GREENer HOUSE

Before                                         After

I have always considered our refrigeration set-up to be rather modest. No bar fridge. No chest freezer. No massive side-by-side fridge-freezer. (That’s the least efficient configuration; freezer on top is the most efficient.) We manage to keep five people fed with a single, rather small, 300 litre LG refrigerator-freezer that receives an A rating for energy efficiency from the European Union.

So I was a little bit disappointed when I used my Watts Up meter to measure the actual consumption of this appliance recently and found that it was chewing through 2.5 kilowatt hours a day, about 10 percent of my household consumption. When I researched the issue on the internet, I saw numerous references to dirty coils lowering efficiency, so I pulled the fridge out of its slot in the kitchen. I feel a little embarrassed to publish the photograph above, because it is a stiff indictment of our housekeeping, but you have to see it to realize that when I say years of dust had clogged the vents, I really mean it.

After a quick vacuuming, I was eager to test whether the improved air-flow to the coils would lower my electricity consumption. I measured at night so that the comparisons would not be thrown off by family members opening the doors during the day. Consumption fell by more than 17 percent after the fridge was freed of its dust blanket. Since the condenser works much harder during the day than at night, the true improvement may be much larger. I have now set an annual memo on my Outlook calendar to remind me to keep the vents clean and my refrigerator green.

Watts up? Pro meter

I have a new toy. It’s called a Watts up?, and it will measure the watts used by anything with a plug, up to about 2200 watts. It will calculate watt hours, as well, which is essential for appliances that cycle on and off. Watt hours are what you and I and the environment pay for. Quite simply, a 1 watt device running for an hour has used 1 watt hour. The electricity meters on houses measure kilowatt hour, or 1,000 watt hours, and that’s what we pay for in our electricity bills. For each kilowatt hour we use, Eskom sends about 1 kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

I’ve been playing with my toy for about a week, and I now have a good idea of how much electricity is used by what.

Here, in no particular order, are some of my findings.

•Washing Machine: 214 watt hours for full load. My mother-in-law always believed that clothes fare better in a cold wash, so we have always set our washing machine on cold. (Who am I to argue with my mother-in-law?) The washing machine is rated at 2360 watts, so it might burn out my Watts Up meter if I tested a hot load, but my calculations are that if we washed in warm or hot water, that number would rise by 10 times.

•Philips 29-inch CRT Television. 73 watts on, zero on stand-by. You won’t find a big flat-screen LCD or plasma TV that uses anywhere near that little.

•DSTV Personal Video Recorder PVR: 29 watts. This is worse than it looks. Forget the fact that the PVR tells you it’s “going to sleep,” or “coming out of sleep.” It uses 29 watts all day every day, three-quarters of a kilowatt hour per day, 270 kWh per year. What irritates me is that the designers could have engineered a PVR that powers down the hard drive when it’s not needed, as my laptop does every time I stop using it for several minutes.

(more…)

Not as green as it looks

I’ve just finished writing an article for Red: the Green Magazine about a rather personal issue. Friends and relatives scoffed and chuckled when they heard that I was researching the environmental implications of toilet paper, but by the time I was finished I saw my father-in-law carrying a 9-roll pack of greener loo-paper home from the store. My wife has also switched to the environmentally friendly option.

So which paper is best? Good ol’ cheap 1-ply. Any brand will do because they are virtually all made from recycled paper, but if you want the added benefit of knowing that your roll hasn’t been rolling down the highway accumulating a carbon footprint, Twinsaver is made in Cape Town, Durban and Gauteng, so you are virtually assured of a local roll if you buy it in one of those areas. Carlton is only made in Gauteng. Otherwise, look for a local manufacturer.

I’ve heard all the arguments against 1-ply. People say it actually costs more because you have to use twice as much. This is wrong on three counts. For starters single ply is more than half as thick as double ply, 5/8s as thick to be precise. And there are 500 sheets on a 1-ply roll—or should be—and only 350 sheets on a 2-ply roll. Finally, research suggests that people use about the same number of sheets regardless of the thickness.

