Bike theft

Since my last post mentioned that we had a bike stolen, I thought I'd put up one of my favorite clips from YouTube. Considering that our Mayor is trying to get us to use bikes more often, you would have thought it was worth doing a bit more to protect cyclists from theft. Right now, if your bike gets stolen, the police aren't really interested at all (after all - there's not much they can do after the fact). Anyway, here's a clip that might help people be a bit more questioning when they see someone with a hacksaw...

Low Energy Doll's House in Trafalgar Sq

Last Tuesday was a little strange. I woke up to a text message from a friend, telling me that he saw me on TV. We had been interviewed for the BBC yesterday, but weren't expecting it to be on this quickly. Turned out there was a mini clip of us on the BBC London news all through the day. That's definitely our 15 minutes of fame up.

Anyway, that night, the LDA and Ten UK launched their Green Homes Concierge service in Trafalgar Square. Actually, it was launched in a little house known as No. 1 Lower Carbon Drive, on the South East Corner of the square. It's a green house show case exhibition with examples of various things you can do to improve the energy performance of your home. Apparently they need to sign up 30 customers and have them implement energy saving measures to offset the cost of building the exhibition I'm sure it's informative for a lot of people and it's certainly pretty at night (!). The LDA's climate change website has info on visiting the house - but it's only there until 16th December, if you want to check it out.


So after I left the launch party to go 'home' to the short-let studio we're renting, I walked past the 'secure' bike park where one of our bikes has been locked up (with 2 different sturdy locks to an immovable bike D-stand)...only to find that the bike had been stolen. All that remained were the feeble looking remnants of the heavy chain lock. So much for our green transport. We figured that now we're celebs, we probably have stalkers looking for our memorabilia.

TV clips...ugh

So I mentioned that we were doing some filming for the Green Homes Concierge Service. It was originally some promotional stuff and then an interview with the BBC yesterday. We get to look daft and ramble on and on

Here are the links to the clips - let me know what you think:

BBC News (web link to the streaming clip on the BBC - NB, the comments at the end of the piece are about the British Gas project, not this one)

Green Homes/London Climate Change (go to the second tab "The Review")

What I've got rid of so far

So far I've managed to save a bunch of re-usable stuff from being sent to the tip, although we have also caved and allowed our builders to send 1 load off so they had space to work (more on that later).

So here's what I've managed to pass on:

• hotpoint electric oven and gas hob
  
• hotpoint fridge
• 1 set of wood floors
• 3 mirrored sliding doors
• 1 wooden cabinets
• 8 old radiators
• 2 radiator covers

In case you're wondering, most of those have gone by way of the wonderful Gumtree. OK, so for most people, it would probably not be worth the time and effort to post and get rid of all these things. In order to make sure they moved, I set the prices pretty low, so I don't think the money has been worth it - but despite this, I'm really really pleased with finding new homes for all that stuff so far.

The main thing for me is that people are going to re-use the stuff. We often talk about recycling these days, but that's not always the same as re-using. I'd rather have someone re-use the flooring that was in the flat, than send it to a wood chipper to be recycled - it's pretty obviously a better option. It's been great for the people buying the stuff (I hope) and it's great for me, as it reduces stuff that gets taken away as waste.

Speaking of waste...Our builder had originally set the challenge of trying to do the whole flat without sending anything to the tip. Unfortunately, that hope went out the window pretty quickly as things weren't selling quickly enough and the builders needed the space. So we did relent and send some waste off with a company called AnyJunk. Green Homes helped us find these guys - they recycle a bunch of what they pick up and are part of the London Community Recycling Network. They filled a truck (labour included) of our building waste for £280. So we didn't quite get away with everything being re-used, but at least any of the waste that can be recycled is going to be.

Our little flat on TV

This morning we were interviewed by BBC London about the refurb we're doing. We got a free home energy audit a month or so ago from Green Homes in return for letting them do some promotional filming with us (read - many many hours of filming us talking about the same things over and over again). Green Homes is now launching a full London-wide service with the LDA - with a big event in Trafalgar Sq - so the BBC came round to have a chat with us about how we're trying to minimise the impact of our refurbishment and make the flat as energy efficient as possible.

Green Homes is providing a 'concierge' type service to Londoners - so you get a home energy audit and then a year's worth of support on trying to implement the measures they recommend. So, they advise on the obvious stuff - boilers, insulation and lighting - but also things like where to find environmentally friendly carpet underlay. Basically, they're helping us research lots of bits and pieces to make our flat as nice as possible whilst being as low impact as possible. Useful for busy people trying to do a refurb or for people that just don't know where to start with choosing an new boiler.

As soon as the (no doubt, awful) clips from the BBC appear on the net, I'll put a link here.

added on 4 December
Here are the links to the clips:
BBC News
Green Homes/London Climate Change (in the second tab - The Review)