IKEA sees the (LED) light!

I’ve been flogging LED lighting systems for a couple of years now. Some time ago I did a project that involved a large number of AC LEDs. Most LEDs run on 12 volt DC power but there are a couple of manufacturers who put out AC power LEDs, including the little MR16s we bought from Seoul Semiconductor - the Acriche LEDs.

The advantage is that they don’t require a separate transformer (or driver) and can be dimmed steplessly.

I grabbed one from the warehouse and after an hour or so of tinkering transformed my IKEA uplight’s spotlamp. This uplight has a branch which contains an E14 bulb - when it first came out, people used incandescent spotlamps which were tremendously hot. Soon after, they switched to cold cathode or compact fluorescents and I had a 7 watt unit in mine.

As the AC power MR16s have a GU10 base, I had to take apart the IKEA lamp and replace the E14 base with a GU10 one. This was done easily enough and even though I could not screw the new base into the lamp unit, the wire, when pulled and secured, keeps the base snug in the back of the spotlamp unit.

As the LEDs use 240 volt AC power but employ a GU10 base which can typically be for either 12 volt DC or 240 V AC, I thought it best to mark this clearly.

The Acriche 3W light gives a very good colour, not unlike that of the halogen it typically replaces, but cooler and flatter which is perfect for near use. Besides, I like how the bulb looks when seated in the lampholder - the fins of the heatsink make the whole look interesting when switched off.

Besides, I now enjoy a host of other LED light benefits including a lifespan 15 times that of halogens and 6 times that of cold cathode, power consumption of about a tenth of halogens and half of cold cathode, and also the feeling I've just done something rather clever.

I still have to modify the uplight section and might use some MR16s there as well. I’ve run out of Acriche ones so may try an array of Revolite ones or perhaps some LED modules. Will keep you posted.

Incidentally we have another of the same lights in the hall and I will likely switch that to an on/off foot switch rather than a dimmer and use the same E27 fittings that are in place. I’ve got some non-dimmable E27s sitting in the warehouse which I can use.

Recipe for an Eco-Friendly Household Cleaner

We’ve stopped buying Cif and Bang as I’ve been making our own eco-friendly and completely bio--degradable spray cleaner. I mixed this up and poured it into an old spray bottle and we’ve been using it to clean sinks, bathrooms, the kitchen and even my MacBook’s white keyboard.

For the last, I prefer it to the sudsy Bang (which, I must admit cleans remarkably) and it doesn’t leave any residue like Cif.

As most spray bottles are about 500ml, you might do well to mix up a quarter portion at a time. And remember - the mix separates if it’s been sitting too long so shake it well before use.

With a bit of experimenting, I’ve also found that a little more baking soda makes it even more effective.


INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup baking soda
2 litre water
half a lemon

TO PREPARE
Mix up the vinegar, baking soda and water. Squeeze in the lemon, taking out any seeds that may fall in as you do so. Pour into a spray bottle.

Make sure you let the foaming stop and the mixture subside before you screw back the cap of the spray bottle or it'll bulge out under pressure.

You'll have to shake it up before use as the mix starts to separate when left to stand.

It settles when left standing, so shake it well before use!

TO USE
Use this as you would any spray cleaner. A wipe with the mix then another with a damp cloth makes a whizz of most household cleaning jobs.

To clean your computer keyboard, spray a little on a soft cloth and wipe down the keyboard. I think it is best when the laptop is shut down, but if you use a very absorbent cloth, you can attack the keys while the computer is on - just open a text file so the key presses don't screw up whatever you're doing.

The tricky keys are the function ones as they make all sorts of weird things happen.

Note that we're so used to seeing sudsy and foamy cleaners that this may not appear to be working but trust me, it does.

Happy cleaning!

