CASE HISTORY ‘Zero Carbon’ Living
One in a series of articles recording projects in the New Forest that demonstrate
renewable energy and sustainable living.
Dan Fish and his wife Jane live virtually ‘carbon neutral’. Their New Forest house is heavily insulated,
they use the sun’s energy to heat their water, generate their electricity and charge the electric car
they drive. In winter they supplement the sun’s energy with a wood burning stove burning surplus
and waste timber.
They realise that we must move on from discussing whether climate change is really happening and
whether it is as a result of mankind’s actions. The argument has been won. The time to stop burning
fossil fuels, wherever we possibly can, is now. We all, individuals, families, communities (such as the
New Forest) and nations must stop. We cannot wait for some wonderful technological advance or
unrealistic and impossible to police world wide international agreement. Wherever we can we must
stop now and with today’s technology. This is how they are doing it.
Electricity
In 2004 they installed photovoltaic (PV) panels on their flat sitting roof. These panels produce about
2800 Units (KW Hrs) a year. The panels were so successful and trouble free that in 2010 they
installed a further set of panels on the south face of their roof. These new panels being more efficient
than the older ones produce about 3400 Units a year to give a total of 6200 Units a year. When not
using electricity the surplus flows out into the local Grid. When it is dark and the panels are not
working electricity is drawn from the grid. In a typical year the household uses about 3000 Units. In
addition charging their electric car uses about 1500 Units a year.
Original PV Panels
New PV panels
(note three solar hot water panels in the centre)
Solar Hot Water
When they were first seriously concerned about climate change they designed and built their own
solar hot water system based on black painted domestic hot water radiators. This worked well for
over twenty years but was changed in 2010 for smaller more efficient commercial panels. Though
working well the original structure was showing the effect of twenty years roasting in the sun and
there was concern that the light horticultural glazing might not withstand the more extreme storms
that climate change is expected to bring.
Original low cost home designed
(with assistance from CAT) solar hot water system
The new panels, illustrated on the previous page, are extremely efficient and now hardly any
electrically heated water is needed. A modified control system designed and installed by Stephen
Harris, the New Milton heating engineers, works really well and means hot water is stored in a
second tank to bridge days when there is no sun. Only very few hours sunlight are needed to heat
the tanks to a high temperature (currently set at 65 Deg C).
House heating
It is generally not practical to use a solar water heating system to drive central heating. In winter
when the sun is not shining hot water and the house are heated by a wood burning stove with a back
burner to heat the water in a twin coil tank that is usually, even in winter filled with water that is at
least lukewarm from the solar panels. Burning wood does not affect carbon dioxide (CO2)
concentrations and hence global warming because the CO2 produced during burning is absorbed
when wood re-grows. If it was not burnt it would otherwise rot and anyway give off its CO2. We must
only burn wood from a renewable source. The drier the wood is the better. It then produces far more
heat when it burns. Long stored wood gets really dry, does not decay and locks up carbon where it
can do no harm. Not a lot of wood is needed since it is burnt efficiently and the house is well
insulated. Scrap wood is scrounged and dead or dying trees are cleared from neighbour’s gardens.
Small thin pieces burn better than thick ones and produce quicker heat. There is no point in keeping
the stove burning when it is not needed. The only rule is that everything must be dry.
Scrap waste wood drying
Woodburning stove with back
boiler
A big kettle simmering on the stove is a useful adjunct to the hot water supply and the stove is often
used for slow cooking. The only regular use of fossil fuel is gas for cooking. The quantity used is
minute. Quarterly bills are about £3 a month. A microwave is used a lot as it can be powered by the
home produced electricity and anyway uses very little electricity. Another gadget is a home made
expanded polystyrene ‘haybox’ which neatly takes two favourite saucepans. For zero energy free
slow cooking nothing beats it!
Transport
To reach their objective of reducing the CO2 emissions, caused by their transport requirements, to
an absolute minimum is quite difficult. Flying invariably releases huge amounts of CO2 per person
per mile travelled. There is no solution to this and since they don’t like feeling they are killing people
while they travel they don’t fly any more.
Petrol and diesel cars also release a lot of CO2 so their nice little old diesel Clio has been
abandoned and they now have a G-Wiz all electric car. This is fine for short journeys and since their
PV panels makes more electricity than the whole establishment uses including charging the car they
can reasonably claim their 5000 mile a year motoring is solar powered.
G-Wiz
As the photo shows it tows a small trailer fine or can carry bikes on a rack clipped to the ball hitch. It
is ideal for short journeys of about 20 miles or so but is not really suitable for longer ones. They do
however take it to London for servicing twice a year and have established a handful of friendly pubs
where they can get a charge on the way. All it needs is an ordinary 13Amp socket within 25M.
