A Thought about Energy Costs

I've been reading lots of articles recently about the rising cost of oil making it more viable to drill hard to reach reserves. When previously this would have been too costly, now it looks more sensible for oil companies. This is obviously not the world's best news. However, the increase in energy costs is starting to make quite a few people think about going 'green'. This makes a lot of sense since people and companies generally care a lot about what's in their pocket. For many, 'going green' isn't so much about saving the environment, but saving money.

Last week, we went to the Green Car Guide show in Liverpool. The show was mainly geared towards businesses, but the message was clear: with rising fuel costs, businesses want more efficient cars, vans and trucks. It's a simple equation - greater efficiency means less fuel, meaning lower running costs. Of course, there are other potential benefits from greener cars (lower car tax, congestion charge exemptions, and even free parking). As costs rise, this will become increasingly important for businesses (and individuals).

The other thing I have been thinking about is the rising cost of home energy. A couple of days ago it was reported that energy bills could go up by 40% (an increase that could mean paying £400 more this winter for the average household). That's a huge increase. This is what got me thinking about the interconnectedness of the oil price rises. This could, and should, make people think about increasing their home energy efficiency. Yes, it does cost money - but as energy costs rise, so do the potential savings. The investment payback time is shrinking significantly now.

So people should be thinking about reducing their heating and electricity bills this winter. There's loads of things people can do: improve the insulation, ensure their boiler and heating system is efficient, double glaze (or even more..), use low energy lighting. Aside from that there are all the easy things like turning off lights. Like many things in life, we'll change only when we're forced to. The pinch on your wallet is definitely something that will do that.

Wasting water

Here's a concept - stop me if you've heard it before - how about you only pay for what you use? Those clever folks at the electricity and gas companies have been at it for years: install a meter and then charge your customers for what they actually use. Clever idea really. Much like the woman (or man) at the supermarket checkout that totals up your bill when you're paying.

Well, in recent years, those tardy folk at the water companies have decided to get in on this act. Water meters (!) - what a great idea. You can almost see the eureka moment when someone thought that they would charge for what people were using... So now, you can move from an estimated bill (the water 'rates' system) to an actual 'pay for what you use' bill. As you're going from a fixed rate to a variable rate, then (assuming your water use doesn't change) your water charges could go up or down. It would all depend on how much water you used compared to the rated estimate. Ofwat (the regulator) have a water usage calculator that allows you to compare your usage on a meter with their rated prices (but frankly I found the uswitch version to be more user friendly - and worked more reliably)


Anyway, we thought it would be a good idea to get a water meter. My reasoning is this: even if it means we pay more for our water, at least we're paying for what we're using. As such, it means we'll understand how much we use and waste - and help us reduce our water usage. Seems to make sense to me.

Apparently Ofwat and the Environment Agency agree. Apparently studies show that houses with meters use between 5 and 15% less water than those without meters. This seems to make sense - as soon as you realise you're paying for what you use, you'll probably use less. However, trawling through Ofwat reports and the internet, I haven't been able to confirm this - though the Environment Agency refer to this report by the UK Water Industry Research. Unfortunately, at £70, I wasn't buying a copy. Anyway, seems like a good idea to me - though so far, not that many people have jumped on the boat. Ofwat said that only 25% of Thames Water customers would be metered in 2007-8.

Anyway, so we had a meter installed (piccy above). This nice chap came along and told us how much money he makes installing meters. Only has to do a few a day (think it was 4) to meet his minimum target, then gets paid loads for any extra ones. He took all of about 15 minutes to do it, then was gone - though only after making my builders envious of his easy job and good money. Then a few hours later, we had a look at the meter, and yes, there was water dripping from it. Mr Overpaid not-a-real-Plumber managed to install a leaky meter. Well, actually, it's not the meter's fault - it's the way it was all installed. Builders were suitably annoyed that he's overpaid and can't do the job properly. Luckily, my builder is a plumber, and is going to fix the joints so it doesn't leak.

Big Crane, Heavy Steels

That's what you'd have seen if you came down my road yesterday morning. (At least if you were walking - if you were driving, you'd have seen one which said 'Road Closed'). Yesterday, was 'Crane' day. We've been waiting a long long time for this to happen - we had to close off the street to get a big crane in to lift up all sorts of steel beams and propping equipment (to stop the flats falling down).


You might wonder what on earth we're doing (we've thought the same thing a few times). Basically, in the re-design of the flat, we decided to make 2 structural changes - both of which should make a large impact on the living space. One is opening up the kitchen so that more light comes into it - currently we have a really light front room and a surprisingly dark kitchen. The other change is removing a wall in the bathroom so we can have a shower there.