Oil and Water

I've been following the BP Oil Spill - wait a bit: it isn't a spill so can we stop calling it that? - saga with some interest. Not just because of the scale of devastation it is causing, nor because of how it highlights our over-reliance on fossil fuels, but also for how stupid some Americans can be in blaming Obama for this and asking him to step in and take charge.

I think these guys should just stop watching Bruce Willis movies and think for a bit:
What could the navy/coast guard/army/airforce/GI Joe/Obama do that BP can't? Besides cleaning up that is, which is already being done. Yeah, well, nothing is just about the right answer. In this instant-gratification age, we all just seem to live in a kind of la-la-land where titanium-clad space shuttles and leaping moon rovers exist, and where a bit of bravado, machismo and derring-do always saves the day and the hunk always gets the girl.

Well, sorry guys, it doesn't work that way in real life.

The crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is bad. In fact it's worse than just about any other environmental disaster ever. But there's no quick solution, no 'you're the disease and I'm the cure' (OK that's Stallone, not Willis) speedy fix. The best guys to do the job are, ironically and much as we all might hate it, the guys who caused it in the first place. So let's quit with the posturing, OK? It's beginning to grate on this non-American's ears.

Now on to something quite different - I thought I'd throw something into the mix. Water. Yeah, yeah water and oil and all that...

I came across a couple of really good books recently. Green Design, ISBN 978-1-55643-836-3 is a really cool book with all sorts of green solutions and ideas.

Coincidentally, I was sent a link to a TED talk on clean water which showcased the Lifesaver water filter which is a remarkable device that can alter the way we approach the care of the victims of natural disasters like the 2004 Asian Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina. In both cases, and almost all like them, water becomes a scarce necessity. Or I should say 'clean and safe drinking water' becomes scarce. The Lifesaver filter is one such solution which is remarkable as it has also been scaled up to provide water for a family unit rather than an individual.

Watch the TED talk here:


I immediately recalled a similar personal device in the Green Design book and dug up this info on the Lifestraw. A truly remarkable device shaped like a straw and through which you suck up clean, safe drinking water from virtually any water source including muddy puddles and standing water.


Read about it and even watch a video demo here:
Lifestraw: A $5 water filter
Or check out the site of the organisation that made it possible:
Vestergaard Frandsen

There are heaps of other great ideas in the book too - including a water drum that makes fetching water from miles away a much simpler, safer and less arduous task. There are also some beautiful designs for lights, seats, interiors and much more. You can buy the Green Design book online:

Vinegar vs Brasso. And the winner is...

I have a few curios I’ve picked up over the years including some brass stuff I bought from Melaka on whim. These include the whole Sireh (betel nut) consumption panoply.

Just the other day, I glanced at it and realised the shiny bronze colour had been replaced by a tarnished near-black patina. Determined to make it look good again, I resorted to a green technique I’d used before. One that eschews the artificial and environmentally-questionable chemicals that are so popular nowadays for something altogether more natural and completely biodegradable: vinegar.

The only vinegar we had was an old bottle of balsamic vinegar which Mei wanted to replace with a newer one (she reckons it didn’t taste so nice anymore but honestly I can’t tell) and rather than throwing it away, I conveniently grabbed it to do the dirty. Or rather the cleaning.

Balsamic vinegar is supposedly more acidic, so perhaps that would increase its cleaning prowess. Whatever, it did turn out to be particularly staining on the fingernails so I put on a pair of kitchen gloves. I soaked some of the smaller pieces in a thin layer of the vinegar then attacked it with an old toothbrush. It did help somewhat as you can tell from these pictures. I’m not sure why the metal took on a pinkish hue but this could be due to the quality of the metal itself. As I recall, this thing didn’t cost that much so perhaps the metal is of inferior quality. It did take on a used and weathered look which I find quite attractive.

At the supermarket a little later, I bought a cheap bottle of white vinegar and soaked some of the pieces overnight in this, then went at the pieces lightly with a scouring pad. It did wonders! See for yourself…

Just a bit of soaking and light brushing and see the difference. The cover on the left of the toothbrush head has been lightly cleaned while the one to the right has not.

