Greens Seeking Light
Today I watered all the plants in the house. In doing so I noticed that those in the GP box or in the house that had the most exposure to light, be it from the sun or the 4 ft. fluorescent growing lights above part of the GP box, did the best. The four-foot fluorescent light set we use over the GP box was in my garage. We just added two grow lights. I am tempted to find or purchase another four-foot unit so the whole box is covered. I can move the present unit to middle, one side or the other but the difference between lights or no light is dramatic. Also the plants in the house or the unheated sunroom are also doing well because of the heat. When we were gone I kept the furnace at 60 degrees and the small radiator in the sunroom at 57 degrees. With the five- pane inserts the radiator was not on a good part of the time. Even now when it is 26 degrees outside, the gauge on the small heater says it is 57 and so has shut down. The gauge on the wall above the GP box, farthest from the heater, says it is 47 degrees and if I had not broken my ground temperature gauge it would probably be reading in the 60’s in the GP box.
All the above observations and information lead me to take an action based on the five-pane window inserts that we made for the sunroom.
In the Diary of the Worm you will find some information on the five-pane window idea and soon there will be more. However, right before my last trip one of the eight small storm windows I have on the first floor of my house blew down in a wind. Rather than put it back up I had this idea of putting two layers of clear plastic, one on each side of the storm. By doing that the window and storm, which would be, considered now two pane windows and have a certain factor of insulation, would be doubled into four pane windows with twice as much an insulating factor. So today for about $10 I purchased a roll of clear plastic that I could put on each side of the storm, blow air dry tight and thus have four pane windows. If I put one on the outside of the regular window I could have five pane windows, and the same insulation saving factor as in the sunroom.
Tonight I talked with my friend, John, whose idea the five pane inserts are and, now that is cold enough outside,we can measure in kilowatt hours and dollars the exact amount of money we are saving with the inserts. We know how inexpensive the inserts were to build so we will know how cost effective this system is. We can apply these numbers to other systems like the 8 small windows in the house.
Today Google, the major internet search and software company, announced how it was getting into renewable and sustainable energy. Saving energy should stay in the common domain and not be purchased and sold as Google will do. So we better hurry and publish our results on the nonviolentworm.org. Light and Heat should be in the common domain and not owned by private companies.
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