Presso Espresso Coffee Maker - Award winning, energy saving fron Nigel's. Dimensions: 31 x 22 x 13cm The Rok Coffee Maker is technophobe-friendly, and has the added bonus of a smaller carbon footprint and lower energy consumption than conventional espresso machines, so it'll make every cup more enjoyable than the last. Espresso has been around for nearly a century and requires two very important things to extract a great drink. Pressure, and water that is around 90 degrees centigrade. If the water is boiling then the coffee will taste bitter. The Rok is different to conventional espresso makers, in that it only uses as much energy as it takes to boil a cup of water in the kettle. The Rok Coffee Maker comes with everything seen in the image (cup and saucer not included) including: Tough heat proof plastic cylinder with two cups worth of water capacity.One or two cup steel coffee filter Easy to clean drip tray.
Made from: polished aluminium(can be recycled at the end of its life). Rok brings back a bit of ritual to coffee making. Select the right coffee. Nigel Says. Eco-principles. Principles of eco-design From all the many theories behind environmental design, this section pulls out just five core ideas. They are all important, and they provide the tools for approaching most design challenges. There are also some excellent books that talk in far more detail about these concepts (see recommended books). In this section: Working with the sun Thermal mass Stack effect Thermal zoning Embodied energy Six principles for making priorities PRINCIPLES OF ECO-DESIGN: 1. WORKING WITH THE SUN The contribution of the sun to a house’s internal heat is called the solar gain. Controlled glazing is the vital component of environmental design. However, there are problems with glass too. So the use of glass is a juggling act - having enough glass to benefit from the free heat of the sun, enough glass to let in plenty of daylight, but not so much that the house overheats during sunny days and freezes at night. 1. 1.
PRINCIPLES OF ECO-DESIGN: 2. 1. PRINCIPLES OF ECO-DESIGN: 3. British Gypsum - Plaster, Plasterboard and Drylining Systems. Isover, leader in thermal and acoustic insulation. Saint-Gobain The future is made of Saint-Gobain. Springvale - Sustainable eps insulation. Publications and Reports | CMHC. Publications and Reports | CMHC. Insulating Your House. Welcome to Spaceline Aerogel. Innovation on trial: the Victorian Terrace Retrofit Project. Aerogel insulation, a new EPS insulation board product and phase change ceiling tiles are among the innovations featuring in the Victorian Terrace Retrofit Project at the BRE in Watford.
The project, which opened its doors today, has been fitted with a host of emerging products that could one day be used by millions to improve the energy efficiency of their cold and draughty homes. The Victorian building has been upgraded using both conventional and innovative products to create a living laboratory where product performance will be monitored in situ. BRE, DECC and industry partners have developed the facility not only to test the performance of products but also to generate best practice knowledge of the most effective ways of upgrading homes, particularly hard-to-treat solid wall housing. Speaking at the launch BRE chief executive Peter Bonfield said: "This project will address the gap between knowing something needs to be done and delivery.
What the project involves The products. The Pellet Stove Store | Wood Pellet Stoves | Pellet Stove Insert | Pellet Stoves. Pellet Stove F2901|Wood Pellet Stove|Large Hopper Pellet Stove. Enviro Pellet Stoves - Natural Heat. All Enviro Pellet Stoves are manufactured to the highest standards of quality and performance. Attention to the details that consumers want is why Enviro pellet stoves rank amongst the world’s leaders. Safety Enviro products come with numerous safety features to give you peace of mind. Temperature and vacuum sensors operate together to ensure that your Enviro product delivers years of worry free and safe operation.
