Sustainable Living in Durham

In the Dungeon

Over the Holidays we overhauled our cellar cistern that is the storage for our rain water harvesting system. Zachary and I spent a few days in the dank, damp and dark cistern that we lovingly called "THE DUNGEON". To get to the dungeon you have to lower yourself through the small hatch in the laundry room floor, dangling your feet until you get your footing on the step ladder that was lowered down with a rope.

What a joy it was to pump out the cistern with a sump pump standing on a step ladder slowly lowering it into the 3 foot deep water; shoveling and bucketing out the last inch of gunk (gazillions of bacteria I imagine); patching up the leaky spots; sealing up the last foot of wall to the ceiling with rigid styrofoam; sealing and insulating the ceiling, which is the underfloor of the laundry room; fixing the supply pipe from the eaves-troughs (including hammering out part of the concrete wall to fit in the new 3" ABS pipe); installing a leaf filter (I'll talk about that in another post one of these days...) and properly piping in the sump pump drain with valves.

So now we have an air tight cistern that won't add humidity to the house. The sump pump can fill it up in the winter and spring (it is already half full now) and we can easily switch it from filling the cistern to draining outside without having to unscrew and pipe like we've been doing for the last few years.... We'll use the cleaner water for flushing the toilets as we have been for years now but now it shouldn't gunk out the toilet mechanisms as much or hopefully not at all. Some pics below.

Another job I should have done years ago taken care of! At this rate, in another decade or so, I might not have anything left to do :-)

Last Harvest of 2011's Garden

On New Year's day I dug up the last of the carrots in one of the cold frames. I left them pretty much as long as I could since leaving them in the ground is the best storage for freshness. Unfortunately, a mouse (or two?) had found them first so the tops of several of them were missing. That's the risk of leaving them so long.

Some other things I like about leaving them in the ground as long as possible is that they don't take up room in the house; they don't dry out or go mouldy. Nothing like a nice fresh carrot!

Last week I harvested the rest of the lettuce in the cold frames too. There are still another 20 or so in the greenhouse. Actually they are in cold frames inside the greenhouse for extra protection. I'm overwintering them until they start growing again in the spring, probably late March. They will be one of the first harvests of the 2012 garden.

Unhealthy Wind?

Up here in the Kendal Hills there has been considerable controversy on the proposed wind farms that may be coming to the area. Apparently there are two companies that are looking at putting about 20 large wind turbines up here. All along our road and sporadically around the surrounding countryside people have signs on their lawns saying "stop the wind turbines" & "health studies before wind turbines".

This is particularly uncomfortable for me and my family as we have a wind turbine on our front lawn. Imagine driving up our road and seeing all these signs and then coming up to our house with a wind turbine on the front lawn... almost makes you think your neighbours don't like you...

Interestingly, it's only the homes that have the signs, none of the farms. I think this is due to the fact that renting out an acre of land to host a wind turbine is a positive move for a farmer.

Personally, I think the whole anti-wind movement is a bunch of BS. Having talked to a few of these proponents, it seems to me they are grasping at any excuse not to have a wind turbine within sight of their home. The real concern seems to be appearance and perceived loss of property value. What bothers me is that they are trying to make it into a health concern and selling this nonsense to their neighbours. We lived in a small village in Germany for 6 months where there were two wind turbines within a kilometer on the village. I don't remember even hearing any noise from them and thought they were rather graceful as far as man made structures go. Certainly nicer than the cell phone towers surrounding our area...

Wind turbines are not perfectly safe but what is? Certainly not coal burning. Just ask any coal miner, person with asthma or a polar bear who is sweating it up. I see the Ontario government has just issued a press release on their recent study on health effects http://news.ontario.ca/ene/en/2011/12/expert-report-confirms-no-direct-health-effects-from-wind-turbines.html Somehow I doubt this will sway the anti-wind folks...

With over a 150,000 large wind turbines installed around the world, you'd think by now they would be considered acceptable. USA and China are the world leaders in installed wind turbines and almost every country is working to add more to their energy mix. Canada is well behind the curve in this and in many efforts to reduce CO2, truly disheartening to us green Canadians.

Catching up

It's been a while... didn't plan on being away so long, must have needed a leave of absence...

