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1500 questions
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Relative carbon footprint of gas or electric heating (UK)

Inspired by this question: Given the current UK (2014) generation mix, would changing a house from gas to electric heating increase or decrease its carbon footprint? The original question was about resistive storage heating, but I'd be interested in…
Flyto
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Deciding when to stop patching a hose

When you live in the country and have hoses that are kept outside, they will occasionally get chewed on. I fix them when that happens, with a hose repair kit: If you haven't used one of these, you basically cut the hose on either side of the hole,…
Kate Gregory
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What should I look for in a knitting machine?

My girlfriend just started knitting and she got really good at it. I like the idea of producing your own clothes a lot since they seem to have a lot more (also emotional) value. I remember that my grandmother had a knitting machine which made work a…
Mathias Bader
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mosquito control with plastic bottle

My friend is managing a tiny guesthouse on an otherwise desert island in Indonesia and, as you could expect, have big problems with mosquitoes. I plan to make some test one of those days using PET bottle as trap as described…
Madlozoz
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MVHR no longer the ventilation of choice in some Nordic countries?

We've covered Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) before here, and it's been the ventilation method of choice for Passivhaus buildings for many years. But I heard something interesting recently: that some Nordic countries, having been…
410 gone
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6
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How can I keep my natural dish soap from going bad?

I bought some biodegradable/natural dish soap from the brand BioVert. I put it in a squeeze bottle left over from some other dish soap, and after some time (maybe 2 months?) there started to be blue dots inside the bottle and the soap itself turned…
tM --
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6
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More uses for bacon grease

We (my family) consume good amounts of bacon which produce a lot of bacon grease. I don't like wasting anything that I could reuse or repurpose, including this. I use this byproduct in many different ways, including: cooking. Filtered it can be…
slybloty
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What makes a food plant good for a small aquaponics system?

I have a small aquafarm, and I have a couple of danios and a cory in it. When I started out, I put some wheatgrass in it, and that grew like crazy. I want to put some variety into it. Does anyone have recommendations for edible plants? Edit: I…
Adam Miller
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Setting radiator temperature to save energy

The heating system at our home is set to auto. I guess this means that our boiler will automatically operate as to maintain the temperature of the home. How much should we set the temperature of the hot water used for the radiator, to save energy?…
adipro
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Preserving opened canned food

I am living by myself since the end of last year. When grocery shopping, I've noticed that canned food (beans, peas, salsas, etc.) is usually 500g or more, which is too much to eat for one seat. I've noticed that canned food is somewhat designed to…
AeroCross
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What are practical and sustainable methods of using guttering for growing hydroponic produce?

A friend is building his house (in a subtropical urban environment), an is endeavouring to make it as sustainable and practical as possible. In our chat, it occurred to me that the guttering around the edge of a roof could potentially be means of…
user1017
6
votes
3 answers

What does it take to stop the use of plastic bags in big grocery stores?

Many people do their weekly groceries at large supermarkets and consume a lot of plastic bags. However, given the fact that I already know that I am going to buy a-week worth of food and supplies what can I do to avoid plastic bags?
ZZZ
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Accounting for ecological foot print of non-renewable resources

Wikipedia defines ecological footprint as the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes. Which overshoot can I talk about if I consume even a bit of non-renewable resources? How…
Val
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How quickly can the offshore-turbine supply chain expand?

To date, there were until recently just a few players in the manufacture of multi-megawatt scale offshore-wind turbines, though with the entrance of new Chinese manufacturers, that's been expanding quickly. How quickly can the supply of offshore…
410 gone
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How long does it take to construct a new port suitable for offshore wind construction?

How long does it take to construct a new port suitable for offshore wind construction? I'm thinking about the whole period: the design and planning, construction, and commissioning? I'd value real-world examples, to back up any numbers. Here's the…
410 gone
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