As I do most mornings, I went into the polytunnel to check how my vegetables are doing. This time I was greeted by a foul smell and mould covered leaves on the potato plants.
My usual tactic when faced with blight is to cut down all the greenery and leave nothing visible above the ground. Disturbing the soil might allow blight spores to get down to where the tubers are so it is best to leave the potatoes for a week or two.
With the onset of autumn the weather is very changeable, cold one day and warm the next. These conditions are ideal for blight mould. I'll keep these potatoes away from the others for a while just to monitor them. If they start to go bad then at least I have others, growing outside.
Blight is a mould that infects the leaves and tubers of potato plants, rendering the crop inedible. I was pushing it by leaving my potatoes in the ground until this late in the year but there was nowhere else to keep them. So long as they are still attached to roots then they stay fresh but are then susceptible to blight attack.
Some useful links.
Gardening Advice: Potato Blight
How to protect against potato blight
Potato Blight
Phew what a scorcher!
Loaded up the stove with plenty of wood this time. Had it burning constantly for about five hours. The house is now baking. The heat still has a few problems with getting to some parts but that will be sorted out in good time.
While I had the time, I invented a renewable energy based tumble dryer (see photo below). It uses a zero-cost renewable energy supply. For those wanting the authentic tumble action I suggest you hold the clothes in your hand and swing them around your head.
While I had the time, I invented a renewable energy based tumble dryer (see photo below). It uses a zero-cost renewable energy supply. For those wanting the authentic tumble action I suggest you hold the clothes in your hand and swing them around your head.
No thanks
A plan to render the dead into tree mulch reminds me of the film Soylent Green. If they start handing out green wafers with cheese on at the wake then don't eat them! Recycling can only be taken so far.
Heat stores
Well, for 1600 euros the wood stove is a little disappointing. With the partitioning of the downstairs and upstairs and a fan system then I could spread some heat around the downstairs. However, I'm not self-sufficient in wood. Most of my supply comes from driftwood and deadwood from outside my property. Coppicing on my own property yields no more than 25% of the wood I have stored.
My mind is now moving to heat stores and passive solar heating. It would be nice to gather as much of the solar energy that the radiates on to my land. With the passing of the autumnal equinox we are now in that part of the year where the sun only fleetingly shows itself and the house hovers around the 18C mark. I would like to build something that can utilise what solar energy there is so that I can save the wood until when it is really cold. The sun is shining every now and again so it would be nice to raise the temperature of the house to 19-20C and even store some for the evening.
From the end of September to the end of November and from the end March to the end of April there is a period where the house temperature oscillates between 17 and 19C. If the sun can be assisted to provide heat during this period then I won't need so much wood. About three months wood supply would then suffice for the very cold period covering December to February.
I like the plans I've seen for solar heating boxes that have little PC fans to push warm air into a building. There is a good access point just under the roof and into the gap created by the loft conversion. I can then use a conduit from there and into where the hot water tank is and out into the downstairs.
I also like the idea of larger heat stores that use large water reservoirs to store heat so that when the sun sets there is still access to heat until the next morning. The following link is such an example.
Two-part heat store
At this time of year our polytunnel is almost idle. There are some potatoes and peppers still in there but they should all be fully cropped and processed soon. I could put a lot of "black things" into the tunnel to help soak up heat. The tunnel is about 10 metres from the house and we could pump heat from it and into the house when needed.
Today I have the ongoing house insulation work to perform. I will also be planting more seeds for next season's crops.
My mind is now moving to heat stores and passive solar heating. It would be nice to gather as much of the solar energy that the radiates on to my land. With the passing of the autumnal equinox we are now in that part of the year where the sun only fleetingly shows itself and the house hovers around the 18C mark. I would like to build something that can utilise what solar energy there is so that I can save the wood until when it is really cold. The sun is shining every now and again so it would be nice to raise the temperature of the house to 19-20C and even store some for the evening.
From the end of September to the end of November and from the end March to the end of April there is a period where the house temperature oscillates between 17 and 19C. If the sun can be assisted to provide heat during this period then I won't need so much wood. About three months wood supply would then suffice for the very cold period covering December to February.
I like the plans I've seen for solar heating boxes that have little PC fans to push warm air into a building. There is a good access point just under the roof and into the gap created by the loft conversion. I can then use a conduit from there and into where the hot water tank is and out into the downstairs.
I also like the idea of larger heat stores that use large water reservoirs to store heat so that when the sun sets there is still access to heat until the next morning. The following link is such an example.
Two-part heat store
At this time of year our polytunnel is almost idle. There are some potatoes and peppers still in there but they should all be fully cropped and processed soon. I could put a lot of "black things" into the tunnel to help soak up heat. The tunnel is about 10 metres from the house and we could pump heat from it and into the house when needed.
Today I have the ongoing house insulation work to perform. I will also be planting more seeds for next season's crops.
