On the subject of wood burning, before I knew of PO and Permaculture I converted both my open fireplaces (I wish I had more!) to Rumford fireplaces. To those wanting to know what Rumford is http://www.rumford.com/. I do not believe that the rush to installing wood burning stoves is a good idea, and believe that you can get far more heat from a Rumford that a stove.
Having had a look at the Rumford website I don't think the above can be true. The smallest Rumford fireplace, a 24" wide x 12" deep, requires a 12 x 12" flue. The usual flue in a post 1900 house in this country would be 8 x 8". The extra air going up a Rumford flue would make it less efficient than an ordinary flue.
When you consider the controlled amount of air going through a woodburning stove, it is miniscule compared with an open flue Rumford fireplace. Most woodburning stoves will function with a 6" dia, 150 dia, flue but only need a larger flue diameter to carry smoke away when the stove door is opened for filling. Stick to the closed woodburning stove that will burn at a much higher temperature than an open fire and thus burn more efficiently.
Kenneal, The Rumfords I have are fitted with 8" diameter flues. The air flow through them is governed by the aperture size in the venturi of the chimney throat, rather than the flue liner size.
Rumfords work better as far as I can see because most of the heat is radiated into the room thus heat people farther from the fire as well. The radiant energy from a stove fire is used to heat the body of the stove and so warms the air in the room by convection and hence the people, which is not nearly so efficient. Open fires are much better at providing ventilation to a room too.
If you don't get the fuel air ratio correct with a stove you will generate lots of soot, risking a chimney fire (which happened when I had a stove) and wasting a lot of fuel in the process.
I currently work in the energy sector (gas, electricity) but might possibly have an opportunity in the near future to move to the telecommunications sector (for a large mobile phone network operator). The nature of the actual work I do would not be particularly different in one sector or the other: admin., paper pushing, number crunching, logistics, billing etc. (exciting stuff, I know)
In the long term I know I obviously need to find something more sustainable and useful to society, learn some "real" skills etc.. But in the short term would it be most wise to stay in energy or move to telecoms??
I think the easy answer is to stay in energy sector, but there are two important additional factors about the job I'm considering in the telecommunications sector:
1. it is located a short bicycle ride away from my house (as opposed to an hour-long train/metro commute to my current office)
2. it would pay 50% more than my current salary (thereby enabling me to pay off more of my existing debt more quickly)
I just thought I'd mention this here, cos it's giving be a bit of a headache, and maybe some of your opinions might help me lubricate my decision-making wheels.
Erik wrote:1. it is located a short bicycle ride away from my house (as opposed to an hour-long train/metro commute to my current office)
2. it would pay 50% more than my current salary (thereby enabling me to pay off more of my existing debt more quickly).
Go for it Erik!
If you can save two hours of your time, cut your traveling expenses and significantly reduce your outstanding debts in a shorter time it has to be worth moving.
I assume you've done your research on the telecoms company?
Erik wrote:1. it is located a short bicycle ride away from my house (as opposed to an hour-long train/metro commute to my current office)
2. it would pay 50% more than my current salary (thereby enabling me to pay off more of my existing debt more quickly).
Go for it Erik!
If you can save two hours of your time, cut your traveling expenses and significantly reduce your outstanding debts in a shorter time it has to be worth moving.
I assume you've done your research on the telecoms company?
Hi Aurora. Cheers for your reply.
The money, time saving, fitness (cycling) aspects of the change are indeed VERY attractive advantages.
I've not done much research on the telecoms company yet, but it's one of the biggest in Spain. My main concern is mostly to do with how hard or rather how soon telecoms will be hit after peak oil (harder and sooner than jobs in the energy sector I reckon). I think my sort of job will be rather vulnerable in any sector though, so I do need to think beyond the short term too ... just can't find the time to think, let alone look (or eventually leap!).
p.s. - By the way, welcome back!! I didn't catch your "reincarnation" at the time. I've been offline a lot lately so I'm still reading up on missed threads bit by bit.
Peak oil or no peak oil telecoms is in for a rough ride over the next few years. As it happens I'm in Madrid in a couple of weeks time talking to Orange Spain (previously Amena) about energy... maybe you can mix energy and telecoms!
Sure is. The current Sun scheme where they give your corporation "thin client" PCs and their servers free ... but you give them a percentage of your energy savings!
clv101 wrote:Peak oil or no peak oil telecoms is in for a rough ride over the next few years. As it happens I'm in Madrid in a couple of weeks time talking to Orange Spain (previously Amena) about energy... maybe you can mix energy and telecoms!
Small world! - we might have crossed paths and would never have known! Except for the fact that I'll probably be in France in a couple of weeks time...
What sort of a "rough ride" is telecoms in for over the next few years by the way? Or are you referring to THE rough ride?!
Unsustainable cross subsidies between business units, the shift from being a hi-tech "luxury" product to a commodity, the technology shift away from the circuit switched networks (including 3G) where billions have been invested to packet switched networks, the fact that most traffic and therefore revenue potential occurs in a tiny fraction of land area and never more than a few 10s of meters from a fixed, high bandwidth, low latency connection, the rapidly falling revenue per bit in the face of fixed backhaul cost per bit... The existing architecture of the traditional telco just isn't what's needed.
Evidence can be seen from the equipment suppliers. Last year Nokia and Siemens merged into one, Alcatel and Lucent merged, Nortel sold off their 3G infrastructure business
How we laughed at that one in the office. Ofcom have come up with some really stupid ideas in the last couple of years but this one really took the biscuit.
I didn't follow what happened to that consultation, I used to work in spectrum management up until 18 months ago but I suspect nothing came of it.
... just can't find the time to think, let alone look (or eventually leap!). 
