The fact is, the 350,000,000 terawatts of power available from the sun is so huge that an exposure to a full sun in only 15 minutes will be enough to generate the world’s energy requirement.
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The earth receives more than enough energy from the sun in an hour to supply the world’s energy requirement for the whole year.

Unfortunately, only a tiny portion of it is harnessed and the world still relies on power plants that burn fossil fuels. The good thing, though, is that there is a constant increase in demand for solar energy; and over the years of continuous development, solar panels are much cheaper today.
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If anything good came out during the recent increases of the fuel oil prices, it is that it is causing an increased interest in alternative sources of energy. Even when pump prices has been decreasing like nothing we have seen before, the uproar created and the pain it did to business will have a good chance of sticking. The desire for alternative sources of energy is on the forefront and may it stay there for good – as it should.
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You may notice on the navigation bar, forum page.  Trying out something new, so feel free to click on it and take a peek.  Still in the formative stages, but it will improve as I go along.  I am totally new to forums, so it was an adventure.  But will continue working on it, tweeking and making it a place to hang out.

To continue my last post.  I am pulling these figures from memory so they may not be exact, but they will be close.  Close enough for you to get an idea of the savings involved.

These figures were close for 2005 and before.  We planned on 2 tons of pellets per winter.  We never used all of it.  That would be 100/40 lb. bags.  Stove would run from 5am to about 8 pm.  We used it on a medium auger speed, with the blower on medium most of the time, high if wind was blowing and it was very cold.  Cost of a ton of pellets was about 125.00.  Without getting real analytical at this time, it cost about 125-200.00 for heating for the entire winter.

Here is a picture of a Pellet stove that looks very much like the one we owned

More pictures will follow in continuing posts on this topic.

With the advent of the new Administration that will be entering the White House in a few days, I think we will see a noticable increase in renewable energy.

Renewable energy includes, wind, solar, energy efficient lighting, and on a home level, woodburners, woodpellet boilers, etc.

I wanted to talk a little about pellet burners in this post.  We used one in Ohio and was totally happy with it.  It was a 10,000 BTU stove,(the manufacture name has long since left my memory cells for greener pastures) with a thermostate controlled blower.  The hopper held about 50lbs of pellets at a time.   Naturally, pellets are manufactured and bagged in 40lb bags.

The stove is a “zero clearance” stove which means it can get pretty close to the interior walls with no problems.  It had a 3″ double insulated pipe that ran thru the wall, and up the side of the house.  The pipe was held with brackets that kept the space between the pipe and vinyl siding about 2-3″ away.

The burn pot inside, where the pellets were augured to, was only about 4″ at the top and a little smaller at the bottom.  There was a series of baffles on the inside of the stove that prevented sparks from exiting the pipe.

Unlike conventional chimneys, the top of stove pipe did not have to be above the peak of the house for draft.

The price of a ton of pellets have gone up a little since we used them, but they ran around 150-200.00 a ton, depending on where u got them.  There was no furnace in the house in Ohio,  there were electric baseboard heaters in the bathroom, 3 in the living room, one in each of the 3 bedrooms, and one in the kitchen.

Tomorrow’s post will be about the heating and usage of pellets thru the winter months.

Solar Energy

The day may not be far off when the use of solar energy becomes a norm. There is now a deep conviction among experts that given a few years time, solar power will be in high demand that the cost will go down, inexpensive enough to undercut the prices of oil-generated electricity.
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For those of you that may be interested in building and using your own wind generator, for under 200.00 complete, check out this blue print below.

To read this free sample just left click and will open in another tab or window.  It is in PDF format so will need to have a way to open it on your computer.  Here is a link for the free Adobe Acrobat reader.

To download this book, right click and “save as”.

Please accept the blue print with my compliments.  Enjoy

Thank you

Go Green In Your Home – And Save Too

If you want to go green in your home, and save a little money at the same time, it’s never been easier. As the planet faces an uncertain future of global warming, which is believed to be the result of us all burning fossil fuels indiscriminately, we all have a duty to do the best we can to redress the balance. Here are some vital tips to help you get started…

Your home is where you spend a lot of your income, so it makes sense to be spending it as efficiently as possible. You can start to go green in your home by insulating the house. Loft insulation, wall cavity insulation, double or even triple glazing – it will all make a tremendous difference. Yes, there is an investment to consider, but you will save in the long term, and save a lot too.

We all use too much water. Go green in the home by cutting back as much as you can. We could all, collectively, save one billion gallons of water a year by changing our old flush toilet cisterns. The old ones use three and a half gallons per flush and the new high-efficiency ones use just over one and a quarter gallon. It makes a big difference! If you did only this to go green in the home you would save 20,000 gallons of water every year, and pay a lot less in water bills.

The standard light bulbs that most homes have are very inefficient. Compact fluorescent light bulbs burn around 5% of the old bulbs and they last 10 times longer. They may cost slightly more to buy initially, but this is an obvious way to go green in the home and save a bundle in the long run. But you can do even better, The new LED lights are almost twice as efficient as even the compact fluorescent light bulbs, and they will last even longer too.

Heat leaks out of a house in winter and into the house in summer. Better insulation all round is a great way to go green in the home. Look at your loft, your wall cavities, your windows and your doors. Sort out all of these and you can go green in the home and really save too.

Home utilities are a drain on energy. Did you know that modern washing powders are so good that they don’t really need hot water? your washing machine uses most of its energy heating the water, so wash your clothes cold. They will clean great while you go green in the home. You may think your dishwasher is also an energy drain, Strangely, it isn’t. If you use it fully filled it uses less resources than if you wash by hand. Once you know these little tips and tricks, it’s easy to go green in the home!

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