Rant

[foamiethegreeny]

Yes I know for those of you who know me it's hard for you to imagine me ranting about anything. Krjalk post "How about planting a tree instead" Sent me off ranting along with Krjalk at the shear stupidity of earth hour. What I would like people to do is send me some practical everyday idea about what I can do to reduce global warming. I'm not

Comments

[krjalk]

Right on! Testify!

There are things we, as consumers, could potentially do to help in small ways that would be far more meaningful than turning the lights out for five minutes, saying "well, this is stupid" and turning them back on again.

Like buying products that don't use blue LEDs, which consume several times more power than red or green ones.

Like ensuring we buy products with low-energy standby modes, or just turning them off completely when not in use. This one alone would far outweigh any stupid one hour per year stunt.

Taking positive steps to change habits and thinking about the impact of our choices would appear to come a distant second to mouthing platitudes and making empty gestures for many.

[liluri]

Insulation, more than Australian standards, will reduce heating and cooling systems. Painting your roof with white paint that contains titanium, I don't know a lot about this but I think it was mentioned on a Swancon panel. Again cutting down on cooling and heating costs. Double glazing on windows, I think there is such a thing as triple glazing. Unsure if available in Australia.

These are pet ideas of mine and all along the same lines.

[foamiethegreeny]

I hear you on the bad housing design. I can't believe anyone in Australia would be stupid enough to build a house without an eve line at the every least. But hey why spend $10,000 on an eves when you can spend that on a air conditioner. We have a mixture of blow-in insulation in the original part of the house and the little plastic pillows in the new section. From a handling point of view blow-in stuff is a nightmare and if it gets wet watch your ceiling come down. I was surprised at how good the Pillow style insulation is. To be honest i had not thought of increasing the insulation. We have a evaporate aircon which we use maybe 6 time a year. We tend to just turn the blowers on if it's a hot still night. Other wise it's just open the window. But I'll look at increasing the insulation for winter. We have a section of area along the side of the house that has shade cloth up during summer so we can grow veggies there and i'm thinking of making panel for a green house for the winter months, so we will see how much that warms