Earth Notes: The Earth Notes Podcast @Home

Auto-updated 2024-04-26.

Listen to the Earth Notes occasional podcast on all things eco and green and efficient @Home! #eco #snackable #podcast

How to cut your carbon footprint at home without pain! All Earth Notes podcast episodes (audio-based articles) are listed here. Look out for the full transcripts.

Try the Podcast RSS feed.

(You may also like to try: the basic feed, site technicals, saving electricity and gas. Oh, and the EOU Mastodon feed.)

The podcast started in June 2019. The first two episodes were created to support a local naturalist who leads guided walks around our local council housing estate.

Episodes are typically:

'snackable' at just a few minutes long
on a green, or energy efficiency, or energy data topic
based at home

Some episodes are a little more tangential, such as listening to the temperature of your radiators for a whole year in one second.

Some episodes are longer. Watch out for video too!

There are also ambient and sonification episodes with little or no commentary.

Episodes

60 episodes, newest first:

2024-03-28 Repair Café Kingston Report to Council and TTK AGM (2024) 6 min a c
2024-01-28 Diarycast - Year In Review (2023) 5 min a c
2023-09-10 16WW Hot Noon Garden Ambient (2023-09) 7 min a c
2023-09-03 Paris Gard du Nord Train Station Afternoon Piano (2023-09) 5 min a c
2023-08-01 UK Home Heating Decarbonisation Seminar Presentation (2023-08) 17 min a c
2023-07-14 MUSIC Yearly Electricity Grid Flows Sonified 2 min a c
2023-04-10 MUSIC Water Music: In The House 1 min a c
2023-01-03 Diarycast - Year In Review, and One Weird Trick (2022) 7 min a c
2022-08-14 The Sound of Campsite (2022-08) 8 min a c
2022-08-11 Six Minutes of Med-ness (2022-08) 7 min a c
2022-07-04 TTK AGM Overview (2022) 7 min a c
2022-06-06 Statscast - Energy Storage Stats Special (2022-05) 8 min a c
2022-05-22 16WW House Suburban Sparrows Ambient (2022-05) 11 min a c
2022-05-08 Hanwell Hootie Ambient (2022-05) 11 min a c
2021-12-29 Diarycast - End of Year Roundup (2021-12-28) 3 min a c
2021-11-14 Diarycast - June to November Roundup (2021-11-14) 6 min a c
2021-09-08 English River August Ambient (2021-08) 11 min a c
2021-09-05 Microbrewery Ambient (2021-09) 11 min a c
2021-08-28 Direycast - I'm All Right Jack (2021-08-28) 4 min a c
2021-08-22 On Being a Hardware Developer (2021) 12 min a c
2021-08-01 Herne Bay Ambient (2021-07) 24 min a c
2021-06-27 Wren Loud and Bold Ambient (2021-06) 2 min a c
2021-06-14 Diarycast - March Warm, April Snow, June Xmas (2021-06-14) 3 min a c