See what a bit of soaking can do. This hasn't even been brushed yet!

And after some light scrubbing just look at the shine!

I’m now wondering what to do about the bigger pieces. I think I’ll soak a cloth in some vinegar and wrap it around the piece for a few hours.

All in all, I feel quite pleased with myself and am looking forward to trying this out on more pieces around the house. Come back here to check on updates to that.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to try a greener way to clean metals and more, check these sites out: the Wikipedia page on vinegar and a site on the 1001 uses of Vinegar. I’m going to try the Scouring Cleaner they teach you how to make next! Oh and my friend Anand says Indian women have been using vinegar to keep their jewellery shiny for years. I wonder if that site listed this tip too...

More on Less Power

Working in a company that helps its clients reduce their power consumption has its benefits. One of which is I have at hand quite a few tools that I wouldn’t normally invest in. A year or so ago we came across the ETrack, a power monitor which was being manufactured and sold by Bridex Harwal. They’ve since stopped production and no longer support it, but we did pick up a few units for clients as well as for our own use.

One of these we mounted in a junction box and it’s our portable power meter which we use to demonstrate how efficient our LED lights or other solutions are. One of the problems the ETrack has is its inaccuracy when measuring very low wattages - we find that anything below about 10 watts doesn’t show accurately. This is a problem because the 6.5W MR16 bulb which we sell to replace 35 - 50W halogens hardly registers on the meter…

On a bit of a power-saving drive, I brought the meter home and started measuring all sorts of stuff around the house. And what I found was quite surprising.

My computer setup is a MacBook laptop with a 17” external monitor, a couple of external harddisks, a little Epson printer and an Epson scanner. I also have an Altec Lansing speaker system, a little box fan and some assorted chargers for camera batteries and so on. Not all the equipment is on all the time and I found that typically, the whole setup consumes about 100 watts when I’m working. The little box fan alone is responsible for about 35 of those watts so the rest of the gear isn’t consuming that much really.

Still, I use my computer sometimes 12-15 hours a day so that’s still a substantial amount of power over the course of a month. As a first step, I cut back on wastage through phantom power. Above my desk is a bank of switches - I’ve now started switching off at the plug devices or chargers that are not being used.

I’ve also changed my sleep mode settings. Now before I put the laptop to sleep, I disconnect and switch off the external monitor and other devices like hard disks. I also unplug the laptop charger and switch that off too so the only power that is being used comes from the battery. I’ll monitor this and update the power savings in a month or so.

The real shock, however, came when I plugged the power monitor in to the fridge. I have an old (about 10 years) Kelvinator which we bought before the advent of energy star stickers. I like the capaciousness of this fridge which comes not just from the large size, but also the adjustable shelves and the very open interior layout. It holds the rolls and rolls of film I have and the bottles of vodka friends insist on buying us quite comfortably alongside the frozen pizzas, tomato and chilli sauce, olives, medicine and other what-nots we insist on cold-storing.

We mounted the power meter in a junction box and use it to measure all sorts of stuff. Came in useful to leave next to the fridge.

As you can see, when the compressor is running, the fridge consumes about 140 watts.

I noted the fridge was consuming about 140 watts when the compressor was running and substantially less when it wasn’t. Then one night when I checked, the monitor showed the fridge was consuming almost 500 watts! It was then I realised the fridge probably had 3 cycles: normal running, compressor cycling, heater on. As I understand it at the back of every no-frost fridge is a heating element which melts the ice build-up. This turns into water which eventually evaporates. I’m not sure if 500 watts is normal for this cycle but it did seem quite a bit.

Even more telling, over the 70 hours I had the power monitor plugged in, the fridge consumed 10.784 kWh. This works out to an average of about 3.7 kWh per day or almost S$30 per month which is almost triple that of a modern fridge. This is roughly equivalent to the amount of power used to boil water in an electric jug. For 2 hours a day, every day...