Are these changes 'eco'? Well not really, but also yes. The improvements we're making to the flat should see it through a long while - and the structural ones should reduce the need for changes in the future. We went through a lot of agony deciding how best to make use of the strange floorplan the flat had, and how to turn it into a long term home. Aside from that, bringing light into the kitchen should make a big difference!

Refurbishment - Part 2 (or My flat is a building site)

Well, our builders have been busy. We now have a brand new hot water and central heating system, and a flat that's nowhere close to being lived in. In fact, most of everything has been ripped out.
And then they stopped working. So our flat's been a bit of a mess for a while. However, things are looking up and the builders are coming back in. Hopefully it'll be all hands on deck to turn this from a tip into a home.

Exciting toilets

I've never been quite so excited about a toilet before. Well, maybe that time my running team was coming back from Hastings with a case of beer and the toilet on the train wasn't working. This is something completely different though. Today, I took delivery of 2 wonderful low water toilets. These days we see dual flush toilets everywhere, so it might seem surprising that I'd be so excited by a toilet - but really, not all low flush toilets are the same!



We bought 2 Ifo Cera ES4 toilets from the Green Building Store. 1 is a wall hung version, the other is a back to wall, and both have a Thomas Dudley concealed cistern with a dual-flush ready siphon. The toilet has a full flush at 4.5 litres, and a short flush of 2. Aside from the incredibly low water usage (compared to normal valve toilets operating on 6/3 litres), the toilet is based on a siphon flush. So? (I can hear you saying).

If you go to the Green Building Store page on the ES4, there's a short video at the bottom of the page extolling the virtues of the siphon over the valve (http://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/es4-advantages.php). Most older toilets are likely to be siphons, whilst modern toilets are almost all valves. Where we're staying (during our house refurb) is a new-build house, and the dual flush toilet has exactly one of the problems described - the valve doesn't shut off correctly, so the tank keeps filling up and leaking into the pan. So if we don't pay attention, there's a huge amount of water that could be wasted. Siphons just don't do that - you have to 'pump' the water into the pan, so if it doesn't work properly, you just have to push a bit harder. The guys who developed the ES4 (combining the Swedish pan with the UK cistern) are called Solution Elements, and you can find out more about valves and siphons on their page (interesting discussion here).

Anyway, I'm excited. The Green Building Store were fantastic help, and the service was brilliant (I even got my builder to confirm a bunch of stuff with them). All I need to do is install them and test them out - I hope they live up to the hype.

Floorplans for dummies

Just when you thought Google had an application for just about anything you wanted (you've already explored the Earth, then you went to the stars), you find out that they have something to help you re-design your whole flat. I don't really know how to say this, other than - it's AMAZING. We've been struggling to work out how to plan our bathrooms for months - and we've had architects and bathroom shops 'helping', but all I really wanted to do is have a look to see how different things would look and fit together (like whether our shower door would be too close to the sink). So I went online to find a simple drawing program that allowed me to measure things easily so everything would be to scale - and found Google's SketchUp. This is the perfect partner for Google Earth, since it allows you to create 3D models which can be used within the Google Earth universe...but it's also one of the most helpful tools I've found to plan out our new home. And best of all it's free.

Basically, SketchUp is a CAD program that let's you build 3D models really quickly. You can then walk round your designs and try out different designs, layouts and finishes. It's meant I could try out different tiling options in seconds (and I even used real pictures of the tiles and finishes from the web). You can even find models/components that have been uploaded to Google for use in your own (like the toilet you see in the pic below - it would have taken me hours to make one that well). It's one of the easiest programs I've ever used.

My virtual shower room

So there you have it. I've now designed 2 incredibly eco-friendly bathrooms (they use no water, have no waste, but do consume some electricity - and required a bit of human fuel to create). Unfortunately, I'm going to use them to make real ones - but hopefully I now have a good idea what they're going to look like.

Getting into hot water

You might wonder why we overhauled the heating system in the first place. After all, you've got to figure that leaving things as they are has less of an environmental impact that refurbishing something. Well, this flat had a bit of a bizarre heating system, especially given its size. It had a combi boiler feeding the sinks and the heating system, but a large hot water cylinder with 2 electric immersion heaters that fed the showers. You find houses that have cylinders fed by the boiler (and often have back-up immersion heaters), but this was a little strange - and not that efficient. Couple this with a boiler that was going to need replacing at some stage in the not too distant future, we thought it was an appropriate time to put in a new system. Little did I know that it involved re-piping most of the flat to get it all working and to meet current standards.

