What’s an IPSW and Why do You Care?
I promised I’d write more about self-sufficiency in the Philippines. even if you don’t give a care about Global Warming or you personal Carbon Footprint and IMO you should), a big part of living costs in the Philippines will involve energy costs, so whatever you can do to cut back on what you hand over to the electric company or the gas man will help balance your personal living equation.
Petroleum-based energy costs, including LPG (the most common source of cooking heat here) are of course, spiraling upward as they are in virtually every country. Commercial gas supplies, as in pipes in the street, are virtually unknown in the Philippines … Manila once had a city gas main system but it is now just a scrap metal relic.
Electricity, in populated areas, works pretty much as most of you are used to in the US, but many considering a move here don’t realize that electricity, per kilowatt hour, is second only to Japan to the most expensive in the world. Whatever you are paying in the US… figure 2 to 4 times as much for your electric bill here .. unless you practice a little difference in how you consume.
Most will realize that heating a home here is virtually never a consideration. Only a handful of places, such as Baguio even have rudimentary heat sources, such as fireplaces. Most of the time people are trying to get cool … and I’ll talk a lot about air conditioning and other forms of cooling some other time.
But one time very few of us want to be cool is when we are taking that much deserved evening shower. A lot of houses have no form of domestic hot water heating. In fact, if you have a home like mine, where our water comes from the municipal water main to a holding tank and thence into the house, you may not see a need for much water heating .. the water coming out of the tap is often quite warm. but for dishwashing and personal hygiene, most of would consider domestic hot water somewhat of a necessity … here in the Philippines the most common way is 
something like this unit … an electric flash heater in technical terms. You have one of these in the bathroom and one in the kitchen and when you turn on the water faucet the water (almost) instantly runs hot and it stays hot until you are done using it. Then the unit goes ‘back to sleep’ until you next decide you want hot water. Hot water heater tanks, such as most US homes use, are virtually non-existent here. these flash heaters will set you back around $100 or so, installed, and I have no idea how much they will actually add to your monthly electric bill. I currently only use the kettle on the stove method, which is not only inefficient, it’s darn inconvenient at times.
My lead photo is also a link to this article … from an old friend of mine, The Mother Earth News … a publication that was extolling energy conservation and self sufficiency long before the ear of the Kyoto protocol and $100 a barrel crude oil. If you read the article you’ll learn a lot about passive hot water heating … and one thing may strike you as it struck me … it’s much, much easier to do something like this here in the Philippines because so many of the considerations necessary in the US … freezing protection being a number one concern … are just not in the picture here … 9the fact you can hire a competent plumber for $12 or so dollars a day is a factor as well. So, I ask myself, why isn’t hot water flowing out of the shower?
Related posts:
- There’s Gold In Them There Philippines
- Just What Is Good Health Care?
- Philippines Homebuilding Thoughts — Intro
- Saving Energy for Practical People — Part 2
- Saving Energy for Practical People — Part 1
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February 26th, 2008 at 6:07 am
One of the easiest and cheapest ways to get your hot water is to pump it through lengths of black PVC water piping. It can be laid anywhere and hooked into the hot water side of your plumbing. The roof is the best place to lay it but pretty well anywhere in the sun. Of course it only works during the day, so you would need an insulated storage tank for night-time use. And it’s almost free!
February 26th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Thank you for the info. It is very interesting. The Mother Earth link was also helpful.
February 26th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Hi John,
thanks for dropping by and your very useful comment. Indeed, that is my next step, if a simple black painted tank doesn’t meet our small how water needs. In Luzon, at least, inexspensive stainless steel household water tanks are readily available … and our roof is very low pitched so it will be easy to ‘collect’. that’s a technical detail I didn’t point out … in Europe and North America getting solar collectors at the most efficient angle to catch the sun isn’t always easy, here in the Philippines (about 11 degrees north latitude), the sun is always nearly overhead, so you don’t need much structure to hold any sort of solar collector … and there isn’t much difference between summer and winter sun angles.
In one of the referenced articles there was a domestic hot water collector made with nothing more thna a heavy duty black plastic trash bag and a few pipe fittings … if it doesn’t work to satisfaction you can save the fittings and use the bag to put out next week’s trash
February 26th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Hello Lonnie,
thanks for dropping by and I’m glad you found TMEN useful. They have been in business for … oh 40 years or so documenting all sorts of self-sufficiency techniques, and many of them are easier to do here in the Philippines because it never gets that cold here … I think they sell CD’s of the magazines for all the years of publication, perhaps I’ll make that my birthday gift to myself.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:18 am
One additional comment, take a look at the photos on this Google photo search page
http://www.google.ca/images?q=solar+water+heaters+Greece&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enAT279AT279
Solar water heaters like this are all over the Mediterranean. Every roof has one solar panel and bright silver storage tank. Sometimes two.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:58 pm
@John in Austria: Thanks John, there certainly are a lot of designs to chose from. Mnay of the ones in those pictures are _way_ more complicated than what you need in the Philippines, becuase they have to handle freezing temperatures … something they never need to worry about here.