Priscilla's new apron.

Today Laura made an apron for poor little Priscilla, our silkie hen. Her beau, Elvis, has a serious case of spring fever, and her wings were getting quite damaged from being jumped on all the time.

So Laura whipped her up an apron!

Isn't she the cutest?

Cheers,
Grant

Fixed up the chicken gates

Today we enhanced the gates to our chicken run. We took a quick video of the action, and played with putting it up on Youtube. Here's our first attempt.



Cheers,
Grant

Energy efficiency around the house

Over the last couple of years, we've been gradually taking measures to improve our energy efficiency around the homestead. We've replaced most of our lights with compact fluorescents, we turn stuff off when we're not in the room, etc.

Hydro Ottawa has a nice graphical web site where you can get a plot of your energy consumption over time, which has been quite nice because it has shown the results of our efforts.

Here's what our daily usage graph looks like:



As you can see, we've cut down our usage, but leveled off the improvements. Also, we're still using WAY more energy than we'd have available on a daily basis if we lived off-grid. I'd really like to get the usage down to an off-grid consumption, so we'll be in practice for our eventual move Back To The Drawlyn.

Here's a brief run-down of the home improvements we plan on doing in order to cut down on our energy consumption.

First off, we realize that our air conditioner is the largest chunk of our energy usage. Here's what we want to do to extend the season in which the AC doesn't need to turn on:

• More attic insulation. We need to re-do the roof on the south-east side of our house this spring. While we've got the top off, we're going to blow in a few more inches of insulation. This should help cut down on heat infiltration.
• More attic venting. A couple of additional vents installed in the new area should help get the cross-breezes going and let the roof expel excess heat.
• Install a house fan. We want to cut a hole in our ceiling in the sun room (the hottest room in the house, by far) and install a fan. Our neighbor Terry has suggested putting in a duct and an inline duct fan, and venting it out the soffit. This has the advantage of putting the noise of the fan as far away from the living space as possible. By running this fan, we should be able to extract quite a bit of heat from the house, thus alleviating the need for the air conditioning.
• Installing custom awnings over the sun room windows. Our sun room, not surprisingly, gets a lot of sun. It gets strong direct sunlight that is very nice in the winter but problematic in the summer. To help cut down on the thermal gain, we're going to install some aesthetically-pleasing custom-made awnings over each of the 5 south-facing windows. A friend of ours is very good with metal fabrication and has agreed to make the custom brackets. And we plan to make custom cedar slats, stained to match our deck for the sun-shade part. It'll be quite a bit of work, but it'll really add value to the house (looks nice and cuts down on cooling costs).
• We'll install a screen door on the front of the house, so we can open the front and back doors for a nice cross-breeze without letting in a ton of bugs.
  

Other things we plan on doing include more compact fluorescent bulbs, maybe getting a more-efficient fridge, and putting our "phantom loads" on a power bar.

Lots to do, lots to do...

Cheers,
Grant

Le Tour Nortel

Every year, there's a bicycle tour called the Tour Nortel, which raises funds for CHEO and other good causes.

Each year, I've told myself I should do the tour and raise some money for the cause. Each year, I find some lame excuse for not doing it.

Well, now that I have a fancy-schmancy BionX PL-350 on my bike, I'm doing it! I signed up for the 70K tour. It should be challenging. ;-)

Please consider sponsoring me for this worthy cause.

Cheers,
Grant

This weekend is the annual Eco-Stewardship Fair in Ottawa. Juergen Weichert will be showing off his e-bikes.

Everyone in the area should drop by and check it out. Here are the details from the web site:

Saturday April 21st, 2007
10:00 am – 4:00 pm
RA Centre – 2451 Riverside Drive (Curling Rink)

Cheers,
Grant

Ebikes are fun!

Yeah, I know it's been a long time since we posted to the blog. Sorry about that. Now that spring is (finally) here, it's time to dust off the old blog and add some sustainable-living, eco-minded content.

Lately I've been obsessed with electric-assist bikes. My plan has been to upgrade my Raleigh mountain bike by turning it into a commuting hybrid-style bike, with an assistance motor. The motor and battery are a BionX PL-350, sold and installed by a great guy, Juergen Weichert at Acclivity Solutions.

Today is a very happy day for me -- I rode to work for the first time on my electric-assist bike! I got 30 minutes of exercise, covering a route from Stittsville to the Oracle Kanata office.

The weather was excellent. The carefully-selected route minimized the amount of time I have to spend in heavy traffic, and was relatively efficient. It was nice to be out in the springtime air.

As I was pedaling along, I saw another cyclist (and he looked like he knew what he was doing), so I followed him. Good thing I did -- he showed me a better route for part of my journey. It was through a nice quiet sub-division, and away from the very busy main road I as expecting to take.

I feel great! I've always had a hard time convincing myself to get exercise for exercise's sake, so this is a great option. I can get exercise as part of my daily commute to work.

The plan is to increase the length of my route once I get strong enough, but I don't want to push it too hard at first. Laura will be the first one to say that I have a real tendency to overdo my exercise at first. ;-)

I'll post a few pics of the bike once I get it cleaned up (I got it very muddy riding around in the rain the last few days).

Cheers,
Grant