It was a long growing season this year and I actually still have some cold hardy stuff growing yet. Just this afternoon (after the first snow flakes this year melted) I picked several small lettuce, kale, swiss chard, cabbage and broccoli. I pulled out the peppers and tomatoes out of the greenhouse last week end and transplanted 25 lettuces and put two cold frames over them getting ready for the inevitable deep freeze that is sure to come soon. Cold frames inside the green house should give us lettuce right to the end of the year.

Our green energy generation is doing well. The wind was slow over much of the summer but the solar panels made up for that. We generated more electricity than we used every month except this last month because we've only been using electric heaters to heat the whole house so far this fall. Today was the first day I started a fire in the kitchen wood stove. It's actually only been under 0 C one night so far where it hit -2.

We have two cords of wood tucked into the sheds and another one dried but with no room left to fit it in. I have another 3/4 for next heating season drying. Since we are going to have to cut down the two huge locust trees on the west side of the house this fall (they are just too sickly to risk leaving for another winter; one has a sumac growing in the crotch 8' up and the other has a bee hive living in a hollow in the trunk) we'll have lots more wood yet.

Over the summer we took many day trips within an hour's drive and I was pleasantly surprised to see several solar panels on houses and farms in the area. In fact there are now 4 arrays within 2kms of our house on our road and another 3 within 5kms. So glad the Green Energy Act is being maintained with the Liberals staying in power.

Got a big pot of squash soup on the wood stove to eat for supper so I'm off.

 

 

 

 

Electric Test Drive

I had the chance to test drive the Nissan Leaf www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car  some time ago.  The Leaf is an all electric car designed from the ground up to be electric rather than converting a current model like Ford http://www.ford.com/electric/focuselectric/2012/ has done with the Electric Ford Focus.  I think main difference between the two approaches is that they didn't have to make design comprimises to fit batteries into cargo space. 

My fist impression of the Leaf was that it's a "real"  car.  It's about the same size as a regular compact like the Sentra, Corrola or Civic.  The back seats are actually much roomier than the aforementioned models.  It felt like you are sitting higher in the back than the front but both felt very comfortable.

Because it was a windy rainy day of the test drive, I didn't really get to experience the "quiet" of the electric drive system, there was just too much weather noise.  What I did really notice was how fast it responded to flooring it.  It has great acceleration when you put the pedal down.  I merged onto the Lakeshore effortlessly bring it up to 80kms in no time.  Of course the down side was watching the battery charge getting eaten up much quicker.  With the indicators of charge and usage you can very quickly adapt your driving habits to being the most efficient.

The only thing I didn't like about the car was the small rear window but that probably isn't much different than some other regular gas powered models out there. 

Overall I was very impressed with the technology and can imagine how it would very quickly become just a normal car that you happen to have to plug in when it's sitting in the driveway.  I certainly wouldn't miss stopping at the gas station! 

Now I'm really charged up to get an electric car! 

Plant Auction Wed May 4th

From my friends at Canadian Organic Growers, Durham Chapter

 

"Plant Auction" this Wed night (May 4), in the Main hall on the main level so get easy for everyone to bring their plants in and out.  Please come enjoy and please bring some plants or gardening stuff to be auction off . Be there at 7pm because we start the auction at 7:30pm sharp.

At....Durham Board Of Education 400 Taunton Rd E, Whitby, ON.

let everyone know the (Durham Organic Growers) have a Facebook page now:

 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Durham-Organic-Gardeners

Signs of Life in the Garden

I've now put fork to soil a few times this last week.  Lots of worms abound.  There are Leeks, Garlic and perennial herbs all poking their heads up ready for the weather to finally bask us in warmth.

 There are 8 cold frames and the green house planted with Lettuce, Spinach, Broccoli, Bok Choy and Kohl Rabi.  A few more flats of warmer weather veggies have been seeded and are still keeping warm in the house.

Feels like a bit of a slow start compared to last year.  Have a peek.

 

 

Nuclear Power Not Sustainable or Safe

I've lived most of my life within 20kms of a nuclear power station.  Doesn't mean I like it or chose to.  It just means this is where I was born and where my family lives.  And that is where I think the safety issue is really hitting home, so to speak.

Of course the concerns are being "rethunk" due to the catastrophe in Japan right now but to me that makes sense as the odds of failure just went up significantly.  There are 442 nuclear reactors (power stations) in the world and now 3 of them have had extremely serious accidents.  These odds aren't great considering everyone living within 20 kms of the stations lost their homes and can never move back.  To me that risk is just too high.   The probability is getting close to 1%, so consider this; if the odds of getting run over by a dump truck was 1% every time you crossed the road, how many times would you want to cross the road? or would you rather take another route? 

