Found a link to this web site recently. It contains all the geeky and non-geeky IT humour with some exceptions. Well, it puts a smile on my haggard old features. It is hereby added to the sidebar.
Today is a house hunting day. Today Wife and I will be driving around (Much less painful now gas is down to 109.9 a litre locally) visiting all the "Open houses" (Houses for sale which have been spiffed up for visitors) in a given area. Not that we're going to buy anything yet, we're just shopping for ideas to get an idea of what's available. We have our roles for this exercise; I will alternately dazzle with brilliance and baffle with bullshit, and Wife will switch between making notes, going 'Ooo' at interesting features, and acting as my 'straight man' in our well rehearsed double act.
Aims and objectives are;
1) Finding stuff we like
2) Finding stuff we like but is impractical
3) Seeing how much leeway there is in asking prices
4) Watching the Realtors eyes glaze over as I ask ever more questions they cannot possibly know the answers to (Always a good one to get away from a 'pressure sell')
Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Let 'er buck!
It's a long time since I was at the wheel of a 4x4. The last time was over fifteen years ago driving a Land Rover Defender in a sideways skid over a rain-slicked English meadow.
To put the previous paragraph in perspective; yesterday was spent driving up and down dirt roads and tracks in search of a suitable piece of land for us to build. We found a few, but some were priced way out of our budget. The property market over here in BC has yet to nosedive like in the UK and US but the cracks are already showing with a fair amount of US owned property going up for sale. Looks like we'll have to look harder and further than we thought.
However, Dog has claimed the back seat of the 4x4 for himself, it is his, and the moment we walk past it he is up and waiting by the passenger door. I'm surprised at this, because normally he hates cars and gets seriously travel sick. Yet this self same mutt hunkers down on the back seat while we're bouncing and jouncing over potholes and ruts like a Kangaroo on steroids. Go figure, as they say over here.
On one occasion yester'e'en, we'd found ourself at the bottom of a sixty degree slope, Dog was sitting up, eyes bright and happy. I took a look at the proposed climb and slipped the shift into four wheel drive. Wife looked sidelong at me as she understood what I was about to ask our little SUV to do. Then a broad grin cracked her face and she said quietly. "Okay Jones, let 'er buck." We surged up that slope like a mountain goat and bounced onto the track, whooping and cheering like teenagers.
What's even better is that we get better gas mileage with the SUV than our van. Damn. I'd forgotten how much damn fun this could be.
To put the previous paragraph in perspective; yesterday was spent driving up and down dirt roads and tracks in search of a suitable piece of land for us to build. We found a few, but some were priced way out of our budget. The property market over here in BC has yet to nosedive like in the UK and US but the cracks are already showing with a fair amount of US owned property going up for sale. Looks like we'll have to look harder and further than we thought.
However, Dog has claimed the back seat of the 4x4 for himself, it is his, and the moment we walk past it he is up and waiting by the passenger door. I'm surprised at this, because normally he hates cars and gets seriously travel sick. Yet this self same mutt hunkers down on the back seat while we're bouncing and jouncing over potholes and ruts like a Kangaroo on steroids. Go figure, as they say over here.
On one occasion yester'e'en, we'd found ourself at the bottom of a sixty degree slope, Dog was sitting up, eyes bright and happy. I took a look at the proposed climb and slipped the shift into four wheel drive. Wife looked sidelong at me as she understood what I was about to ask our little SUV to do. Then a broad grin cracked her face and she said quietly. "Okay Jones, let 'er buck." We surged up that slope like a mountain goat and bounced onto the track, whooping and cheering like teenagers.
What's even better is that we get better gas mileage with the SUV than our van. Damn. I'd forgotten how much damn fun this could be.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Power number crunching
Have been spending time over the past few days at Wife's behest, doing some ballpark power calculations for a domestic power system that is independent of the grid. No matter which way you cut it, Solar doesn't quite add up. The cost / benefit analysis still comes up short even in the medium to long term. Small Wind turbines don't give anywhere near the power required to heat and light the average home. This is including factoring in the use of Ground heat pumps and various types of heat exchangers.
A moderate Solar panel, for my calculations I picked a model manufactured by Mitsubishi rated at 120w with a generating area of about 0.6 square metres. According to the sources I've seen, even on sunny days you are likely to get no better than 30w per panel; possibly as low as 10w per panel on cloudy or winter days, and that's just during daylight. To get even close to a houses daily power requirement my back of a cigarette packet calculations tell me I need 20 panels at a cost of about CDN$13,000 in total. Then there is the cost of the wiring and the inverter, which bump that up to a grand total of roughly CDN$22,000. This is without factoring in the cost of a solar powered hot water system and ground heat pump, which I estimate (Ball park figure only) at around the CDN$10,000. Not sure about the installation costs, but I'm sure the price tag hovers around CDN$5-6,000 at the very least. To be on the safe side, let's call it a round CDN$40,000 or £20,000 for a system that will only give value for money if the sun shines a lot.