Operation Available on the EF2/EF2i, the EF3Bi, and the EF4i Freestanding Pellet Stoves is the easy-to-use “Dial-A-Fire” which controls the heat input from a minimum of 6,500 BTUs to a maximum of 45,000 BTUs, depending on the model. The Evolution, Empress and Meridian offer fully automatic control systems. The Enviro 45,000 BTU Evolution truly is a unique Pellet Stove, which offers special features never before available in a pellet stove. The Enviro Empress is a powerful heater crafted in cast iron. Enjoy the environmentally friendly comfort of an Enviro Pellet Stove. Maxim - How an Outdoor Furnace Works. Www.theyellowhouse.info. WasteSolutions. Home | Low Energy Victorian House. Victorian refurbishment with triple glazing, solar thermal and wood-fired boiler. Interviews - LSE's Anne Power: the Government's Feed-in Tariff is great news. Matilda Lee: How big are the energy costs of our homes? Anne Power: Massive, in three different ways. One, the land they sit on and the roads that they require cause floods, affect biodiversity and use up land needed as a sink for our pollution.
Second, the energy required to build homes, from brick making to quarrying slate and creating steel girders, is huge. Third, they leak out heat through poor insulation and draughts - which is where we could make an 80 per cent saving. The more we preserve older homes, the more we encourage greater density, and the less we encourage sprawl, green field building and wider environmental damage. ML: What is your recipe for the 80 per cent energy savings you mention?
AP: I use the analogy of the tea pot. Very alarmingly 35 per cent escapes through the walls, 15 per cent through the floors and 15 per cent escapes through doors. Another aspect of the tea cosy is to stop draughts of cool air chilling your teapot. ML: What is it about the German approach? News - News Analysis - Low-tech retrofit experiment could transform social housing. From a distance it may look like any other rural council house, but a retrofit experiment taking place in 21 The Street, in the pretty Norfolk village of Ringland, could represent the future of social housing in the UK. Most of the UK’s 1.7 million council houses were built decades before such things as green building regulations, fuel efficiency and optimised insulation, and in a world of diminishing resources, most are unfit for purpose. Poor design, inefficient use of energy and the rising price of fuel make properties costly for tenants and the environment both – a quarter of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions come from housing sector.
Up until now councils and housing associations have simply been knocking down old stock and building anew, but the question being posed in Ringland is, why demolish when you can retrofit? The proof of the pudding will be in the living, however. ‘The trick is to capture and store heat in a healthy way. Green Living - Ecologist guides - Ecologist guide to greening your home. Eco retrofits For inspiration, check out these pioneering examples of full eco-retrofits on the Ecovation website.
You'll see super-insulated, energy efficient, energy generating houses around the UK that have been transformed by their owners. There are houses of all ages, shapes and sizes - from a church cottage to an 1890's Oxford semi. Insulation and glazing Around half of the heat loss in a typical home is through the walls and loft so it's worth checking whether yours are insulated. Adopting the following measures can significantly reduce your energy bills: Cavity wall insulationSolid wall insulationFloor insulationLoft InsulationDraught proofing around doors and window framesHot water tank and pipe insulationDouble glazing for windows For more details including cost, payback and savings see the Energy Saving Trust's guide to home insulation and glazing.
For information about where to start and what materials to use click here. Heating and hot water Anything we've missed? Energy labels. Retrofits are go! At first glance‚ some houses look just the same‚ identical to any other on their particular street. It is only on closer inspection that their identity as ‘eco homes’ become apparent. When people think of eco homes‚ most think of the ultra-modern.
But ‘eco-retrofits’ can come in all ages‚ shapes and sizes‚ ranging from 17th century cottages to 1920s semis. ‘An eco-renovation‚ or retrofit‚ is when you look at every aspect of a house and have a goal of getting the energy use down‚’ says George Marshall‚ a climate campaigner who has fully retrofitted his house in Oxford (see ‘The Yellow House’ opposite). ‘A lot of homes now have insulation or more efficient boilers‚ but that’s not eco-renovation‚ that’s home improvement.’
