No sooner did I press the publish button on my last post than a letter from the city arrived with final approval for the last round of drawings and calculations for my house foundation.  Now to get the work started!

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The foundation repair on my 330 year old house is finally coming together!  The final plans were submitted to the city a few weeks ago, and I’m waiting for approval.  I’m in very active discussions with a contractor, who I expect will do the work.  If nothing serious goes wrong, work should start in about a month.

What an incredible project this has turned into!  Contaminated ground, some of the most poorly behaved neighbors I have ever seen, cheated by architects, bad contractors, just everything that could go wrong has, and it has all dragged out for years now.  As things start to come together, and the work starts getting done, I plan some posts both explaining what’s happening as well as what’s happened.

What you see in the pictures above are the main larger drawing of my new foundation at the top, including 16 piles 21.5 meters deep.  In the blue folders are about 50 pages of mathmatical calculations that describe in detail all of the functioning of the new foundation and all the support the various parts will give.  Also on the right is a new steel stability structure that will be installed in my wall to keep my house stable for the future.  On the lower left are the plans for a support structure that will be used during the construction that will keep my house from collapsing when the weight is transferred from the old foundation to the new one, which will be particularly important because we’ll be living upstairs at the time.

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Like I mentioned in my last post, I share a common wall with one of my neighbors.  It’s a complicated and age old problem.  I own the land under our common wall, and in fact a bit of the land under my neighbors house as well.  I have the larger house, and my house is older than my neighbors, by around 100 years.  Taking all of these things into account, the city said the common wall was my responsibility.  I have to take care of providing a foundation and support for this wall, but my neighbor has to pay the extra costs associated with supporting the weight of that part of his house.  In addition, my neighbor has the right to do his foundation together with mine if he wants.

While my neighbor is not very technical, and probably does not understand fully what’s going on, he said very firmly at the beginning he does not want any dependency between our houses, and he will pay the extra costs of my doing that wall, if that’s what’s necessary to keep our houses independent.  It’s worth noting that my neighbor taking that decision is turning out to be a very expensive one, as I warned him it probably would be.  In layman’s terms, it leaves him a house that has to be supported asymmetrically by his new foundation, as well as having to pay me the costs of supporting that side of his house from my foundation.

Then Comes the Constructeur

There are two architects working on this project.  The first one, who is also my advisor and project manager, made the initial drawings of my house that were the basis of the new foundation design.  The other architect is called a ‘constructeur’, and is a technical architect.  He is the one who actually designs my foundation, as well as the associated building plan.  He plans the number and layout of the piles, as well as how deep they have to be.  This is really a lot more complicated that it might seem, given the age of my house, the common wall with my neighbor as well as all the stresses a new foundation will put on the house itself, both during and after the building work.  If this is done wrong, my house could collapse or I could have long term structural problems.  On the other hand all the safety supports which are part of the building plan are very expensive, and erring on the cautious side could costs tens of thousands of euros unnecessarily.  A number of steel beams have to be placed before and after the work, and these have to be planned very carefully.

At the beginning we asked for a number of quotes from constructeurs, and we choose Duyts, mostly because they were the least expensive.  They started by making a draft drawing of a proposed foundation, that we could use to get feedback from contractors and others, so that minor changes could be incorporated later into a final version.  This draft was also used as a way to get quotes from contractors for the work, and in this way we have already chosen a contractor.  This draft seemed okay, but honestly there were some problems, mostly requiring extensive work around the existing stairway that didn’t seem necessary.  We also had a number of rather stupid issues, like the constructeur forgot an important support structure, during a new phase I was asked to accept extra charges that in fact we had in writing were part of the original quote, and some other smaller things that are a little hard to explain clearly here.

Then it was time.  We had accepted a quote for the work from a contractor, had a tentative start date for the work, and signalled the constructeur to do the final drawing incorporating the feedback on needed changes.  We were promised the drawing in a week (it was complicated enough that he probably spent most of that time working on it), and even though he was a week late he finished and sent the drawing directly to the city for their final approval before the work would begin.

The only problem was the constructeur totally changed the drawings in the meantime!