Microgrids
A BBC story on microgrids details peer-to-peer energy networks providing electricity and heat to local communities. I've thought about the same myself. When I have rung the last drop of self-sufficiency out of my land then I'll invite all my local neighbours (about 15 houses within a mile of me) to look at what I've done. They can copy anything they like (free! - take note greedy persons on the Internet) and can hire me cheaply to help them.
There is plenty of wind here (it's blowing a gale at the moment) for some small turbines. Many of the houses here are oriented incorrectly for passive heating but heat boxes and homebrew conservatories could solve that. There is plenty of wood here and the locals are good at woodland management so a food fired electricity generator is do-able. Any system would have to produce power 24 hours a day though. Enough batteries to handle 15 or more houses is not feasible.
There is plenty of wind here (it's blowing a gale at the moment) for some small turbines. Many of the houses here are oriented incorrectly for passive heating but heat boxes and homebrew conservatories could solve that. There is plenty of wood here and the locals are good at woodland management so a food fired electricity generator is do-able. Any system would have to produce power 24 hours a day though. Enough batteries to handle 15 or more houses is not feasible.
A productive evening
A few friends came round to discuss a wood gas project so it looks like we are going to give it a go. At first, we will build a retort to get a lawnmower engine running on wood gas. If that is successful then we will look at running a motor vehicle on wood gas and storing the gas in metal bottles, tyre inner tubes and gasometers.
Running diesel engines on straight vegetable oil or bio-diesel was deemed not to have the potential to create as big a fuel cost saving as wood gas. Waste vegetable oil is not available to us as all supplies are already used by a growing band of devotees.
I gave a demonstration of hydrogen production using aluminium, sodium hydroxide (caustic soda/lye) and water. Though it will probably be used to cook with, it would only be used as a back-up source of gas for internal combustion engines because aluminium is not a sustainable resource. The aluminium I used was from orange juice cartons.
Running diesel engines on straight vegetable oil or bio-diesel was deemed not to have the potential to create as big a fuel cost saving as wood gas. Waste vegetable oil is not available to us as all supplies are already used by a growing band of devotees.
I gave a demonstration of hydrogen production using aluminium, sodium hydroxide (caustic soda/lye) and water. Though it will probably be used to cook with, it would only be used as a back-up source of gas for internal combustion engines because aluminium is not a sustainable resource. The aluminium I used was from orange juice cartons.
The simple things
Last week I lagged every hot water pipe that had metal exposed to the air. Some of the pipes leading into and out of the hot water tank received two and even three layers of lagging. So long as I could feel heat coming through, I kept on lagging. All this means that the oil boiler is on just twice a day for 15 mins in the morning and 45 minutes in the evening. There is now too much hot water for the two of us so I can cut it down further.
Tomorrow I shall be outside with the caulking gun. It is very windy outside and I can feel little draughts coming in. Enough to cool a room anyway.
I was going to put up a partition near the stair well to stop heat from the stove going straight up the staircase without heating the downstairs first. Some bright spark (obviously not me) suggested a thick curtain so I'll try that first. If it works then a lot of labour will have been saved and in the warmer months there won't be an additional wall impeding movement around the house.
The sun made a brief appearance today. We are a bit lax with opening curtains in the morning but today I opened them all when the sun shone and the house temperature went up a degree centigrade.
The south side of the house has six windows which can all be contributing to passive heating of the house. I have thought about placing large sheets of metal on the window sills, painted black, to absorb heat. Maybe some sort of arrangement on the side facing away from the window to dissipate heat. Fins, white paint, a fan maybe. Some things to experiment with.
Tomorrow I shall be outside with the caulking gun. It is very windy outside and I can feel little draughts coming in. Enough to cool a room anyway.
I was going to put up a partition near the stair well to stop heat from the stove going straight up the staircase without heating the downstairs first. Some bright spark (obviously not me) suggested a thick curtain so I'll try that first. If it works then a lot of labour will have been saved and in the warmer months there won't be an additional wall impeding movement around the house.
The sun made a brief appearance today. We are a bit lax with opening curtains in the morning but today I opened them all when the sun shone and the house temperature went up a degree centigrade.
The south side of the house has six windows which can all be contributing to passive heating of the house. I have thought about placing large sheets of metal on the window sills, painted black, to absorb heat. Maybe some sort of arrangement on the side facing away from the window to dissipate heat. Fins, white paint, a fan maybe. Some things to experiment with.
It's your duty too
A BBC story highlighting reasons why air travel is cheaper than using the train. One of those reasons is that airlines don't pay duty on the kerosene the aircraft engines use as fuel. This results in ridiculous 1p flight tickets and more and more aircraft taking off and pumping the upper atmosphere with noxious gases.
The sooner air travellers have to pay the real cost of air travel the better it will be for the environment and for those exotic places corrupted by our western ways.
The sooner air travellers have to pay the real cost of air travel the better it will be for the environment and for those exotic places corrupted by our western ways.
So long Sun
As the autumnal equinox passes the weather turns chilly and the autumn winds start to blow. Only another five weeks before the clocks go back and the chance to work outside during the early evening will be gone. At least it will give me a chance to work on my other blog and use the dark nights for other purposes.
