Dublin Zoo - Teacher Training and Summer Camp Madness, Summer 2012

I was invited in to work with Dublin Zoo this summer on their teacher training course and on their summer camps. They have a purpose built school garden now in the zoo with a vegetable patch, fruit area, composter and pond for dipping in, as well as a purpose built classroom and a kind of urban farm next door complete with cows, sheep, goats and pigs.
I spent 2 days teaching primary teachers about how to set up their own organic school garden, I covered garden design elements and how to re-design your school grounds, seeding seeds, planting potatoes and science in the garden experiments.
The summer camps were run over 5 weeks during the summer, I was only doing one day a week on them, and fair play to the rest of the staff in the zoo for doing them full time during that time, don't know if I would have had the energy! I did some veg tasting, seed in a pot, mini-gardens,pond dipping and bug hunting in the school garden, it was a busy day in the zoo.

Team Willow rocking it at Body and Soul Festival June 2012

I returned for a second time to the Body & Soul Festival at Ballinlough Castle in Co. Westmeath with an increased Team Willow in tow this time! Myself and Cathy Eastman (good friend from days working down at Kerry Earth Education Project - see link below!) led team willow. Our main project was building and decorating the main entrance into the main stage area, see piccys below. We combined tissue and willow discs with a simple criss-cross willow fence at the base, and our saviour Rob built us the basic archway on which to erect all our art work! We also made large dry willow and tissue trees which decorated the main stage area, the usual ground lanterns in the woods, a few other small projects, oh and most importantly, there was a festival baby born to our decor boss while we were there! very exciting!

http://www.bodyandsoul.ie/

http://www.gortbrackorganicfarm.com/online/

Woodland Heritage Project in Wicklow

Early in 2012 we received LA21 funding from Wicklow County Council to run a  Woodland heritage Education Programme in Hollywood Woods,, Hollywood, Co. Wicklow. We worked with four different primary schools in the local area, bring them to the woods for a complete woodland immersion day. We played tracking and hide and sneak game, we deprived the kids of their sight by blindfolding them and leading them through the woods, we hunted for the bugs of the woodland, we tasted all the tasty edibles there are to be found in the ditches, looked at the trees talked about plants and their uses, we packed loads in and the day just flew, with the kids going home exhilarated and mucky and totally immersed in the woods! Job done!

For this project I linked up with my good friend and colleague Ciara Hinksman at Earthforce Education, you can check out what Ciara does here: http://www.earthforceeducation.com/

Herb Spiral in St.Finian's NS, May 2012

In May, we continued with our ongoing school garden programme at St. Finian's NS in Finglas. This time we  built a herb spiral in place of the old herbacious border that the school wanted removed from the front of the school. With 4th class we built a very magical spiral bed into which we planted a huge variety of herb plants, from medicinal to colourful to culinary herbs, rosemary, sage, thyme, marigolds etc.

April 2012, The Outdoor Classroom, redesigning the school garden!

It had been a while, but I went across to Tullamore today to work with Geraldine O'Toole from Sonairte. We did a school garden design day for the school. We worked with 4th class for the day, bringing them through the whole process of redesigning their school grounds from the perspective of making it into an Outdoor Classroom. so we went through the possible elements - vegetable patch, woodland, pond, orchard, fruit area, wild area etc, then we went outside and mapped the grounds, measuring the buildings and green spaces and auditing the site so we knew what the school already had onsite. Then in the afternoon we returned to the classroom and together with the kids we came up with the design that you see here in the picture, a fabulous 10-year plan for the school to work towards. We already made some preliminary plans to come back and start building the vegetable patch in a few weeks!

Progress being made at Piper's Hill, April 2012

The ladies are making huge progress in the new school garden we're building for the students down at Piper's Hill School in Naas, Co. Kildare. I'm working with a parent's group to develop the garden, and it has turned out to be an all women's group, but let that not deceive you, there has been trojan work done by the ladies, during April we built the beds for and planted up the herb and fruit areas in the garden. We planted raspberries, currants, strawberries, and rhubarb to name a few!

