How to use The Compost Bin.
Welcome to The Compost Bin, which contains my musings on my life. Here I blog about my day, using this cyberspace as a sort of diary. I live in Herefordshire with my husband and 9 year old daughter. We have 4 acres of land which contains a woodland, small orchard, garden and veg plot. We grow our own organic fruit and veg and make lots of cider, wine, jam and chutney. We share our lives with 18 Chickens, 3 Cats, a Guinea Pig and assorted wildlife!
I work as an Environmental Educator and am a Forest School Leader, working with adults and children. I am also a Master Composter, a volunteer community compost adviser. I teach organic gardening and run various craft workshops, where we make beautiful objects from natural and recycled materials. I also teach woodcraft skills, composting (there's a surprise!) and chicken keeping.
So, I might talk about; what we have been doing on our patch of land and in our wood, my environmental education work, the chickens and their funny ways, how to grow veg, the fun things our cats get up to, self sufficiency and what it actually means, more general environmental issues, composting, making various crafty stuff, happy and sad times here, living a more frugal lifestyle, making and mending and re-using and re- cycling stuff, living more lightly and my views on life in general.
I hope you enjoy your time spent inside The Compost Bin.
Remember to click on the photos to make them full size!
Oh joy!
Compost Mansions has a new addition! Its up, on the S E ish face of the(newly tiled) roof !
Compostman starting to carry tubes up the scaffolding yesterday afternoon
Work partly done, yesterday afternoon. Heavy rain called a halt to proceedings yesterday
But the tubes were still getting the water to a respectable temperature this morning with only half of them installed...
Late this morning and all tubes are plugged in and working.
So the temperature of the water in the tubes rose...
And rose....we have NOT had a very sunny day here today, it has been warm but not hot, and overcast at times. BUT by 4.30 pm it was blooming hot in those tubes! 49 celsius!
Can I just say here that Compostman is an absolute STAR for installing this system, he has worked really hard these last few weeks to get all the parts together and install it and I love him very much indeed.
oooohh I can't wait to have a shower :-)
13 comments:
Congratulations! I am very envious. Well done Compostman.
how exciting. I hope it works perfect.
Wo, that is GREAT! How is your girl?
Oh wow wow!!! thats marvelous you lucky things!! am envious too lol!
Hope you are all on the mend now,if not all those hot showers will soon pep you up ay?
GTM x xx
Wonderful CW... I think solar paneling is brilliant and already you are reaping the rewards!! Clever Mr CW who obviously does not mind heights either (trembling at the though!!!)
So very glad CG is on the mend... was becoming very concerned for you and of course CG!
I hope CG enjoys the next three days at school and you can now begin to relax after such a trying and difficult time!!
You are in my thoughts!!
Much Love, Jane xxx
He seriously is a star for doing that.
Funnily enough I'm just reading "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air," by David JC MacKay. I noticed in there, that if you are going to use solar power, then domestically, your option seems to be the best one. You'll even be able to have a bath now after digging, and not feel guilty.
Good to see you posting again too.
Okay, so I am excited for you, but a little confused.
Is there water in the tubes? And where does the water come from? Or are the tubes an alternative to solar panels? Can you explain more here in the states I am a bit lost as to what this about. Some form of solar water heating, but that's about it. I would like to know the how (and the what).
Thanks.
PS Glad to hear CG is on the mend.
There is water in the tubes, which are like giant va ccumn flasks . This water gets heated by sunlight and goes off to a heat exchanger coil inside the hot water tank in the house. The tank also has a coil from the oil boiler and the electric immersion heater.
When the solar thermal tubes produce enough hot water, the water in the tank is heated up by that alone and the oil boiler doesn't come on.
BUT even if the solar thermal tubes aren't making ALL the hot water they are helping to raise the temp of the water in the hot tank, so the oil boiler has less to do and so uses less oil to get the water in the tank up to the set temp.
At the moment we are getting hot water for free :-) but we need to rejig our consumption times to coincide with when the solar hot water is produced...so showers in the middle of the day and running appliances during the day, so the tank can be re heated by sunshine...rather than showering last thing at night so the tank is then heated next morning using oil...that sort of thing!
But this is only Day 1, so we have a lot of experimenting/playing around to do with it yet... :-)
But thats what Cm and I used to do at work....scientific experiments!
:-)
Hope this has clarified things a bit for you?
And yes, Cg is much improved..still a bit wobbly but much better.
What an absolute gem you have there in Compostman. Well done him.
Margaret
Just had a solar shower :-)
despite it being dull and overcast here, we have used no oil the last 2 days for hot water....
:-)
Cg still being "difficult" though...(sigh)
wonderful! I envy you.
I have just shown my other half this and he was suitably impressed. He's been waxing lyrical lately about solar power panels, so this got his attention!
GOOD WORK Compostman! Hope you enjoyed that shower, hope Compostman has had a good long (hot) soak after all that work too!!!
Hi Sarah
Congratulations on getting the solar water heating installed. My DH installed ours a few months ago; I got my quartely gas bill yesterday, and it was A THIRD of what it was for the same quarter last year (we have Gas central Heating - which hasn't been on this quarter - and a gas hob which we use a lot because we do a lot of preserving. The saving's all down to the "free" hot water!
I also wanted to let you know that the Dorkings are settling in well. We tried them on pasta today, they loved it!
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