Wood heat

    On Wednesday the electric utility Enel will disconnect the electrical supply to our neighborhood of four houses. They must pull about 30 meters of supply cable from out of an underground conduit and replace it with a much heavier conductor in order to receive the 15 kilowatts we should be producing. I'm worried because I remember a roughneck builder breaking this conduit shortly before we fired him from our septic tank job. That defined the moment when we took this project on ourselves some six years ago. I repaired that conduit as best I could and it has survived one line replacement since then, but this is a heavier wire. We will be without power until they get it replaced and we've got a couple of freezers full of food at risk. Wednesday is the day.

     Solar panels, inverters and three phase conductors are all signs of a new and better age of power production, but alongside all this modern trickery is another energy project of ours. Ironically, also on Wednesday, a delivery truck from south west England is supposed to arrive in London where it will meet another delivery van we've hired to transport a newly built wood burning stove/fireplace to us here in Italy. The wood burner will incorporate two internal water heaters which will feed our hot water tank and power our underfloor heating system. This will be used to supplement our three existing hot water solar panels during the winter months. We are just beginning to prepare the cavity which will accept the stove.
     If all these things go as planned on Wednesday, well... it will be a small miracle.