Christmas wish list

It can be rather difficult to be festive and green and the same time! 2 weeks ago I wrote about the measures I am taking to make our Christmas slightly greener this year, but I am slightly concerned that I blew absolutely everything this weekend when we had 14 people over for a christmas party. Not good! Well the party was good, but I think we just about blew a weeks energy use in one day... (Fact is I haven't had the guts yet to read the meters, so I don't know for sure, but I have a strong feeling that when I do the weekly readings there will be a massive spike). I always knew that the usage would be slightly higher than normal, but I hadn't realised how having guests can give you completely different priorities for the day. (Unless all your visitors are eco-freaks like yourself!)



We left the heating on for most of the day, because we obviously didn't want people to get too cold. Lights were left on in most rooms downstairs all the time, because people were moving around, and where as normally I know which lights burn a lot of energy and avoid putting them on, obviously this was not the case for all the party guests - so the heavy duty stuff was going. I found myself switching a few lights off from time to time, but who wants to be a party pooper?!

I think a fair bit of food probably got wasted as well. Everybody had brought a contribution to the party and we had loads of food, but a lot of people didn't feel a big urge to take home leftovers, and I can't really blame them, because I had no desire either to eat my way through the food mountain.

Thankfully I didn't have a hangover the following day, but I did spend a bit of time wondering how to make parties less wasteful and energy intensive. The thing is it would have to be done discretely, if you start a party off with asking guests not to switch the lights on and bring an extra sweater, you have kind of ruined the party spirit.

The best I have come up with so far is getting better energy sources. Unfortunately renewable energy is pretty expensive to install, so it would probably be many years before I could have a green energy party, but I did a search anyway to see what might be possible. I went on to the Energy Saving Trusts website (www.energysavingtrust.org.uk ), they have a tool where you input information about your house etc and you then get an idea about what might be suitable for your house.

A wind turbine is out of the question, we are afterall in the town and the size of the garden doesn't amass to several acres of land. Hydro power isn't really an option either as it needs a source of water, and we don't have a river flowing in the back.

The options that we might have are a wood fuelled boiler, a wood burning stove, an air source heat pump, solar electricity panel or solar water heating. Wow! I wonder what it all means?

I have never been a techy person and despite diagrams and all sorts of other stuff on the website, I still haven't got a clue how any of this works. Well ok, I do know that a solar electricity panel converts energy from the sun into electricity, and a wood fuelled boiler is obviously a boiler fired by wood rather than gas or oil, but exactly how it would all work in our house is still a mystery! How do you put in a wood burning stove, when your property hasn't got a chimney? How much electricity do you actually get out of a solar panel? Can these things work together or does one exclude the other? All sorts of things to wonder about.

The biggest question of all is obviously how much would it all cost. According to the aforementioned website from the Energy Saving Trust these are the approx costs you can expect: Wood fuelled boiler: 9k, wood burning stove: 3k, air source heat pump: 5-9k, solar electricity panel: 8-14k and solar water heating 3-5k. It is possible to get grants for some of these things and I believe low cost loans are available as well, but frankly we can't have any energy consuming christmas parties for a long time if we are to get enough money together for any of that.

So I am down to my very last option if I am to have a more guilt free party next year:

Dear Santa,

I have been very good this year and I have made several changes to my lifestyle in order to help stop all the ice on the North Pole melting. Please, please, please can I have some kind of renewable energy installed in my house both to help secure your workshop and to make it possible for me to enjoy some more christmas parties. I promise I will work even harder next year to be green. Thank you.

Love from
DG

PS. Please watch out for my new apple trees when you land in the garden, they are still a bit fragile


Merry Christmas everyone, enjoy the festive season!