THE next generation of homes is set to get greener for Singapore residents. The Housing Board (HDB) is looking into rolling out further initiatives to green new and existing homes, said HDB Building Research Institute managing director Lau Joo Ming on Tuesday.
Click to continue reading “Drive for green HDB homes (Singapore)”
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29 March 2009
Today, the update is about the progress of my little homemade aquaponic growth vegetables.
Firstly, there had been a failure to anticipate how tall the plants can grow and the strength of the winds.
Let me show you the current photos of the vegetables.
Top Bucket 29 Mar 2009
Bottom Bucket 29 Mar 09
You can see the Bottom Bucket had half of the vegetable was gone due to my own fault, the plants got too tall and fell sideways touching the water that is coming down from the hoses.
The end result is death to all my “kang kong” vegetables, I was devastated at first then realized the top bucket is suffering from the same problem of weak stems and need some sticks to support them individually.
I uses some old wooden chopsticks & small wire to tie them upright to prevent them from falling over, the result of the rescue is the photo above on the top bucket.
Those on the top bucket is majority are “ladyfingers” vegetable and a small number of them are “chili padi”.
I will continue to update on this project and hopefully able to harvest them…but I am not experienced enough to know if they are ripe for harvest…any advice will be helpful! 
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According to Yahoo!News:
The electricity tariff is coming down for the second straight quarter.
For the period of April 1 to June 30, it will be reduced by 21.37 per cent or 4.9 cents to 18.03 cents per kWh. This is the lowest rate in four years, since April 2005.
The tariff is currently at 22.93 cents per kWh for January to March 2009.
SP Services said the reduction is largely due to lower fuel oil prices.
The electricity tariff is reviewed quarterly and adjusted in line with the changes in the cost of electricity.
- Currently, the Singapore household are being charged using regulated tariff that changes every 3 months.
Many do not know that there might be a chance that we will be using a new pricing methods in the future after Singapore electricity market gets fully liberalized, that may be sometime in the future….but it will be more volatile using the future pricing methods that changes every 30 minutes.
Pray hard it will not come soon as any changes of oil prices in the future will means immediate price flucutation and bigger impacts…(For people staying in Singapore)
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Solar Distillation Parts
7 March 2009
This is a my new project on Solar Water Distillation, I had seen many distillation projects out there that are not very efficient in creating pure distill water.
This project is to have a high target of distilling lot’s of water in the shortest possible amount of time.
Idea is very simple, use a big lens to concentrate the sun light onto a small frying pan and drip rain water or drain water or any water onto the frying pan. The resulted steam will be sucked into a copper pipe above and it should go through a series of copper pipes to cool down and condense the steam into pure distilled water.
The setup is relatively simple…but I haven’t got all the stuff yet…this is a video on the list of items that I had acquired over a period of 2 weeks.
7 March 2009 Night
PVC Stand
I had completed the base of the stand and the holder of the Fresnel Lens to be able to turn vertically and horizontally.
Fresnel Lens Holder
I currently faced the problem of mounting the holder to the base of the PVC stand…I need to get more L-Brackets to tie down to the stand and mount the holder down with screws.
The rest is still work in progress hence not updated here yet but soon it will be up!
To follow this project go to my project page.
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26 Feb 2009 Photos
26 Feb 09 top Bucket
26 Feb 09 Lower Bucket
2 Mar 2009 Updates
02 Mar 09 Top Bucket
02 Mar 09 Lower Bucket
All the vegetables are growing really well!
I had modified the double barrel fish protector filter for my water pump to point upwards instead so that there won’t have any possible chance of over flowing anywhere since the amount of water are limited to the water level above the barrels.
My molly fishes had actually given birth to many small babies!! ^_^
I fed them 2 times daily with algae wafer and they seems to be flourishing well
More updates will be found in my project page of this blog!
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The DIY Indoor Aquaponic Growth System status report on the growth of my vegetable garden. 1. Kang Kong is growing up pretty fast… 2. Xiao Bai Cai is spreading all over the place Let me write a small review on this setup and the problems encountered & unsolved problems. Aquaponics is a combination of hydroponics and Aquatic fish breeding to make a 90% to 100% maintenance free. The benefits of my set up is as follows
The disavantages are
There are some problems that I had encountered previously during the set up process and mistakes made that cost me some money to replace the “Ikea Snail Buckets” because I had drilled holes into the bucket wrongly making the set up noisy and very annoying.
First problem that I had faced was the noise, the splashing noise can be heard from the next room if there was no stone pebbles inside the buckets. After reviewing some other people’s setup such as ninamichelle77‘s video on her Aquaponics System,
I had decided to follow her hose design with slight modification. Then the second problem is the water pump sucking fishes into it’s “final destination” and end up in heaven, I managed to connect a “fish protector” from the pump to prevent small fish from premature death ^_^.
The third problem is the risk of clogging at the drainage hole (hose connector) inside the bucket from small pebbles, I managed to find a small tea strainer to cover up the hole to prevent any small stones from clogging the opening and able to cover the whole strainer with stones without clogging!
