New Electric Fire!

OK George, I'll bite............

..............you had no choice !

Now, IF (big IF) but IF you had had a pair of 135s or better still a Krell FPB600 power amp, and you left it on 24/7, you wouldn't have needed to destroy the planet with the manufacture and running of a two bar 800 watt electric fire....................

Don,

I like your post! Love it in  fact!

But at least I'll turn off when i go to bed with 14 tog eider-down!

To be awakened with a 3 Watt LED table lamp time switch ,,.

Very best wishes from George

George I need a link or photo.  I have no idea what this is.  The Queen's English alludes me.

I think we need a few reviews and your reasons for choosing this particular model. Does it need burning in and how does it affect your sound quality?

Photo's of George in his PJ's ready to snuggle under the 14 tog  !!!  ????

Not before breakfast - please 

For some reason, I picture there'd be a candle and nightcap in that photo

It certainly does! The word is eludes.

 Meanwhile,  back to bedtime  

Nice little fire. .

Eider-down, is what a Duvet tends to get called in my family, and possibly widely in Norway. Not sure about that. 14 tog is the warmth rating. This is a warm duvet!

I don't think anyone really wants a photo of me in my PJs!

ATB from George

eider = a breed of duck

down = soft feathers from said duck

end product = a very warm cover for a bed called an eider-down

Duvet = modern version of an eider-down

Tog = Terry's Old Geezers, OR a unit of warmth for duvets - the bigger the number the warmer the duvet 

Thanks Don,

I suppose we live in a world where the eider duck is not widely known anymore. Or the superb quality of their downy feathers for bedding!

I had a synthetic duvet for a short while years ago now. It was heavier, and not nearly so warm. In the winter a warm bed is rather a nice thing, and often overlooked when people over-heat their houses. 

ATB from George

Additional end product = one very cold and pissed off duck.

Dear Adam, 

If it were not so potentially sad - no pissed off duck is a nice thing to cause or contemplate -  I could smile, but it does beg the very reasonable question of just  how eider-down is harvested.

Either ducks nest on the coasts of Europe and the American continent in Arctic regions. They line their nests with their own down against the cold Arctic temperatures. When these nest are left, people collect the down. No cold Eider ducks should result from this at all. It is one of the reasons why eider-down is much more expensive than goose-down, for for example. Geese are plucked at the time they are slaughtered for meat, and sometimes they are plucked live at the time of their moult, and three or four times again before they start laying eggs again.

Just how sure we can be about how much suffering plucking live geese causes is a reasonable point, and there certainly have been cases of dreadful cruelty in the interests of making money from the practice.

But the Eider duck is safe from this, by generously giving us her beautiful down with no harm to anyone! Not only is eider-down the best, but it is a sustainable and complete cruelty-free commodity! 

ATB from Geogre

Now, now, Adam. Just because this might involve your avatar.............

Not if 8 billion people want one !

on a sort of linked theme..............

......a BBC1 programme around about 7:30 pm this evening showed two incredibly enthusiastic people who had just succeeded in commissioning two community-funded power generation schemes. One was based on an Archemedian screw hydro scheme near Oxford that could power 60, yes 60, homes. The other was a solar farm in Hampshire. Power couldn't be fed directly to the individuals in the local communities who had contributed - it had to be fed into the National Grid, presumably for administrative reasons but also presumably because laying new cables and controls to 60 houses in Oxford would mean that scheme would be even less economic that it already was.

Now my idea is that we get the local community, ie all 70 million of us in the UK, to chip in a couple of grand each and build half a dozen nuclear power stations. Connect them up to the National Grid, with a Central Board based in Gloucester, to organise the planning, design, construction, running and decommissioning of these things for the next 120 years.....................oh! we tried that, did we?......the CEGB ? and broke it up we sold it to ourselves for peanuts, so we could sell it to the French, Australians, Chinese and Spanish at a mega profit.

