Eco Houses Under Construction - Event 5

The 5th event in the series will take place on Saturday 12th November, 2-5pm.

This is a rare opportunity to visit the UK's first Zero Carbon Barn Conversion, just down the road in East Leake. The developer (and owner) of this home is David Hill, who previously developed the UK's first Code 6 new build Zero Carbon homes in Upton, Northampton. He is now director of Carbon Legacy Ltd.

Although not still "under construction", this house has the advantage of 3 years' energy data post completion, showing that the approach taken has worked.

For more information or to book your place on this free event, email Tina on info@wbecohouses.co.uk. 


For the full article about this eco house, go to http://wbecohouses.blogspot.com/.

A busy time for Abundance West Bridgford

All throughout August and September we have been harvesting apples, pears, tomatoes and plums.
It has been a bumper year for fruit so our stores are well stocked for the winter ahead.
Apart from that we have now got the Abundance community shop on Clumber Road. The Clumber Road Off-licence owners Bipin and Kiram very kindly gave us space to leave the fruit and vegetables for the community to come and pick up. It is all free but if people want to leave a donation so we can buy new pickers and equipment we are grateful for any contribution.

One of the main sources of apples were the ones from Abbey Road School, where a branch had come down during the storms mid September. We went home with 20 crates, which were turned into juice at the launch of Totally Locally West Bridgford There are also some pictures on the Melton Road Shops website

The weather has now turned autumnal, chilli but sunny, so I am off to harvest some more apples with 2 other members of the group. We only do 1 hour of picking, which seems to be enough to keep us happy doing the Abundance picking over a long stretch of time.

Totally Locally West Bridgford Launch

After a few months of organising, we had the most amazing Totally Locally launch on Saturday 1st October on the Melton Road. The weather was hot and hundreds of people came to find out what it means to shop local rather than buying from a supermarket or online.

Transition West Bridgford had their stall as well promoting Rushcliffe Solar, The Eco house Group and a little bit further in the market the Abundance project and the Skills Exchange where members of the Skills exchange pressed 20 litres of apple juice for people to sample and bottles to buy. All the funds raised have gone back into the community.

There was a real buzz in the air and no doubt this initiative will benefit the whole of our community if people are willing to divert a fiver from their normal supermarket shop into the local independent businesses. See the Totally Locally website for pictures and information

September heatwave

2 Oct 2011: DNC writes: The heat wave at the end of September 2011 produced 3 successive PV-Maximum days in a row. As it is after the Equinox, these averaged 13.5 kWh only per day on my east facing 4KW array, but it is still nice to have them. The lower daily harvest is due to lower sun angles and short hours of daylight. It's distressing how quickly it gets dark in the early evenings!
    It says something about the summer we have had (a lot of cloudy bright conditions) that that last day that PV was close to a maximum was 14th June, and previous to that it was May 1st and 2nd!
     For those who installed in early 2011, the good news is that 2011 has so far been sunnier than 2010, July and September being notably better.
dnicholsoncole@gmail.com