Low Flow Shower Head

As you may have noticed, I've been away from the blog for a bit. I was volunteering at the IIHF World Hockey Championships which left little time for much else. Community involvement is part of this project for me.

Anyway, on with the eco-friendly stuff: Today, I installed my new low flow shower head. It was part of the kit that I was given with the energy audit last month. Needless to say, this was a super-easy project that involved only about ten minutes, a bit of plumber's tape, and a pair of channel locks. Wham bam, done.

Testing it out was a bit more fun. It has three settings, excellent pressure, and all in all, makes for a very nice shower. The benefits are many: less water usage, less hot water and electricity used, improved pressure. As far as green projects go, this one is cheap and easy!

Bike to Work Day?

According to Wired, today is bike to work day! I totally missed it!

My bike needs to get into the shop, then I will see about biking in. My guess is that it will be very good for me, fitness-wise. There are a lot of ups and downs between home and work.

Questions about the Pop Can Furnace

I had a nice note from Mark in Ontario and I thought I'd share his questions and my answers about the pop can solar furnace... It's been cloudy for a few days, so I'm not getting any free heat this week!

Hi,

I saw your popcan solar furnace on your lowerfootprint.blogspot.com blog , and thought it was unique because all the other solar furnaces are for exterior installation and drilling holes in the house etc. Since we don't have any blank wall space on the south side, those plans aren't too useful. However your window version would work for us.

I'm hoping you wouldn't mind answering a few questions.

Did you put any covering over the pop cans?

What kind of hole did you put in the bottom of the cans and what tool did you use to make it?

Did you make a larger hole in the top of the cans?

What kind of glue did you use to join the cans together?

Thanks for the info.

I had the energy audit too (it cost me $375 in Ontario), and will be adding insulation to bring my attic to R50 this year.

Cheers,
Mark

Here's my response:

Hi Mark...

My second version will be a vertical window one, so I'll post more when I do that one...

1) Currently no covering on the pop cans. They're painted with heat-heat black bbq paint though.

2) The bottom of the cans were punched out using a "churchkey"... the can opener you'd use for opening a can of apple juice. The excess was simply folded into the can.

3) No extra hole in the top. It was part laziness, but also helps to cause some turbulence in the airflow, helping to pick up more heat perhaps. They weren't lined up or anything.

4) I taped the columns from side to side with black electrical tape. This first model is shockingly crude, but hey, it will built in about two hours, start to finish.

The new model will be an enclosed box, sized to fit vertically into a window in my solarium. It will have a glass or plexi front and top and bottom vents. I'm considering a set of shelves inside it, made of perforated material for airflow (possibly wood and my drill). The shelves would allow me to experiment with cans filled with water. I have a row of them on the windowsill and they get quite hot, but of course, keep the heat much longer.

Energy Audit

It's been so busy lately that I haven't had a chance to keep everyone up to date on the progress at home. Here's hoping I can catch up on everything in the next while.

My energy audit happened last week! Initially, I was a little underwhelmed because I had all these ideas of what cool stuff was going to be happening and that we'd been talking solar power and whether a VAWT would be a better choice. Well, we mostly talked insulation.

The good news is that my house is in pretty good shape, by all initial reports. The windows are still in decent shape (with one or two exceptions) and the house is insulated with the best available insulation in 1974. The contraption at the right is a fan unit that pressurized the whole house so we could see everywhere air, and thus heat, was leaking from the house. This part was pretty cool.

I'm waiting to receive the final report, but priority targets are as follows:

• fill cracks and leaks throughout the house (on my own)
  
• insulate the ceiling in the garage
• a new garage door and door from the garage to the house
• new siding and extra insulation around the outside of the house

Most of the above also bring government rebates and I have 18-months to get them done. I also need to install the remaining digital thermostats around the house. As seen previously, these pay for themselves in no time.

Peak Oil and the End of Suburbia?

Okay, so this is a bit alarmist, but it's a pretty good article in Business Week.

I was struck last week when the city knew that gas was going up by 6 cents, and cars were lined up four and five deep at the stations (idling all the while, of course). It could be a vision of things to come as gas prices will continue to increase well into the summer.

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everyone! Much to report, but no time at the moment! All will be revealed shortly!

Test Driving a Hybrid - Part I

So, thanks to my house-mate, I was able test drive a 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid last night. Very fun! Here are a few pics of the car to start.

On the right is the Hybrid Synergy Drive. This is the main component of the hybrid system. One part electric motor, one part computer, one part super-battery.



In this pic to the left, you can see the Synergy Drive on the front right, nestled between the pink fluid canister and the orange cables. The rest of the car's normal combustion engine is behind and to the left of the pink canister.

What immediately struck me about this car is that it is in main respects, identical to my 1993 Camry that I still drive everyday.


So, after checking this vehicle out, I'm left with the idea that we are already in the beginning of a major transformation. The hybrids are here and before we know it, all vehicles will have this technology and in a few years, you may not be able to buy a typical vehicle without this system. For those of us who want even more efficiency, we might find versions with a few compromises in style or size, but overall, I'd expect that our average consumption of gasoline is about to go down dramatically.

In the next segment, I'll show you some of the displays within the car and what it was like to drive.