As the old thing does need some attention (slightly leaking door seals, some minor water leaking and corrosion on the edges of the doors), we decided instead to get a new one and paid a visit to our favourite appliance store, Mega Discount Store and splashed out $1280 on a new Fisher & Paykel E442B which is 3-star rated at approximately 635 kWh annually or less than 1.8 kWh per day. At projected savings of $18 per month, it’ll take almost 6 years to pay it off just in electricity savings, but I suspect we’ll do better as there are only two of us at home (most times) so the fridge isn’t opened with the frequency a typical household would see. Additionally, the old unit is bound to need attention again soon.

The new fridge arrives on Friday and I’ll post the power readings in a month or so.

Meanwhile, if you want to measure the power usage around your house, check out the Kill A Watt meter. AS they say, knowledge is power. In this case, it's power-savings. 

Earth Hour: What's the point?

Earth Hour came and went a few days ago and for one hour from 8:30 pm on 27 March this is what I did differently from the day before or the day before that: Nothing.

My hall lights were on, as was the TV. My computer was put to sleep but was still plugged in, its charger consuming a little phantom power. Most of the other stuff in the flat was either off or running as it normally does.

I’m very cynical about Earth Hour simply because I see it as a way normally profligate consumers of electricity assuage their feelings of guilt. For one hour, these chaps get to feel good about themselves by sitting around in semi darkness, patting themselves on the back for saving the world a few barrels of oil. Then at 9:30, weak-kneed and flush with feel-goodism, they switch on their air-conditioners, halogen lights, flat-screen TVs and surround-sound systems, or get out into their three-and-a-half litre BMWs and motor down to a pub in a haze of unleaded to meet up with their similarly self-congratulating friends over a glass of Perrier or Brazilian coffee.

I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work for me.

I’d much rather look at how we can live better and greener the whole 24 hours in a day rather than just that one hour per year. Yes, yes I know Earth Hour is supposed to help bring long-term change, but just ask yourself what long-term change have you effected in your life as a result of Earth Hour?

Dubai reckons it saved 170,000 kWh during Earth Hour in 2009. This is roughly 102,000 kgs of CO2. Nice. Now ask yourself how much we would save if everyone who drives on a PLUS highway drove at 115 km/h instead of 125 km/h (yes, we all want to drive just that little bit beyond the speed limit, and yes, I am being a little simplistic here - bear with me). At the less-fast speed, if you’re driving between Singapore and KL, you arrive just 15 minutes later than at the faster speed, but you would have saved about 10 - 15% on your fuel bill and you would have emitted about 65 kg less CO2 (or about 0.03 kgs less per km traveled).

Now, over 1,000,000 vehicles use the PLUS North-South highway every day. Just imagine if each one could reduce their fuel consumption by 10%. Now I don’t have the figures for how many vehicle-kilometres are travelled on the North-South Highway, but just going by what I think is a conservative estimate of 150 km/car, we get these figures:
150 km/car x 1,000,000 vehicles = 150,000,000 vehicle-kms per day.

Assuming (told you I would be simplistic) an average of 11.3 L/100 km per car (and that’s a conservative estimate), and assuming a savings of 10% of that you would save 1,695,000 litres of fuel each day.

Here’s another very rough estimate: Using the figure of 0.03 kg less CO2 emitted per km, we get an astonishing reduction of 4,500,000 kgs of CO2 emitted each and every day, just on the PLUS North-South highway. Or 187,500 kgs every hour. Much more than Earth Hour achieved in Dubai.
And all it took was a speed reduction of about 10 km/h.

I’m going to write about some of the simple things we can do around the house which can help us save some power and money and will take you through some of the stuff I have done. I’ve still got some way to go yet, but as I said at the start of this post, I’m constantly looking for ways to live greener and better, every hour of every day.