Hello everyone.
“How wonderful!”, I have heard said so many times. That was when visitors were talking about the Hydro-system and had just seen the waterwheel and generator system. I guess it is wonderful, if it is working correctly and you don’t have to do any maintenance. It is quite another matter when you have no power and rain is bucketing down, or it is 2.30 in the morning and the wheel is making a racket. Then it is far from wonderful, especially as the freezer and fridge will need power in a while. No, there is no such thing as free electricity, especially if the fault is serious.
From November until January I tend to be on hyper alert, as far as the wheel is concerned, for the summer stream trickle has given way to the autumn flow of storm water which shows up all the maintenance weaknesses. The last two Christmases have been fault free but for several years before that the wheel was poorly and we had no hydro power over the Christmas season. We have had rumbling hubs and even a broken shaft, so wonderful it is not!
At the moment, although the power is fine, we have a problem of defunct batteries. We went from having a powerful battery bank (see right) to a bank of no power capacity to speak of. Fortunately, someone was in the know (!) and was able to find us a new battery bank at no cost. Brilliant. But that left the problem of what to do with the old batteries (see below).
We couldn’t recycle them as you would a car battery, and enquiries led us to understand we would have to find about £4,000 to £5,000 to dispose of them in an environmentally friendly fashion. Even storing them on site is causing a problem for there will be leakages and spills occurring from time to time.
All of this means we need to find that £4,000 or so, so the Trustees have launched an appeal (use the link to view). If you can help then we would be extremely grateful, for it is truly hard to be Green.
The usual updates are there this month, Planting by the Moon and Astrology for Healers and Therapists.
Have a great month – Blessings
John
