Soggy Log Blog

This log maker was one of the Xmas presents I mentioned back at the end of December. The fact that I'm blogging about it in March tells its own story.

The idea is soak newspapers overnight, squish them into blocks and, when they're dry, burn them as fuel. The 'when they're dry' part of that statement is critical - the instructions say put them on newspaper to dry and change the paper daily for a week. This seemed a bit of a faff, so I put them under cover outside where the wind would get around them and left them. And waited. And waited. Seven weeks later they seemed dry. But they didn't burn well at all - rather they turned straight to ash in the heat of the fire.

OK, so I didn't follow the instructions fully, but I can't see the newspaper having made that much difference. I'm not impressed, but I'll give it one more go (and do it properly) before I consign it to the 'Green Graveyard'.

In the meantime if anyone else has had more joy with one of these, please post your tips in the comments.

LED there be light!

There's been a lot of hype about the next generation of lighting using white Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) as they're much more efficient than tungsten bulbs and a lot less toxic than fluorescent bulbs.


I got a Cyba-Lite LED/Xenon torch (right) last summer. You use the LEDs for walking around, but if you lose your car keys, you can switch to the powerful Xenon bulb for more oomph. The batteries will last over nine hours on the former, but only one and a half on the latter.

Then Santa got me this great solar-powered LED bike light (left) from The Natural Collection. I was going to wait to see how well the charging works in practice before reviewing this product, but as the light works for 15 hours from a peak charge and it gets plenty of daylight to trickle charge the batteries during the day, I'd be waiting a long time... During the summer, you can use it as a torch or just as a solar charger for two AA or AAA batteries.

While both of these uses are small beer in terms of energy use (and avoiding toxic waste batteries), the really exciting development is domestic LED bulbs. I haven't tried them out yet, but I understand they're still for decorative lighting as they can't match those 50W halogen spotlights just yet...