The fact is people make mistakes and there have been plenty of mistakes made at nuclear power plants.  The ones in Durham region are not perfect either.  I don't like to gamble with everything I love and care about, especially when someone else is making all the choices on how much risk we are willing to assume.  When coal, oil, gas, wind, solar go badly wrong at least you can just clean it up and get on with your life.

Nuclear isn't sustainable either.  There is only so much Uranium in the world, just like coal, oil and natural gas.  Why would we want to keep putting our money into systems that aren't sustainable and a lot of money it takes too...

Canada has 18 nuclear reactors (according the European Nuclear Society site http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm) generating 12,569 MW of electricity (net).  With a large wind generating putting out 1.5 MW, it sounds like we could replace all the nuclear plants with about 20,ooo wind generators (give or take a few thousand).  At 1.5 million dollars each we could have 26,666 wind generators (there are already more than 100,000 wind generators in use around the world) for 40 billion dollars which is probably a lot less then we paid for the 18 reactors (I believe they are quoting 26 billion for the two new ones proposed at Darlington). 

Sounds like a nice safe, sustainable and inexpensive way to generate electricity to me....  I'm sure I'm over simplifying and we would probably need more solar, hydro, bio-mass etc. to close down the reactors; but the sooner we get started the better I like the odds.

Solar in Boston

Last week I travelled to Boston on business and the first thing I saw when we were taxiing to the terminal was a legion of solar arrays like soldiers with Shields raised to ward off incoming arrows.  Each solar array was on a pole with 30 panels probably about 6,000 watts each.  There must have been at least 30 arrays mounted on the parking garage.  They were mounted on poles so cars could still park on the roof under them.

The next day I notice a large apartment building with the roof covered in solar thermo panels.  There were a few houses with panels that we passed too.  One in particular caught my eye as it had a relatively large array of panels and the back yard was filled with stacks of firewood.  Must have been 50' x 50' of firewood taking up the whole back yard, made me feel like a slouch with my tiny stacks... 

I noticed several solar arrays when travelling in to Toronto on the Go train a few weeks back too.  The biggest was a Home Depot with the whole roof covered.  There were also a few homes with parts of their roofs covered in panels.

I look forward to the day when this is the norm rather than the rarity.  Solar power output is high when demend is high; creates no air pollution or CO² and is safe (especially compared to coal and nuclear).  I'm sure our grandkids will be glad we invested in this technology and got away from "cheap and dirty".

Are you losing 20% ?

You just spent a small fortune to fill up the tank and you don't want to lose it so fast.  What can you do?

Well, besides walking, biking or taking public transport, you can drive the speed limit.  Every day I see people zipping by me going 20% faster than the speed limit and burning 20% more fuel to do it.  For instance, 60Km speed limit but everyone is going 72Km; 80 speed limit but doing 96; 100 but doing 120...  you get the idea. 

I was no different a few years ago.  Driving the speed limit was one of the last "green" actions I took for transportation.  The fact is I love to drive fast, it's fun!  That said, I now drive the speed limit and have found some real benefits besides not losing so much money.  It is really relaxing compared to the "get out of my way moron" method of driving.  I think it's probably safer too and I think I have the right to make this claim having smashed up three cars, two in the fast lane on the highway (not my fault of course but if I had been going the speed limit, I'm sure I wouldn't have been in the accident) 

I'm actually surprised more people haven't figured this out with the price of gas right now.  Another thing I notice, as I putt along at the speed limit, is people with bigger vehicles drive faster.  My theory is that if you bought a small car it was because of thrift and environmental concern which both result in driving slower.  If you bought a hummer it was because you have something to prove to the world and passing everyone of the way just makes your point even better. 

In the last week I've actually been driving SLOWER than the speed limit at times as the $30 for a half tank really hurt!  I only drive slow like this if there is no one behind me (slow drivers can be a big hazard to the hummer guys) and I have a few extra minutes to spare.  An interesting fact that I came along the other day to support this slow speed is that the highway mileage ratings are done at 70Km per hour.  With my car in 5th gear and going under 80 I can get under 5.6l/100km or over 50mpg.

I don't want to lose that 20%!