Well, no harm in giving it another shot and getting rid of these outsiders, except Scottish and Southern Electric of course.

Dear Don,

Eight billion people will not be able to have one each! Fortunately the Eider-duck is a rather fast and wild creature, so unlikely to volunteer for live plucking!

I think we agree that the population thing is something that is not discussed anything like adequately by our leaders - I hesitate to use the terms statesmen - these days.

However, apart from a short spell with an artificial duvet I have always had proper eider-downs. Tradition, I suppose!

ATB from George

Yes, that was my point. Its not a sustainable solution if 8 billion people want one each. A bit ( but not quite) like beavers, when everybody in Europe in 1800 wanted a top hat.

Some things are only sustainable when only a few people want them and the raw material is just sitting in your back garden, and will return year after year.  Now what can I do with pigeons and Japanese Knotweed............................ ?

Dear Don,

It is the population of humans that is unsustainable, not the life-cycle of the Eider duck and the gift of a very limited supply of eider down. I suspect that there will be Eider ducks long after the last human has died!

The eiders don't miss the down, because it would be gone anyway by the time they return from their migration south, and I blame all  our human population problems on the Habor Bosch method for wrecking the possibility of the human remaining at a sustainable population.

Many would say that the invention of the Atom Bomb was one of the nastiest pieces of human invention.

I'd say Habor Bosch!

ATB from George

How cold is it outside during the night where you live?

Dear Gianluigi,

Minus 2 at the moment, outside. Plus 13 inside my living room, less warm in my bedroom ....

Better good clothes and good bed-clothes than wasting a lot on heating in my view.

ATB from George

I burn about 12 chilos wood every evening. But it's a big house and i have a stube (that's the way they call it today). Don't you have an exaust pipe that goes outside the house?

Dear Gianluigi,

My house was upgraded about twenty years ago, and they capped the chimney, unfortunately. 

Crazy idea really as old houses are meant to breath, not be like a vacuum sealed container. To prevent it getting stuffy, I leave the back window open a bit except when it gets much colder than it is now. I accept that it is cold, but at least not damp from this ventilation.

One thing I would do if I ever won the Lottery would be to buy a house with a proper wood-burning fireplace, and somewhere to have a wood-burning stove. 

I ought to buy a ticket one day!

ATB from George

Those Jotul make a great job. Maybe time to change house imho?

George,

I think everybody has a right to aspire to whatever lifestyle they wish, including owning an eiderdown. However, given the evidence that large numbers of people aspire to the current lifestyle and living standards of (say) Western Europe and North America, this lifestyle is unsustainable. The planet simply cannot provide the required resources at the required rate for the earth's current population.

Some resources are limited. eg oil, coal, lithium (probably). Once used, that's it. The oil, coal and lithium etc WILL run out sooner or later.

Some resources are renewable, but at a limited rate. Examples include food and water, timber, organic soil, wool, cotton, eiderdown etc. They are renewable, but the rate of production/harvesting is insufficient to support 7bn people in western lifestyles. At present, the rate of production of some such resources might be artificially high eg food, given our use of oil-driven farm machinery and fertilisers.

Other resources are effectively limitless, eg solar energy and wind energy - but our ability to use them is limited by our current level of ingenuity and also the need to use some of the limited resources for their capture.

Ingenuity is needed to extend the life-span of the limited resources (oil, coal etc) - this will give us breathing space. Ingenuity is also needed to increase the yield of the limited-renewable resources (food, water, timber etc).

I understand that to support the global population at current western lifestyles would require something like 5 Earths - assuming we still have oil and coal. Various  projects indicate that we might be able to reduce this to about 2.5 Earths, but is hugely dependent on how much we eat and what we eat; plus how much we travel.

I can see a way forward with a global population of c 1bn - but 9bn (2050) doesn't look too clever, it looks like global warfare over limited resources including 800 watt electric fires and 14 Tog eiderdowns.