Seventy Six

…… what a wet summer it’s been…… what a wet, wet summer. A wet wet wet wet wet wet wet wet …… the entire country flooded and Gordon ….. Gordon Brown said something…… I can smell mocha frappacino… …… I like your Camper shoes……… first bit of sun in ages…… and there goes a butterfly….
‘George?’
Yes Pips?
‘Are you OK down there?’
I am just daydreaming in the sun if you don’t mind.
‘Have you ever heard of a Passive House? I haven’t’.
I think I possibly have Pips if I think about it.
‘It says here they consume about 85 – 90% less energy than conventional houses and reduce carbon emissions by about the same amount because they don’t have traditional heating systems. So we should all be living in Passive Houses George, basically. Anyway this article is about a family who built one in Finland. It says “in order to achieve optimum energy efficiency, not only were external factors such as the local climate taken into consideration when calculating the temperature of the house – in this case, due to it’s northern latitude it was cool with heavy snowfall in winter – but also internal factors such as body heat (the average body giving off 100kw of heat, similar to that of a light bulb)….” blah blah blah…..’ it was super-insulated with large triple-glazed windows that faced south to optimise solar gain. Once inside, the heat was kept there by the installation of a heat exchanger which brought fresh air into the house via an underground duct, and which transferred heat from the old air leaving the house to the fresh air entering it” and then there’s a lot of jargon and stuff that I don’t understand because these technical people don’t speak English but the point is that the family, having moved into the house, were a bit cold so what did they do? What do you think they did George?’
Did they add another solar panel?
‘Do you think they added more solar panels?’
I’ve just asked you that Pips.
‘Well they didn’t’.
Did they move the house to Spain?
‘What do you think they did?’
Did they put a glass roof on it? No I know, I know! They put in a coal fire!’
‘Remember it has to be an environmentally-friendly solution George’.
I don’t know Pips. What did they do?
‘You’ll never guess. They got a dog!’
No!
‘It says here ‘the dog gave that little extra boost to make the house comfortable’.
You see Pips? What a valuable contribution we dogs make in the great international fight against global warming?
‘It must have been a big dog. You wouldn’t be any use would you?’


Yes she did Freddie. She said that. That is what she said.
‘She probably didn’t mean it George’.
She did Freddie. That is what is so disappointing.
‘Well she may have a point. Perhaps bigger dogs do give off more heat than us smaller dogs’.
But do they Freddie?
‘I don’t know’.
How do you know that the heat isn’t more condensed and therefore hotter from smaller dogs like you and me actually?
‘Well I don’t’.
I think we may well provide hotter heat. I really do.
‘George?’
What now Pips?’
‘Come on, we’re going’.
See you later Freddie. We’re off to the internet café so Pips can join one of those dating websites to find herself a tosser.