Oxley Woods Living

Life in an Oxley Woods eco house

 
 

Archive for the ‘Eco living’ Category

 

The future of Oxley Woods?

January 10, 2011

Oxley Woods. How do you describe it? If you’re Taylor Wimpey, perhaps you’d choose words such as these..

Oxley Woods is a truly innovative and outstanding development of sustainable homes combining comfort and character with an environmentally friendly lifestyle.

But then, if that’s how you truly felt, would you plan to drop the award winning RSH+P design in favour of this?

New Oxley Woods

According to a letter we’ve received from planning and design firm CMYK (Planning and Design) Limited. Yes. Yes you would.

More to follow I’m sure, and the debate has already begun on the residents’ forum (see link above). Now available is a copy of the outlines of planned changes in PDF format. Click here to download/open the PDF.

Eco cleaning for an eco kettle

October 19, 2010

A couple of years back, not long after we moved into Oxley Woods, our kettle blew up. It somehow frazzled itself, it was very old, and sadly, it had to go.

We replaced it with an eco kettle, the Kenwood Energy Sense Kettle to be precise, as it seemed the best of the bunch at the time, especially as I like tea, and tea likes properly boiling water, which many eco water heaters simply don’t do.

Anyway, after a while the boiling plate at the bottom started to look a bit nasty. It’s only limescale, but despite the inline water softener we have in these houses, it builds up quick. Not only does it look unpleasant, it can damage your kettle, and make them less efficient. Sucks doesn’t it.

We’d been bought a book on "green cleaning" and decided to check out what we can do to help the issue, and the solution, it turned out, was simple citric acid, purchased from the local John Lewis store for a few pounds.

We use a little sprinkling of this (it recommends a large dosage of about 1/3 a packet, but we use less every time) about every two or three months, and the results are amazing.

Here’s some before, during, and after photographs of the kettle this week. We left a little longer to highlight how this simple, 20 or so minute operation, can completely reinvigorate your ‘orrible looking, inefficiently running kettle.

Before the cleaning:

Up close and scaly:

Fizzing away:

Citric acid working its wonders:

Ta-da!

Good as new, almost:

So proud of my babies…

September 22, 2009

OK, that’s very tongue in cheek, I wanted to clarify that before anyone thinks I have gone completely off my rocker thanks to the stress of the current situation!

The “babies” in question are our Strawberry plantlets which have finally had their runners cut this week, and are doing pretty well so far!

Baby strawberry plants

To be honest, our Strawberries were a bit of a let down this year. No, they were a huge let down. As previously mentioned we had a good crop of blueberries, the corn is middling to poor, tomatoes have been excellent, potatoes still under way, but the strawberry growing was fair from fruitful.

The lack of fruit has been slightly made up for by the number of strong looking plantlets we had come from the runners on the plants. I potted them up a few weeks back, and this week finally cut off the runners, as all the plantlets appeared to be showing signs of fresh growth.

So far, they’re doing well. I know this is small fry to many of the accomplished home-growers on Oxley Woods, but I’m still pleased to see this working out well, hopefully next year we’ll have a bumper crop of juicy red fruit!?

Residents’ forum is go!

September 21, 2009

The forums are now live. Not much there just yet, but if you’d like to join in, go to the forums now!

You can also use the link in the main menu at the top of each page.

Any questions on how to register or use the forums, feel free to post a comment here, or use the “contact” link above.

Residents’ forum coming soon

September 9, 2009

I’ve had some positive murmurings with regard setting up a public forum here for residents to share their experiences, and basically use as they please as an online community for our community here in the Oxley Woods eco houses.

I’m working on it, and will get it set up as soon as possible. Nothing fancy, but it’ll be there if anyone wants to use it.