Today, I brought in my boat's sails for repair, turned a compost heap and checked out a birch tree for felling. Quite a few birch saplings have shown themselves above the weeds. Nice to know that nature doesn't need my help but she will get a boost when I start planting out over a hundred trees early next year. My polytunnel is turning into a jungle with all the saplings I've grown in it.
Today, I brought in my boat's sails for repair, turned a compost heap and checked out a birch tree for felling. Quite a few birch saplings have shown themselves above the weeds. Nice to know that nature doesn't need my help but she will get a boost when I start planting out over a hundred trees early next year. My polytunnel is turning into a jungle with all the saplings I've grown in it.
A right way and a wrong way
This Guardian article about polytunnel growing in AlmerÃa should be about successfully farming an arid part of Spain. Instead, it is about greed. Whenever money is involved then corrupt practices follow.
My polytunnel allows me to compliment what I grow outside in the deep beds. All done without artificial pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. In AlmerÃa they are destroying their environment by blanketing their land in plastic sheet and dousing their vegetables in chemicals. The result is waste strewn all over the place with the inhabitants suffering from chemically induced illnesses. All for a few extra Euros.
Sustainability is not only about doing your own thing with homegrown vegetables but in a way that will permit you to do so for an eternity.
My polytunnel allows me to compliment what I grow outside in the deep beds. All done without artificial pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. In AlmerÃa they are destroying their environment by blanketing their land in plastic sheet and dousing their vegetables in chemicals. The result is waste strewn all over the place with the inhabitants suffering from chemically induced illnesses. All for a few extra Euros.
Sustainability is not only about doing your own thing with homegrown vegetables but in a way that will permit you to do so for an eternity.
Stove fires up at 17.5C
And asks more questions than it gave answers. I've decided to change tack on the insulation of the house. I will just put rock wool beneath the floors upstairs, build a partition in the hallway where the staircase is and then surrender the upstairs to whatever the winter has in store for us.
The roof insulation will have to wait until next year. Better to have the downstairs warm rather than the whole house cold. The room in which the stove sits went up to 23C. The rest of the downstairs went up to 18.5C and so I need some kind of way to spread the heat around downstairs.
Elsewhere, I have been taking in my potatoes and scrumping apples from an abandoned (only in Ireland!) orchard.
The roof insulation will have to wait until next year. Better to have the downstairs warm rather than the whole house cold. The room in which the stove sits went up to 23C. The rest of the downstairs went up to 18.5C and so I need some kind of way to spread the heat around downstairs.
Elsewhere, I have been taking in my potatoes and scrumping apples from an abandoned (only in Ireland!) orchard.
Messing about on the water
I spent the day in my boat. It has a name, given to it by a sailor called Finbarr. More about that later.
I was just sailing around for fun. When working in it, I prefer to row. It's actually faster to row this boat unless it's a force 2 or 3 then I hang on to the main sheet and let it fly.
My boat is the one with the blue sail. Actually, I couldn't resist picking up some driftwood so the day wasn't entirely wasted on fun. I might need the extra wood as we are having a bit of a cold snap. The thermometer shows 18.5C. If it drops below 18C then I shall light the stove.
The name of my boat? Finbarr says, "It's been on the rocks so often I call it Black 'n' Blue!"
I was just sailing around for fun. When working in it, I prefer to row. It's actually faster to row this boat unless it's a force 2 or 3 then I hang on to the main sheet and let it fly.
My boat is the one with the blue sail. Actually, I couldn't resist picking up some driftwood so the day wasn't entirely wasted on fun. I might need the extra wood as we are having a bit of a cold snap. The thermometer shows 18.5C. If it drops below 18C then I shall light the stove.
The name of my boat? Finbarr says, "It's been on the rocks so often I call it Black 'n' Blue!"
A year in review
It's been over one year since we moved into this house so I'll go over what I've done and how we've changed our urban lifestyles. Here are some early photos. Apologies for the quality as they were taken with my old 800k pixel camera.
The house sits in an acre of land. This is the east facing side with lawns (which I despise) that will become a small wood and orchard. There is another field to the right, beyond the line of ghastly Leylandii trees, where I will have short rotation coppiced willow.
This is the south facing side of the house. As you can see, it is a very big house. Fourteen rooms in all. The upstairs is incomplete and I am concentrating on completing this, whilst testing my rib cage falling through the ceiling. Insulation is about 25% complete. Then come floorboards and Velux windows. We shall wait to see if radiators are necessary after this winter's experiments with the wood stove downstairs.
One of the first things I bought, after we moved in, was a polytunnel. Poor contrast in the photo but you can just make out the galvanised hoops that hold the polythene sheet. It has a ground space of 45 square meters and cost about 700 euros.
As soon as we unpacked I was in the garden building my first deep bed. I had been growing seedlings on the window sills of the house we were renting previously and wanted to get the seedlings in the ground as quickly as possible. I had no choice but to buy some compost but it was the last time I did so. You can see the beginning of my compost heap in the upper right. You can see how it has grown in just over a year in this post.
