Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

Doozergirl

silvercar wrote: »

If that were mine it would have some decking and gnomes with fishing rods trailing into the water and a fountain in the middle (solar powered) and a little rowing boat.....

If it were mine it would have my dog in it

LIR, Biomass burning thingies you can that load themselves automatically. You'll have to get a whole load of fuel to it occasionally but it wouldn't be like chucking logs on a fire. You can get the boy to do it I am trying to read about it, but in random magazine articles and advertisements!

lostinrates

Doozergirl wrote: »

If it were mine it would have my dog in it

LIR, Biomass burning thingies you can that load themselves automatically. You'll have to get a whole load of fuel to it occasionally but it wouldn't be like chucking logs on a fire. You can get the boy to do it I am trying to read about it, but in random magazine articles and advertisements!

that sounds a relief. Our other option (prefered but hard to source in UK it seems) is anaerobic digester. Because !!!!!! is something we produce A LOT of.

GDB2222

lostinrates wrote: »

that sounds a relief. Our other option (prefered but hard to source in UK it seems) is anaerobic digester. Because !!!!!! is something we produce A LOT of.

Dry it and burn it?

John_Pierpoint

GDB2222 wrote: »

I don't have practical experience, but my gut says definitely to put the collector in the pond if it's pretty big and more than 2 feet deep. The reason is that the bottom of the pond never gets below 4C, even when there's a layer of ice on the surface. In the deep mid-winter, that's probably the warmest place around, so it's a great place to grab heat from. Also, the water circulates, so I expect you wouldn't need such a big collector as if it's buried in a field.

I remember am interview with a "farmer" who had been successful in the watercress business.

When asked how he got into the business he replied:
"When I was a farm labourer, I realised that the only job that would not give me frozen feet in the winter, was working in the watercress beds".
If I remember the interview correctly the chalk spring water came out at 7+ degrees even in mid winter.

Pass the waders.

lostinrates

GDB2222 wrote: »

Dry it and burn it?

Easier said than done. You can make briquetes, but tbh, life is too short...I reckon it would take me a day to make what I'd burn in an evening. then you have to unload it fro the moulds....stack, its not a small undertaking I don't think. OK to see you through short term short falls in wood etc...

John_Pierpoint

Turff as they say in Ireland.

lostinrates

Doozergirl wrote: »

I was reading an article in one of my magazines where they had tested existing turbines in different areas for their efficiency over a year. One turbine they tested used more electricity than it created!

hey is YOUR electricity ok now? funny we're talking about power at the same time.

silvercar

PasturesNew wrote: »

Edit: Cordyline Australis was the correct name. http://www.palmcentre.co.uk/Admin/Gallery/images/Cordyline-australis_large.JPG

They grow quite quick, well, 1-2' a year.

Oohh! Thank you PN, we have one of those in our garden - not as big and not as symmetrical, but the leaves got weighted down by the snow in the winter and rotted the core, so the top had to be cut off. Now we have a stump with leaves trying to grow round the base in tufts

Needed the name to try and get a replacement.

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

Oohh! Thank you PN, we have one of those in our garden - not as big and not as symmetrical, but the leaves got weighted down by the snow in the winter and rotted the core, so the top had to be cut off. Now we have a stump with leaves trying to grow round the base in tufts

Needed the name to try and get a replacement.

The street name is: Cornish palms. They're everywhere round here.

LydiaJ

lostinrates wrote: »

Anyway, then put the bar thing through the door and a handle, which is a bit stiff but ok, screwed on the handle, and now it won't turn the bar thing. So in all I've wasted a good deal of tie making a bad situation worse with that door.

Doozergirl wrote: »

Yes Lir. I have lights etc, it's the socket switch on the consumer units that trips the whole thing. H just tokd ne to call the sparky but everything is breaking atm and I've had to text his wife for his number because H killed my phone with all my contacts. In it. Luckily we got a brand new one without quibble but i have no friends now!

H fell yesterday and totally snapped a worktop. The boiler's on the blink, the tumble drier is already broken. The xbox has been sent off for repair, phone charger is broken, the laptop charger was broken but they have replaced, can't remember what else. This is a nightmare

Hugs to both of you and hope it's all sorted soon, and no more disasters.

GDB2222 wrote: »

You can begin to see why this has not caught on if you look at his performance data page. http://www.secretenergyturbine.com/performance-data.php

His figures show that the 75cm turbine will produce under 3kWh per day, so that's about £100-worth of electricity a year, with a 30 year pay-back period on the capital investment, ignoring maintenance costs. That's for a pretty big turbine, not just a rotating chimney pot.

Quite frankly, as an investment proposition, it's completely hopeless.

Also, if he's supposed to be some kind of expert in generating electricity, it's rather worrying that he's talking in terms of meaningless incorrect units like kW per day and watts per hour. That's the sort of basic mistake that would be perfectly understandable from a member of the public looking to buy turbines etc, but someone claiming to be a professional ought not to be making mistakes basic enough to lose you marks at GCSE!

ETA For those who are wondering what's wrong with those (and please ignore it if it's TMI and you don't want the complications)... it's because watts and kW are have already got the time included. Watts means "joules (of energy) per second" and kW is "thousand joules per second". So to have kW per day is like saying the speed of your car is 40 mph per day. A kWh is the total energy you get if you run a 1kW thing for an hour, so you can have kWh per day - that's fine. If something generates 5kWh per day, it means that in one day it will produce enough electricity to keep a 1kW heater going for 5 hours, or a 2kW kettle going for 2.5 hours, or whatever. HTH.