Let’s get real — I’m not giving up my computer or my cell.

This ecovillage uses a multitude of eco-technologies and also has WIFI. Now we’re talkin’.
Take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT6NIj4kEbQ

Could you live in a house that had only 360 square feet of living space? What if you had a roommate? What if you had a spouse and a child? That’s commitment to a sustainable lifestyle!

Take this video tour conducted by a very nice couple, expecting a baby, of the lovely sustainable home they built.

http://drtv.dancingrabbit.org/2007/08/23/eco-cribs-larkspur/

news source: Guardian

Gordon Brown’s long awaited measures to help people struggling with soaring gas and electricity bills may have been derided as a bit of damp squib, but at least there are grants out there to help you insulate your home.

At the heart of the scheme is the plan to restore funding to the existing grants scheme – the government’s flagship Warm Front programme, which suffered a £83m-a-year cut to its budget last November. The government restored £34m a year and this week’s plan will now see each of the big six energy companies contribute an extra £50m a year to fund home improvements.

The package’s key points are:

· If you are 70 or over, earn less than £15,460, and receive one of a number of benefits, your power company will pay for cavity wall and loft insulation. Contact your power firm to confirm your eligibility.

· For the first time the power firms will be “encouraged” to top up existing loft insulation for the most vulnerable, although this is not mandatory.

· The power firm will also offer to pay 50% of the cost of loft and cavity wall insulation for all other households regardless of income.

· On top of the help offered directly by the power firms, Warm Front is still offering grants to help the over 70s and to those on benefits of up to £2,700 to install a new central heating boiler. Critics of the plan claimed that figure should have been raised to cover the entire cost of a new boiler. Anyone aged 65-70 will still receive £300.

· Cold weather payments, triggered after seven consecutive days of temperature below 0C, have been increased from £8.50 a week to £25 for pensioners, disabled people and unemployed families with children under five.

· The government has ordered a freeze on this year’s bills for the 600,000 poorest consumers and promised action to end the financial discrimination suffered by the those forced to use prepayment meters.

Within hours of the announcement phone lines to Warm Front (0800 316 2805) and the government’s helpline (0800 512 012) were jammed by consumers keen to know if they would benefit from the measures.

Ministers said the government’s aim is to insulate of all Britain’s homes, where practical, by 2020.

However, critics seized upon the plan as devoid of “ambition”.

Friends of the Earth pointed to the fact that these measures are likely offer little for the third of all homes that are classified as hard to improve with cheap energy measures.

Age Concern, which last year received 5,000 complaints about Warm Front, said yesterday’s measures did little for the poorest groups who apply for a grant for a new boiler but are forced to drop out because they can’t afford the extra £200-£2,000 demanded by the installer.

For more information on loft and cavity wall insulation visit http://www.thinkinsulation.co.uk

House building may not be the first thing that occurs to you when you think of hemp. Due to the fact that you can (apparently) smoke it, hemp has had a bad press so its commercial possibilities haven’t been fully explored. Hemp actually has a history of being really useful. Hemp ropes were used to scale mountains and to bind boats together until the early 20th century. It was the original material for artists’ canvas. It can be woven into fabric to make clothes. It also makes fantastic insulation.

Our first choice of wall insulation was straw. As a byproduct of farming, it is really low impact and incredibly cheap. Unfortunately it only comes in one size – bales. This would result in very thick walls and as our site is long and narrow would have reduced the living space of our rooms by about a metre. So we looked at other natural insulation material. Sheep’s wool, as a byproduct of the meat industry, wasn’t acceptable to the vegetarians in the family. It’s also relatively expensive – £9.50 per m2 compared to £6.50 for hemp. Warmcel is made from 100% recycled newspapers and is pumped into the walls but we couldn’t find a local supplier. British-grown hemp batts are supplied by Burden’s Builders Providers which made them the easiest option but the more we learnt about hemp, the more we loved it.

OK, there’s the ‘hur, hur’ value of having a house made of hemp but it really is an amazing resource. Commercial hemp crops are now grown in Britain and across Europe (but are still banned in the US) and are proving their eco credentials. They use far less water, fertiliser and pesticides than most crops, being unattractive to most insects and growing to 3-5 metres in a couple of months. As they grow they lock in carbon, creating a carbon sink even more efficient than trees. They are low impact in every sense. They may even hold the key to the biofuels issue.

From a building point of view, hemp has great thermal resistance and can be used in external and internal walls, floors, lofts and roofs. It also controls moisture, protects against fire, insects, fungus and vermin, and the strength of its structure means it doesn’t compress or slump once in place.  It has great acoustic properties – which means that once the kids are installed in their new rooms we shouldn’t hear them at all! The NBT hemp batts we used are available in different sizes and are designed to be compatible with the diffutherm system (see previous post). Hemp doesn’t have any of the nasties that trigger allergies and it has full lifecycle certification (see www.natureplus.org) which means that it is eco friendly from seed to disposal. And it smells good!

House full of hemp

Homeowners may want to take cutting their heating costs into their own hands by installing better insulation as according to the Evening Standard, drops in the wholesale price of gas are not being passed onto consumers.

In fact, the opposite is true, claims columnist Neil Collins, pointing out that in July, wholesale gas prices fell from about 63p to 45p per therm – a unit of measurement.

Meanwhile, both EDF and British Gas announced massive price hikes equivalent to almost a quarter and over a third. Both British Gas’ 35 per cent price hike and EDF’s 22 per cent price jump, were publically justified by the rising cost of gas on wholesale markets even as the prices came crashing down.

Furious consumers have been calling for a windfall tax on profits for energy companies after the announcement – the day after the price hike – by British Gas parent company Centrica of £992 million in profits.

But irrespective of the tax, households that want to counter the rising energy bills should consider installing insulation to reduce the amount of gas and electricity they use.

Get intouch with http://www.thinkinsulation for Loft Insulation and Cavity Wall Insulation

 Basically it’s the ingredients of Natural Insulation Products that differentiate them from traditional insulation material. Also their impact on the environment is much less than that of traditional insulation material.

This quality also helps to protect the building structure from damage through condensation and moisture, especially if it is timber, by wicking the moisture away from the wood. Natural insulation products are therefore ideal for use in ‘breathing’ constructions.Additional benefits of natural insulation materials are effective sound insulation and the ability to perform over time, qualities not always achievable with conventional insulation products. The immediate performance benefits and longer-term cost benefits will therefore be significant.