Low Carbon House Renovation

This is Pat's new blog: https://therecordingbellandthebutterfly.wordpress.com/ 

 

Given my energy background, it was natural that I would set about improving the energy performance of my house when I moved in over 18 years ago. It is a detached bungalow built just before the first  the reductions in energy use I have achieved (about 75% in the last 14 years) have come in several phases.

 



Following the large reduction in gas usage in 2007, and the subsequent installation of solar systems in 2008 and 2011, I have begun to focus more on my carbon footprint rather than just energy reduction. Now that my carbon emissions are barely 300 kg/year (most houses are measured in tonnes), I think it is reasonable to refer to my low carbon house and since I've passed the 90% renewables contribution landmark I've even allowed myself to start thinking of the Holy Grail of Zero Carbon! The graph below shows the contribution of the different renewables over the past 12 years.


Prior to 2009 I had reduced the heat losses through roof, walls, doors and windows substantially over a period of years. The large reduction in gas usage in 2007 came from a combination of disconnecting the underfloor heating in my conservatory (and sacrificing some tender plants) and pumping foam insulation into the 9" hollow block walls. The reduction in gas usage in recent years is due to the fact that I have been decommissioning my central heating system room by room as I have worked my way through the house putting in underfloor insulation and sealing off each floor with Intello airtight membrane (http://www.ecologicalbuildingsystems.com/).  Only the sitting room now remains for this treatment in 2013.  Each of these rooms now has a Süka wall-mounted electric heater which is thermostatically controlled and I have each one on a timer suited to the usage pattern for that room. 



Installation of underfloor cellulose insulation and Intello membrane



In March 2011, I had an air tightness test conducted by Christ Spoorenberg of EcoScan. The results were a slightly disappointing 7.68 Air Changes/Hour @ 50 Pa and a Permeability of 6.17 m3/h.m2. However, as I was less than halfway through the sealing process outlined above at that time, it may not have been too bad and, in addition, the thermal imaging also carried out showed up a number of weak points where I was losing heat such as hall door, hot press, fireplace/stove and attic door. I have subsequently dealt with all of these now apart from the attic door.

 

Extract fan in back door

Cold air (blue) around attic door

 

The reduction in electricity use has been achieved by means of a detailed audit of all appliances, and their usage, and systematically going about tackling each of them. Whenever I'm replacing an appliance I choose the most energy efficient option available - the most recent example of this being an amazing induction hob in my revamped kitchen. LED technology has advanced rapidly in recent years and I now have an LED option in almost every room which has more than halved my electricity usage for lighting in recent years. A dramatic reduction came in 2008 when I installed SOLARFOCUS solar panels for hot water and in the process did away with both summer electric immersion and electric power shower in one fell swoop - anyone used to a power shower might find my gravity fed shower a little tame but I find it more than adequate!

It may seem counter intuitive to be putting in electric heaters but the heat loss for the house is now so low (less than 3kW) that they are only needed to supplement the solid fuel stove I installed in 2006.  In addition, I am now generating my own electricity from my solar photovoltaic (PV) system (see my separate post on this for more detail and latest data) and, as I am exporting almost 80% of output to the grid, my net purchase of electricity is running at just over 500 units in a 12-month period at a net cost of about €200.  It seems to me very last century to pipe a fossil fuel halfway across Europe into my home to burn it in a boiler and then pump the hot water all around my house!

In December 2013, I replaced the existing solid fuel stove with a dedicated Charnwood C4 wood burning stove. I choose it for its clean-burn and air-wash technology designed specifically to re-ignite volatile by-products emitted by the initial burning. As wood is composed of 80% volatiles this is critical and I am amazed at how little ash is being produced which indicates to me that I am getting a very complete combustion. This series of stoves also features an integrated inlet for ducting external air to the combustion area rather than sucking it from the room and combined with the flue liner connected to it (rather than going straight into the chimney as with the old stove) I now have a closed airtight system.  Pat

Ready for Winter!