5 Simple Ways For Potters to Save Electricity
Along with water, electricity is one of the most heavily used and precious resources in pottery. Pottery is an artisan industrial process that requires energy to create pots and to fire them, often twice with a bisque first, followed by a glaze firing. Many Potters use an electric-powered pottery wheel to throw their pots, and an electric kiln for firing work, so without electricity, some pottery just wouldn't happen. There are so many things Potters can do to save electricity, in this blog post, we explore five of the simplest ways.
Using an energy-efficient kiln.
This is not necessarily something that applies to all Potters. Some Potters might make pottery in a community or educational pottery setting where the pottery Studio Technician is firing the pots.
Some Potters may use a gas-fired kiln or not be at the point of making the investment to buy their own kiln. However, no blog post on saving electricity would be complete without saying that the energy efficiency of an electric pottery kiln is one of the most important ways to save electricity in pottery.
When I first thought about buying my own kiln I found one that I thought was a great option; it could run off a domestic power supply, was cheaper to buy, and had a bigger firing space than other kilns.
However, when I looked more into the amount of electricity it would take to fire the kiln I realised that this kiln had less insulation (hence the bigger internal firing space) and used double the electricity of other kilns to fire.
In the end, I made the investment to buy the most energy-efficient kiln I could find. This has saved both electricity and money in the long term.
2. Fitting pots together better in the kiln.
In a glaze firing pots can’t touch each other or they will stick together as the glaze melts in the high temperatures of the kiln. This can lead to a lot of wasted space in the kiln if pots are large and don't fit well next to each other.
When I first started to fire work in my own electric kiln I made wide breakfast-type bowls, which I could only fit two or three of on each kiln shelf. I quickly realised that there was a lot of wasted space around each bowl, a triangle in the middle and lots of space around the sides. I thought about how if I made smaller things they would fit together better in the kiln. I could fit more into each kiln firing, and save electricity by needing to fire the kiln fewer times. So I started making smaller things with far less wasted space between each pot.
Another thing that helped reduce wasted kiln space was to invest in the right kiln furniture such as shelves and props. By having a good range of different-sized kiln props or even a half-kiln shelf or two, Potters can ensure that they can really accommodate all of their different-sized pots and pack each kiln completely full.
3. Not firing unwanted pottery
This has been a hard lesson for me! As a Potter, I often become emotionally invested in everything I make, especially after the work and creativity that has gone into making it.
However, I learned the hard way that if something is defective, such as cracked or warped, these defects often become much worse after a pot is fired, particularly at the glaze firing stage. I now encourage myself to let go of things I’ve made at an earlier stage if they are not quite right, rather than use time and electricity to fire them.
By scrapping the pot at the leather-hard or greenware stage the clay can be completely recycled or ‘reclaimed’, which cant happen if the pot is fired. This is another good reason to discard a defective pot at an earlier stage.
Drying pottery with a desk fan uses one ninetieth of the electricity of a heat gun!
4. Using a desk fan (instead of a heat gun or hair dryer)
Many Potters use a heat gun to help dry parts of their work during the making process. They may need to quickly dry a freshly made handle for example, so they can attach it to a leather-hard pot, to prevent cracking.
The type of heat guns normally used in pottery studios are manufactured primarily for paint stripping. The hot air is produced by heated elements, and a fan draws the air from the back of the gun over the elements and out the nozzle to create a stream of hot air.
The temperature of the air produced by a heat gun is 100°C – 550°C. Heat guns are typically about 2000W in terms of their power. They use huge amounts of electricity compared to a desk fan that can dry clay by blowing air over it, without heating it. In fact, a heat gun uses over 90 times the energy of a desk fan to run!
Whilst a desk fan may take a little longer to dry work Potters can save a huge amount of electricity by using one or by simply drying their work naturally.
5. Eliminate bisque firing by ‘raw glazing’
Raw glazing is the practice of glazing a pot at the leather-hard or greenware stage, rather than bisque-firing it first. The pot is then fired straight up to glaze temperatures where it reaches maturity in a single firing, rather than the usual two-firing process.
A typical bisque kiln firing for example in an energy-efficient electric kiln takes about 19KW.h of electricity. Using the raw glazing technique this electricity can be saved from the production process.
Raw glazing is not something widely practised in handmade pottery because greenware pottery is much less robust than bisque ware and can disintegrate when re-wetted with glaze.
Potters also need to use the right clay and glaze, often those that are high in ball clay work well. However, raw glazing is a fantastic way to save time, effort and electricity in pottery.
If you're interested to learn more about raw glazing this book will teach you how to make 10 glazes suitable with the raw glazing technique: Eco-conscious Pottery Glazing: Make your own pottery glazes with minimal harm to humans, animals and the environment.
Further reading and resources for Potters
If after reading about these 5 simple ways to save electricity in pottery and you’d like to know more about eco-conscious pottery. There are resources, ebooks and mini-courses for Potters available on the Oxford Clay website.
Oxford Clay books are also available as paperback books on Amazon.