Ecovation (www.ecovation.org.uk)‚ which Marshall helped set up‚ is the first UK website to feature case studies of people’s eco-renovation projects‚ written in their own words. ‘People were really excited and inspired by it‚’ says Marshall. Why retrofit? How to do it. Green Living - Home - Wrap up your home. When Penney Poyzer and her ‘green' architect husband Gil moved into their Victorian semi in Nottingham six years ago, ‘the only form of insulation was mould,' she says.
One of their top priorities was to insulate, internally and externally, from roof space to cellars. Along with other eco renovations, Penney estimates that ‘we now save £1,000 a year on heating bills and our carbon emissions have gone from around 18 tonnes to just a fraction of a tonne.' ‘Insulating the loft is a no-brainer, it's so cheap and easy to do,' says Martin Normanton - who, from top to bottom, and room by room, has dramatically improved the insulation of his 1903 solid wall house in Walsall.
(For details of how he did it, see the Ecovation site) Nearly 50 per cent of all heat loss in an average home escapes through the walls and roof according to the Energy Saving Trust. In the UK, the amount of heat lost in this way is enough to heat around three million homes a year. Loft Walls EASY AND CHEAP Eliminate draughts. Nigel's Eco Store - Environmentally friendly products and eco friendly gifts for sustainable living. Great British Refurb Campaign. Sustainable Energy Academy. Green Building Books - Green Building Bible 3rd Edition Volume 1.
Parity Projects - Experts in low energy refurbishment - Parity Projects - Home Energy Masterplan. Turning our Victorian terrace into an ecohome: part one. Ecohome envy. That's what I've had for a very long time. I've visited new houses of every eco type - a new build ecohouse in Clapham, the Angell Town ecohousing estate in Brixton and beautiful designer co-housing (Hockerton in Nottingham and Springhill in Stroud).
Then I started hearing about 'ecoretrofits'. No, they're not 1950s makeovers - it's the eco refurbishment of old housing stock. Most of the houses in the UK are old, draughty, single brick houses (no cavity walls) that have been around a long time and are likely to be around way past 2050 - the date by which the Government has committed the UK to an 80 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. What the future holds Fortunately, there is a quiet eco-revolution in the offing, with Government, energy companies and local councils now gearing up in order to meet our commitments, particularly through new eco-builds and refurbs of social housing that will help reduce fuel poverty as well as climate change.
Make a plan. Green Living - Home - Turning our Victorian terrace into an ecohome: part three - floors. Well, this is all taking rather longer than I expected. The main problem is that I seem to have become an ecorefurb research junkie – and the more I know, the less sure I am what the hell to do. The other weekend I visited several houses in north London that were part of an ecohome open house weekend. Some of them had gone the whole hog – wall insulation, solar thermal and PV panels, rainwater harvesting connected to the toilets and washing machine and passive solar conservatories. It was incredibly inspiring. The houses ranged from the type you’d see in a glossy interior design magazine to the more home-spun version of eco-living. There’s no right or wrong obviously, and it was great to see how people have made their Victorian homes more energy efficient in different ways and with different budgets.
Draughty floorboards One thing I wanted to find out about was floor insulation. At one house, we went down into the cellar to view the insulation boards stuck snugly between the joists. Green Living - Home - Turning our Victorian terrace into an ecohome: part two - insulation. A thermal image of our solid-walled Victorian house in winter would show it glowing orange, Ready-Brek style, with all our hard-earned money and more than our fair share of CO2 just flowing out of the walls.
Insulation may not be the sexiest thing to get to grips with in an eco-refurb, but hell, it certainly has passionate advocates. And as it's the best way of keeping warm and reducing your carbon footprint (which is, after all, the point), it's worth doing right. External vs internal Even without a cavity wall, you can still insulate.
If you have a big expanse of external wall the easiest option is to insulate outside rather than inside. Internal wall insulation by contrast involves removing the skirting boards, window sills, electric sockets, phone points, radiators and curtain rails from every internal outside wall. With professional install it works out at about £45-60 per square metre (£15/sqm for materials). 'Magic wallpaper' and other solutions It was an exciting thought.