WEBVTT NOTE Transcript 2024-03-23 from FLAC by https://elvery.net/prototypes/transcribe/ on my MacBook Air M1 on maximum quality setting. NOTE Body lightly edited. 00:00.000 --> 00:06.600 Hi, I'm Damon Hart Davis. I was asked to describe something about your sustainable 00:06.600 --> 00:12.800 home, something about the nature visiting the garden and how you feel about your neighbourhood. 00:12.800 --> 00:18.520 Anything at all, in fact. Our house is in its fifties like me. It's 00:18.520 --> 00:23.640 timber framed with a concrete tile roof, ends terrace with hanging tiles on the side walls 00:23.640 --> 00:28.920 and has a small garden front and back. It is on the Cambridge Road Estate in Kingston 00:28.920 --> 00:34.400 upon Thames, very close to a cemetery and the Hogsmill River. And not so far away 00:34.400 --> 00:40.120 from us, though usually downwind, is the local sewage works. 00:40.120 --> 00:44.720 I have for one reason or another in the past run quite a few computers. I ran an early 00:44.720 --> 00:49.800 Internet Service Provider from home. It was pointed out to me that I was probably wasting 00:49.800 --> 00:54.520 a lot of energy with them. I was having to run aircon in summer to keep them cool. I 00:54.520 --> 01:01.200 took that as an energy efficiency challenge to do more with less. My Earth Notes Web site 01:01.200 --> 01:07.520 at Earth.Org.UK is one outcome. A house that uses less than half of the electricity and 01:07.520 --> 01:13.080 gas of those around it is another. Indeed, the house is about net zero carbon for those 01:13.080 --> 01:19.280 two given the solar panels on the roof. We have small gardens front and back. Both have 01:19.280 --> 01:26.400 lawns but somehow in the back garden we also managed to squeeze herbs, pumpkins, blueberries, 01:26.400 --> 01:32.759 beans, tomatoes and some of radish rhubarb peppers, carrots, cucumbers and courgettes. 01:37.400 --> 01:41.880 lack of rain last year and dropped all its fruit early but this year I'm hopeful that 01:41.880 --> 01:46.759 we may end up with something to taste. The pumpkins try to take over the garden and 01:46.759 --> 01:52.040 they finish up in autumn and the nasturtium then tries to out-do them! 01:52.040 --> 02:00.040 The variety of birds we get is astonishing. From pigeons (wood and feral) and magpies, to more exotic green and 02:00.040 --> 02:05.760 spotted woodpeckers and jays. Parakeets swarm up to seven or eight at a time on our feeders 02:05.760 --> 02:11.280 hanging from our washing lines, coming from nearby Richmond Park in the cemetery I think. 02:11.280 --> 02:17.200 We also get hordes of smaller birds, robins, blue tits, cultits, greatits, goldfinches 02:17.200 --> 02:23.520 and more rarely chaffinches, greenfinches, dunnocks and wrens. Noisily sparrows are swarming 02:23.520 --> 02:29.160 and squawking again recently in a way I don't remember since I was a child. Occasionally 02:29.160 --> 02:35.120 starlings murmur eight overhead. There also seems to be a thriving bat population and 02:35.120 --> 02:41.280 at dusk you can see them whooshing past just above head height it seems. In the cemetery 02:41.280 --> 02:46.040 I think that crows are still probably top of the pile, the parakeets may be muscling 02:46.040 --> 02:52.640 in and some of the louder sounds are from the squirrels by day. At night the foxes bark 02:52.640 --> 02:56.000 and squeal and whine and make other noises that I don't have words for. 02:56.000 --> 03:02.280 We also have had excitement such as boys apparently lighting a fire behind our back wall and setting fire 03:02.280 --> 03:08.320 to our ornamental tree and things that maybe I shouldn't air publicly. Our house stands 03:08.320 --> 03:13.880 out a bit with the solar panels on top and at least one nearby house has followed suit. 03:13.880 --> 03:17.560 Our walls are lined with the same stuff that the Space Shuttle used to survive the heat 03:17.560 --> 03:23.040 of re-entry called aerogel to keep us warmer in winter and cooler in summer. The triple 03:23.040 --> 03:29.400 glazing helps too and helps keeps out noise. We have a warm and efficient home with rather 03:29.400 --> 03:35.000 more nature on our doorstep than I'd realised. I hope that our energy saving is also nature 03:35.000 --> 03:38.600 saving, taking a little heat out of climate change.