This is me, and friend Mary, in a boat I built last year. It carries a single sprit sail and is used for fishing, and driftwood, blue barrel and other assorted junk collecting. Cost of boat, about 800 euros. The sail was cheap, I used a polytarp and stitched it together with double-sided carpet tape.
My intentions from the start were to live as self-sustainably as possible. Progress is slow as I am doing the work of a builder (working on the house), a forester (cutting and processing wood for the winter and growing saplings for the proposed small wood), a fisherman (taking a small sailing boat out to catch Mackerel - as well as collecting useful junk and driftwood from the beaches), a vegetable farmer, a part-time teacher and an IT consultant.
In our first year we used just 1185 kW of electricity (at 12 cents a unit - doubled by the ridiculous VAT, standing charge and public obligations levy), 125.95 euros of butane gas for the cooker and 721 euros of heating oil.
Insulating the house will reduce the heating requirement. I'm hoping that most of it can be achieved with the wood burning stove and what is left of the heating oil will heat the hot water tank only. The plan is to build a wind turbine to produce electricity to power a heating element in the hot water tank thus obviating the need for heating oil altogether.
This winter will see the building of a Savonius wind turbine (as soon as I get a new jigsaw on Saturday,) completion of the house insulation and monitoring of the house heating by the wood stove.
The house sits in an acre of land. This is the east facing side with lawns (which I despise) that will become a small wood and orchard. There is another field to the right, beyond the line of ghastly Leylandii trees, where I will have short rotation coppiced willow.
This is the south facing side of the house. As you can see, it is a very big house. Fourteen rooms in all. The upstairs is incomplete and I am concentrating on completing this, whilst testing my rib cage falling through the ceiling. Insulation is about 25% complete. Then come floorboards and Velux windows. We shall wait to see if radiators are necessary after this winter's experiments with the wood stove downstairs.
One of the first things I bought, after we moved in, was a polytunnel. Poor contrast in the photo but you can just make out the galvanised hoops that hold the polythene sheet. It has a ground space of 45 square meters and cost about 700 euros.
As soon as we unpacked I was in the garden building my first deep bed. I had been growing seedlings on the window sills of the house we were renting previously and wanted to get the seedlings in the ground as quickly as possible. I had no choice but to buy some compost but it was the last time I did so. You can see the beginning of my compost heap in the upper right. You can see how it has grown in just over a year in this post.
This is me, and friend Mary, in a boat I built last year. It carries a single sprit sail and is used for fishing, and driftwood, blue barrel and other assorted junk collecting. Cost of boat, about 800 euros. The sail was cheap, I used a polytarp and stitched it together with double-sided carpet tape.
My intentions from the start were to live as self-sustainably as possible. Progress is slow as I am doing the work of a builder (working on the house), a forester (cutting and processing wood for the winter and growing saplings for the proposed small wood), a fisherman (taking a small sailing boat out to catch Mackerel - as well as collecting useful junk and driftwood from the beaches), a vegetable farmer, a part-time teacher and an IT consultant.
In our first year we used just 1185 kW of electricity (at 12 cents a unit - doubled by the ridiculous VAT, standing charge and public obligations levy), 125.95 euros of butane gas for the cooker and 721 euros of heating oil.
Insulating the house will reduce the heating requirement. I'm hoping that most of it can be achieved with the wood burning stove and what is left of the heating oil will heat the hot water tank only. The plan is to build a wind turbine to produce electricity to power a heating element in the hot water tank thus obviating the need for heating oil altogether.
This winter will see the building of a Savonius wind turbine (as soon as I get a new jigsaw on Saturday,) completion of the house insulation and monitoring of the house heating by the wood stove.
A fine crop of peppers
There are still plenty more peppers on my forty or so bushes. Only slightly hot but quite sweet. I got the seeds from a friend who was giving away his excess crop last year. I will try over-wintering them and see if they will grow another crop next year. To be on the safe side I am sowing seed from this year's crop too.
Here are the peppers after being de-seeded. They are now in the freezer and will be used in pastas and other dishes. The seeds will be planted later this evening.
Here are the peppers after being de-seeded. They are now in the freezer and will be used in pastas and other dishes. The seeds will be planted later this evening.
Putting my oar in
First time back in the boat since my cracked ribs healed. No problems. Rowed out to Barrel Island to pick up two blue plastic barrels for the hoped for Savonius wind turbine. Plenty of drift wood there too. I noticed that my oars aren't set-up correctly. My oar handles should almost touch when I'm rowing. They were a good 8 inches apart but no longer since I moved the sleeves futher down.
When I returned I noticed all the seaweed I brought back yesterday was begining to dry out in the sun so I hosed it all down to remove as much salt as possible and then put it into the compost heap. Always best to use green seaweed. Brown or black seaweed found at the top of the beach is either dying or dead and will soon dry out and lose all the nutrients you are trying to put into the compost.
When I returned I noticed all the seaweed I brought back yesterday was begining to dry out in the sun so I hosed it all down to remove as much salt as possible and then put it into the compost heap. Always best to use green seaweed. Brown or black seaweed found at the top of the beach is either dying or dead and will soon dry out and lose all the nutrients you are trying to put into the compost.
