In the middle of this dire economic crash, with peak-oil and climate change suggesting that the “best” is now behind us and that a long, slow (or short, quick) decline is what we face, a wonderful movement is being reborn. It shoots can be seen everywhere – in the flowering of Transition Towns across Britain, in [...]
Archive for December, 2008
28 Dec
Aims and Achievements
I’d been planning to put together a list of aims and achievements since I talked about it back in August. In the great pause between Christmas and New Year it seems appropriate to finally get around to it! So here is my quick brain dump. I’ll expand on this as I achieve some of them:
Food
Build [...]
26 Dec
Cheaper Solar Panels
It seems that cheaper solar panels are on the way in 2009. I’d heard this earlier in the year with regard to new Chinese suppliers coming onstream, but now the forecast drop in prices is accelerating as a result of drop-off in demand from Spain and Germany.
By the end of 2009 average prices for panels [...]
23 Dec
Mexico to be hit by Peak Oil
Just a short post to flag an article on Mexico reaching Peak Oil production and ceasing to be an oil exporting economy by the end of 2009. This has major implications for the stability of Mexico’s economy – where’s it going to get those export dollars from now? And also for US energy security as the [...]
23 Dec
Underfloor heating or radiators?
Assuming we’re not going to be at the point of only heating one room anytime soon, how do we heat the whole house? Traditionally I’d have said easy – just radiators. The hot water can come from our wood-fired range, topped up with Solar hot water and our emergency Gas boiler. But I’ve always had [...]
22 Dec
Peak-Oil Replacement for our SUV
Rather than all this impersonal planning for the future, I thought I’d take a step back and look at some of the things we’ve already been doing. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most has been taking my daughter to Kindy on the bike. This came about as a result of a number of things [...]
21 Dec
iZip Electric Bikes
iZip Street Enlightened
Saw one of these in our local bike shop when we were in there picking up a new tube. It’s an iZip Street Enlightened – looks like a normal fast hybrid but the aero down tube is wrapped around a battery pack – a 24V / 10 AH Lithium-Ion pack for those of you [...]
20 Dec
Beautiful wood-fired stoves, ovens and ranges
A recent thread over at powerswitch unearthed a whole range of really beautiful – and practical – woodburning stoves. Here are some of the pictures, click on them to get more details.
While I love the look of the Cucinotta Forno, I can’t see it being practical to just have a wood-fired oven as a kitchen range. The [...]
19 Dec
Containers for storing food
There are a heap of problems to watch out for if you’re planning a large store of food:
- making sure that it doesn’t get eaten by a whole range of pesky critters
- keeping it dry
- keeping it safe from everyday accidents (getting knocked off the shelf, shelves collapsing, earthquake – that sort of thing)
- knowing what’s [...]
