Crete Eco

The petition tells you most of what you need to know. Click on the link and sign it.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Save-the-Cretan-landscape

Ok, I have been doing a lot of work over Easter weekend here in Crete. Just after the conception in July last year I emailed about 12 European suppliers of Alternative Energy components. Both wind power and photo-voltaic equipment. I guess it says a lot about how much opportunity there is in this industry as NOT ONE of them bothered to get back to me. Had they done so I would have immediately placed an order for my own house here in Armeni for both a wind turbine and PV panels.

So my choice has to be to go outside of Europe now. Other than some worries about quality it has to be China as there appear to be a huge number of manufacturers there and I have LeiLei who comes from China to do all the negotiation. Perhaps the delay has been fortuitous as, at conception I had not even met her. She now has a long list of companies to contact this week and we will see how it goes.

I also did some research on Rain Water Harvesting equipment and 10/10 to iWater UK who got back to me immediately with a trade price list. I did a lot of research into RWH over the weekend and it poses lots of problems here. Not insurmountable problems but problems all the same. We really have no rain to speak of between May and October in a normal year, so storage capacity for 6 months supply is really necessary. I think this will push the cost effectiveness of Rain Water Harvesting right out of the window. Water here is very cheap compared to the UK. The cost of storage will be high. From an ecological point of view it is worth doing, but at what financial cost? I need to talk to my engineers and architects about the problems that storing water in the foundations of houses may cause as that may be one cheap alternative.

If you use: 2 showers, 10 toilet flushes per day, do three loads of washing per week and use 100 litres of water per day on your garden, six months usage is 51465 litres. This figure makes no allowance for re-using your grey water on your garden.  With this figure comes your first problem. If you live in Sitia and live in a house with 100m2 of roof you can only collect 47,900 litres in a full year - less than you need. In Ierapetra you fare better collecting 66,180 in a year and in Heraklion you also fail to meet the requirement as your collection would be 48,320 in an average year. Given that we can probably collect rain water from patios as well we should be able to get to the required amount for relatively low consumption.

However the problem still remains as to where the hell we put over 10,000 gallons of water. We need 515 cubic metres of storage or a tank that is about the size of a swimming pool. This tank needs to be cost effective too. To construct one from concrete would cost around 10,000 Euros, so you can see where I am going with this argument. Given that my average water bill for domestic and garden use is around 150 euros per year, without any pumping equipment the return on investment in the tank will take 666 years to happen, if the concrete tank holds together that long. Plastic tanks do not appear to work out much cheaper, but more research is needed.

If you have any good ideas please feel free to email me or just leave a comment. One final question before I go to bed - why is water so cheap in a country where it hardly rains (Greece) compared to a country where it does nothing but rain (UK)?

Goodnight.

This is the birth of an idea conceived nine months ago. Time constraints in my life meant that the idea had to be put on a back burner. Now we are ready to go and this blog will chart our progress over the next few weeks, months and years.

I firmly believe that there has to be a better way in life. That most things described as progress are often the exact opposite. I do not subscribe to the philosophy of people needing to buy more and more, of economies having to expand or most of the American dream. I believe that resources are precious and the best inheritance that we can hand down to our children and grand children. I believe that freedom to do what we want with our time is one of the most precious resources.

Imagine a life with no mortgage, no utility bills and no council tax. How much freedom would that give you? It is possible and attainable here in Crete. Our voyage of discovery together will show you the results of our trials - both successes and failures and hopefully produce the means for an alternative life style.

This is the conception of Crete Eco, a not for profit business, commited to building a community of alternative energy users in Crete. We already have our first commission - to design and build a photovoltaic and wind powered electricity system for a house in Kavousi and to provide a waste water management system.

The web site is in the form of a blog, meantime so that you can follow our progress, researching, learning and making contacts with suppliers and experts in the field.