Phew!
Just back from collecting a wheelbarrow load of seaweed from down the road. I'm a little out of condition after my little cracked rib enforced lay-off. I washed the seaweed with fresh water and now have it lying on the grass. A few days in the rain will wash it sufficiently so I can then add it to the compost heap.
I finished extending my no-dig deep beds. Almost out of compost now. I have another pile but that won't be ready for another few more months if I want to use it for soil. For mucking and earthing up potatoes its fine as is.
There's always something to be done in the kitchen garden. I have finished digging up the last of my onions and already I'm planting more seed for next year.
I finished extending my no-dig deep beds. Almost out of compost now. I have another pile but that won't be ready for another few more months if I want to use it for soil. For mucking and earthing up potatoes its fine as is.
There's always something to be done in the kitchen garden. I have finished digging up the last of my onions and already I'm planting more seed for next year.
The talk of the town
I was in the hardware store today and the topic of everyone's conversation was vegetable oil. The price of petrol has almost doubled in two years and everyone is looking for an alternative. With vegetable oil at half the price of diesel, at a local cut-price supermarket, more and more people will be converting.
Today I bought some sodium hydroxide for my upcoming experiments. I also went to the old vocational school where I was gifted some chemistry equipment from the lab.
Today I bought some sodium hydroxide for my upcoming experiments. I also went to the old vocational school where I was gifted some chemistry equipment from the lab.
Onion soup
Dug up the last of the onions today. I didn't grow enough but the onions I have are the size of grapefruit so I'll be able to cut them in half and freeze them for the winter. Plenty of carrots and leeks in the ground. Over twenty potato plants too. I'll leave them there and just rummage around under the soil with my hands when I need a few.
My pepper plants are ripening. I planted about 40 of them. They produce small sweet peppers. Much tastier than the larger ones you get in the supermarket. A slight peppery taste but no heat. My jalapeño chile seed failed. I'll buy some more for next season. I don't like supermarket chiles at all.
The tomatoes are not doing well. I am growing them in 10 litre paint buckets. Too small, I would say. Next year I will grow them in halves of blue barrels.
It hasn't been a bad first season of growing on this land. I'll need to double-up to provide more of what I have and a little more variety.
My pepper plants are ripening. I planted about 40 of them. They produce small sweet peppers. Much tastier than the larger ones you get in the supermarket. A slight peppery taste but no heat. My jalapeño chile seed failed. I'll buy some more for next season. I don't like supermarket chiles at all.
The tomatoes are not doing well. I am growing them in 10 litre paint buckets. Too small, I would say. Next year I will grow them in halves of blue barrels.
It hasn't been a bad first season of growing on this land. I'll need to double-up to provide more of what I have and a little more variety.
Crystal clear thoughts
Well, a good deal of e-mailing today. Bouncing ideas off people. I've made my mind up with regards to generating my own energy. I will indeed be building a Savonius wind turbine. In fact a few of them. I won't be charging batteries though. Too expensive. Instead I will dump the current generated through a heating element and into the hot water tank. That will rid myself of the 500 euro a year heating oil bill. The space heating will be achieved with the stove I installed in June.
Petrol is harder to replace. The only way really is to get rid of the car and get a diesel engined one. Not just that but with a diesel engine that is the easiest to convert to vegetable oil as fuel. There are a few makes and models that are the best for such a conversion. Hopefully, all the cost savings this year from reduced electricity usage, homegrown food, and ceasing heating oil usage will help pay for a diesel car.
I'll put these thoughts forward in the meeting in two weeks and see if there are any projects people want to get involved in.
Petrol is harder to replace. The only way really is to get rid of the car and get a diesel engined one. Not just that but with a diesel engine that is the easiest to convert to vegetable oil as fuel. There are a few makes and models that are the best for such a conversion. Hopefully, all the cost savings this year from reduced electricity usage, homegrown food, and ceasing heating oil usage will help pay for a diesel car.
I'll put these thoughts forward in the meeting in two weeks and see if there are any projects people want to get involved in.
A productive encounter
Alfred, a German farming friend up the road, came to visit. We talked about alternative fuels amongst other things. I called a few other friends on the phone and everyone is keen on experimenting with alternatives to petrol and diesel. I shall arrange a dinner one evening and get everyone together so that we can make plans and will gather together all of my research and print it out for the attendants. The thought of saving as much as 2000 euros a year is spurring me on.
Alternative car fuels
When I first moved to Kerry in 2003 petrol was priced at about 72c a litre. It's now around 110c a litre. That's a rise of over 50%. We bought a wood burning stove for the winter so that we wouldn't have to buy so much heating oil. This winter we will still have to heat washing water with the oil boiler but next year I hope to have built solar heaters for the warmer months and have a homemade furnace outside to heat water during the colder months.
By far our biggest oil-based expense is petrol for the car and this is to be the next target of my self-sufficiency drive. I have flirted with the idea of an electric powered car but the cost is too prohibitive for now. I would either have to convert one of our existing vehicles or buy another one. Then the component costs would eat into all the money I have set aside for renovating the house.
