Sunday Sermon

It's a weekend of bad news on a global scale, I'm afraid.

I linked just now to Greenpa's discussion of the fatal flaws in the idea of replacing oil with crop-derived ethanol. From a broader perspective there's also this report at New Scientist about the UN's official conclusion that we really are facing the end of the world as we know it due to human-caused environmental destruction and unsustainable development. The point is made there that energy consumption is the number one concern. Dramatic action is needed, now.

The ABC has a story about another new report which makes the startling conclusion that if we keep digging minerals out of the ground on an industrial scale then before too long there won't be any left. Well, duh, but for some reason humanity still seems to act as if the world's resources are limitless. Maybe seven billion is too large a number to really comprehend. But that's roughly how many people are now aspiring to live something like "the American dream".

I guess if there's anything positive it's that the broader message about sustainability is starting to get mainstream exposure. The shift in society and in politics is in the right direction. And speaking of politics, I'm delighted to see the ALP, Democrats and Greens joining forces to try and break the Liberal/National stranglehold in the Senate. If you're an Australian voter who cares at all about the future of humanity, please don't let the industrial-era coalition continue in power.

Fuelish Fantasies

One of my favourite bloggers, Greenpa, is a professional scientist who has lived a low-impact lifestyle for 30-odd years. His latest post is a stunner, making a convincing argument about why the dreams of the biofuels industry are more like naive fantasies. Please take a few minutes and have a read.

Then get back to reducing your energy dependence while you still have a chance.

A productive day!

1. Tank interconnecting pipe fitted: check.
   
2. Overflow outlets fitted and sealed: check.
   
3. Water level gauge fitted and calibrated: check.
   
4. Custom gutter cleaning tool designed and fabricated: check.
   
5. Gutters cleaned, probably for the first time in a decade: check.
   
6. First flush diverters emptied ready for the next rains to rinse out the dirty gutters: check.
   
7. Beer bottles emptied: check and check.
   

That's everything I'm willing to do myself. From here on I'm paying somebody else to finish the job. We've got overflow pipes to run underground to the street, a pump to install and internal plumbing to be done.

Well actually there's one more thing for me to do, which is to bury the connecting pipe that runs between the tanks. That can wait until after somebody has installed a t-piece in the middle of it for the pump to draw from.

Instead of a rubber... thing... to seal the overflow outlet I bought two 90-degree flanged fittings and just screwed them onto the outside of the tank with silicon to seal them. They point downwards and the insect barriers just pop onto the end of them. More pipe can be attached later to take any overflow safely away.

Ebb and flow

Over the past 24 hours my attention has switched from finding missing water to managing unexpected water. We've had some short but heavy showers and something that could reasonably be called a storm, and so it is that my tanks are finally being put to use.

As best I can tell, the southern tank has about 20-30cm of water in it and the northern one about 30-40cm. If that's right then we've caught a bit over two thousand litres. It would have been substantially more in the northern tank if I'd managed to clean out the gutters before the rain came. But I didn't, and debris clogged up the pipe causing the water to back up and flow over the sides.

I'm pretty excited about having water in there, even though we can't actually use any of it yet. It's not high enough to come out of the bucket taps and I don't have any pipes or pump connected to the ground-level outlet. Still some work to do.

This weekend I have two tank tasks which must be completed. I need to get a rubber... thing... to properly seal the overflow outlets, and I need to clean the gutters. I'd also like to fit the gauge which I got replaced today, and if everything's really cruising along perhaps put in the connecting pipe.

And in the back of my mind I still have to figure out why we're using so much more water recently. Going to be a wet weekend, at least in my head.

Water update

Two days have passed since the discovery that our household water use had shot up unexpectedly. I just read the meter again: an average of 424L per day for the past two days. That's better than 507 over the previous ten but still well up on our previous benchmark of under 350.

To test the idea that maybe our new water heater was wasting a lot of water by being over-heated, I placed a bucket beneath the overflow pipe. There's water there, for sure, but it's nowhere near the missing 75L per day. After two sunny days the bucket is about half full - we can use that water safely on the gardens so I don't have any real concern about that.

So we come back to the possibility of a leak, or a change in our behaviours. We'll focus on the behaviours first, maybe keep a log of our water use activities during the day. I'd really like to get those figures back to where they were without having to pay a plumber.

Have we sprung a leak!?

In the past couple of months I've allowed the time being readings of the water and electricity meters to stretch out to about once a fortnight. Our consumption of both has been fairly consistent so there didn't seem much point in religiously getting out there every morning.

My previous reading was on the 13th of October and the figures for the preceding 18 days were a little high but nothing extraordinary: 7.3kWh electricity and 347L of water per day.

This morning, ten days later, there's something amiss. Electricity use has dropped back a touch to 6.9kWh per day, but water has shot up to an incredible 507L per day! That's 1.6kL of excess consumption and I just can't imagine where we might have used so much water. Got me wondering about a leak.

The other factor is the new solar water heater: it has a valve which opens under conditions of excess heat/pressure and I'm wondering how much water is being lost that way. I'll go and stick a bucket beneath the outlet (which is a bit of a risk, actually... bucket of really hot water just sitting there...) and try to get a feel for whether it's a significant amount.

Looks like I'll be reading the meters every day for a little while as I try to figure this out.

Gutter talk

Late last night a tiny spit of rain fell on my house. I almost didn't hear it on the roof tiles, and when I checked the weather radar there was nothing more than a few white dots scattered over the map. Even so, I went outside with a torch to see if there was anything noticeable happening with the tanks.

