Spring clean your car

So the Bank Holiday weekend is over and for those of you who don't use alternative means of transport you'll be back at work, commuting in the car. Make sure your car is efficient as possible:

Remove all bike racks, roof racks and roof boxes. The wind resistance is wasting fuel and costing you money. Remove them now!

Lighten the load. What's in the boot of your car? A set of golf clubs? A des res four man tent? Why waste fuel using your car as a shed? Get them out and save more money.

Check your tyre pressure. Reduce the rolling resistance of your tyres. Check here for more details.

Share your car. Cut your fuel bill in half by car sharing.

Springwatch 2006

I'm a big fan of Springwatch, which returns to our screens this month at 8pm on Monday the 29th May on BBC2. Set your video recorders and your PVRs to make sure you don't miss an episode!

As usual Bill and Kate will be discussing spring events around the British countryside and using hidden cameras they'll be giving us a priveliged look into the lives of some of our fascinating wildlife. Meanwhile, Simon will no doubt be bringing us fantastic footage of otters, seals, arctic skuas and curlew.

It has been a long and dry winter followed by a very warm and wet May - one of the wettest on record for some years, although this has hardly been enough to re-fill the aquifers that supply our water. The effects of this unusual weather situation on our wildlife will provoke an interesting discussion and will no doubt visit the climate change themes currently being discussed in the BBC's Climate Chaos season.

They'll also be promoting the Breathing Places campaign. The aim of the campaign is to get people volunteering and to create their own spaces for relaxation and nature.

Get on the milk round

If you buy milk from the supermarket it's very likely that it will be in a Tetra Pak style carton or a plastic milk bottle made from high density polyethylene (HDPE). The Tetra-Pak cartons, because they are made of different materials fused together, are very hard to recycle and many kerb side collections do not allow for carton recycling. The HDPE bottles require lots of energy to be recycled. Many people buy large quantities of these cartons and store them away in the freezer for use later - which uses up even more energy.

An alternative has been around for decades though and if you're lucky it may still be available in your area. It is of course the milk man and his returnable, reusable glass milk bottles. Not only that, the milk float is usually an emission free electric vehicle. Find out if a milk round is available in your area by visiting Express Dairies or Dairy Crest. The milkman will deliver much more than just milk and fresh orange juice these days so it's well worth looking into. And with a fresh pint at your doorstep every morning there's no need to worry about whether you'll have enough until the next time you go shopping.

If you really want to know more about milk floats, why not visit this endearing little site dedicated to "our friends electric"?!

Heating water

Did you know that since the 1st January 2006 nearly all domestic boilers sold in the UK have been gas condensing boilers. They are super efficient due to the way they use the heat from the exhaust gases to further heat the water. James Watt would have been proud.

This post was originally going to be dedicated to gas condensing boilers but the National Energy Foundation have an excellent article telling you everything you need to know. If you have recently installed a gas condensing boiler please let us know about your experiences by leaving a comment below - are there any pitfalls we should be aware of? I have been told that it can take a minute for hot water to come through the taps and this can waste quite a lot of water. I suppose you could use this water to rinse dirty dishes or you could save it in a large jug to put on the garden.

As you can tell I don't have a gas condensing boiler because I only have electric and I am on an Economy 7 tarriff. This tarriff is rated so that off-peak electricity (between the hours of midnight and 7am) is a quarter of the price of on-peak electricity. However, on-peak electricity is rather expensive. I believe this is an attempt by the electricity companies to smooth out the peak of electricity demand during the day and the trough of low electricity usage overnight. You can't just switch off a power station when nobody is using it, so encouraging people to do their washing and heat their water overnight must use up electricity that would otherwise be wasted.

There are a whole host of other problems associated with Economy 7 tarriff but I'm not going to discuss them here.

Here's a little description about the hot water tank that is installed in my flat. It is well insulated with foam and has two immersion heaters installed. One is supplied by electricity between the hours of midnight and 7am and is placed at the bottom of the tank. If left switched on permanantly it would heat the whole tank but only using the cheaper electricity for seven hours every night. The other immersion heater is supplied by electricity 24 hours a day but is positioned half way up the tank. I presume this is supposed to be used as a booster to supply half a tank of hot water during the day if the rest has been used up.

Given that I rarely use a full tank of hot water each day it seemed wasteful to be using the Economy 7 tarriff every three nights or so, especially as it only took about an hour to heat up the tank. So I've had a timer installed on the 24 hour elecricity supply which only heats up half the tank and only for one hour in the morning just before I wake up. Now I only use 7 hours of Economy 7 electricity per week to heat my water and I don't have to remember to switch the hot water on and off every few nights. This is especially good as I often forgot to switch it off meaning that I'd end up using lots of expensive on-peak electricity for no reason whatsoever.