Since my neighbor who decided did not want a connection between our foundations also started work on his foundation, and choose the same architectural bureau, the constructeur decided to combine our houses.  When I called on the constructeur to explain himself, explain why he didn’t let us know in advance he was going to do that, and correct the mistake by redoing the drawings, he was indignant.  It was simply better, he said.  He said that because he now had the drawings from my neighbor, he had new information of the situation being different and he didn’t need to tell us he was going to change anything.  I’m still seething at the arrogance that lies behind a statement like that, and the idea that whatever this architect says he thinks I have to accept, because he knows better what my house needs than me.

Besides the fundamental problem of combining my foundation with my neighbors, there are other obvious technical problems in the latest drawings, including not enough space being left for my stairway, the only means of getting into my house.

Starting Over

So now I’m in a situation where I realize what a total idiot this constructeur is, I guess it’s my fault for choosing the cheapest, and I suppose you get what you pay for.

His position is still that he hasn’t done anything wrong, and while perhaps I could eventually convince him to redo the drawings, I’m far beyond that now.  My house is too important for such an idiot to plan my foundation, so I will look for someone else to do the drawings and do the building plan.

Of course he is expecting me to pay thousands of euros for the incorrect drawings, which I won’t, and this may lead to confrontation in court.

Of course there is no guarantee another constructeur will be able to use the original draft drawings as a basis for my foundation, because they may be wrong or the constructeur may simply have a different methodology.  This would mean the current quote that I’ve accepted for the foundation work can’t go forward, that may result in the contractor asking me to pay compensation.

It’s also very likely starting from scratch could mean it takes a month or more extra time, delaying the project that much further.

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I’ve been meaning to post some pictures of our local Saturday farmer’s market for some time now.  Last Saturday I took my camera along.  Honestly it’s mostly locals who shop at this market, and someone with a camera really stands out and kind of gets in the way, which is why I haven’t made this post earlier.  Above is a picture of the entrance.  Everything sold at this market is supposed to be organic, but much of it is not certified.  As far as I know, there is only one other organic market in the city, and mine is the only true farmers market as the other is simply run by independent market stand operators.

The horse was just dumb luck.  We don’t normally have horses at the market.  There are however a couple of horses that ride around the city giving rides and tours to tourists, and just as I picked up my camera one went past the market.  A photo moment!

This market has a Dutch language website here.  You might have some luck using Google language tools to translate it.

Above is my favorite cheese stand.  They are a farm, and they do sell some of their own cheese.  Mostly what they have done is collect organic artesian cheeses from small farms around Europe, and sell them.  They are really expensive, but also have some very nice cheese.

The honey guy (above) is usually there, selling honey and honey related products.

There are only about 4 or 5 stands selling vegetables regularly, and this is one I like because it’s reasonably priced and of good quality.  This market is actually on the small side, when all is said and done.

The most exotic stand there sells only mushrooms.  Besides being very expensive, I honestly haven’t found much use for them.  I like mushrooms, but I don’t really know how to cook most of these.

Besides these stands, others sell fruits and juices, grains, house plants, cheese, olives, breads and meats.  Almost all the food related stands have farms behind them, but often sell other products that aren’t their own.  There’s a stand that sells vegetarian goodies like handmade sushi, pate, sandwiches and so on.  On the back side there are stands selling things like clothes and household things.  There’s a woman who runs a Scottish baked goods stand, and there is a power foods stand where you can stock up on wheat grass juice and goji berries.  Other stands come and go, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few.

I guess what I don’t like are the many non farmer’s market aspects to this market.  Many stands sell things that aren’t their own, and these things often come from far away.  I saw oranges this week, and these must have come from the southern hemisphere.  I was hoping to get a picture of some the the large bunches of bananas that often adorn the market and must come from elsewhere, but there weren’t any this week.

You often see things like chestnut mushrooms, which all the food stands sell, all look exactly the same, cost about the same, and you know come from the same wholesaler.

While I sometimes appreciate being able to buy these things while I’m shopping at the market, and I have a lot of respect for the need for farms to work together because it’s pretty hard for one farm to provide enough variety year round to stock a single market stall by themselves, this really goes far beyond that.  This is really a local farmers market, integrated with large scale food wholesalers.  Also while I say local, many farms come from far away and are on the large side.

Also none of these farms offer Community Supported Agriculture subscriptions, at least via their market stalls.  What sort of a true small farm would not choose to offer a CSA?

