A Little of Everything

As you may know, we spent 10-12 days in Japan, before and during a PICES fish and climate meeting. Above is the pagoda in the Zen garden at Rinnoji temple in Sendai. I'm not sure we would have found it if they hadn't been having an outdoor rock concert for Earth Day.















Sunset at Matsushima Bay on our last evening there.















It's here! The results of the sock contest are in print, with everyone (including me) wanting to make the cover socks.















Here's my pattern, rated experienced+. I used all natural dyes on the sock yarn and the pattern was inspired in part by jungles on cursed isles in Puzzle Pirates. I designed a cursed isle and the Three Rings people kept telling us to "add more jungle!".















In other creative news, the T-shirts with my lynx design are in.















Just in time for visitors, we have curtains in the guest room with sun-block lining. I originally bought the fabric for the window at the top of the stairs in our NJ house - from a store which has since gone out of business.



















The porch settled during the spring thaw so Rob dug up two footings and raised them, with the help of a new footing bought for the purpose.














Having no dirt to speak of, we bought two containers and enough dirt to grow a few things: marigolds, parsley from a friend, and basil.














The tai chi group had a fund-raiser of a yard sale in the parking lot when other people were having plant sales: Siberian irises by the top of the driveway.














Also two rhubarb plants, fertilized by the neighbor's bunnies.

A quick update

A very quick update. The move is complete and the old house is sold! Onto phase next! Those with our old main number, it is still our number, it will reach Rob's new iPhone. The new house continues to treat us well. We have stopped using the generator for power for two to three weeks now. We are getting plenty of solar power these days!

Daylight as seen from our house in the dead of winter. The light situation is improving rapidly now, though.












Rob out fussing with the solar panels. They have since been fixed (we hope) so as to be robust in a gale. I took this picture because of the light on the hoar frost.
















I messed up yesterday and left the network on. The power from the batteries goes through an inverter to give the house 115 V AC. The inverter uses power in doing its job, but can go into a standby mode in which it pulses once a second to see if anything in the house needs power. If so, it will turn itself on. Having the network on all day prevented the inverter from getting into standby mode, in which it uses less power. Today the net was on, but we were here using it all day.

Preliminary House Data

Here is some basic apples and oranges comparison. As with all statistics, you can bend them any way you want. We have some pretty good data from oil and electricity bills from our old house and only a couple months of data from bills in the new house for oil, gas and water.

Old house (average cost per day):

• Oil: $9.90
• Gas: $0.00
• Water: $0.00
• Electricity: $3.56

New house (average cost per day):

• Oil: $7.32
• Gas: $0.97
• Water: $1.10
• Electricity: $0.00

Totals:

• Old: $13.46/day
• New: $9.39/day

So far, the difference is approximately 30% so far for only a couple months of records. The 30% during the winter will drop once the clothes washer is moved. This will require more energy and water to operate. We also have had to dump a fair bit of electricity from past wind events that might be captured for later use. The savings should improve a bit more during the rest of the year as we start gaining energy from solar and reduce the need to run the generator.

Fundamentals

Old house:

• Electricity (source: electrical grid/GVEA)
• No gas service
• Water (source: well, electrical pump)
• Oil (domestic hot water and water baseboard heat)

New house:

• Electricity (source: off grid, wind, solar, generator)
• Gas (tanks, supplies oven and refrigerator)
• Water (delivered, electrical pump)
• Oil (oil burner for domestic water and radiant heat; generator)

While there is no cost for electricity from being detached from the electrical grid, the real cost for electricity shows up in oil use as burned by the generator.

Come back later when more data is available.

Approaching Winter Solstice

If tonight is clear, there is a spectacular meteor shower to take place. Approximate peak of 140 shooting stars per hour! The shooting stars the past couple mornings and evening have been impressive.

View at 11 am:


Worked on organizing the garage a bit:


Not much sun on the new property, though the upper part of the wind tower can get a glimpse:

party

We just had a housewarming today, featuring a Tux the penguin cake because Rob and I have been using Unix for 25 years now. Who'd a thunk it? I remember when there were many operating systems and now we're only buying systems that run Linux. Even Cray is selling Linux systems. I'm so happy to not be using VMS or that IBM thing that believed all lines had 80 characters - and made it so.

Anyway, we learned a few interesting things about the Parade of Homes yesterday and today. The dean of Rob's department and his wife were coming out to see our house, but turned back because they didn't have winter tires on yet - and she was one of the judges. Nevertheless, we managed to take first prize on our kitchen - for what it's worth.

In other home news, it's feast or famine on the wind power front. Without wind, we have to run the generator every other day to keep things working in the winter. The solar panels aren't doing much good even when the snow isn't covering them every day. Still, now we get to gloat about being warmer than town by a noticeable amount, maybe 20 degrees.

Tuesday - Thursday

Thursday morning dawn, greatly enhanced picture. The digital camera just can't pick up the low amount of light. Moon and solar array as well :)


Tuesday evening: all the center island lights are working.


The drying closet has clothes lines:


One shower curtain hung:


A new toy. Fit2 PC, consumes at best 7 to 8 watts of power (includes a 160 Gb small form factor hard drive). Perfect for off grid use. Note the size, that is a quarter sitting on the unit. Need plenty of air flow around the unit. The unit does not have a fan so the chassis heats up fairly well. The plan is to datalog from the renewable system. Hitting a USB/serial barrier right now...