Working on a yearly energy bill of around CDN$2000 I've worked out that amortising the installation / maintenance costs of a solar / wind energy solution will take the best part of 20 years, minimum. Mind you, that's for heating, cooking, hot water, everything; and relies very heavily upon us investing heavily in high value insulation installation / low energy house design. That entails another level of cost, but only (From what I'm told) increases the build price by 15 - 20%.
Now there is something I've been looking at that will provide more than enough electricity for our and our children's and grandchildren's needs, given the right site. Good old fashioned Hydro electric power. Micro systems retail at under CDN$10,000, allowing another CDN$10,000 for permits, engineering works etc and can provide power 24 / 7 being largely independent of the weather, excluding drought of course. System life tends to be measured in decades with only moderate maintenance, and can pay for itself within 10 years.
On the surface, a micro hydro plant looks the better solution. This bears further investigation. That can wait for another day. I have a small but significant headache and think I should get outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Good idea.
A moderate Solar panel, for my calculations I picked a model manufactured by Mitsubishi rated at 120w with a generating area of about 0.6 square metres. According to the sources I've seen, even on sunny days you are likely to get no better than 30w per panel; possibly as low as 10w per panel on cloudy or winter days, and that's just during daylight. To get even close to a houses daily power requirement my back of a cigarette packet calculations tell me I need 20 panels at a cost of about CDN$13,000 in total. Then there is the cost of the wiring and the inverter, which bump that up to a grand total of roughly CDN$22,000. This is without factoring in the cost of a solar powered hot water system and ground heat pump, which I estimate (Ball park figure only) at around the CDN$10,000. Not sure about the installation costs, but I'm sure the price tag hovers around CDN$5-6,000 at the very least. To be on the safe side, let's call it a round CDN$40,000 or £20,000 for a system that will only give value for money if the sun shines a lot.
Working on a yearly energy bill of around CDN$2000 I've worked out that amortising the installation / maintenance costs of a solar / wind energy solution will take the best part of 20 years, minimum. Mind you, that's for heating, cooking, hot water, everything; and relies very heavily upon us investing heavily in high value insulation installation / low energy house design. That entails another level of cost, but only (From what I'm told) increases the build price by 15 - 20%.
Now there is something I've been looking at that will provide more than enough electricity for our and our children's and grandchildren's needs, given the right site. Good old fashioned Hydro electric power. Micro systems retail at under CDN$10,000, allowing another CDN$10,000 for permits, engineering works etc and can provide power 24 / 7 being largely independent of the weather, excluding drought of course. System life tends to be measured in decades with only moderate maintenance, and can pay for itself within 10 years.
On the surface, a micro hydro plant looks the better solution. This bears further investigation. That can wait for another day. I have a small but significant headache and think I should get outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Good idea.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
House dreaming
One of the things Wife and I crossed a third of the world to do, apart from bring Wife back to her homeland, was to build a family home for the generations to come. Not just any home mark you, but a mostly self sufficient house with non-dependent heating systems, water, electrical power etc to keep me and mine safe and snug, even if the rest of the world went to hell in a handbasket.
There are others who have tried this approach with their 'back to nature' model with such measures as earth closets. I like my plumbing a little more sophisticated, and while crossing Canada was reminded of the noisome horror of such toilets in the height of summer. Besides, I want it to be a place I am happy to admit guests to, and don't want them going home with stories about 'roughing it'. I've done my share of sleeping under hedgerows, in sheds, and smoky, poky little rooms, and quite frankly that's for masochists. My thoughts circulate around a well constructed and insulated shell with an open plan feel about it. That and a comfortable bed to sleep in at night.
To this end, Wife and I have spent months poring over house designs, studying issues like 'passive solar heating', air circulation, power generation and heating. All of the aforementioned appear at the moment of writing to be little more than partial solutions. Especially just above the 49th parallel. More research is needed.
There are others who have tried this approach with their 'back to nature' model with such measures as earth closets. I like my plumbing a little more sophisticated, and while crossing Canada was reminded of the noisome horror of such toilets in the height of summer. Besides, I want it to be a place I am happy to admit guests to, and don't want them going home with stories about 'roughing it'. I've done my share of sleeping under hedgerows, in sheds, and smoky, poky little rooms, and quite frankly that's for masochists. My thoughts circulate around a well constructed and insulated shell with an open plan feel about it. That and a comfortable bed to sleep in at night.
To this end, Wife and I have spent months poring over house designs, studying issues like 'passive solar heating', air circulation, power generation and heating. All of the aforementioned appear at the moment of writing to be little more than partial solutions. Especially just above the 49th parallel. More research is needed.
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