Collect your own rainwater, and give your home a free supply of naturally soft water.

Extraction of water from deep in the ground and from rivers deprives our natural environment of an essential resource. And it is becoming ever more expensive for the householder.

A rain harvesting system collects the rain that falls on the roof of your house, and in some circumstances from your driveway or hardstanding, and stores it in a tank for household use. This reduces the amount of mains water used by the household.

A rainwater harvesting system can be as simple as a rainwater butt for garden watering, but to provide water for toilet flushing and for washing machines you’ll need an underground high capacity tank with an automated supply system.

In the solution involving an underground tank, the downpipes from the gutters on your house are taken to a common collection point, and then into the first stage filter. This filter removes leaves and other debris, so that the reservoir tank does not accumulate sludge, and become stagnant. The water can then be used for toilet flushing and washing machines. These two uses combined account for about 50% of the total water usage in the average household. With the addition of extra filtration and purification equipment the rainwater may be used for bathing and drinking.

When there is too much rainwater to store in the tank the excess will be disposed of in your soakaway or storm drain in the normal way.

Rainharvesting will reduce household bills where the supply is metered by the water company. After installation of a rain harvesting system, the householder may decide to have a water meter installed as their water bills are likely to be reduced, and the installation of meter is done free of charge by most water authorities.

We believe that log-burning stoves are the heating industy’s best kept secret.

	They are very effective at space heating.
	They form an attractive and cosy feature
	Many models are designed to accommodate back-boilers for the purpose of water heating.
	Stoves are very efficient – only about 20% of the heat is wasted. 80% is radiated and convected to the room. The 20% of heat that is not transmitted to the room is performing a useful function in helping keep the flue clean of soot. Compare this to open fires, which can achieve negative levels of efficiency – i.e. they can draw more heat up the chimney than is being produced by the fire. This is especially true where the room has auxiliary central heating by gas, LPG, electrical storage, or oil. Open fires can also induce unpleasant drafts in the room, due the large amount of air convecting up the chimney.
	They happily burn the less sought after, hence cheaper, softwood logs that are unsuitable for open fires due to their tendency to spit.
	Heating your home predominantly with a stove can be cheaper than using gas, oil, electricity. This depends on finding a good local supplier of logs.
	Wood stoves are much safer than an open fire, as the fire is contained behind an integral glass door.
	Stoves produce very low levels of smoke emissions from the chimney. If you see a smoking chimney, it’s probably serving an inefficient open fire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PLUS they are ecological in every sense. The wood fuel they burn is “carbon neutral”. In other words, the carbon content of their emissions has previously been drawn from the atmosphere by the growing tree. As opposed to fossil fuels, where the carbon has been laid down over millions of years. The burning of fossil fuels only increases the levels of green house gases (GHG) which have climate changing properties.

The difference between open fires and log-burning stoves is analogous with the difference between steam engines, and the modern internal combustion engine. The steam engine burns huge amounts of fuel in an uncontrolled manner in the hope that some heat with get into the boiler. In the modern log-burning stove the fuel burns in a chamber where the rate of combustion is controlled by an air regulator valve. The fire can be turned up or down to suit the weather conditions, and to suit the needs of the occupants. The consumption of the fuel will be decreased by turning down the fire, and hence will have to be fed less often.

With modern flue systems that do not require a brick chimney, many homes can benefit from a log-burning stove where no fire previously existed.

A domestic wind turbine is a very much scaled down version of those used in commercial and community wind farms. They comprise an alternator, much like the one under your car bonnet, which charges the car battery, with turbine blades that are turned by the wind. When the turbine blades are turning at a sufficient speed, an electrical voltage is produced. if not required immediately by the household, the electrical energy can be used to charge a bank of batteries, or be fed back into the national grid after being converted to 240V. To be effective, wind turbines must be mounted at an appropriate height, and clear of obstacles to the wind such as trees and buildings. They are usually mounted on a tubular steel tower that is anchored to the ground, or on a small steel structure on the apex of a building.

A fairly powerful domestic wind turbine, that produces a peak output of 1 kW, would typically sit on a tower 5 to 10 metres high, and have rotor blades with a 2 to 3 metre diameter. Space must be allowed around the tower for guy cables, which maintain its stability when the wind is blowing.