In fact, as far as I know, true CSAs are not available in Amsterdam.  What we have here instead is the polar opposite, and it’s called a ‘Vegetable Subscription’.  It’s run by the country’s largest organic produce wholesaler and is simply a selection of their choosing of all the leftover products that goes unsold through other channels.  Real CSAs couldn’t compete with this on a price basis, and I think most Amsterdammers wouldn’t understand the difference, so it’s unlikely CSAs will take off here anytime soon.

What I just said about CSAs only applies to Amsterdam and probably most large Dutch cities.  In the outlying areas I think there are lots of CSAs available, but I’m not really sure.

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They have arrived!

I’ve posted before about the repair of my 325 year old wooden house foundation.

Two permits arrived a few days ago, a demolition permit to remove the ground floor and the building permit for the new foundation.  The great paper chase is almost over!

Some key points in the permits are:

The technical architect needs to do more work.  In particular, I have a common wall with one of my neighbors who is not repairing his foundation at the same time (even though his is in bad shape too).  I need to stabilize this wall using support only from my foundation and this requires extra piles and a special concrete structure.  The technical architect needs to do another ground test to verify the depth of the stable ground layer and combine this with some more calculations for this special wall support.  The good news is I get to bill my neighbor for half the extra cost this support is costing!

Bad News:  My ground is seriously contaminated with heavy metals!  Good News:  The main problem is zinc (Zn), which is non-toxic to humans, in fact it can even be purchased as a food supplement.  There are only slight traces of mercury (Hg) and lead (Pb).  The ground under my house has to be dug up anyway as part of the foundation repair, so the main consequence is I will have to pay to have it disposed of as chemical waste and replaced with clean sand.  The city will also inspect the building site and insure there is no spread of the contamination during the work.  If anyone is interested, apparently zinc comes primarily from metal smelting.

An archaeological study is needed, and someone from the city will come and have a quick look when they tear up the floor.  If nothing is obvious, the foundation repair can go as planned.

Next Step Quotes

We have requested a couple of quotes from contractors.  We have two quotes in.  One was just bad, the contractor didn’t understand what was going on.  The other was good, but since we don’t have much to compare it with, we don’t know if it’s the right price.

Already one contractor has pulled out completely.  He said this business with the wall with the neighbors is just too complicated for him.

We’re waiting for one more quote, but we might ask for more too.  The main problem is there are not many more contractors around to ask quotes from.

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• Architectural Drawing of the Houses
• Asbestos Survey
• Test for Ground Contamination*
• Test for Ground Stability, where they send a probe some 20+ meters into the ground to look for the beginning of the stable ground layer.
• Pile plan, where a technically oriented architect uses the building drawings together with the ground stability tests to determine how many of what type piles need to be placed, together with their pattern.
• Archaeological study waver, where the city determines (hopefully) an archaeological study is not needed under my house before starting the construction.*

After the application, a building inspector will come and do an inspection.  This could be very superficial or very involved, I’m not sure yet.

So far no asbestos or toxic materials have been found yet, but not all the test results have been returned.

The new piles will be about 22cm in diameter and 21 meters deep!  The ceiling clearance on our ground floor is only about 2 meters, so they will have to drive them in segments.  They will be made by driving a hollow casing into the ground, filling it with concrete, then removing the casing (I think).  In total, 19 piles will be needed.

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A little more than two years ago now I posted about my house foundation. I wonder how many readers have been around that long and were paying enough attention to remember that post! What’s really funny is how the picture from this original post was indexed by Google. Have a look at the Google images search for House Foundation and see if you can find the picture of our foundation.

Anyway, it’s time. I’ve waited as long as I could, but the city says it has to be done now or the houses will collapse. I turned in the application for the building permit today, and it’s time to start the great paper chase before doing the actual work.

Ours are the two dark colored houses in the middle of this picture, with a straggly looking grape vine going up the middle. They are open on the inside and fully joined together, only the outside makes them look like two houses. The discerning eye may notice the orange glow of a growlamp in the upper right hand window where I have started my seedlings.

The two houses were built at the same time around 1680 when our neighborhood was built, making them 328 years old. Our neighborhood, the Jordaan, was the first major expansion of the city outside of the heavily fortified original center.

