Selfsufficientish.com

dave45 wrote:"Getting the recipe right took about a year."

not easy to replicate at home then?

That was my first thought, too. Then my second thought was, "I'm not sure how fussy I am about getting it 'right'." I'm going to give this a go! Cheers, Doofa

Hey Jessie

I'm never quite sure whether I'm here or not

I've sacked the window cleaner and decided to do it myself. Surely that's being self sufficient? Definitely! I'm trying to avoid too much planning until I've finished my solar panel project, otherwise I'll get too distracted. I had hoped to get it finished by the beginning of March... As for clothe...

Of all those things, Steve, the thing that struck me was the line about compost. Firstly, because it's one of the things I try not to spend money on, yet with all your animals, you've only got to 100% self sufficient for the first time this year. This makes me think I'm almost certainly not putting ...

If you're using a woodburner to heat the whole house then you'll certainly spend a lot of time feeding logs into it - we do. Our sitting room is only a little smaller than yours, so I think you're right that 9kW to the room would be too much. As for the thermal store, ours is 350l and doesn't have m...

Hi Mike, Our set up is a little different as we use the wood burner for central heating as well as hot water, but maybe I can make some general comments that might be useful. Ours is very strongly biased towards the water (including central heating), rather than the room: 3.2kW to the room and 7.5kW...

How do you get the sawdust to stay in the tube, pbf? I tried it once, but just made a mess. I use the tubes for keeping various computer-related bits of wire tidy. I can never find the one I want, but it is a little easier if the two ends are sticking out of a tube - at least you can tell which pair...

Hello

I'm glad to hear you've managed to get at least half your allotment back - what a ridiculous man, hanging on to all that space that he's not using. As you say, hopefully he'll see sense once you're back there tending your plot, making comments like, "I wonder where I'm going to put..."

Your post prompted me to get off my backside and actually do some of what I planned to do today. It was beautifully sunny here, but very cold, so I was putting off going outside. I did pop out to fetch something from the greenhouse, but couldn't get in because the door was frozen shut. I did go out,...

Hi Glyn,
Congratulations on finally making the move! It sounds like you've made a great start I look forward to hearing more about how you're getting on.

I was just looking at the list to see whether the things I bought today count as exceptions, because I feel they ought to. I'm amused that things like massages and music downloads - which are definitely off my list - are excepted. I suppose it's about not accumulating new stuff, rather than being an...

Congratulations! It really depends what kind of event you want. Our wedding was a handfasting, held outdoors (guests sat on straw bales), followed by a barn dance. Apart from quite a lot of ribbons, we had very little by way of trimmings, though we did go to town on the outfits (and the long woollen...

Hi Chris, good to hear from you. You've been in the house only a year and completely finished the work you wanted to do on it? That's impressive! I like the sound of your garden, and I love to hear about all those trees you're growing, especially the oak trees from acorns

bet they don't work anywhere near as well as claimed .... vertical axis! That's 3kW for the whole tree of 72 turbines, not per turbine! It didn't sound like a very bold claim to me. Also, I couldn't find any mention of vertical axis turbines on the Warwick wind trials website - did I miss it somewh...

No, no noticeable draught. I still haven't got round to investigating ours properly with a thermometer - I will if you're interested. We went to a new year's eve party in a large, high-ceilinged room. The wood burner in there didn't seem to be having much impact on the temperature until we moved an ...