2021-03-21 Diarycast - Smoke and Snow to Census Jab (2021-03-21) 4 min a c
2021-02-07 Soundscape - Going Postal in Audio 21 min a c
2021-01-14 Diarycast - Interview Snippets (2021-01-14) 4 min a c
2020-12-31 Statscast - Load Profile (2020-12) 4 min a c
2020-12-22 Soundscape - Solstice Exercise Mile Walk 20 min a c
2020-12-21 Diarycast - Solstice Lockdown Edition (2020-12-21) 8 min a c
2020-11-13 VIDEO Smart Radiator Valves Video 17 min a c
2020-10-10 Statscast - Baselines and Bats (2020-09) 9 min a c
2020-09-26 Weymouth Ambient (2020-08) 22 min a c
2020-09-25 Diarycast - Summer Catch-up (2020-09-25) 5 min a c
2020-09-21 Soundwalk - an hour on the Cambridge Road Estate (2020-09-12) 61 min a c
2020-09-18 Bats Around our Home aka 16WW 38 min a c
2020-07-26 Diarycast - Conscious Uncouping - Travel (2020-07-26) 9 min a c
2020-07-12 Diarycast - Conscious Uncouping (2020-07-12) 7 min a c
2020-07-05 Statscast - Normal-ish June, Heating Re-viewed (2020-06) 9 min a c
2020-06-10 Statscast - Lockdown Changes, Log Noises (2020-05) 11 min a c
2020-05-23 Diarycast - Urban Dawn Chorus (2020-05-23) 24 min a c
2020-05-13 Diarycast - Ambient Sound of a Graveyard (2020-05-13) 11 min a c
2020-05-10 Diarycast - Lockdown Patently Workable (2020-05-10) 4 min a c
2020-05-03 Statscast - PV Up, Travel Down, Weakly Weeklies (2020-04) 11 min a c
2020-04-22 Diarycast - Blue Skies PV High (2020-04-22) 3 min a c
2020-04-19 Metacast 2: Podcast Specs and Workflow (2020-04) 5 min a c
2020-04-13 Diarycast - Lockdown Lawnmowing Sadly Allowed (2020-04-13) 3 min a c
2020-04-10 Metacast 1: Blue Yeti, Shy Eurasian Footwear (2020-04) 4 min a c
2020-03-21 Coronacast for March 2020 2 min a c
2019-12-30 Sign-off for 2019, Hello 2020! 7 min a c
2019-11-09 VIDEO OpenTRV Movie Mashup 2 min a c
2019-10-29 Water Music: How Does Tap-water Temperature Sound in Time-lapse? 5 min a c
2019-10-28 The Green Existence of Adam Hart-Davis 6 min a c
2019-10-19 PV Sounds: How Does PV Grid-tie Generation Sound in Time-lapse? 3 min a c
2019-10-13 Battery Sounds: How Does a Battery Sound in Time-lapse? 3 min a c
2019-10-12 Rad Sounds II: Attempting a Higher-fi Home-heating Time-lapse 3 min a c
2019-09-22 Greener Travel: Why We Should Cut Car-bon Miles 4 min a c
2019-09-15 Rad Sounds: How Cool is your Home Heating in Time-lapse? 3 min a c
2019-08-28 Aircon On, Windows Open! (2019-08) 3 min a c
2019-06-21 About Our Greenish Home aka 16WW, with Bonus Bats and Sparrows 4 min a c
2019-06-15 Solar Panels in My Garden 2 min a c

