Another example, alter our homes to better capture the sun during the lower winter sun, and insulating the house to prevent heat loss.
This really is just common sense, but most of us aren't thinking this way - I wonder why!! :-)