At the time the average person had 8m2 of living space or about 86 ft2! The city expansion was desperately needed. The houses were built during the peak years of the Dutch East Indies Trading Company, the money from which is almost certainly what funded the initial construction.

The houses were built on a wooden foundation, with 4 meter long piles. This wooden foundation was built entirely under the outside walls, no part of the foundation extended toward the middle of the house. Until the 1930s, the house had a dirt floor on the ground level.

The new foundation will be built with concrete piles made by driving hollow pipes into the ground and filling them with cement. These will be placed in the middle of the house on the ground floor and steel rods will be placed across the top of them extending into the walls and in turn stabilizing the structure.

The reason the foundation lasted this long was because as long as wood stays wet and isn’t exposed to air, it won’t rot. Our house was built at sea level, with the foundation below sea level. Because it was submerged, it never rotted.

All over The Netherlands, but in Amsterdam in particular, is the problem that where there is land protected and drained by canals and dikes, it sinks slowly over time. That’s whats been happening to our house which has sunk an average about 1mm for every year of it’s life. As you can imagine, things were starting to get out of hand after a while, not just with our house but the whole city. At some point in the course of managing the water and ground levels, around the 1950′s, the city made the decision to lower the water level to the point where most wooden house foundations were exposed to air, including ours.

All over the city now house foundations are rotting and being repaired.

Our new foundation will be built to around 14 meters where there is a stable ground layer, instead of the original 4 meters, meaning our house won’t sink anymore.

I don’t know if I can take a lot of pictures of what’s going on, but I will at least post from time to time about it.

In case you are wondering what a home repair like this costs, let me assure you just thinking about it is making my eyes water. The total costs aren’t known yet, but this looks set to be more money that I have ever spent in my life with the exception of the initial purchase of our house. There are some subsidies for this available from the city, but I have been warned not to expect too much.

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Two Kinds of Chlorine

There are two kinds of chlorine, and the difference between them is very important.

The first kind is ordinary pure chlorine, sometimes called household chlorine, and is what common bleach is made from. This is also sometimes used in swimming pools, or added to drinking water. While there can be health issues with this type of chlorine, in particular both high concentrations and chlorine gas can be toxic and some people can have allergies to it, but overall it is considered very safe both for people and the environment. This type of chlorine occurs naturally in the environment, so moderate use is generally considered to be 100% biodegradable.

The other kind of chlorine is what is used in manufacturing processes. This is also sometimes called elemental chlorine, and this is what happens when atoms of chlorine are combined with other elements. One of the most important characteristics of these compounds is they are usually very long lived in the environment, and sometimes very toxic. Some common examples we are probably all familiar with are ozone depleting CFCs, PCBs which are very toxic, DDT as well as a number of other pesticides that have now been mostly banned (these are sometimes referred to as POPs or Persistent Organic Pesticides) and also PVC plastic.

These chlorine based compounds are so damaging to the environment, they have frequently been the focus of Greenpeace actions. Together with nuclear waste and heavy metals, chlorine compounds are some of the most serious environmental contaminants in the world now.

The Good

Household bleach really has many uses in the garden as well as in the house. Many people think of it as a harsh cleaner, because it smells so strong, but this is not actually the case. It’s a great environmentally friendly cleaner to use for the toilet, and is perfectly safe for septic tanks or for grey water collection systems to be used for plant irrigation. It is a much better alternative to bathroom scrubbing powders or creams, which are mostly very bad for the environment.

While you should never apply it in any way to plants or your garden, it’s very useful to clean greenhouses, tools, pots, seed trays and so on. It’s a very good disinfectant and can be very important in preventing the spreading of plant diseases. When you are done using it, it can be poured down the drain or on an unused spot in the garden. Within 48 hours it will completely break down into the environment.

The Not So Good

Most of us have something made from PVC plastic in the garden. Plastic coated fence or tools, maybe irrigation pipes. It can be really great stuff because, by design, it really does stand up to sunlight and last forever.

If you ever look into alternatives, you will see there aren’t many. Galvanized steel is sometimes used, but it contains trace amounts of heavy metals that will stay in your garden after the original material decomposes.

