Am_Fear_Liath_Mor I had remembered you had brought up that energy monitoring device awhile back and was looking into it, they had a similar one for us in the US for the 220V 60 HZ and I think that will be an investment coming up. They do give a few breaks on solar but you still have to fork out quite a bit cash. I have been trying to monitor the progress of the thin film technology to see if the prices would start coming down. They are making cells they can print out almost like a printer, they have them in shingles and like banners to be hung from the sides of houses as well but the price is still more than I can afford right now. I'm putting a water heater timer on the heater now and will try to convert it over to solar down the pipe as well. I'm also tinting the sun face windows with black out curtains behind them as something to try and slow down the loss until I can use other means. I do have shrubs on one side that helps but not where I need them most.

What is messed up was I geared a lot of my survival equipment on cold and floods with equipment capability of 300 feet underwater and 60 below zero for cold. Ironically now it's the heat I neglected thinking the temps would stay semi what normal but these past years have shown a continuing rise into the triple digits and heat waves pounding a lot of normally cold environments. As I am trying to get my house and energy bills under control I wonder what we can do to prepare for a future worst case scenarios of extreme heat, I know Australia has been kind of the watching grounds for everything, the increase in box jellyfish in the waters due to warmer oceans (like what is going on in key west)to nights than can reach either cold or oven temperatures. Even as stated in the past we have followed the animals and went underground, it may be another history repeats itself in the future. Should get interesting. With us we have killer amoebas in our water in the summer, pythons and gators in the swamps, jelly fish and sharks in the oceans, cruise ships turning coco beach into a land fill and add a little oil in the water and wallah you have Florida..
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Failure is not an option!
USMC Jungle Environmental Survival Training PI 1985