The turbine blades are designed to convert efficiently the wind’s energy. For this reason, and the fact that domestic wind turbines are relatively small, they are not considered to constitute a noise nuisance. The maintenance schedule should be followed to prevent mechanical noises such as squeaking. Before you install a turbine, you should check with your local authority planning department to see whether formal planning consent is required.

These are the other form of “solar panel” (as opposed to solar thermal, or solar water heating panels). We have all seen examples of these in pocket calculators, or in boats, caravans, or on some roadside signs. They are increasingly being installed in large quantities on roofs to provide electricity for houses.

In construction, they are a large silicon chip, which produces an electrical voltage when exposed to sunlight.

The efficiency of photovoltaic panels at converting the solar energy to a useable form of energy is not even close to that of solar thermal (solar water heating). And they are very expensive to purchase and install. As most of the energy that they do deliver is during times of bright daylight, most households will not benefit unless they have some form of storage (a bank of batteries), or they have an arrangement with their energy distributor to export energy to the grid. There are two problems with exporting. Firstly the power will need to be at 240V AC, so an expensive inverter will be needed. The inverter reduces the system efficiency even further. Secondly, if you are exporting to the grid, you are classed as a producer, and you will be paid very little per unit of electricity that you export.

Despite all of these drawbacks, photovoltaics are increasingly being installed in the UK. This is a result of generous grant funding, which can cover half or more of the installation cost.

This is another example of a “carbon neutral” fuel. A pellet central heating boiler replaces your existing boiler to provide space heating and water heating. It is fuelled by small pellets manufactured from compressed, dried wood or vegetable matter. Pellets manufactured from wood chips are widely available, but UK trials are underway to determine which varieties of energy crops produce the most energy-rich product in the shortest time. Common ones are short rotation coppice willow, and a tall grass called miscanthus.

The pellet boiler is automated to a large degree, as the fire is fed by an auger that draws the pellets from a hopper. Periodically the hopper must be refilled and the ash removed.

For every 1kWh (kilowatt-hour) of electricity that you pay for, get up to 6kWh of heat energy for your home.

Heat pumps work by extracting solar energy that has been absorbed by the ground, watercourses, or air. They use the same principle as does a fridge or freezer for transferring heat from one place to another. A fridge has a large cooling vane on the back that dissipates the heat that has been extracted from inside. In the domestic heat pump system this cooling element is built into the floor to provide underfloor heating.

Ground-source heat pumps are effectively using your garden as a huge, but low temperature, solar panel. Similarly with water-source heat pumps, your pond or lake, and the watercourses that feed it act as the solar collectors.

Ground-source requires a long continuous, but not necessarily straight trench to be dug. Into this is laid a long polythene coiled continuous pipe, or “slinky”. The trench is then backfilled, and the two ends of the slinky are connected to the heat pump situated in your house. The slinky is filled with water/antifreeze mixture, which is then pumped around the circuit continuously. The fluid returning to the heat pump will be at ground temperature. It will be cooled by the heat pump, and the liberated heat is used for the underfloor heating system. Where space is limited ground-source can also be implemented by placing the pipework in boreholes 30-40 metres deep.

Installation costs are high, due to the extensive excavations required. But the high returns make it an attractive proposition.

Air-source is much harder to implement in the UK, due to noise, and the large size of the external heat exchanger that is required.

95% the water supplied to domestic premises goes down the foul drains to the sewer. We drink very little of the water that is supplied to us. In fact of the 200 to 220 cubic metres (or metric tonnes) used by the average 4-person household in a year, each person will drink only about 1 cubic metre of water per year. That’s only 2%. Toilet flushing accounts for about a third of the household usage. The remaining 2 thirds is the product of showering, bathing, washing machines, and dishwashers.

Much of the drinking quality water that is supplied to us is disposed of with very little contamination. This is commonly called “greywater”, as opposed to “blackwater” which is from toilet flushing and dishwashing. A greywater re-use system will segregate the drainage in a house into a blackwater system and a greywater system. The blackwater system willl discharge to the sewerage system in the normal way. The greywater can be used immediately for irrigation of gardens or land. Or it can be cleansed in a very simple manner to make it suitable for short-term storage, and subsequent use for toilet flushing. This will save a third of the household’s water consumption.