The main problem with using PVC in the garden is that it will be around long after you throw it away. It’s a very difficult plastic to recycle, if it’s incinerated or heated to a high temperature it will decompose into PCBs and if it is put into a landfill it will stay a very, very long time. While other kinds of plastics may be around for decades or maybe even centuries, PVC will likely be around a lot longer. When you think it will probably stay in your garden for 10-20 years, that’s a small percentage of it’s total lifespan.

Kelly of Future House asked the question if there were environmental problems with the manufacture of PVC. As far as I’m aware, there is no harmful waste created in the manufacture of it, but this is only half the equation! You should consider how what you buy will be disposed of, and if there are more environmentally friendly alternatives. Until now we have all been taught not to worry about what you throw away, and that what can be disposed of now can be dealt with by some future technology that will be soon developed. Not all of these technologies are emerging, and toxic waste and landfill space are already becoming serious problems.

Specifically addressing Kelly’s rain harvester system, what they might have used instead of PVC were metal fittings connected with rubber or plastic hose. Yes, it almost certainly would have leaked from time to time, and not worked as well, but it would have been easier to dispose of or recycle the individual components. It may also be possible to design a system where a single leak wouldn’t be as catastrophic as it would be in their system, perhaps top filling the barrels and having a separate tap on each one, maybe connecting the barrels in pairs or groups instead of all together. Another possibility might have been to try to use second hand PVC fittings, but I guess this would have been very difficult to do.

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Anyone reading this has to understand my priority is using less energy without spending money in the process. I realize this can be a controversial position to take, but I have never believed much in the idea of doing good by spending more money.

I don’t buy the most expensive food available thinking it is the healthiest, I don’t buy every fertilizer and pesticide available thinking it’s going to make my garden grow better and I don’t think going out and buying all the latest energy saving appliances is doing any favors for the environment. I prefer to focus on the ways I can save energy that don’t involve buying things I wouldn’t need to buy for other reasons anyway.

Of course when I do need to buy a new appliance, I am always looking for the greenest alternative available for a reasonable price.

There are a number of personal circumstances that cause me to consume more energy than I would otherwise. My house is larger than most people in Amsterdam have, it’s not very well insulated and the windows are leaky. I have closed off as many rooms as possible and leave them unheated, and made as many small repairs as I can to the leaks. We also have our home thermostat on a timer and keep it as low as possible. The climate here is mild, and mostly our heat is off unless we turn it on because we’re cold. I would replace all of our windows with new double glazed windows if I could afford it, but realistically this is years away, and probably not until the windows are completely falling apart anyway. There are other similar decisions we have made that end up using more energy.

The Major Appliances

As it turns out most of our major appliances are pretty modern and new. In the last 3-4 years all of them gave out in one way or another and we had to replace them. We used the opportunity to get the most energy efficient models we could find. We have a new refrigerator, chest freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, clothes dryer and hot water/central heating combo unit.

I realize the clothes dryer is probably a controversial item for some people. Actually, until about 3 years ago we air dried all of our clothes on racks and didn’t own a dryer. This made laundry an almost constant chore and wet laundry a permanent fixture in our house. The Dutch government had an offer of a €200 subsidy when you bought a new energy efficient gas dryer, and since the price of a new dryer was €320, this covered most of the cost. It was a little bit of luxury we decided we wanted, and decided considering the 15 previous years we had done without a dryer it was an okay thing to do.

A gas dryer is common in the US, but very rare in Europe. I hired a plumber to install the gas line, and he said he had been a plumber for 30 years and never seen one before. As far as I’m aware, a gas dryer is significantly more energy efficient than an electric dryer, but it’s hard to know for sure because you can’t make a direct comparison of the two. A gas dryer certainly costs a lot less to use.

I have my doubts of the energy efficiency of my washing machine. It received both top ‘A+ ratings’ for energy/water use and cleaning clothes. After I installed it, and read the instructions, I became acquainted with the ‘intensive wash’ button. The instruction manual explained this option should be selected for all but the most lightly soiled clothes. Apparently the washing machine received it’s A+ rating for cleaning clothes with the button pressed and it’s A+ energy/water rating with the button not pressed. A portion of the energy efficiency rating is a result of a high spinning speed meaning the clothes come out drier. They then supposedly need less time in the dryer, but I have a very energy efficient dryer anyway. We also need to give all of our clothes an extra rinse or they are too soapy, putting the water efficiency in doubt.