I have decided therefore to use what vehicles and motors we have and use alternative fuels. A friend gave us her old van, which runs on diesel, so I would like to convert that to vegetable oil. The car runs on petrol so I have been researching the making of wood gas or straight hydrogen.
I have considered using electrolysis to liberate hydrogen from sea water. However, last night I happened across an interesting website that details the generation of hydrogen through reacting aluminium beverage cans and water with sodium hydroxide (in the form of drain cleaner) as a catalyst. It looks deceptively easy. The only expense is in buying the sodium hydroxide.
Any hydrogen I generate will be stored in an old butane bottle and then added to the fuel air mixture to reduce the quantity of petrol consumed. I would hope to then increase production to negate the need for petrol entirely.
Utilising what engines I have, petrol (converted to hydrogen) and diesel (converted to vegetable oil), is the most economical way rather than going electric and buying expensive motors and batteries. Let's imagine that the oil economy dies within my lifetime. There would be a rush on all the components to create electric cars and so prices for these components would increase. People would start dumping their petrol and diesel engined cars and these would easy to pick up cheaply.
By far our biggest oil-based expense is petrol for the car and this is to be the next target of my self-sufficiency drive. I have flirted with the idea of an electric powered car but the cost is too prohibitive for now. I would either have to convert one of our existing vehicles or buy another one. Then the component costs would eat into all the money I have set aside for renovating the house.
I have decided therefore to use what vehicles and motors we have and use alternative fuels. A friend gave us her old van, which runs on diesel, so I would like to convert that to vegetable oil. The car runs on petrol so I have been researching the making of wood gas or straight hydrogen.
I have considered using electrolysis to liberate hydrogen from sea water. However, last night I happened across an interesting website that details the generation of hydrogen through reacting aluminium beverage cans and water with sodium hydroxide (in the form of drain cleaner) as a catalyst. It looks deceptively easy. The only expense is in buying the sodium hydroxide.
Any hydrogen I generate will be stored in an old butane bottle and then added to the fuel air mixture to reduce the quantity of petrol consumed. I would hope to then increase production to negate the need for petrol entirely.
Utilising what engines I have, petrol (converted to hydrogen) and diesel (converted to vegetable oil), is the most economical way rather than going electric and buying expensive motors and batteries. Let's imagine that the oil economy dies within my lifetime. There would be a rush on all the components to create electric cars and so prices for these components would increase. People would start dumping their petrol and diesel engined cars and these would easy to pick up cheaply.
Not impressed
Ireland, from painful experience, is not the most Internet savvy of European nations. I'm pretty certain that if I e-mail someone in Africa or the Amazon basin (wherever that is) I will get a speedy reply. Not so in the nation of my forebears. Half the population would think that I had been out fishing and had something "in t'net for dinner". Many companies in Ireland have a website and proudly boast their e-mail address. Do they read their e-mails? Do they bollix!
According to the ESB's (ESB being one of the many electricity companies that I can purchase my power from - NOT!) website, the electricity supply market opened in February 2005 and I can now shop around for the cheapest price. Well, there are many companies out there but as of September 2005 a householder can still only buy electricity from ESB.
I sent an e-mail to the CER (Commission for Energy Regulation) asking why it was still the case that I could not shop around for electricity. It took a week to get a reply that said no more than, "Your e-mail has been sent to the appropriate department." That was over a week ago. We can assume that the appropriate department was the trash can on the PC of the corporate drone that replied to me.
Most Irish businesses are pretty high-handed towards their customers so none of this is a surprise to me. I almost hanker for the good old days of London's "Service with a scowl" rather than Ireland's "No service at all."
According to the ESB's (ESB being one of the many electricity companies that I can purchase my power from - NOT!) website, the electricity supply market opened in February 2005 and I can now shop around for the cheapest price. Well, there are many companies out there but as of September 2005 a householder can still only buy electricity from ESB.
I sent an e-mail to the CER (Commission for Energy Regulation) asking why it was still the case that I could not shop around for electricity. It took a week to get a reply that said no more than, "Your e-mail has been sent to the appropriate department." That was over a week ago. We can assume that the appropriate department was the trash can on the PC of the corporate drone that replied to me.
Most Irish businesses are pretty high-handed towards their customers so none of this is a surprise to me. I almost hanker for the good old days of London's "Service with a scowl" rather than Ireland's "No service at all."
Now this is really getting away from it all
I've just read a news story in the The Observer about a chap that calls himself the Ditch Monkey. He commutes to London to work at Sothebys the auctioneers but by night he travels home to his bijou apartment in the woods of Oxfordshire. He sleeps in the open and doesn't have a house. His aim is to live there for a year as a demonstration of how we can all live a simpler life whilst raising money for the Woodland Trust.
Nice to know that if I get desperate then I can retire to the mountains here but I hope that in giving up life in London that I have simplified and yet enriched my life anyway.
Nice to know that if I get desperate then I can retire to the mountains here but I hope that in giving up life in London that I have simplified and yet enriched my life anyway.
