Saturday 9 January 2010

Saturday 9th January 10

A reasonable day... Gill was getting ready to take our two and a friend to see Avatar, so I went to the baker and the Co-op and by the time I got back they were gone.

I did a bit on the computer and had lunch, and washed up, then went outside and did more woodpile. Also started to dig out a semi-finished pallet-bin and turn it into it's neighbour, to make way for the stuff which is currently awaiting it's final resting place alongside sawdust, hedge trimmings, straw and cardboard, and some warmer weather! I got very cold and was glad to come back in.

Gill had made a pizza dough before going out and when I got in, she was in the middle of cooking a pizza for the children. All of them had enjoyed Avatar, though the glasses had made Gill's eyes water.

So, a nice pizza for tea, with home-made baked beans. I'd done these earlier today: beans from the garden, soaked and boiled, then drained and put with a litre of out of date tomato juice, and brought to the boil again and left on the stove for a couple of hours simmering. Not bad at all!

The boys watched The Simpsons Movie on TV whilst I played Scrabble on facebook and waited for the bathwater to heat up enough on the stove for my bath.

Through facebook I was pleased to learn about the latest news from Georgina Downs' campaign to prevent pesticides being sprayed near where people live. She won in the High Court and the Government appealed and her victory was overturned. So she's taking the case to the European Court, and I hope she wins. See here for today's article in The Ecologist . The other thing I found was that the Royal Mail, apparently, are going to reduce the number of posties who use bicycles, and replace them with vans. How stupid is that? If you feel the same as me, and live in the UK, you can sign this 'Number 10' petition to the Prime Minister: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Royalmailbikes/

2 comments:

James said...

John

What do you think to these?

http://www.ecofan.co.uk/

Compost John said...

Hi James, I have two models of these as I was very curious about the Seebeck semiconductor which generates a current when one side of the chip is hot and the other cooler.

I believe these are mainly a 'boy's toy' gizmo gadget; a good stove will generate lots of convection currents and no need to try to set up a different sort of airflow. I noticed no difference in our rooms in the warming ability of the stoves with these.

What they are really good for is drying fruit. If you put a cake-drying rack full of fruit near the stove top, you burn the underside of the fruit and the top remains wet. But if you aim an ecofan over the fruit, this seems to speed the drying and stop any burning.

My other issue is that they need to be placed with their back to a cool air flow... meaning, with both my stoves, one of the sides, pointing across the hot surface. My ecofans do not work so well with their back to the back of the stove, taking air which has been warmed between the back of the stove and the wall behind, and blowing it out into the room. So I rarely use them.

Bit of fun, boy's toy, demonstrates a technology very well, could assist fruit drying if you need to speed-dry stuff close to the stove surface. But warming parts of the room that the stove didn't already heat, no.

Hope this helps.
John