What seems so far one of the best purchases is our water/central heating unit. We’ve had it a year now, and our gas use is much lower. The old one was also supposedly energy efficient, but the new one is clearly much better. Our gas bill is almost €500 less (30% reduction in energy use) compared with last year. Perhaps if I had given the matter a little more thought, I might have done better installing a solar hot water heater and buying a smaller and cheaper heating unit, but now that I have the new unit this isn’t economical any more.

The Other Things

Beyond the major appliances, we have a TV (old style CRT type) together with the usual stack of VCR, DVD player, satellite box, etc. We have several computers, which we normally turn off but are sometimes left on overnight. Together with the computers we have a wireless network and adsl connections with the associated hardware, all of which stays on all the time.

We have a conventional electric oven with a gas top, as well as a separate microwave/toaster oven. We have a few other kitchen appliances, vacuum cleaner, mobile phones, a couple of radios and a few other minor things.

We are not fans of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), and don’t own any. Rather than buy one more expensive consumer item, with it’s own waste disposal problems, I prefer instead to use normal light bulbs with a lower wattage and be more diligent about turning off lights when they are not used. We also have a number of halogen lights.

I realize not using CFLs is going against the popular trend now, and another controversial decision on my part. The energy my lights use is a small percentage of the overall energy consumption in our house, and I have saved far more energy in other ways than I could by switching to CFLs. CFLs are made with heavy metals, and especially if you don’t have a way of properly disposing of them when you are done, are not environmentally friendly. In my case, most normal light bulbs are made in Europe, but the CFLs are made in China, have to travel farther and don’t support the local economy as much.

Probably the most important reason I prefer normal light bulbs is because the technology behind them is too old to be patented, unlike CFLs which are patented by companies like Philips.

It seems to me the reason it’s so important we all switch to the new light bulbs has much more to do with corporate profits than protecting the environment. The Dutch government has promised to phase out normal light bulbs soon, at which point we won’t have a choice any more because it won’t be possible to buy them.

Anyway, this pretty much sums up the hows and whys of our energy use.

Choosing an Energy Supplier

I guess like many places now, it’s possible to choose an energy supplier and buy your gas and electricity from many different suppliers, some of whom claim to be greener than others for different reasons.

There’s a strong emotional impulse to buy your electricity from a company that claims to generate is all from wind or solar power, or other renewable source. At the same time it’s not that clear to me this is actually the case.

Everything is interconnected, so there is no guarantee a particular electron comes from any particular company, and indeed we are promised if anything happens to the company you buy energy from like it goes bankrupt or their generation facilities fail, you will continue to get energy from some other company.

Since the so called dirty power plants will continue to operate, even if I pay more money for green energy from another company, what’s to say I’m not just subsidizing the use of dirty energy by someone else. In theory the dirty power plants will generate the same amount of energy regardless if I buy it, so if I buy green energy won’t that just make it cheaper for someone else to purchase the dirty energy?

The issue of clean and dirty power generation is much more politics than anything else. Companies are the biggest consumers, and governments establish prices with subsidies and taxes, which determine what energy companies decide to purchase. Treaties like the Kyoto Protocol establish limits that are likely to have a much more significant impact on how power is generated than what energy company I choose.

In the case of Europe, the electric markets have been privatized with one important exception, standard ‘grey’ electricity from the local energy company. I don’t like the idea these energy markets have been privatized, and I prefer to continue to buy my electricity from a regulated source as long as it’s possible. Remember what happened to the state of California and Enron a few years ago?

In theory it’s possible to save money by switching energy supplier, but in fact prices fluctuate a lot and it’s not always true in the long run. In order to keep your costs low, you may have to keep an eye on prices and frequently change energy companies. I prefer to save money and be green by using less energy than by switching companies.

These are the reasons I’ve chosen not to choose a ‘green’ energy company.