Aftermath
Well, I started writing this before hurricane Katrina hit the US mainland so I have been doing a little rewrite. Now that the devastation has happened we can see a possible portent for the future. A city bereft of services, the authorities struggling to cope and mob rule. And, as most of us thought, the price of oil has risen again.
Is the anarchy in New Orleans going to be commonplace when the Oil Age ends and people lose the luxurious lives they have now? People looting food and medicine is justifiable. But luxury items instead?
Whether or not we have reached peak oil (the point at which we have used more than 50% of reachable reserves) is contentious. What we do know is that the world only has finite resources of oil and that one day it will run out. The increasing price of oil can be thought of as a forward price representing the cost of future extraction so the end of oil will probably occur during my lifetime and I might end up in a world like New Orleans is now.
I now write about the lead up to the end of the oil age and beyond.
The Lead Up To The Post-Oil Age
I have mentioned this before but there is a theory named after a place in Africa called Olduvai. This place is well-known to paleoanthropologists because it is the scene of many discoveries of ancient man and his activities. Littered with stone tools it is not only representative of ancient ways of living but might also be a sign of future ways of living. If you believe in the Olduvai Theory then you believe in the catastrophic decline of humanity following the oil age. Others believe in a graceful fall believing that we will find other alternative fuels and energies that will replace everything that oil does for us now.
Will alternatives be found to replace oil? Oil is not only a source of energy. It is not just for powering cars with petrol and diesel, aircraft with kerosene and homes with heating oil. It is the raw material for the petrochemical industry creating plastics, fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide, pharmaceuticals and many other products and raw material for other industries. No, a wind turbine can't do all of that.
When people think of renewable energy they think of wind and solar. Methods for generating electricity and heat. They are not replacements for all the others things that oil does for us. There would appear then to be an approaching energy gap. One that if not filled will have a profound effect on our way of life.
Those in the cities that don't own cars like to view the rising price of oil with amusement stating that they always use public transport so the price of oil has little effect on them. As oil gets more expensive the price of everything will have to rise. Not just oil based products but everything that is transported to shops for us to buy. Road hauliers have to fill their trucks with diesel to bring these goods to our shops. Even if we sit at home and order over the Internet then the post office is going to have put up the price of postage as increased fuel costs eat into its profit too. Oil goes up in price. Everything goes up in price.
Many city dwellers might eschew personal motorised transport but their way of life is dependent on thousands of delivery trucks filling shops and supermarkets with goods. Not only that but the whole infrastructure of a modern city depends on repair men in personal transport keeping everything running, fixing telecommunications, electricity, gas, water and sewerage. A malfunction on an underground train requires many repair men and their vehicles to repair the problem.
How long could a modern city survive without oil? Supermarkets would be empty within a day. Utilities would start failing and permanently as a backlog would start without fuel to get repairmen to where they were needed. We only have to look at New Orleans now, in the most advanced nation on the planet, to see how easily cities can cease to function. We must assume that as fuel becomes scarcer then governments will have to ration it. The armed forces will come first of course, the police would be close behind along with ambulance and fire services. Then come other essential services to keep modern urban life functioning. The rest of us can forget it. For rural dwellers a form of personal transport is essential. Maybe we in the western world will have to learn how to use horses again. Still, it will start a new economy.
The Post Oil Age
The Global Economy - Capital will always flow into the cheapest markets but goods can't flow out of those markets without oil. There may well be a return to local markets. The time when you can walk down to your European supermarket and buy vegetables from Africa may well have passed in the post oil age, for the good of Africa as well as Europe. Food mountains will be a thing of the past. African industry might get a boost from not having European cast-offs dumped on it. For example, many African clothing manufacturers have gone out of business because of cheap European cast-offs have flooded African markets.
Lawlessness - Will there be increased lawlessness? Policing will be less mobile. Rural people won't get the protection that city dwellers get. Desperate city dwellers might forage (or steal) in the country for what they need. However, decreased mobility might be beneficial. Today's criminal is mobilised with oil and preys upon soft rural targets. Without oil a criminal will have to work locally. If New Orleans is anything to go by then small local fiefdoms created by criminal gangs in areas where people are unable or unwilling to learn how to look after themselves in the new order is possible.
Collapse of Cities - Cities were around long before oil. It is safe to assume that they will still be around. Cities expanded during the Industrial Revolution as the poor from the countryside moved into cities to find wealth. Will there be a larger underclass due to their being no oil based jobs? Will these people move into countryside as bands of foragers, stripping nature of its resources but without the knowledge to replenish those resources in a sustainable manner. In New Orleans we see people willing to steal to survive, kill to gather resources too. How would country people protect themselves from large bands of marauding urban dwellers without mobile police protection?
Disease and Over Population - Hospitals will be hard pressed if lawlessness breaks out, oil based medical supplies are hard to get hold of, sanitation breaks down, sewers fail. There would have to be a correction in the size of the world's population.
Tough times are ahead
Learn to be resourceful.
Learn how to renew your resources.