The other argument against 1-ply is that it is rougher. I cannot deny that it is not quite as soft. So keep one roll of extravagant, environmentally noxious, virgin 2-ply on hand for those moments when some unmentionable condition makes you tender down there. And let us know if you find a 1-ply that you think is softer than most.

Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on any high-priced bog roll purporting to be “green.” If you want to know why, you can read the full article from Red below:

How many trees have you flushed down the toilet in your lifetime? The South African paper industry is equipped to manufacture 4.7 kilograms of tissue a year for every man, woman and child in the country. So it is a reasonable estimate that consumers of tissue made from virgin wood will consume about a tree every decade.

Fortunately, South Africans have a large and growing range of options to reduce their loo-print, ranging from toilet paper made from sugar-cane fibre to 100-percent-recycled, 2-ply rolls. With choice comes confusion, however, and paying extra for green marketing may not help the environment. Often the cheapest rolls are also the greenest. When buying toilet tissue, saving the environment and saving money can go hand in hand.

For decades, most South Africans have been using 100 percent recycled toilet paper—without paying an extra cent. These shoppers did not even know they were making the environmentally friendly choice, though they might have noticed a few speckles in the paper that suggested its former existence as office paper. Three-quarters of the toilet rolls sold in South Africa are single-ply rolls that are usually tree-free, something shoppers would never know from reading the labels. The more expensive, two-ply toilet tissue is mostly made from virgin wood pulp.

The problem with virgin toilet paper is not the lost trees—they generally come from forest plantations where each harvested tree is replaced by a seedling. But toilet paper from wood pulp unleashes a host of other assaults against the environment for a product that gets used for only a few seconds. Tree farms take up land that could otherwise be home to diverse natural forests. The conventional pulping and papermaking process uses twice as much water and far more energy than recycled toilet paper. And logs, pulp and tissue are regularly shipped all the way across South Africa, adding to virgin paper’s expansive carbon footprint. Recycled toilet paper, by contrast, is often sourced, manufactured and sold all in the same city.

(more…)

Polar Bears Don't Like AC

The December issue of Red: the Green Magazine is out in the Cape, and it features an article I wrote about alternatives to air conditioning, especially evaporative cooling.  Here’s what it has to say:

Craig Bransgrove has been installing air conditioning in Cape Town homes and offices for the last six years. So it may seem surprising that when he recently installed a cooling system for his own home, he did not choose traditional air conditioning at all. Bransgrove’s Blouberg home uses an evaporative cooling system that takes advantage of the same effect that makes a wet swimming costume feel so chilly on a windy day. “I looked at all the options,” says Bransgrove. “It’s a lot healthier and it’s cost effective.”

Evaporative cooling is gaining popularity as environmentally conscious South Africans increasingly look for ways to keep cool without resorting to air conditioning. In the driest parts of the country, the systems are actually more common than refrigeration air conditioning in residential installments. “I don’t think there’s a household in Upington that doesn’t have evap cooling in it,” says Philip Coreejes, owner of Hi Power Electric.

(more…)

Call me petty, but when I received a gorgeous shirt as a gift recently, I was a little disappointed because two Jeep tags were sewn onto the front of the shirt. (Green tags nogal!)

Chrysler consistently ranks at or near the bottom of fleet fuel economy rankings in the United States, and Jeeps are the thirstist vehicles in the Chrysler stable. Some Jeeps are rated at more than 21 liters per 100 kilometres. (4.7 kms/l or 11 miles/gallon.) They definitely have not earned their green tags.

I’d rather not walk around in a shirt that adds any cachet to the Jeep brand, but I didn’t want to waste a beautiful shirt. So I solved this problem with the help of a stitch-ripper, a handy tool that should be a part of any sewing kit. Without the green tags, my shirt is so much greener.

With petrol breaking the R10 barrier today, I’m sure the newspapers will be hauling out the AA’s list of fuel-saving tips yet again. We’ve all read them least a dozen times. The list is generally sound: use the correct tyre pressure, don’t accelerate too quickly, etc., etc., etc. Our eyes are glazing over, however. It’s time for a new list. It’s time to push the envelope.

The fuel consumption numbers in the literature for new cars (and now on windshield stickers in South Africa) are useful for comparing between cars. But few people can keep their fuel consumption that low on the streets. The official stats are derived under very controlled conditions that don’t really reflect the habits of typical drivers.