The Bottom Line

Gas:

Use: 1660m3

Usage Costs: €1002.73 annually (€83.56/mo)

CO2 Emissions: 2948 Kg

Electricity:

Use: 4507 kWh

Usage Costs: €1007.44 annually (€83.95/mo)

CO2 Emissions: 2572 Kg

Fixed Costs:

Gas: €170.05 annually (€14.17/mo)

Electricity: €87.65 annually (€7.30/mo)

Taxes and Subsidies: €-198.02 (€-15.59/mo)

It’s a little interesting the CO2 emissions are on my energy bill now, but especially for the electricity I question how accurate or biased it is.

Is the electricity figure only for my energy company, the country as a whole or a European average? The answer is very important to understanding the meaning of this figure, and I don’t know what it is.

Update: After doing a little research I found a little more information about the CO2 emissions for electricity. It is related to the choice of energy supplier, in my case ‘grey’ electricity from the standard supplier, probably from the natural gas plant near Amsterdam.

I also discovered my gas use is a little below the national average of 1820m3 per year, my electric use a lot higher than the national average of 3500kWh, and my overall CO2 emissions also a little higher than the national average of 5221Kg.

Where Does it Go?

The gas is mostly used for central heating and hot water, but some is used by the stove top and clothes dryer.

My working assumption is my electricity usage is divided up roughly as follows:

Dishwasher and Washing Machine: 50%

Lights: 10%

Computers and Internet: 15%

Everything Else: 25%

Everything else means mostly standby appliances, refrigerator, freezer, TV and kitchen appliances. I should probably break this down a little further, but many of these things I’m not sure how much energy they consume.

We’ve done our best to reduce the number of standby appliances that stay on, but we still have a few.

We just bought a more energy efficient computer for primary use, so maybe next year our energy use for this will be less.

On average, we use our dishwasher and washing machine for about one load each per day (our washing machine is much smaller than most standard US models).

So how does all of this compare with the decisions you’ve made, your usage and costs?

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Robin of Bumblebee Blog had a good idea. She suggested her readers post some of the the search terms people use to find their blogs, then she would then make a post linking to them after December 5th, so we could all compare. Here’s my contribution. I’ve been meaning to post about this anyway.

Of course people find us for the ‘right’ reasons, by searching on topics relating to this blog, but I’m going to give some examples here of some unexpected things.

The first thing to realize is Google has really changed a lot over the last few years, and search terms people were finding us with before are not the same as now, with one exception. Before and now, the single most common term people use to find this blog is ‘weed burner’. I made a post about weed burners very early on, and I seem to have become the main Internet information resource for weed burners.

As a result of using the word ‘weed’ in a popular post, and posting a little later about cannabis, we also have no end of people who find us wanting information on this:

pics of weed

weed

cheap weed

…

I also made a post about my 325 year old wooden house foundation needing to be repaired, and a lot of people started finding us looking for information on foundations:

Why is my house sinking?

sinking house foundation

How do I know if my foundation is bad?

What does a bad foundation look like?

For a long time, people were finding us searching on information about carrots:

Can you grow carrots in a bottle?

What do carrots look like when they are underground?

What types of carrots are there?

history of carrots

pictures of carrots

how do I grow carrots

To be clear, I’ve never particularly posted much here about carrots.

For a while a number of people were finding us searching for missing bees and Colony Collapse Disorder. The popularity of the topic led me to write a number of followup articles afterwards.

A number of people have found us recently looking for pictures of different kinds of garlic. This was part of the reason for posting the pictures recently, because there aren’t many pictures of garlic on the Internet.

By far in a way the biggest ‘Google event’ happened when Steph made this post on Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

For those of you not familiar with this beer, in recent years it’s probably become the most popular ‘alternative’ beer in the US, and it’s particularly popular among students. When Steph and I were students in Chico, California, where the brewery is located, we went on a tour of the brewery while it was still in a garage. A few days ago we bought our first bottle in Amsterdam! It still tastes the same after all these years. At 15 euros (about US$21) for six bottles it’s not going to become our daily beer again anytime soon, but it was still a nice treat.

Anyway, after Steph made this post people started ‘borrowing’ the picture by linking to it within blog posts, forums, myspace pages and so on. It’s all over the Internet now, and a search on Google images shows it’s now the most popular image above even those released by the brewery itself! The picture itself is probably the single largest source of Internet traffic for our domain, I think more than everything else combined.

Like I said, Google is broken now, but until recently it was including all of these links in our page rankings. I like to think I’m popular for other reasons, but surely this has had the greatest impact on our Google rankings!