The G-Wizz represents about the limit of what can be done with Lead/Acid batteries but these only
hold enough for an absolute maximum of about 45 miles and don’t like ‘top up’ charging.
The car is great for shopping and heavy traffic. It is very easy to drive and seems rugged and
sensibly designed.
Their favourite alternatives to the G-Wizz are bicycles or train.
They don’t let the no-flying rule hamper them too much. They have two folding bikes which are very
light and nice to ride and will take full size panniers. The photo below was taken on a cycle path in a
park in Ottawa on the way to catch the train to Montreal. The next photo shows how you come home
from Canada without flying. They have done many long trips by train and bike. To Crete by train, bus,
bike, and ferry. Beijing to New Milton by train and ferry. New Forest to Dundee by bike. Round the
Western Isles by bike and ferry. Spain and Portugal by ferry, train and bike. To Prague and round
India by train. The secret is to keep all the gear as light and simple as possible, build up the muscles
gently and don’t try to go too far until you want to and last of all keep your tyres pumped up really
hard.
Ottawa
Down St Lawrence + folding bikes
The no-flying, no internal combustion engined car, life is very different. But it is also much more vivid
and much more fun. Cycling to Scotland on his own in the middle of winter proved to be one of the
best trips of Dan’s life. They have crossed the Atlantic quite a few times but the only crossing they
can really remember at all was when they came back on a container ship. Catching the early morning
train from Beijing to Moscow was another great experience.
They only went back to cycling when they were in their sixties but it seems to be fine. They are not
very fast and don’t go very far but once the muscles have built up a bit can still do 30 or 40 miles in a
day and are now in their late 70’s. Hills aren’t a problem. They walk. Luggage isn’t a problem. You
can take a huge weight in a pannier without really feeling it except on the steeper hills. With bikes
there are more and more quiet roads or even traffic free cycleways. They cycle across London
frequently and much of the time avoid all fast or heavy traffic.
There are three perfect ways of travelling. Sailing with a fair wind. Paddling a canoe down stream
and cycling down a slight hill or on the level with a smooth empty road and the wind behind you!
Quite often it really happens.
Food
When peak oil really bites a much more significant part of the cost of food will be it’s transport. Food
already travels huge distances for quite silly reasons. The new resilient Transition economies will
produce an ever increasing amount of their food them selves. To encourage this and to protect
ourselves we need to start now by buying as much locally produced food as we can. A good rule is
NEVER buy anything that has been flown here. Never buy anything that is seriously out of season.
Never buy anything that has come a long way until we get slow zero carbon shipping.
When the Russian money that had been supporting Cuba dried up they had to be much more reliant
on home and locally produced food. Even right in the centre of Havana they began to grow
intensively in any corners of land that were available. Havana now produces a large proportion of it’s
food in this way.
There is no doubt that the most efficient way of producing food is intensive vegetable gardening. Dan
and Jane do not think them selves very green fingered and have had many disasters but they do still
produce a lot of food from some seriously small vegetable patches. The secret is not to start with too
large a patch but do your small patch really well. Make lots and lots of compost and use it. You will
never have too much. Experiment with sequential sowings. Start in pots and plant out to beat the
slugs. There is not room to write a gardening book here but the following photos give you an idea
what can be done.
Another good rule is to learn to eat as much vegetable as you can. It is not only really healthy but
also reduces green house gas release. Learn how to cook the delicious vegetarian dishes that are a
substitute for meat. Falafels, houmos, stir fried Chinese cabbage, home made whole meal bread.
If you haven’t got a garden or enough land to grow your own ask around. Bully local governments to
find you allotments. There are many possible patches and it is one of New Forest Transitions aims to
help those who want to grow their own to find somewhere to do it. With skill you can grow a lot of
food on a 100squ ft of deep bed. Even if you don’t need to do it now learn the skills. It is hugely
rewarding.
Postscript September 2011
As the years pass by trees grow and have begun to shade the original PV panels on the flat sitting
room roof so we have moved them away to a new purpose designed field shelter in a paddock near
bye. The shelter is made of local Douglas fir and is 150m from the house so is a good example of
how you can often find alternative sites if your house is not suitable. See photo below
Other projects are:- Super insulating the flat roofed extended sitting room so that hardly any heat will
be needed there and then using a solar PV powered heat pump to supply the heat instead of fire
wood. Building a large cold frame to increase the growing season and preparing two more deep beds
in our poor shallow New Forest soil. Spending what’s left of our savings on a real electric van for our
son Jim’s (see above) building business.
Postscript 2012
We have now completed the super insulation project and the results are dramatic. We plan to fit a
small heat recovery ventilator and a separate air-to-air heat pump in the next few months. (Now
completed 2013 and both working well.)
Experiments with making Biochar and incorporating it in the vegetable deep beds are exciting. More
news to follow.