Checked the southern end first. No leaks from the new downpipe and a surprisingly steady stream of water burbling into the tank. Was thrilled at first, until I noticed that the water was actually going all the way into the tank instead of filling up the diverter which keeps that first run of dirty water out of the main tank. Check out the image on that linked page. See the hose that runs from the bottom of the diverter out to the outside wall of the tank? I'd forgotten to re-attach that after working inside the tank yesterday fitting the taps. Bummer.

The tank at the northern end was also being filled, but to my surprise it was doing so much more slowly than the southern one. That didn't seem right because the northern tank gets fed from both sides of the house instead of just one. But at least the diverter was filling up in that one.

This morning there was no trace of rain on the ground but at the northern end water was still trickling in from the gutters. Oh yeah... I really need to clean them out. All the crap in them had acted as a kind of sponge, absorbing the water and then releasing it slowly. More on that in a bit.

The diverter in that tank was completely full, and the water pressure demonstrated that I needed to seal the release valve better: it was dripping lightly and excavating a little trench in the crusher dust. The kids and I emptied the diverter into a bucket used the 20-odd litres of somewhat dirty water on our gardens.

Then I set to work removing the diverter from the southern tank, re-attaching its hose, assembling it all again, and using some plumber's tape to seal up the diverter release valves. So far so good. Now to the gutters.

Our stupid gutters. The roof tiles come right out to within a couple of centimetres of the outer edge of the gutters. There's not enough room for me to get my hand in there. I went to the hardware store this afternoon and bought a cleverly-designed gutter cleaning scoop, but there's not even enough room to get that in there. The gutters at the northern end of the house, especially on the eastern side where we have a shade tree, have better-looking compost in them than what's in the black bin at the end of my yard and I can't clean them out.

Very frustrated. Going to have to craft some kind of L-shaped scraping tool to try and clear some of the crap away before the "thundery rain" the Bureau is forecasting for later in the week. Like I have time for that $#!%.

The Tank Fairy

I've never heard anyone speak of the Tank Fairy, but there must be one because mere hours after sliding tank #2 onto its base both tanks have been fitted with taps and hooked up to the downpipes - almost as if by magic!

I'd better stop with the fairy story or my very good neighbour, the actual worker of magic here, might get offended. Around the same time this morning as I was typing my previous post I noticed that Pete had come home. Pete's a builder and I wanted to get his advice about the next steps to take with the tanks. My thinking was that I had to get the overflows hooked up before I did anything else, and that's a big job.

Pete had a different opinion. He reckoned we'd be pretty damned lucky to get enough rain to cause any overflow at the moment and if there was it would be welcome on the garden. So he got stuck into the job of hooking the tanks up to the gutters.

We cut holes for the overflow of course, and I'm about to go and seal them with tape to prevent insects getting inside. We fitted the main valves at the bottom ready to be connected to each other and eventually the pump. And we fitted bucket taps about 40cm off the ground to allow general outdoor use of the water without the need for a pump at all, providing the water level is high enough.

I ordered a simple gauge which will make it easy to tell how much water's available.

Getting the interconnecting pipe fitted is the next priority - especially so since I decided to give up on connecting the southern tank to the downpipes at the front side of the house. There was just too much mucking about required so it's ended up only being attached to the rear corner. That means the northern tank will get about twice as much inflow as the southern one: I need the pipe in place to allow the water to distribute itself evenly between the two.

Returning to our irregularly scheduled program

It must be almost a month since my last post. I'm not dead, and I haven't just abandoned this. Hopefully that doesn't disappoint any of you. It's just that my professional life has been highly demanding in recent weeks leaving not a lot of time for things that actually matter.

Unfortunately that's not likely to change for the next month or more so I have to squeeze things in when I can. That means a quick update now.

1. Seven or so weeks after getting my first tank sited on its base, this morning I finally got the second one into its own spot. The quality of the groundwork is not as good as the first one but I'm hoping it's good enough for the task. Now the next phase begins: drainage, pipes and plumbing.

2. I'm so impressed with the new solar water heater. There's no discernible difference between the new hot water and the old hot water out of the taps, but emotionally it feels great to have yesterday's sunshine warming my back in the shower. It's also wonderful to see the electricity meter sitting unmoved week after week.

3. The worms have me a bit concerned. They don't seem much inclined to eat any of the kitchen scraps, which kind of defeats the purpose of having them. There are also increasing numbers of non-worm inhabitants in the farm including some really tiny white ant-like creatures and some actual ants which are slightly less tiny and rather more black.

4. Of the dozen capsicum plants we transferred from the pot to the garden bed, one has died, two are looking less than fantastic and the rest appear to be thriving. There are flower buds forming around the tops of most of them even though they're only 30-40cm tall. The compost/mulch combination appears to have worked a treat for nourishing the capsicums while suppressing the weeds - so far I've only had to pull out a smattering of nut grass.

5. The tomato plants have just about run their course. They've produced a fair amount of fruit but it's all been very small - the largest about the size of small marbles but many nearly as small as peas. I'm planning to have another go in that pot but with better soil, a larger variety of tomato, just one plant instead of several, and pruning to try and focus the plant's energy on fruit production rather than straggly stalks.

6. Our carrots are also seeming to find their pot-bound existence a bit less than ideal. They're too crowded and the combination of water restrictions plus too-good drainage leaves them looking withered most afternoons. We'll see what we can do to make them fatter and sweeter but I'm not confident that this crop is going to end up being very edible.

7. The compost has been totally neglected for weeks. It's almost certainly full of mice, judging by its popularity with the neighbourhood cats. May have to start over again with that one.

8. A combination of bindies, weeds and flies is making outdoor time less pleasant. At least we don't have a plague of mosquitos - yet - like we did last summer.