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At the same time, I have some space on my roof and am growing some things in containers. I’m always a little ambitious on what can actually fit on my roof, and this year is no exception. I have already planted, or am in the process of planting, the following:

Tomatoes:

• Pineapple
• Black Pineapple
• Black Prince
• Silvery Fir Tree
• Matt’s Wild Cherry
• Sugar Cherry Currant
• F2 Hybrid, Ida Gold x Whippersnapper

The Silvery Fir tree is a carrot leafed tomato. What’s that, I hear you ask? Well there are ‘normal’ leafed tomatoes, and some of you who have grown heirloom tomatoes have probably seen ‘potato’ leafed plants where the leaves resemble the potato plant. Well this is ‘carrot’ leafed. I guess the tomatoes are ordinary and red, I don’t know. Does it say something about me that I am growing a tomato plant to look at the leaves? I got this tomato via a seed exchange with a tomato grower in Denmark.

The F2 hybrid was breed by Lieven of Garden of Eden, who breeds it specially for the F2 generation. F2 hybrids are genetically unstable, which means every plant is different, and the F2 generation is the most unstable. I will plant three of this tomato so I can compare them. I’m going to give some plants away to friends, so we can compare with each other too.

Potatoes:

• La Ratte d’Ardèche
• Peruvian Purple
• Charlotte
• Sarpo Mira
• Catriona

Cucumber:

• Kaiser Alexander

Lettuce:

• Doree de Printemps
• Pinokkio (Pinocchio)
• Sherwood

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The city of Amsterdam has been coming by our house for the last few months, asking to inspect different things. Measuring our walls, inspecting the general state of the structure of our house, and so on. One day a few weeks ago, they came by and said they wanted to inspect the foundation. They wanted to dig two holes, one for each of our two houses, along the edges near our neighbor’s houses with the hope of being able to inspect their foundations as well. For one of the holes, they were going to have to break up our cement floor. For those of you reading this who have never been to Amsterdam, you need to understand that almost all houses here are built next to each other, touching on their sides.

We had mixed feelings about the city doing this. In theory, it was possible to refuse to allow the inspection, but if we had done this they city would have come back again and again. As home owners, we didn’t really want to know of problems with the the foundation when it came time to sell our house, because we were going to have to reveal what we know. At the same time, if our house is going to collapse, we thought it would be a good idea to know this now, and do something about it. Also, if we let the city inspect it, the city was going to have to pay for the inspection. Anyway, we agreed to the inspection.

Our house is pretty typical, in that it is a brick house with a wooden foundation. We live almost at sea level. Our house is above sea level, but most of our foundation is below sea level. The idea is that as long as the wood stays submerged, it won’t rot. If it ever dries out, it will rot very quickly. The bricks of our house, and the wooden piles in our foundation, are separated by a flat wooden plank that holds the house on the piles. The piles go down about 4 meters.

There have actually been two issues with our house. The first, as with nearly all houses in the city, the 4 meters the piles of our foundation go down is not enough, and our house is sinking. Our house is sinking at the rate of about 1-2mm per year and, because it’s been doing this for a long time, it’s getting pretty low. The other more pressing issue is that on the far sides, our two houses are sinking faster. This latter issue was what was concerning the city the most.

Okay, so they dug the two holes. First on the east side of the house:

At the top of the picture you can see our cement floor. Below this, you can see the brick wall that leads down to the wooden plank separating the piles from the house. One wooden pile is visible. This hole is about 2 meters deep, and is just wide enough for a person to stand.

When they dug this hole, a city architect along with a team of inspectors came to take a look. It was clear the situation was bad. Several of the piles were rotten, and others had slipped out from under the house.

On the west side of the house:

Here things got a little dirty, because among the many pipes going under the ground here, there was a sewer line that they broke in the process of digging. This hole only goes down a little more than a meter, and at the bottom you can see a wooden pile that has slipped out from under our foundation.

So, what was the conclusion? We still don’t know. It’s clear the past 325 years have not been kind to our foundation. On both sides there is rotten wood and the house shows signs of slipping off the foundation. What we don’t know is how stable the situation is, or what exactly we need to do. We are expecting the city to tell us more later.

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