So the plumbers descended en masse and managed to do everything in a matter of days. I missed the yellow gunk that came out of the hot water cylinder, which fed the showers (my builders thought it was disgusting), but I did catch the radiators being emptied:I'm told that our new system shouldn't ever end up black like that...

Why boilers are sexy

OK, so you know you're obsessed with your refurb when you talk to people about the boilers they're putting in and get all excited about flow rates and energy ratings. Well, in our place, the choice of boilers came down to this: Volkswagen or Mercedes. I had spent a fair while researching the very best boilers - going to everyone from the Energy Saving Trust to the Sedbuk database (Seasonal Efficiency of Domestic Boilers in the UK) - and basically I'd not moved massively forward. I was stuck with Vaillant, Viessmann and Worcester Bosch. All very efficient and seemingly all pretty good. So I put the question to our builder (aspiring to be a Corgi engineer) and our plumber. The response I got back was something like this: "they're all good boilers, but you've got imagine them like cars. A Worcester Bosch is like a Volkswagen, but a Viessmann is like a Mercedes." Err...ok, but I just want hot water.

In the end, we chose the Worcester Bosch. I'd asked the plumber which he prefers to install and deal with and he was unequivocal. It was also nice that the Green Homes people later suggested the same one. As did a friend of mine (graphic artist turned plumber turned interior decorator) enthusiastically agreed with the boiler assessment. So we are now the proud owners of fully operational hot water and central heating system. Gone is the old combi boiler and immersion heater (I'll mention that in another post) - in its place, a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 42CDi combi boiler.

So here are the beautiful 'before' and 'after' shots:

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")

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)

How do I get rid of all this stuff?

We're embarking on a complete refurbishment of the flat we bought.  First of all, you might think that a refurbishment is not the right thing to do in the first place - one of the lowest impact things to do would be to simply leave the flat as it is.  After all, the last people lived there perfectly happily.  Well, to be honest, I can't say we thought about that one for too long.  It's only really in retrospect that I've considered this.  However, I don't think we're doing the wrong thing.  You see, homes need to be upgraded periodically - hopefully not too frequently, but often enough to make sure that the places we live in are in good shape.  Also, as we've learnt more about energy efficiency, it makes sense to upgrade our homes - realising though, that some of the benefits may take a while to pay off.  In other words, we all need to maintain our homes, for ourselves and for those that may live there in the future.

With that in mind, we set out to get a few things right from the start - we wanted to replace the old (and slightly strangely but very ineffciently arranged) heating and hot water system with something more efficient; we wanted to use low impact materials for our floors and walls; and we wanted to put in as much energy efficient lighting as possible.  All that was a great plan to begin with, but we soon found ourselves with another problem.  Even though the flat seemed completely empty, as soon as we started taking the flat apart, we realised we were sitting on top of a huge amount of really useful stuff.

OK - what I mean by stuff is:

• an oven
• a fridge
• a gas hob
• 2 different sets of wood floors
• a carpet that was under the wood floor
• underlay that was under the carpet
• massive mirrored sliding doors
• 2 wooden cabinets
• 2 bathroom suites
• a bunch of old radiators
• 5 radiator covers
• a mirror
• 2 shower doors

So my goal became - How do I get rid of all this stuff?

At least, how do I get rid of it all without sending it to a landfill - or in our case, to our eco-friendly waste company that recycles as much as 80% of the waste they collect.  Keep tuned in to find out what happens.

Refurbishing - Part 1

Since we're refurbishing our flat, I thought it would be interesting to chart its progress here.

All the pictures in this post were taken by the previous owners before we bought the place. Hopefully, I'll be able to post more pictures as all the refurbishment work starts to happen.

We decided to make our refurb as eco-friendly as possible - but we realised pretty quickly how difficult it was to make choices that reflected that ideal. There simply isn't a 'best' way to do things - everything is a compromise of sorts, so you just have to do the best you can.

The Kitchen

In the kitchen, we're taking up the floors (some of which were damaged), replacing the appliances (the old owners already took the washing machine and dishwasher), boiler and the counters, but keeping the cupboards. By deciding to save the cupboards, we made things incredibly difficult on ourselves - anything new had to be sized to fit the existing layout and we're going to have to be really careful doing work around them.

Bedroom

The old hot water and heating system was a bit strangely set up - with both a combi boiler and an electric immersion heater. So we're changing the system along with replacing the boiler with something much more efficient. The bedrooms were set up in a strange way as well, so we're re-arranging the floorplan to make it a bit more sensible. However, this meant a lot of time with structural engineers and architects to get landlord's consent and the party wall sorted out. We're still not there on all of that, but we're hoping that the ridiculous amount of steel our engineer wants us to put in will keep everyone happy.