I hate to brag, but I do consistently match or beat the official fuel consumption figures for the cars I drive. You can, too. Follow me.

[Lawyer's note: Use these tips at your own risk. GreenerHouse is not responsible for your prang. Safety first.]

1. Don’t brake.
2. Hold your right foot in the air
3. Watch your rev counter
4. In town, windows down
5. Ride the roller coaster
6. Drive your spouse’s car
7. Change your clocks
8. Know your numbers
9. Rearrange your “To Do” list
10. Drive farther . . .

1. Don’t brake

Ok, if a ball rolls out into the street with a child running behind it, slam on the brakes, but most braking is an unnecessary waste of energy. You must learn to feel guilty every time you brake, converting all of that good momentum your engine has given you into wasted friction and heat, requiring you to accelerate all over again.

Not braking requires planning ahead, allowing space in front of your vehicle and exercising patience. A typical example is a street with speed bumps. Most drivers accelerate after each bump and brake before each bump. It makes no sense. The bumps are there because the people who live on that street convinced the government that cars should drive slowly for the safety of the neighbourhood’s children and pedestrians. Settle into the speed at which your car can handle the bumps and stay there. Unless you’re heading downhill, you shouldn’t have to brake.

Look way ahead to the traffic lights and let your car slow naturally well in advance of a red light. People are always in a hurry to sit at a red robot, wanting to give the poor smash-and-grabbers a sporting chance. Don’t worry about the guy behind you flashing his headlights. You’re saving him petrol and a smashed window, too. Smile and wave.

If you have to brake at the bottom of a hill or before a curve, it probably means that you were accelerating unnecessarily a few moments before. Slow down in advance—it’s not safe to brake on a curve, anyway—and keep your foot off that darned brake.

(more…)

Since the issue of Maverick containing my Solar Photovoltaics vs. Diesel Generators article is off the newsstands, I can now publish the article in full on Greenerhouse. Enjoy:

Bringing Back the Light:

Diesel vs. Photovoltaic

It began with an email. My brother-in-law asked me, the family’s resident green guru, to weigh up the relative merits of diesel generators vs. solar power.

Load shedding is clearly driving him to distraction. Computers are crashing in his home office, and he has scrambled to reschedule meetings of 30 and 40 people to stay out of the dark. He wants to know that the power will be there where he needs it, when he needs it. “I’m looking for a complete solution, and I don’t want hassles,” he told me, admitting that he was close to choosing the diesel route.

But he also knows that his green credentials need some buffing since he traded in his Honda Jazz for a Land Rover Discovery last year. Is solar electricity an affordable alternative?

Until the beginning of this year, the answer to his question would have been simple: In South Africa, solar cells may be virtuous, but they don’t pay for themselves. (Solar hot-water panels do pay for themselves, but you can’t run your PC on hot water.) Even the national sales manager for Sanyo photovoltaic panels in South Africa, Win Kurzyca, says, “it doesn’t pay me to put 10 of these on my roof—even at staff price—instead of paying 32 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity.”

But suddenly everything has changed. In fact, the question has changed. My swaer is not asking whether photovoltaic panels pay for themselves; he wants to know whether solar electricity is competitive with diesel-generated electricity.

(more…)

The picture that I meant to take of Mandla

These are sad times in South Africa. And though I mostly feel quite distant from the terrible violence against our African neighbours, I have been touched by the tragedy in one, odd way.

For the past two years, a man name Mandla has rung my bell every Monday morning to see if I have any recyclables for him. I first saw him digging through garbage in my neighbourhood during one of my jogs. He was collecting white office paper, so I told him to stop by my house, since I always separate the good white stuff, which fetches a higher price. Ever since, he has made a weekly stop here. And as prices have risen for other commodities, I have given him cartloads of plastic bottles and cans in addition to paper.

I had just decided that it was time to write about Mandla on GreenerHouse. I liked the topic, because I believe that developing this kind of relationship creates meaning out of recycling, spares the collector the indignity and effort of digging through rubbish, and could save homeowners trips to the recycling depot. I had even decided that I would call the post “Meet Mandla.” I was going to take his picture and place it on the website.