The fourth problem is the loud drainage noise that happens every time when the water flow is large hence I installed a valve to the setup to control the flow of water and the noise just disappeared!
The current pending problem is the top bucket is still not very well irrigated which probably delayed some of the growth, I am still thinking of ways to improve the water flow and currently testing if lowering the platform can slow the water flow and irrigate the top bucket better.
The plants is doing great and the molly fishes are doing rather well in the tank The wild common mollies are very good jumpers hence I had to cover the top part of the fish tank using some plastic cut out cover but still 1 or 2 still jumps out occasionally at some small openings…but it’s not a serious problem for now.
The common mollies love algae wafer & flake fish food hence I have no problem breeding them but I will love to get my hands on a tilapia (Japanese fish) this weekend if possible but I know recently the weather is terribly hot causing many fishes to die in the drains…saw a few floating tilapia last weekend!
Ok, that’s all for today’s update…stay tune for my next update probably a few more days before I post again on this project. My next project might be very interesting, it might be a project on water & sun…stay tuned!
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Today’s update is another upgrade to my hydroponic system, I had placed a tea strainer to protect the hose connector from small stones.
Tea strainer is suppose to be stainless steel or of non-rust material hence should be 100% rust free underwater.
Mesh Tea Strainer from Daiso
Added a water flow valve to regulate the water flow so that the water won’t make so much noise lol.
Do go to the My Project page to see more of this project
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Today, I had upgraded the flow of water to using hose connectors.
This afternoon, I went to the local river (canal) near Lavender MRT to catch some Tilapia (aka Japanese fish) but unfortunately only caught some small common molly fish instead.
I had notice 3 dead Tilapia floated past me and I find it rather weird, it seems that the water may be too hot for them or because of the industrial waste?
Anyway, below is my latest video on the upgrade to my Aquaponic system since the last video.
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FOOD prices in Singapore shot up by 9 per cent in May due to a range of dearer food items including rice, milk, fresh vegetables, poultry and cooking oil, pushing the month’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) up by 7.5 per cent from a year ago.
This percentage will certainly go up in the next quarter as we see more spike in prices in everything in front of us. Corn prices just spike recently due to flooding in the mid west of USA, Mexico desperately trying to freeze the prices for 150 food products hoping to help the poor family cope with rising prices but I can predict such actions might cause shortages of food.
What can you do to curb inflation and fight the rising cost of living? Firstly is to get out of any debt ASAP and stop gambling on uncertainties that you cannot 100% be sure of earning money.
Cut credit cards, cut debts, pay back any loans faster if possible and start finding extra incomes.
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Ever since I started researching on the future energy crisis via the journey I conveniently place on the right side of my page, I realized that the future of the world including my small resource poor country are in a very serious psychological dilemma in regards to the pending energy crisis.
There are several types of people, one the economist or optimist will consistently deny any doom to the world and think of creative ideas to be profitable during the down turn. Investing in the right stocks or shares when the price is “low” will make you rich if the market becomes “high” again.
The Politicians will say they are pouring money into R&D and technology with alternative energy will come and save the day! Fear not and continue with your life!
The Leftist or Conservative always counter that and says we need to be realistic and prepare for whatever comes our way and with a large scare protest can make the government make it “right”
The Doomer will say, it’s no use the economic is doomed to stagflation (No Growth with High Inflation) and without cheap oil the world will go back to pre-industrial age with little or no capability to sustain the current over populated Earth with enough food, electricity, water and money.
For Me I am a 10% optimist + 30% Politician +30% Conservative +30% Doomer. I plan to find possible solutions to present to the world the simple and affordable way to sustain life. I am on a quest to find solutions to “save the world”.
The first quest will consist of the few key elements.
1. Electricity
I had securely rigged up a few solar panels to my HDB windows to charge some batteries. You can see on the left is my first 12 Volts (DC) 10 Watts Small solar panels which was my first taste of using renewable energy! I had since bring one 20Watt and a big brother 40W panel to join in Green and Clean Solar Brotherhood of my window! 
This 64 bulbs LED (Light Emitting Diode) can bend and shape according to what you want and as you can see it’s pretty too! My living room are much more romantic compared to the AC counterpart!
Solar Charged Batteries connected with a Inverter (DC to AC) can even used to see TV, Charge laptop & Hand Phones.
It’s strange we all had taken electricity for granted as almost all of us can afford the electricity now. So with a sigh, I can only do this project alone with the only reasons is to go green and environmentally friendly to avoid ridicule. Another good thing is that my batteries are handy during any black out in Singapore! If you have seen the movie Die Hard 4.0, you will know what I mean ya! Do Check back here for more of my old and new projects that I will be doing for the sake of sustainability in a urban “desert” during the energy crisis. (Yes, just received a mail stating the subsidies on electricity for 5 years! Even the Government are ready for the crisis….)
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