a = episode artwork, c = WebVTT captions/transcript

A direct RSS podcast feed is available.

This podcast is also available via Apple Podcasts, Subscribe on Android, Overcast, and Listen Notes.

Please like and subscribe to help other people find this podcast!

The Feeder (F-Droid, Google Play) open source feed reader and podcast player on Android is data-plan friendly!

Lite

'Lite'/mobile pages play smaller, mono versions of the audio files where available. Smaller files help save your mobile data allowance and a tiny carbon toeprint for you and for me. A smaller version may be served automatically if you have data saving mode (Save-Data: on) enabled in your browser.

Diary

Diary of some EOU HQ and notable events/stats, for a future diarycast!

2024-04-26: RSS Podcast Efficiency featured in Podnews!
2024-04-25: odd: playing SoundCloud music (in Firefox) seems to block/slow Time Machine finding changes to back up; pausing the music sometimes allows Time Machine to continue...
2024-04-24: the council's grass-verge-trimming contractor is outside and the strimmer is so much less unpleasantly loud than previously — it seems to be electric!
2024-04-22: I am posting in my vote for the London Mayoral and Assembly elections. (I previously did my 6-month PhD progress report, and will next order more ground coffee: priorities!)
2024-04-20: I sent an email with an Apache log sample to anthropic.com: When a robots.txt says "no” that does NOT mean "ask again in a few seconds just in case". This is filling my logs with garbage and wasting my CPU and bandwidth. The misbehaviour that had been continuing for days did stop after a few hours, so I think someone read the mail and acted on it.
2024-04-19: the Octopus heat pump survey happened, taking about 4h; it will be very tight to get everything physically fitted and eg meet the GDPO requirements to avoid the need for planning permission.
2024-04-17: GPTBot and ClaudeBot are all over my sites today...
2024-04-16: did an interview with FT Next about my heat pumps and TRVs pre-print. Also, and less fun, finished filling in PFF2 and CYI student finance forms...
2024-04-12: finished off the last of the 60 podcast transcripts this (sunny) morning, hurrah!
2024-04-07: the off-grid system powered the Internet router through the night last night.
2024-04-05: on the bus to meet friends in the evening, I found myself on the bus with someone I worked with in a start-up over 20 years ago!
2024-04-03: I turned off DMARC pct=100 reporting on a couple of inbound-only MX domains since their misuse and its reporting continues to be solidly tiresome and distracting.
2024-03-26: on the GB Grid Intensity page I have renamed the zero-carbon fuels total to low-carbon because, as overall grid intensity falls, the difference stops being a rounding error!
2024-03-24: the heat battery was (over) full before noon.
2024-03-23: a little after 3pm all storage was pretty-much full again. In the evening peak period little of the additional demand was taken up by fossil fuels, eg CCGT, but mainly from storage and interconnectors (mainly French nukes). A marginal kWh need no longer be gas.
2024-03-21: a little after 3pm the heat battery is completely (over) full and has stopped absorbing energy, as has the Enphase, so over 1kW is spilling to grid. By little after 4pm the off-grid energy store was full too.
2024-03-19: I have been roped in as a judge/assessor for a university sustainability module to today!
2024-03-18: I will stop taking vitamin D from tomorrow until Autumn.
2024-03-17: a nearby friend who has been exploring heat-pumps, roof and wall insulation and solar PV called me to say that he was about to sign up for PV, with batteries and diversion to his existing DHW cylinder — hurrah!
2024-03-16: the sparrows have been swarming and chattering and squabbling in the hedge under my window the last few days...
2024-03-15: 14:45Z: just after closing the poll for central heating state (~1/3 off) we turned ours off, so that was a ~3 month heating season.
2024-03-15: unexpected converging benefits of WFH (Working From Home) and Bluetooth speaker: being able to to take my bath while staying in a retrofit conference to make space in my heat battery for DHW for everyone else in the family later!
2024-03-09: not a spectacular day, but most of the storage (Thermino, Enphase) got pretty full.
2024-03-08: the Thermino was about to (over)fill on diversion a little before noon today, but strategic bath-time shifting has fixed that...
2024-03-07: I paid in my liquidation cheque from Caredall.
2024-03-04: I submitted my FHBS consultation response to [govUK2023future].
2024-03-01: at noon PV generation is peaking over 2.7kW and the grid-intensity is low enough for the Thermino to be getting a grid top-up after my nice hot bath this morning: boost and divert logically happening concurrently! Came very close (~105% estimated) to 'overfull' and auto-disconnecting the heat relay...
2024-02-29: I submitted my TRVs and heat-pumps paper, somewhat rejigged, to another journal today.
