Sunday 21 February 2010

Sunday 21st February 10

Got up at 9 as I'd arranged to meet a Freecycler who had asked for some compost. My response was to offer one free sack, which I could deliver (for free too!) But I said that if he wanted to have more than one sack, then I wouldn't be willing to give him the extra ones for free, and that I'd swap, barter or be happy with a donation for the extra ones.

He emailed back absolutely delighted! And asked when would be convenient to visit. We arranged this morning at 10.30. But when I got up I saw that it had snowed quite heavily overnight. I sent him a message suggesting that it might be best to reconsider this morning's meeting, and postpone it until later in the week. He phoned me back and said he'd been thinking the same thing. We arranged another meeting.

So I had a lazy morning in some ways... watched Country Tracks, which had some info on the new Feed In Tariff (or was that Countryfile this evening?) and did bits of washing up and fruit preparation.

After Gardeners Question Time on R4 I cycled down to see Richard who told me the saga of how he cut his hair, by accident (!), and I bought a large pile of goodies, and loaded up my trailer with 2 x 20kg sacks and 3 x at-least 15kg boxes of compostables, and slowly cycled home, stopping off at the Co-op for hommous, margarine and goats milk.

I was asked to come in to ensure that peace had broken out, and when this seemed to have happened, I had half an hour in the back garden to take the compostables down to the current heap... which has an internal temperature of over 60 Celcius, even though there's snow all around.

I got too cold to continue chopping up green potatoes so I came in.

Gill had made a spaghetti and Quorn mince thing, just as an experiment, but neither child liked the Quorn, although I didn't mind it. The mince version is far better than chunks. I like the fact it's made from a soil mould! Watched Countryfile.

The rest of the evening was peaceful. Thank goodness!

3 comments:

James said...

John

How is the solar hot water going?

Compost John said...

Hi James, I've just been up to the loft to see the temperature on the inlet pipe to the tank from the panels, and the temperature is 39.1 degrees Celcius. This means that if I were to run the boiler, for a shower perhaps, the water would flow into the boiler, and the valve would blend that water down to 24 degrees with cold water, for the boiler to take it up to 46 degrees which is what temperature we want it to come out of the tap.
A bit later today, the temperature in the tank will probably exceed 46 degrees, and then the valves next to the boiler will by-pass the boiler if we ran the hot water, and if the water gets hotter than that, there is a valve which would blend the very hot solar water down to a safe tap-exit temperature.
I was surprised to see how warm the panels were getting, on a sunny February day with the outside temperature at about 6 degrees.
Thanks for asking.
But I'm using water off the top of the stove at the mo for washing up, baths etc, but not for the shower...
John

Anonymous said...

hya! glad you've had atleast one peaceful evening! good luck with everything and my wishes for your happiness. yours jess.