Mucho viento

When the British think of Spain it's often a Mediterranean sun, sea and sand-scape. We remember sunburnt August package holidays but have little understanding of what the weather is like during the rest of the year.

Here in Catalunya, we get the intense heat of the summer, but there is so much more weather too.

When the wind blows here it really means it. It roars through the trees, howls down our chimney and throws the bin around (if we leave it in a foolish place). A strong north-westerly has been blowing since Saturday without much let-up ("Siempre viento in este país," said the man in the garden centre this morning), and last night was the fiercest so far.

When I'm awake and listening to the wind at 4 o'clock in the morning it seems as though every gust will be followed by a bang or a crash as a tree snaps, something falls from the house or the car takes off. But when the sun comes up and I look out of the window everything is as it was. The pine trees simply seem to bend to the force (think of wibbly Van Gogh cypresses) and each patch of olive trees on the hillside turns into a pool of shimmering green waves as the leaves are flipped over and back, catching the sunlight on the way.

Our little house nestles into the southerly side of the hill so we're often protected from the worst blasts. Sometimes the wind can be tearing away behind us while we enjoy the sun on the porch, not feeling a whisper.

On the plus side, a nice steady north wind gets our wind turbine spinning happily. Right now we're getting about 6 amps from the turbine and when the sun's out too there's actually too much energy generated for the power system to use - even if the fridge is on, the laptop is charging and the TV is being watched.

But the wind is wearing - it makes the puppy hyper, dries out my skin and stops us all from sleeping. I hope it calms down soon.

Eco-conquering the washing machine: part two

I've been using Ecoballs with mixed results in the washing machine. (See part one for background to this post.)

In their favour, they massively cut down water and energy use. I've been running the first part - the washing part - of the cycle as usual off the generator. (We tried the heating-the-water part directly from our off-grid system, but got scared when it started sucking more than 100 amps of power out, so switched it back over to the genny.)

Then, as the Ecoballs say they don't need a rinse cycle, when this first part is finished (after about half an hour) I stop the machine, turn off the generator, plug the machine into the wall (so it's running off the solar and wind) and flick the dial around to the final rinse and spin, thereby missing out two rinses and another half hour or so of washing machine churning.

So, by doing this, I've halved the water used and cut the use of the generator by about 60 per cent, which is very good.

However, I'm still not convinced by the cleaning power of the Ecoballs. Some smells and stains linger more than they would with the traditional method. And I can't get the tea towels clean in spite of soaking overnight in Ecover laundry bleach and then washing at 60 degrees.

I think the way forward might be a compromise between washing the less dirty stuff with Ecoballs, and the tougher stuff with soap.

Eco-conquering the washing machine: part 1

The other day a clever man suggested that instead of running our washing machine directly from the generator, our solar/wind-powered system could handle a cold wash on its own.

Until now I've been too frightened to even consider trying to run the washing machine without the generator. All that water-churning and spinning must, I assumed, take loads of power: too much perhaps for our little alternative system. As a consequence, doing the washing is a noisy business with the washing machine and generator thundering away together; and not very green or cheap at all as it uses up half a tank of petrol (and, incidentally, about 80 litres of water).

What I do know about washing machines though is that heating up the water takes the most energy out of of the whole cycle. As I needed to wash some sheets and I didn't want to wash them in cold water, I decided to experiment.

I ran the first half of the wash as usual from the generator. This meant that the water was heated up to 40 degrees by petrol power. Then I switched off the genny (oh, the silence!), crossed my fingers and plugged into the other system which was being powered up nicely by the midday sun.

With my hand hovering over the washing machine's off switch in case anything suddenly went horribly wrong, I watched how much energy it was using. It turned out that the sun could manage perfectly well - the machine's needs were relatively modest. (For anyone interested, it took about 15 amps to turn the drum around each time during the rinse cycle, and spinning took about 29 amps.)

A success!

Next step: to reduce the machine's water and energy consumption by getting the ecoballs out of the box and cutting out a few of the three or four rinses that it seems to think that it needs.

Next step after that: to supply water to the washing machine which has already been warmed by the sun (or at least gas until we get a solar water system).

• Spotted today - a lovely big hairy bumblebee and - I think - a hummingbird hawk moth.

Should I get a mangle? Sensible and not-so-sensible energy-saving ideas

We're off grid - we have no mains gas, electricity or water.