2024-02-28: I submitted my HEM consultation response to [govUK2023HEM].
2024-02-27: I am starting work on a Home Energy Model: replacement for the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) consultation response [govUK2023HEM]...
2024-02-26: the first school is talking to KEFSS about PV, and KEFSS is meeting RBK's Property department tomorrow (virtually) to help get it comfortable with converting rooftops in their bailiwick!
2024-02-22: Combiphos content changed today, roof checked and leak fix seems to be working, and a 5mm gap has been made under the 1g bedroom door which gets most humidity and condensation.
2024-02-15: I think that I have completed a code upgrade and improvement to cope with the coming change in National Grid's systems. Naturally, by avoiding doing the research that I ought to have been doing...
2024-02-14: attended the Hackathon final-5 presentations, but did not get to see the overall winner.
2024-02-11: the second Hackathon day at uni, and I spent some quiet moments gathering some of the receipts (literal and metaphorical) for the work that got us to an EPC A (100). There was a tiny bit (~30Wh) of solar PV diversion today.
2024-02-10: the first Hackathon day at uni today as presenter/mentor/whatevs: fun but exhausting and in bed by 7pm (having been up at 7am)! In the evening the renewed 16WW EPC certificate came in from Ecoalex and it is an A (was previously B), which is ~0.3% of existing England and Wales homes!
2024-02-09: my son is off skiing with the school in Italy, by coach (~24h).
2024-02-07: working on the uni Hackathon for the weekend, including problem statements...
2024-02-06: Paul of Ecoalex is doing an EPV today for 16WW.
2024-02-05: I have a provisional date for the Octopus heat-pump survey in April... (I was called in the Eurostar departure lounge in Brussels to agree the date range.)
2024-02-04: relatively few talks attended (RISC-V, open source European legislative environment). Apparently about 8000 people attended FOSDEM.
2024-02-03: in the FOSDEM Energy devroom most of today. [FOSDEM2024energy]
2024-02-02: off to FOSDEM today! It is usually icy here in Brussels for FOSDEM weekend, but it is more like 10°C this weekend.
2024-01-28: pushed out a quick podcast 2023 round-up episode and cajoled the MBA to top-up a little off-grid.
2024-01-27: the off-grid battery hit FULL today, and I have just booked into a week-long music festival in August that I have been interested in for years.
2024-01-25: kitchen MHRV motor being replaced and heat exchanger cleaned today.
2024-01-21: brought upgraded heat-battery RPi (pekoe) back on-line.
2024-01-20: started replacement of worn/failing microSD card in heat-battery RPi (pekoe).
2024-01-18: replacement motor unit for Tempra fan arrived today, as did my first SPAM 'message request' over Signal (about Bitcoin, naturally).
2024-01-17: replacement Bodum Coffee Press Replacement Beaker, Borosilicate Glass — 3-Cup, Transparent (Capacity: three cup, 0. 35 L, 12 oz) (£12.90 including VAT, MPN 1503-10, EAN 727015100586) arrived and fits! The packaging also lists MPNs for the metal filter parts: repair and reuse ahoy!
2024-01-16: attempted to connect my SoundCloud account via RSS into my mastodon.social account, to automatically feed in any new music, and possibly other things that I like/post: I will find out!
2024-01-16: ordered replacement motor assembly for kitchen MHRV.
2024-01-15: my simple cafetière broke this morning (the rim of the glass vessel broke. I do not think that it could go with the normal (soda) glass for recycling evening if it did not have a sharp edge, so the glass is wrapped in newspaper and in the landfill bin...
2024-01-12: For the last couple of months (ish) I have been trying to reduce the amount of laundry I produce.
2024-01-11: Dave the builder is on our frosty roof to try to fix the leak via the old kitchen boiler flue vent (with flashing), dodging the asbestos and pigeons... Also cable-tying a couple of the solar PV cables that have slipped down to and spilling over the gutter at the front. Also trying the boiler radiator flow temperature on its lowest (~35°C) setting, at ~5°C outside, to further probe how a heat-pump might work...
2024-01-08: a flurry of snow shortly after 1pm, continued for a while, bit none settled. Did some PAT (Portable Appliance Testing) training on-line, and passed!
2024-01-03: boiler board swap started just before 11am and had everything fixed in under half an hour: we have central heating again in time for the cold snap! (Time to take the Thermino off 'primary' DHW duty...) The boiler's little rest did (a) cut our mains gas consumption and footprint (b) verify that our base heating temperature is ~12C ie we do not need heating when it is warmer than that outside (c) provide a data point for a weather compensation curve (d) show us that we can cope reasonably well without heating!
2024-01-01: I man do a dry-ish January, once I have finished the open bottles of wine!