It was going to be a good week for Mandla, because I had worked on the cleanup crew for my daughter’s matric dance and had rescued bins full of PET plastic bottles, aluminium cans and steel (tin) cans. I had them waiting at the gate for him. When Mandla didn’t show up last Monday, I didn’t think much of it. But now he hasn’t rung my bell for two weeks, so I know that last week was not a good week for Mandla. We had never discussed his origin; we mostly talked about the prices of various recyclable commodities. But it now seems clear that he was a Zimbabwean. In my experience, most of the hawkers who collect recyclables on foot are from other African nations.

I hope that Mandla is safe, wherever he is, and that someone is giving him lots of white paper to sell.

I cannot yet reprint my article on solar photovoltaics vs. diesel generators from Maverick magazine as long as the issue remains on the newsstand. But I can share a  few thoughts from what I have learned while reporting the article:

Prepare Ye the Way of the Panel. For years we’ve been promised that photovoltaic panels will come down in price as volumes increase. Well, volumes increased, but prices went up. Demand rocketed in Germany, Spain and elsewhere as governments made solar attractive financially. Solar-cell factories couldn’t be built fast enough to accommodate the new buyers, so the law of supply and demand took over. This is a temporary situation. As new factories are commissioned, prices will fall to not-yet-seen lows. If you’re feeling flush with cash and impatient, go ahead. Early adopters play a great role in advancing the acceptance of any new technology. But for most of us, it makes sense to wait, especially if the S.A. government implements a feed in tariff—like the one in Germany or Spain—which pays households for surplus solar electricity they feed into the grid.

In the meantime, there is plenty of work to do while getting your home ready for cheaper solar. Photovoltaics produce less electricity than you would expect. They belong in houses that already have low electricity consumption. Replace that old fridge. Install compact fluorescent light bulbs. Invest in a gas stove. Install a solar hot water panels, perhaps with gas back-up instead of electrical back-up for cloudy days. Consider space heating with gas or wood. And if you are doing any remodeling, plan a space in advance for batteries and an inverter. They need protection from the elements and ventilation, preferably in a location close to your circuit board.

It’s Your Health, Too. Burning more diesel is not just bad for the planet, it’s bad for you. Diesel fumes are known cancer-causing agents. Would you want your neighbour to idle his 1979 diesel Land Rover Defender in your driveway for several hours a day, spewing carcinogenic fumes toward your family? Running a diesel generator is no different.

You Get What You Pay For. People are always telling me that generators are cheap. And to look at the advertising inserts from D.I.Y. stores, you would think so. But some of these generators do not even have voltage regulators, leading to blown TVs. Even better generators with voltage regulators can create brief surges that are harmful to sensitive equipment. Seamus Finnegan of Northern Technologies SA recommends two layers of surge protection to protect against electrical current spikes as well as an uninterruptible power supply to keep computers operating during the lag between the beginning of load shedding and the start-up of the generator. “We see a lot of damage done by generators,” say Finnegan.

Heads Solar Wins, Tails Diesel Loses. Okay, maybe I’m biased, but diesel has problems under both scenarios facing South Africans. If load shedding becomes a serious regular occurrence, then the fuel expense begins to eclipse the upfront capital expense, and solar becomes more attractive financially. If Eskom gets its act together and load shedding ends, anyone who opted for solar still has a source of free, green energy. Those who bought a diesel generator are stuck with a rusting eye-sore.

The latest issue of Maverick magazine, which is arriving on newsstands this week, includes an article I wrote comparing diesel generators with solar photovoltaic panels. The point is that solar cells are normally considered pricey, with little hope of paying for themselves in the near term and maybe not even in the long run. Load shedding changed all that, however, because many South Africans are now shelling out tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for diesel generators to make themselves Eskom-proof. In my article I compare what happens if that money is instead put into generating solar electricity on the roof. I use actual quotes for systems for one house and then run the numbers to see how the two options compare over time.

When this issue of Maverick comes off the newsstand, I will post the article in-full on GreenerHouse. In the meantime, I will share a few insights from my reporting here in the next few days.