Gas is easy. It comes in big orange bottles which, when empty, you exchange for full ones from garages or the gas man who comes into the village every Wednesday morning.

Under the house is a massive concrete cisterna which stores rainwater drained from the roof. When there's no rain we can get Juan the water man to fill it up from his lorry (90 euros per delivery - last time we shared it with our neighbours), or we can put a water cube on our trailer which we can fill for free from the well in the village. The water gets from the cisterna into the house by an electric-powered water pump.

Electricity comes from our solar panels on the roof, our little wind turbine on the highest point on the hill behind the house or our generator.

Even though I've always tried to be frugal with resources, the whole world changes when you can no longer take them for granted. Here are some of the sensible - and a little bit crazy - procedures I've been putting in place.

1) Not flushing the toilet very often. This saves gallons of water, plus lots of electricity as the water pump takes a great deal of power. Am I a little bit strange for telling visitors who come from the world of plenty that they're very welcome not to flush? NB if you go to a party in an off-grid home, it's perfectly acceptable not to flush.

2) Re-thinking clothes washing. The washing machine has to run directly off the generator. It takes about an hour and a half and 3 or 4 euros-worth of petrol to do a wash. The waste water gushes straight out into a bucket so I can see the huge amount of water that it's using. I'm thinking hard about whether clothes are really dirty before they go in the machine, hand washing some more clothes in the outflow (the water is used twice that way), and beginning to wonder if I could stop the machine before the spin cycle and rely on the sun and the wind - or even a mangle (it's one of these, kids) - to do the drying.

3) Trying to read by candle-light. That doesn't work very well.

4) Buying more batteries. We've been running the CD player off batteries so that we don't have to worry about it draining the electricity system. But do old batteries pollute the world more than us having to put the generator on a little more often?

5) Unplugging things when they're not in use. We've been told for years that phone chargers suck up power, even when they're not charging your phone. I never bothered with unplugging them when they weren't being used - I do now.

6) Trying to work out what volts, amps and kilowatt hours are. I'll get back to you about this.

7) Saving water. I take a bucket into the shower to collect the water that I'm too chicken to wash under before it's warmed up - I'm getting about three litres a day from this, which is enough to water quite a few plants. We're using eco-friendly washing up liquid and clothes washing liquid so that we can throw the grey water onto the garden without worrying about poisoning everything. Obviously, turning the tap off when teeth-cleaning. And doing the washing up all in one go rather than turning the tap on every time a cup is dirty.

8) Not opening the fridge - unless it's absolutely necessary. Because every time you open the fridge it warms it up so the power has to kick in to cool it down again. No more staring into the fridge idly wondering what to have for lunch - a decision has to be made fast.

9) Loving sunny, windy days. This means power!

Some days are better than others

It's not all wonderful views and non-stop fiestas, you know. Today isn't going well.

We had been feeling really pleased with ourselves for learning to manage our off-grid power system. We've been diligently making sure that everything's well charged up and we've been trying to be as nice as possible to the batteries (how to care for batteries is the source of much debate among the off-grid community). Then this morning, just as we plugged in the generator to boost the system, suddenly all the power disappeared from the batteries. They'd been reading that they were 97% charged and they plunged to 0% for no apparent reason.

So it's now 6.30pm and we've had the generator on since about 9.30am trying to get them back up to 100%. We're still only on 62%. I've been trawling the internet to try to find out what went wrong. All I'm finding is more things to worry about (why we're not getting a full charge, whether the solar panels are working properly, whether we've got too many things pulling power out and not enough going in...).

On top of that, there are loads of wasps taking a peculiar interest in my pot of mint outside the front door, and I'm too scared to move it. I moved all the other plants in case they too became similarly affected and I've just discovered that the protective lid has blown off the salad seedlings and they've all perished in the sun.

I got attacked by a swarm of black flies earlier. The tiny mosca negra is much dreaded in these parts - some people are allergic to their bites and they're said to plague the Ebro region. I hadn't worried much about them as I hadn't seen many - until today. So I went into panic mode, coated myself in some honey moisturiser which is supposed to fend them off and sprayed fly spray around the house in case any had come inside. (I know fly spray is bad, but there is a time and a place for it.) The cat then ran back inside the house - right into the toxic fumes - so I had to dive in after her - fireman-style with my hand over my mouth - and pull her out. The spray didn't kill any flies anyway.

And in addition to the generator thundering away all day, David has been strimming while I've been trying to concentrate on work. So much for peace and quiet - grrr.