{"id":693,"date":"2011-02-26T16:57:56","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T16:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulaowenconsulting.co.uk\/?p=693"},"modified":"2015-11-24T16:35:31","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T16:35:31","slug":"my-search-for-a-carbon-neutral-heating-source-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/2011\/02\/my-search-for-a-carbon-neutral-heating-source-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"My Search for a Carbon Neutral Heating Source – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

A month ago I blogged about my quest to find an efficient, low-carbon heating solution for my ‘home-office’, as\u00a0using central heating system seemed overkill since\u00a0I spent most of my working day holed up in one small room.\u00a0 At the time I was awaiting delivery of a bio-ethanol fuelled portable heater\u00a0that I hoped would be the answer to my ‘carbon-free cosiness’ quest.\u00a0 Well, the heater duly arrived and\u00a0I have been using it over the last weeks, and so i can now report on my experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

To start with the positives I can say\u00a0 it is a mighty fine looking heater.\u00a0\u00a0It’s all glass and black metal and has a flame that runs across the bottom of the heater – which does much to make you feel warm.\u00a0 It also heats a small area up very\u00a0fast, I can go from 15 centigrade to 24 in about half an hour (at which point I’m sweltering and have to put the fire off).\u00a0 There is also hardly a smell, although there is\u00a0a faint whiff of fuel that does linger.<\/span><\/p>\n

So from a looks and warmth potential it does the job nicely.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, there are a few downsides.\u00a0 Apparently I am risking life and limb\u00a0by using it in such a small room!\u00a0 They recommend not using such heaters in spaces smaller then about 3×3 meters.\u00a0 My room is hardly 2×2.\u00a0 They also recommend keeping a window open when you have the heater on – which kind of defeats the purpose of having it there – so I have not been doing this; instead figuring my leaky old Edwardian house would have enough natural ventilation to do this job for me. \u00a0And,\u00a0so far, so good, I haven’t\u00a0felt faint or passed out in a swoon.\u00a0 Although I do make sure\u00a0to take regular breaks from the room.<\/span><\/p>\n

The biggest downside\u00a0I can see is the cost of such a system.\u00a0 I bought a bulk load of the bio-ethanol with the heater and it worked out at about \u00a34 per 1-litre bottle, although single bottles can cost as much as \u00a35!.\u00a0 When you consider that petrol\/diesel, even at an all time high, is only approx. \u00a31.30 a litre that does seem a little steep.\u00a0 I also wonder how a fuel that is made locally (well, within the UK at least), from waste organic materials can cost\u00a0nearly 4 times the price of a fuel that is dug out of the ground or deep sea, refined, and then transported thousands of miles\u00a0to get\u00a0here?<\/span><\/p>\n

The heater will run for about 4 hours on its 1-litre bottle.\u00a0 I put the heater on and off sporadically during the day as the unit does warm my small space up quickly and efficiently.\u00a0 But\u00a0I still get through, on average, a bottle per day.\u00a0 Hence\u00a0I am spending \u00a34 daily to keep myself warm.\u00a0 This is much more expensive than my gas central heating system and even an electrical heater – a friend has a halogen mini heater that keeps her office\u00a0snug and that has a 400Watt rating, so it costs her about 6p per hour to keep warm as compared to my 50p per hour equivalent!<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the moral of the story seems to be if you want to do the right thing carbon-wise, its gonna cost you lots more than by conventional carbon-intensive means.\u00a0 I’m trying to find other, cheaper,\u00a0local,\u00a0waste derived supplies of the fuel but the best I can find at the moment works out at just under \u00a33 per litre.\u00a0 Still a high comparative cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hence, if anyone out there knows of a bio-ethanol\u00a0source out there\u00a0that is sustainable\u00a0and cheap, please let me know.\u00a0 But I fear you can only get one of those two options in any one product!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A month ago I blogged about my quest to find an efficient, low-carbon heating solution for my ‘home-office’, as\u00a0using central heating system seemed overkill since\u00a0I spent most of my working day holed up in one small room.\u00a0 At the time I was awaiting delivery of a bio-ethanol fuelled portable heater\u00a0that I hoped would be the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-renewables"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1947,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}