Energy efficiency in historic homes

[Penners]

I've got a friend who used to have roughly the same amount of land as you, and he did just that - kept a couple of four-legged lawnmowers (otherwide known as sheep).

All very practical and charming until you have to dip them against the scab. The only way he had of doing this was to fill an old galvanised coldwater storage tank with noxious chemicals, then he and I would grab two legs each, upend the poor creature and dunk it unceremoniously in the tank.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Well, we are on the National Grid and I can't say it's without problems. However - I think many smaller local schemes may be the way to go. In rural areas, I see small turbines springing up all over next to buildings. Will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

On land the effect of the exhaustion of the coal supply will be even more marked than on sea. Every building could be supplied with its own windmill, to use the motive power that wanders where it listeth on its roof top to turn wheels that will lift its elevators, generate electricity for its machinery; pump its water supply and do all that coal now makes possible in the machine room; sails on our factories, sails on our mills and in our shipyards to catch the slightest breath that blows and turn it into a means of moving the wheels of progress; wind power utilized everywhere as the servant of man, free for every one, working silently as a great force while the world sleeps. Possibly the exhaustion of the coal supply of the earth may turn out to be something of a blessing when it is considered how difficult and dangerous it is to wrest from the ground the hidden resources of nature for use as fuel, and how natural and easy it is to make the power of wind do the work now done by coal.

Lord Kelvin, 1902.

 

[Nemesis]

Problem is, all those turbines seem to require at the moment a great deal of energy in manufacture and transport. Then there's all the other associated costs of turning that power into something we can store and use.

Maybe we should make our own from local materials.

Now, where's that axe...

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Problem is, all those turbines seem to require at the moment a great deal of energy in manufacture and transport. Then there's all the other associated costs of turning that power into something we can store and use.

Maybe we should make our own from local materials.

Now, where's that axe...

A windmill is a big cumbersome thing and I cannot think it possible that progressive men will settle down contented to go back to this primitive method of obtaining power. I have a windmill on my own property, but I never thought it amounted to much, except for pumping water. Wind power, as every schoolboy knows, can be used for generating electricity, but the horsepower thus obtained would not be adequate to the demands of this bustling age.

There is wood enough in the forests of South America to supply the world with fuel for 50,000 years. Wood as fuel takes up more space than coal, but it must be remembered that we are constantly economizing on the amount of fuel necessary to do a given amount of work. The quantity of fuel used to run a locomotive is being reduced as the machine is perfected and the engineers learn to make the coal box smaller without reducing the speed of the engine. By the time the coal supply is exhausted it may be possible to burn wood with equally good results.

Thomas Edison, 1902

 

[Nemesis]

Well, steam yacht Gondola is now running on wood, but I'm not sure that the world population explosion, and the vast increase in energy demand, were factored in to that opinion.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Well, steam yacht Gondola is now running on wood, but I'm not sure that the world population explosion, and the vast increase in energy demand, were factored in to that opinion.

Edison does sometimes tend to come across as a sort of dress rehearsal for Jeremy Clarkson.

 

[biffvernon]

Problem is, all those turbines seem to require at the moment a great deal of energy in manufacture and transport.

Energy payback time for large turbines is typically a few months. That's not a problem.

 

[Nemesis]

Unless of course you find large turbines a blot on lovely landscapes, when it is a problem.

But we go round and round... which seems more than some turbines do.

 

[biffvernon]

Funnily enough, there have only been a few hours on two days in the past month since the last of the 20 turbines I can see from my garden have not been going round and round. But then there's not much between us and the Urals.

 

[Lime]

Edison does sometimes tend to come across as a sort of dress rehearsal for Jeremy Clarkson.

Edison was a man who qualified for the term genius IMO.
He was a giant in early technology and often sneered at by those with paper qualifications but few ideas.

Unlike Leonardo de Vinci he put his ideas into practice.
Today's modern world owes him a lot.

 

[Penners]

Funnily enough, there have only been a few hours on two days in the past month since the last of the 20 turbines I can see from my garden have not been going round and round.

The same is true of the small (6kW) turbine at our local pub. It was put up about 18 months ago, and I've been amazed at how rarely it's stationary. You can stand in the field and think, "Hmmm - not much wind today", but there it is, whizzing around like a good 'un.

Can't be the Urals effect, though, because our wind is predominently a south-westerly.

 

[Nemesis]

Odd, cos oop north where we are told giant turbines work best, especially in beautiful countryside, I often see them not going round or going round very slowly.

Small ones seem to whizz, although I wouldn't care for the noise some seem to make too close to my house. Maybe that will improve in time.

 

[Flyfisher]

Edison does sometimes tend to come across as a sort of dress rehearsal for Jeremy Clarkson.

Edison was a man who qualified for the term genius IMO.
He was a giant in early technology and often sneered at by those with paper qualifications but few ideas.

Unlike Leonardo de Vinci he put his ideas into practice.
Today's modern world owes him a lot.

Does that imply that Jeremy Clarkson is a sneered at genius, unrecognised in his own time? Scary thought :shock:

 

[Lime]

Edison does sometimes tend to come across as a sort of dress rehearsal for Jeremy Clarkson.

Edison was a man who qualified for the term genius IMO.
He was a giant in early technology and often sneered at by those with paper qualifications but few ideas.

Unlike Leonardo de Vinci he put his ideas into practice.
Today's modern world owes him a lot.

Does that imply that Jeremy Clarkson is a sneered at genius, unrecognised in his own time? Scary thought :shock:

The relation between Clarkson and Edison is not of my making.
However if asked I'd say there were several orders of magnitude difference.
We use Edison's inventions all the time and every day, our world would grind to a halt without them, what has Clarkson done to be even considered for comparison?

 

[Flyfisher]

I'm certainly no Clarkson apologist. Who knows what future generations will make of his ramblings? But there's no doubt that plenty sneer at him today.

 

[Nemesis]

Well he's turned into a bit of a caricature but no doubt it's made him millions.

I have a small word to say in his favour and he did join the campaign to save the Brunel Pumping Station at Totnes, which I think maybe helped to get the listing decision (refusal) overturned! Certainly he helped gain max publicity for the case.

http://periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9088&p=103453&hilit=Totnes#p103453

 

[Craig]

Makes good TV programmes, as well. :shock:

 

[biffvernon]

Wasn't Edison responsible for the incandescent lightbulb, and thereby the doom of humanity? If only he had been clever enough to invent the compact flourescent

 

[Nemesis]

Swan.

http://www.timmonet.co.uk/html/body_joseph_swan.htm

 

[Lime]

Wasn't Edison responsible for the incandescent lightbulb, and thereby the doom of humanity? If only he had been clever enough to invent the compact flourescent

and

Swan.

Like all of our past it is seen in 20:20 vision but it depends on who's doing the lookin'!

For what it's worth, Edison's patents:

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledisonpatents.htm

Unlike many inventors who specialise in the particular, Edison turned his attention to nearly everything.
The patent list (which is quite impressive) is only a tiny part of his work.