Our Thoughts for the New Year

Thank you to all our readers for sticking with us through 2007. It was definitely an exciting year for us as we finally got to move into the eco-flat lab, as Epi called it. Although a bit slow in posting articles at times, we were able to share some more green achievements with you.

We installed recycled plastic slate in the bathroom, appeared on TV with Silenci?, put down a gorgeous cork floor, reduced our water consumption and installed double glazing, applied real eco paint, hunted down some furniture, started urban gardening and built FSC shelves. All this while eco design became more and more mainstream, big businesses decided to go green(er) and people’s climate change awareness grew drastically not least because of An Inconvenient Truth, Live Earth and Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change winning the Nobel Price.

We hope that in 2008 this awareness grows in order to eliminate green-washing and even plastic bags, and make us all more responsible consumers, and that more and more people achieve the win-win-win (for people, planet, profits) scenario by making their business sustainable. On a more local scale, the R3project will look into the most eco-friendly heating system, water filtering systems, cradle to cradle office chairs, analyse our electricity, gas and water bills, find out where our recycling goes and hopefully, throw a huge Open House Party for everyone who has been involved with the project.

A Happy New Year to all of You,

Petz & Sergio

Not All Christmas Trees are Green

In case you are wondering whether a real Christmas tree is eco-friendlier than a fake plastic tree- here is the answer.

Despite some obvious advantages of having a fake tree, like re-usability (one tree can serve many years), non-prickling and perfect shapes, the fact that fake trees are almost always made from PVC does definitely not make them an eco option.

If you have to have a tree, go for the real ones. After all, Nature’s trees have been fully cradle to cradle designed and come with a special CO2-reducing feature. However, since having a Christmas tree implies chopping down a living one, make sure they come from somewhere where new trees are planted every year. Your local small-scale grower is definitely the best option. After the festivities, make sure your tree gets disposed of correctly. If you live in a city, watch out for Christmas recycling facilities that turn the trees into compost. In Barcelona you can find over 218 collection points between January 7-14 all around town.

Living in the Gothic area in Barcelona, we went to the flower stalls on Las Ramblas and bought a tree branch we put into a pot with water for it to keep its needles longer. We asked the flower vendors if they new where the branches of the Christmas trees had been gown. Most didn’t know, some guessed they came from Catalonia and only two could confirm they were locally grown. Our branch is from Espinelves, around 90km north of Barcelona.

Read Grist’s in-depth article about Christmas trees here. “There’s always the option of not having a tree at all”, says Umbra Fisk from Grist: “Have you thought about having no tree and living vicariously through the trees of others, decorating a living exterior tree, decorating a house plant, or making your own tree as an ambitious crafts project?”

Also check out TreeHugger’s How To Pick A Christmas Tree and, in case you are still shopping for presents, the TreeHugger 2007 Gift Guide.

Special thanks to Anita and Julia for hand-making our Christmas tree decoration.

And Merry Christmas to all our readers!

A Condensing Boiler for Hot Water

After a lot of research into different methods for obtaining domestic hot water, suitable for our home, we decided on a condensing gas boiler. In Barcelona, where we don’t have access to an alternative energy source (yet?), we concluded gas would be the most efficient way to heat the water for our shower, kitchen and central heating. The condensing boilers are especially environmentally friendly because of their efficient use of the gas and their considerably lower CO2 (responsible for global warming) and Nox (responsible for acid rain) emissions. We needed a combi-boiler in order for it to provide hot water for central heating as well as domestic hot water all year round.

In the wall-mounted boiler Cerasmart by the German brand Junkers, widely available in Spain, we found what we were looking for. The advantages: gas saving and low emissions.

How does it work?

The condensing boilers recycle the energy that is normally lost through the duct into the atmosphere. It catches the water vapour produced by the burning of gas for it to condense back into water. This way the heat, produced as water vapour, is recovered and the boiler uses less gas. Image by Junkers

“Typical condensing boiler efficiencies are around 90%, which brings most brands of condensing gas boiler in to the highest categories for energy efficiency. Condensing boiler manufacturers claim that up to 98% thermal efficiency of fuel conversion can be achieved in normal domestic use, compared to 70%-80% with a conventional design." (Via Wikipedia) Junkers claim the boiler Cerasmart to be 21% more efficient than standard ones, due to the fact that it can work at lower temperatures.

Condensing boilers are especially recommended if you have under-floor heating, low H2O radiators (like us) or other energy saving heating solutions.

A slight drawback is that you need to install an extra draining pipe to get rid of the condensate. This can either be installed vertically through the roof, or diagonally through the wall to the outside. (see photo on the right)

Another disadvantage might be the fact that condensing boilers are generally more expensive than conventional ones. It is estimated that “as of 2006, at UK prices the extra cost of installing a condensing boiler should be recovered in around 2-3 years” (via Wikipedia).

The Cerasmart boiler, for a 4-people flat with central heating by Junkers will cost you around 2268€ in Barcelona (you might be able to get a standard one for under 1800€). We bought ours at Tuysa.

Why we didn’t go solar.

Solar Hot Water Panels would have been the most eco-efficient solution, but all the companies we contacted turned us off the idea. Technically, so they say after visiting our flat and roof, it would be very difficult due to the distance (2 floors) the water would have to travel to and from the roof. Plus we would have to give up 2 of our precious 58 m2 to make space for a not so beautiful water tank.

The initial first cost didn’t help make our decision easier as it would have been at the very least 2000€ for the panels to which we would have to add the installation cost and a back-up boiler. Moreover, we would have to get the approval of the fellow property owners of our building to install the solar panels on the communal roof. This shows again that eco-renovating a flat within the city is a very different story to building an eco house in the countryside where space and neighbours are less of an issue.