MrsBrown's philosophy of life and stuff

If you've never been inspired to make your own solar hot water heater or solar air heater, join the mailing list I'm on and change your mind.

Mostly though, the patterns and inspiring stories are on this website.  They're all American so I get a bit confused with the strange units.

The closest Australian site I can think of is the ATA.  I'd love to get an Australian equivalent going, but I'm already working on enough volunteer type projects, and I can't really do it it in work time, even though it's work related.

Following a link from the mailing list this morning (via an article about plastic balloons used to make solar power plants) I found out that in the USA, they need an activist group to change legislation so that they're ALLOWED (!!!)to hang their washing outside!

I already knew the nuclear figure (probably wrong by now, I first heard it 20 years ago) that the 9% of energy produced in the US was nuclear and also that, coincidentally, 9% of the energy used in the US was used for clothes drying. That's probably part of why I didn't own a dryer until about a year ago.  The laundry website also has a list of ten reasons to hang out clothes (figures are for the US)

    *      Save money (more than $100/year on electric bill for most households).FN1
    *      Conserve energy and the environment.
    *      Clothes and sheets smell better.
    *      Clothes last longer. Where do you think lint comes from?
    *      It is physical activity which you can do in or outside.
    *      Sunlight bleaches and disinfects
    *      Indoor racks can humidify in dry winter weather
    *      Clothes dryer fires account for about 15,600 structure fires, 15 deaths, and 400 injuries annually. The yearly national fire loss for clothes dryer fires in structures is estimated at $99 million.

They left out the joy of chatting to a small child (if you have one) while you hang out the clothes and having an oportunity to be reminded that outside is lovely,  even when you didn't want to  go out to start with.

Last night at the Sustainable Living Festival I found out about the Solar Venti, a solar heating device I'm tempted to try.  You can use them for drying rooms  instead of an electric dryer (as shown on Carbon Cops) or for providing some preheating to your home.

mr_bassman has maintained this theme this morning.  He's just discovered one of my favourite shows - The secret life  of Machines

All the videos are here -   I'm going to watch the washing machine episode