Learn how to make do without money.
Learn to appreciate only those things that aid survival and not the brief fascination with wealth and celebrity.
Build a strong community that can withstand outside threats.
Is the anarchy in New Orleans going to be commonplace when the Oil Age ends and people lose the luxurious lives they have now? People looting food and medicine is justifiable. But luxury items instead?
Whether or not we have reached peak oil (the point at which we have used more than 50% of reachable reserves) is contentious. What we do know is that the world only has finite resources of oil and that one day it will run out. The increasing price of oil can be thought of as a forward price representing the cost of future extraction so the end of oil will probably occur during my lifetime and I might end up in a world like New Orleans is now.
I now write about the lead up to the end of the oil age and beyond.
The Lead Up To The Post-Oil Age
I have mentioned this before but there is a theory named after a place in Africa called Olduvai. This place is well-known to paleoanthropologists because it is the scene of many discoveries of ancient man and his activities. Littered with stone tools it is not only representative of ancient ways of living but might also be a sign of future ways of living. If you believe in the Olduvai Theory then you believe in the catastrophic decline of humanity following the oil age. Others believe in a graceful fall believing that we will find other alternative fuels and energies that will replace everything that oil does for us now.
Will alternatives be found to replace oil? Oil is not only a source of energy. It is not just for powering cars with petrol and diesel, aircraft with kerosene and homes with heating oil. It is the raw material for the petrochemical industry creating plastics, fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide, pharmaceuticals and many other products and raw material for other industries. No, a wind turbine can't do all of that.
When people think of renewable energy they think of wind and solar. Methods for generating electricity and heat. They are not replacements for all the others things that oil does for us. There would appear then to be an approaching energy gap. One that if not filled will have a profound effect on our way of life.
Those in the cities that don't own cars like to view the rising price of oil with amusement stating that they always use public transport so the price of oil has little effect on them. As oil gets more expensive the price of everything will have to rise. Not just oil based products but everything that is transported to shops for us to buy. Road hauliers have to fill their trucks with diesel to bring these goods to our shops. Even if we sit at home and order over the Internet then the post office is going to have put up the price of postage as increased fuel costs eat into its profit too. Oil goes up in price. Everything goes up in price.
Many city dwellers might eschew personal motorised transport but their way of life is dependent on thousands of delivery trucks filling shops and supermarkets with goods. Not only that but the whole infrastructure of a modern city depends on repair men in personal transport keeping everything running, fixing telecommunications, electricity, gas, water and sewerage. A malfunction on an underground train requires many repair men and their vehicles to repair the problem.
How long could a modern city survive without oil? Supermarkets would be empty within a day. Utilities would start failing and permanently as a backlog would start without fuel to get repairmen to where they were needed. We only have to look at New Orleans now, in the most advanced nation on the planet, to see how easily cities can cease to function. We must assume that as fuel becomes scarcer then governments will have to ration it. The armed forces will come first of course, the police would be close behind along with ambulance and fire services. Then come other essential services to keep modern urban life functioning. The rest of us can forget it. For rural dwellers a form of personal transport is essential. Maybe we in the western world will have to learn how to use horses again. Still, it will start a new economy.
The Post Oil Age
The Global Economy - Capital will always flow into the cheapest markets but goods can't flow out of those markets without oil. There may well be a return to local markets. The time when you can walk down to your European supermarket and buy vegetables from Africa may well have passed in the post oil age, for the good of Africa as well as Europe. Food mountains will be a thing of the past. African industry might get a boost from not having European cast-offs dumped on it. For example, many African clothing manufacturers have gone out of business because of cheap European cast-offs have flooded African markets.
Lawlessness - Will there be increased lawlessness? Policing will be less mobile. Rural people won't get the protection that city dwellers get. Desperate city dwellers might forage (or steal) in the country for what they need. However, decreased mobility might be beneficial. Today's criminal is mobilised with oil and preys upon soft rural targets. Without oil a criminal will have to work locally. If New Orleans is anything to go by then small local fiefdoms created by criminal gangs in areas where people are unable or unwilling to learn how to look after themselves in the new order is possible.
Collapse of Cities - Cities were around long before oil. It is safe to assume that they will still be around. Cities expanded during the Industrial Revolution as the poor from the countryside moved into cities to find wealth. Will there be a larger underclass due to their being no oil based jobs? Will these people move into countryside as bands of foragers, stripping nature of its resources but without the knowledge to replenish those resources in a sustainable manner. In New Orleans we see people willing to steal to survive, kill to gather resources too. How would country people protect themselves from large bands of marauding urban dwellers without mobile police protection?
Disease and Over Population - Hospitals will be hard pressed if lawlessness breaks out, oil based medical supplies are hard to get hold of, sanitation breaks down, sewers fail. There would have to be a correction in the size of the world's population.
Tough times are ahead
Learn to be resourceful.
Learn how to renew your resources.
Learn how to make do without money.
Learn to appreciate only those things that aid survival and not the brief fascination with wealth and celebrity.
Build a strong community that can withstand outside threats.
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