Earth Notes: From the Inbox (and Outbox) 2010

Emails and queries from readers (also see 2008/2009)

I receive a stready stream of emails about the site, some of which I expand into stand-alone articles (eg Going Green in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and Solar PV in Diffuse (Cloudy) Daylight) and others of which I follow up privately. Also, I've sent unbidden an email or two to register an opinion...

Below you will find some other interesting brief interchanges (edited as necessary); I hope that you find them useful.

Re condensation management

In actual fact, you should open your windows with the radiators on to reduce moisture.

I'm studying Building services engineering and we have been looking at condensation --- that word of advice is from my lecturer!

He said people always say that's crazy, but it's true, it better forces the air to circulate and dry.

I'm prepared to believe it's true, though my experiments suggest that any improvement is very limited, more serving to raise my blood pressure with all the heat being forced out the window!

In February 2010 I was asked:

I read your article on LED lighting - do you think it's mature enough to use through an entire house? Am currently planning the lighting in my new house - I guess my main concern is canb I use the same fitting as a conventional low energy bulb, if the LED bulb is not good enough?

I'd say 2010 is the year of the Linux desktop ... erhmmm ... domestic LED lighting. Ordinary retailers are beginning to stock it, and in common fittings such as bayonet and ES14/ES27, lm/W is comparable to CFL and still improving, light quality is OK and still improving, etc, etc, though for anything tricky a specialist supplier is still probably a good bet.

The thing to look out for is the maximum power/lumens rating of the bulb. Difficult to get an efficient LED bulb over (say) 7W in any domestic fitting at the moment, which is roughly equivalent to a 7W CFL or ~40W--60W incandescent. Plus the light cone is typically still much narrower than for an incandescent unless you are very careful in what you choose.

I think the EQ60 is very good and in cool white should be a close match for a 60W incandescent though with a light cone of ~120 degrees rather than the ~300 degrees of a conventional bulb. An EQ80 is on its way, but we'll really have hit pay dirt when we get to the EQ100, matching the brightest ~20W CFLs currently easily available.

So in your case I'd plan for a mixture of current fittings, but possibly slightly more of them than you might otherwise, so that you can use more lower-power devices, possibly also with smaller lighting cones, though both problems are waning.

Remember that unlike an incandescent or even a CFL, when you buy an LED lamp it is for life, not just for (one) Christmas...

Saving ~1kWh/day with a Home PC

A project with a sub-1-year ROI (return on investment) is enough to make an accountant weep with joy. Note that many people who are otherwise anti-AGW are nonetheless happy to DoTheRightThing(TM) if it coincides with saving them money; carbon taxes (etc) are about aligning those world views in part...

Gareth H tells me:

Before: 57 watts from the computer and peripherals when the computer was asleep. The majority was going into a huge surround sound system which came bundled with the PC.

Now that I use the Intellipanel from oneclick (Maplin £29.99) this has been reduced to 14 watts. This is composed of Netgear router [that] consumes 9 watts, the sleeping PC 4 watts and the Intellipanel 0.6 watts. The printer, screen, speakers, steering wheel have their power cut to zero.

The computer going in and out of sleep mode triggers the Intellipanel to power everything else off (but the PC).

Keeping the PC in sleep mode and the router connected through ADSL means the PC can always be used at 5 seconds notice. Hence there is no disincentive to putting the PC to sleep. The PC will put itself to sleep after 10 minutes.

Note that some applications such as iTunes have to be tweaked to allow the PC to go to sleep...

Given that the saved electricity should be ~£40/year (and 100--150kgCO2/year emissions from electricity generation), it's a "no brainer" I think.

Sources/Links

• Going Solar in the North West, UK
• Going Green in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne email exchange with Chris Benson.
• Solar PV in Diffuse (Cloudy) Daylight email exchange with Phil Turner.