Water # 1 - Water water everywhere!

The average person in Wales uses 150 litres of water per day (www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/beinggreen/117266.aspx).  It rains a lot in Wales!

The roof on our house is 265m^2, and the average rainfall in rural Monmouthshire over the last 5 years has been: (www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/Rainfall/date/England_SW_and_S_Wales.txt)

(mm)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Days	31	29	31	30	31	30	31	31	30	31	30	31
2008	181.3	60.4	132.9	72.2	93.2	61.4	158.3	167.1	125.4	155.4	107.4	86.2
2009	154.9	61.1	62.7	74.1	71.8	63.4	219.8	76.8	42.1	117.3	260.4	137.5
2010	97.9	78.4	91.1	39.6	45.5	34.5	105.8	110.7	116.0	98.3	130.7	46.5
2011	134.5	98.0	28.0	19.1	59.0	102.9	75.8	80.4	99.0	113.7	86.9	171.5
2012	103.8	43.9	30.0	175.8	58.2	182.2
Average	134.5	68.4	68.9	76.2	65.5	88.9	139.9	108.8	95.6	121.2	146.4	110.4

Taking the average, and multiplying by the roof area, we currently have the potential to capture the following amount of water:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Volume (m^3)	35.64	18.12	18.27	20.18	17.37	23.55	37.08	28.82	25.34	32.11	38.78	29.26
Volume / day (l)	1149.59	624.67	589.33	672.75	560.26	785.11	1196.13	929.64	844.69	1035.85	1292.76	943.96

Our family consists of 2 adults and 2 little children currently, but I guess in the future, when we're considering the required capacity of this house, we should think that we might have 4 big children, plus the equivalent of several adults staying in our holiday cottage.  A reasonable design capacity might therefore be: Family = 6 people, Guests = 2 people = Total 8 people = 8 x 150 = 1200l per day.

Putting these elements together gives a balance of:

Firewood # 4 - Western Power!

There are several power lines crossing the fields of Tymawr Farm, for which we receive a handsome 'wayleave' payment of £83 per annum! A much more important benefit is that every few years Western Power Distribution (www.westernpower.co.uk/) (WPD), who manage the infrastructure, come and trim any trees which are close to their lines. They hadn't been for several years prior to last week. They check with you a few weeks in advance to run through what & where they need to trim, and also what you want done with the 'trimmings' e.g. do you want them to take them away, chip them into the hedge etc. As I am building a fuel store for the years to come, and am also trying to tidy up the path through the woodland I asked them to cut any branches big enough to burn into manageable pieces, and to chip the rest into neat piles. The chips will be wheelbarrowed up to the woodland and will become the surface of the path.

They turned up on Saturday morning 'en-masse' - there must have been four or five four wheel drives, one tracked chipper, one wheeled chipper and eight or ten tree surgeons. Ben and I watched, fascinated as they worked (incredibly fast - I think it must be piecework or maybe Wales was playing in the afternoon!?) - the chippers in particular are awesome - easily shredding two to three inch diameter branches. The air was briefly filled with the sound of two stroke engines, shouted commands and acknowledgments, and the thud of branches hitting the ground.

When they had left, we walked around and inspected our woody-goodies! The totals are:

1. Wood chips: Approximately 4 cubic metres (40 wheelbarrow loads). One barrow load is giving a decent covering for about 3 metres of path, so I've got 120 metres of path covered for nothing. I would estimate that this is about half of what I need to do, so it's a very welcome addition! Out of interest B&Q sells 100 litre bags of 'softwood chips' (

http://www.diy.com/nav/garden/garden-care-watering/mulches-sand-bark/bark/B-and-Q-Softwood-Chips-Natural-100L-10288047) for mulching / paths etc. for £7.98. If we assume that these bags are compressed, so maybe one B&Q bag is equal to two wheelbarrow loads, we got 20 x £7.98 =

£159.60 worth of chips free. Incidentally I can hire a heavy duty chipper for £60+VAT per day locally here and I think it would have probably taken me 2 days to do the work that WPD did in a morning.


My little helper Ben!

2. Wood for fuel: Approximately 2 cubic metres of very nice looking mixed hardwood logs including Hawthorn and Beech. Once I've finished the (seemingly endless!) task of cutting to length and splitting these logs I will have wood which would have cost us around £300 to buy (see Firewood #1).


The log pile - waiting to be split!

I'm really pleased with this - another wonderful illustration of the abundance of the land. Its important for us not to miss opportunities to SAVE money like this, instead of always focussing on how we can MAKE money, in fact when we're trying to achieve self-abundance the savings are more important because they are not taxed, so £1 saved is worth something like £1.50 earned, after tax, pension, national insurance and all the rest is taken into account (see Vision #1).

Three cheers for WPD! Look forward to your visit in 2015!