So this weekend is Open House in London. It’s where places sign up to be open to the public and people can go and look around buildings for free.
The one that caught my eye is 3 Acorns which is a Victorian house owned by Donnachadh McCarthy, an eco-auditor (amongst other things). He converted his 1840’s Victorian terrace home into a retro-eco home, just like I want to do!
Unfortunately I am busy this weekend, so probably won’t be able to go visit (although I might try to regardless), but I have been reading his website with great interest.
The first thing that came to mind is I was dismayed that his wind turbine was not producing much electricity at all! I may need to rethink my ideas for a micro-turbine. However his one was installed in November 2005. I am hoping that in 2014 when I am ready to start thinking about turbines that Ecotricity’s Urbine is ready for market. My hope is that it will be more efficient (due to being vertical axis) to make it a viable option (although I guess depending on whether the area the house is situated gets enough wind is a bigger consideration). Also I don’t know what the garden situation would be like, but I’d prefer a free standing turbine as they are supposed to be more efficient (but more expensive). So that might eliminate the problem the 3 acorns house is experiencing with vibrations.
Then the second thought was, I don’t think that this is a good model for a sustainable house. Obviously Donnachadh knows what he is talking about and has created a house that has achieved exactly what I want to do, but… I don’t like the idea of a wood burner.
Yes you can argue that it’s carbon neutral as the carbon produced from burning the wood is offset by the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere as the tree grew. But this is not what I take issue with.
I want my house to be energy independent. His house used 48 wheelie bins of wood in a year. It is reliant on there being a supply of wood. Obviously this isn’t going to be a problem for one household, but if you were to scale this up and asking every house in the country to become carbon neutral, where would you get enough wood?
Also a common complaint of non-environmentalists is that we all want society to regress so we’re all back living in caves. These people are of course idiots, but I do think that we have the technological advancements that allow us to have a zero carbon house without having to resort to huddling round a wood fire to keep warm. I think people are more willing to make a switch to renewables / low carbon solutions if they are easy and familiar and seem like an 'upgrade'.
If you are producing enough electricity to feed back in to the grid, why not use that electricity to heat the house? Of course it might not be viable, or it may be more efficient to do things this way. I guess the only way to find out would be to visit the house on Open House weekend!
Regardless, it's provided me with a lot of inspiration, hopefully I'll be able to surpass 3 Acorns.
No comments:
Post a Comment