Fantastic bats

This week I saw a presentation about bats by local expert Patty Briggs. It was a fascinating talk - she dispelled some of the myths about bats and explained how they use echolocation to find insects in the dark. She even had a couple of bats to show us - a couple of pipistrelles and a long eared. These were disabled bats - you're not allowed to keep them unless you are specially qualified.

There are seventeen species of bats in Britain, the most common being the pipistrelle and they could be nesting in your home. However, all bats are protected because they are declining in numbers. You can quite happily fit two pipistrelles inside a match box they are that small but each night they can eat up to 3000 flying insects so they're great to have around. They can fit through a gap just 8mm wide and they don't like roosting in a draught, so the eaves of your house may be the perfect place for them.

Female bats gather in maternity colonies and there can be up to 150 in a tiny area. If the hole to the colony gets blocked up by a builder who doesn't know to look out for bats then a whole local population can be wiped out in an instant. If you're planning any major structural work on your house, such as a loft conversion, make sure you contact the Bat Conservation Trust first. They can help you check your house out for bats before the work and help you do the work with the least disturbance to the bats.

You can use a bat detector to listen to bats as they echo-locate their food. Or, you could join a bat walk. Look in the local papers or contact your local wildlife trust to see if they're running one in your area. You can even provide a place for bats by putting up a bat box.

How to excel at printing

I've covered double-sided printing in an earlier post. Today I'm going to give you a few handy tips about printing Excel spreadsheets and what you can do to reduce paper use. I'm aware that other spreadsheet packages are available and if you use them and have any tips please leave a comment below.

So, Jeff from Sales has just emailed you an Excel document showing last weeks sales figures and every day you print it out and file it away in a cupboard somewhere. But wait - there must be a better way than this!

If you don't need it, don't print it! This sign hangs above the printer in our office, and it's a good place to start. Do you really need to print this spreadsheet? Does anyone ever look at it? Will they ever need it again? If it needs to be kept then perhaps it would be better to save a digital copy somewhere and take a backup?

OK, so you do need a printed copy of the spreadsheet - the paperless office isn't with us yet. But each week the Sales spreadsheet gets bigger (Jeff's good at his job). It extends over several pages and the totals column is always on a page of its own. And half the data is irrelevant - nobody wants to know how much Jeff is spending on champagne lunches with the customer. Don't worry - we've got it sorted...

Firstly, use the mouse to select the part of the spreadsheet you want to print. This is the bit where you can ignore Jeff's earnings forecast for next month. He gets paid too much and nobody wants to be reminded about that. From the File menu select Print Area and then Set Print Area.

Print Preview is your friend! This handly little option can also be found in the File menu and it shows you exactly how the spreadsheet will look on paper. The Setup button is where it's at and the Fit to: radio button (on the Page tab) could probably be one of the biggest paper savers in your office. If the spreadsheet is too wide, try printing it landscape. Decrease margins for a better fit. Add headers and footers to help guide your viewers around the pages of the spreadsheet.

Finally, don't forget to print double sided. The finished spreadsheet will look professional and you'll have saved paper, toner and energy. And that can only be a good thing.

Wildlife gardening

If all our gardens were put together they would make a massive nature reserve, perhaps the most important in the country. Neatly manicured gardens are not the best for wildlife though and with a bit of thought they can be turned into sanctuaries for birds, mammals and invertebrates and lots of other native species.

The key to a good wildlife garden is food, water and shelter - for that is what nearly every living creature needs to survive.


Food: This can mean a whole lot more than putting out a bag of peanuts for the birds, but it's a start. Consider insects that feed on pollen and nectar, animals that eat slugs and worms and birds that feed on berries and fruit in the autumn. You may want to plant a buddleia to attract butterflies or a cotoneaster whose berries are very popular with thrushes.

Water: Birds love a good birdbath, and it will be much better for them if it is filled with rainwater from a water butt rather than chlorinated tap water. Even better - if you have the space - is to dig a pond. Ponds are an important habitat that have been lost from the British countryside and nothing beats waking up in March to finding frogspawn in your own garden pond. If you're lucky you may even be visited by a heron.

Shelter: Animals need shelter to sleep in, to breed in and to hibernate in. Bird boxes and bat boxes will be welcome even in the smallest town garden and you can even get boxes for insects now including bumble bees and the gardeners friends - lacewings and ladybirds - they love gorging on aphids! A compost heap provides excellent shelter for frogs, toads and even hedgehogs. Wood piles and rock piles are perfect hiding places for a variety of invertebrates.

Avoid using chemicals in your garden and it will be a wildlife haven in no time. You can guarantee that next spring when it comes the Big Garden Birdwatch you'll have plenty to make note of.