yes, I agree. You sleep somewhere over Lapland and wake up over Sikhote Alin mountains
by the way, I have a friend there in Sikhote Alin mountains
he is a monk and lives in the forest
once he called me to his house deep in the forest, showed the nature around
absolutely unforgettable experience. There are actually people who are sort of hermits in the forest, live without much contact with the outer world and make their living off forest and selling wild ginseng roots sometimes
they contact each other using sticks they call Pan Tsui - leaving messages on a stick next to a dwelling of another hermit and getting messages back same way
in Japan ferry is some 30% cheaper but normally ferry takes a lot of time and require expenses on food and drinks so finally the price is about the same
;) In the USA, people used to think I was Australian! Possibly a bit more understandable
Bugger....just got an email to say I have a delivery of firewood coming today. Hopev they come early so I can go ride, otherwise I will be stuck in all day
This is my forst delivery of such a large order.....500kg of firewood
I'd like to see how big that is
Even if I don't get out, I will be getting good exercise!
That reminds me.....@andy256 I was surfing last night and came across the Sony Experia Z3 Compact phone. Looks really good, but more than I wanted to pay. Am not totwally confused once again :( sonymobile.com/gb/products/phones/xperia-z3-compact
@andy256 well nobody asked me, but I'd have voted to go.
@andy256, rode a bus from Narita to home today and was overwhelmed by the whole shower of contrasts around. It is so weird - huge city, monstrous concrete giant, wild, subtropical vegetation directly on this concrete, old woman in kimono walking on the street, 1970-ties taxis around, super modern structures just next to it all.
@Mσᶎ your avatar keeps blinking at the top and left.
I have a private project to convert my car to electric. Thought at least some of the traffic on Sustainability might be related. A few old Qns are, but not much.
Next to the highways Persimmons being sold Cicada's wing.
:D
cicada's wing shows the entry of autumn season, because most cicadas die around this time and disintegrate so their wings are all around lying on the asphalt as is
@andy256 there's a bunch of car nuts in the ATA Melbourne, they have their own meetings and mailing list. For a while it seemed that 90% of ATA member activity in Melb was car conversions...
Also, if you're not in the ATA now, joining gets you access to back issues of Renew magazine which has quite a few articles on conversions. But mostly I'd say find the car nuts and talk to them. Well, let them talk to you.
they do useful stuff, they have a lot of consumer magazine style reviews and dirty great spreadsheets for various sustainable technology things. So if you're looking at a new fridge it's worth checking their reviews and charts as well as your local consumer organisation, because ATA will tell you more about power consumption and performance
also, you being in the USA you can get a SunFrost fridge much more cheaply than we can.
it's kind of sad that in the whole world there is only one company making domestic fridges designed primarily for efficiency. Sad because there's only one, and because so few people buy fridges with that criteria.
Part of the problem here is they don't meet the Australian standard "cool a car load of groceries from 30°C to 4°C in 4 hours", because they have a tiny little compressor that's ridiculously efficient but is designed to work with the very insulated box so its peak power output is low. But that means they can't be sold here, each buyer has to import their own.
Over here rental properties come without fridges, washing machines and so on. Stoves yes, sometime air conditioners, but very rarely a fridge or washer.
Almost everywhere you rent out here comes with a fridge and stove. Never seen a rental with A/C. About 50% have washer/dryer and about 50% have a dishwasher.
so renters have to shift those things round. Which is not good for the machines, and is also a PITA. But then, rental property whitegoods tend to be very low quality. We even have special "rental grade" hot water heaters... cheap to buy, reliable, but very inefficient so they cost a bomb to run.
A dishwasher and on-site laundry are pretty much dealbreakers for me. Laundry doesn't have to be in the unit, but I'm not loading all my clothes on my bike and galavanting around town anytime I need clean clothes.
@Mσᶎ are there seriously rentals that don't even come with a water heater??
Our power consumption here is more than half heating the laundry via the hot water heating that's bolted to the wall near the ceiling (so we can't wrap more insulation round it)
Around here an increasing number of landlords get good efficient appliances, then advertise "energy efficient home" and charge way more on the rent. They probably end up more than making their money back on the initial investments, and there's enough of us sustainability types that there's a market for it.
@Mσᶎ see just use cold or warm water instead of hot for laundry. Works fine.
@Batman true. Well, not currently living in a college town (I'm on an internship). But yes, previously living in a college town at my past several rentals.
we had a big win in Melbourne when we rented a house that had decent insulation and thermal drapes, but horrid coloured carpet... so the rent was cheap. Now we're trying to buy, it seems to be the same. People will pay extra for built in air conditioning, but not for the insulation that makes air conditioning unnecessary.
Unfortunately that makes it very hard to find a house with decent insulation.
For good reasons, it just amuses me. They put RAPS into Timor-Leste, so they deal with locals there who grow coffee. So they import that coffee and sell it effectively on behalf of the growers.
I dunno if it's officially Fair Trade{tm}, but it's fair trade.
Usually little 20-50W panels with SLA's to do lighting and phone charging.
But increasingly bigger systems to run laptops and low-power electronics for community services.
It's as much about providing expertise as the hardware, Timor is third world but not abject poverty. The problem is that there's not enough money to make an import business profitable (little country). We shall not discuss foreign aid.
I am looking at our ecohutch being off grid, because I expect we will use less than 10kWh/day, making a 3kW system quite usable and that's about $10k all up. Or about $4k for grid-interactive with no storage. Feed-in tarrif here is 8c/kWh and falling, so it's arguable whether it's worth doing at all. Luckily no "you must grid connect" laws here (yet?).
When we're looking at over $1/day in connection charges plus $500-odd to get the connection certified, connecting starts to look less attractive. There will be much mathematics done before we get to that point, though.