SteamyTea

I bought my Bosch washing machine though Argo. A 'foot' was missing, got £145 off. Hard to get that sort of discount/saving.

How cosy. Having grown up in the tropics, I still find 24°C a 'bit chilly'. Humans evolved in places with a mean temperature of 26°C. 26°C I find quite nice, but still need long trousers and my jumper on.

Is there an anagram to be made from Clerk of Works?

Has the back been damaged, they seem to be covered with the best Blue Peter sticky back plastic.

And it will keep the vegans away.

I would think that is considered a 'normal risk'. And they will probably get some of it back via someone's PI insurance. And, they probably costs these sort of mistakes in from the start.

It may work out cheaper to pay for a rebuild every now and again (and associated legal fees) than employ 40 clerks of works (or however many are needed for current contracts).

Where I live, MacDonald is a restaurant.

I have not read, and digested all this topic, but I get the feeling that there may be some confusion with terminology. There are thermal stores, vented cylinders and invented cylinders. The method of heat input to all three are basically the same i.e have something hot inside them to transfer the energy. It is the extraction of the hot water that then differs. A thermal store usually uses a heat exchanger, vented cylinders generally never do, and an unvented cylinder usually does not, but it might. So is the OP really talking about a thermal store (often multiple inputs) or an vented cylinder. It is only the invented cylinders that need G3 as far as I know.

A bit more pumped storage may be better (hydro or air). Thermal storage is probably the cheapest and easiest way to store surplus, and we already have the infrastructure for that. Just make E7 E8 or 9 some days.

It is greenwashing. Hydrogen will be a useful fuel for aviation, but so would ammonia, and we already have the infrastructure in place for that (how we make fertilisers). As for the placement and 'moving stuff about', as it is a pilot plant, it will probably have a visitor centre as well (more opportunities to hood wink). The water used in these types of electrolyser has to be a lot purer than tap water. This is partly why the EIEO ratio is so bad. That and the compressing/cooling of the gases for storage. I am in two minds about hydrogen as a fuel, it is useful in places i.e. long distance travel. But then trains are good for that as well.

You are not alone. How 2023 saw the UK going backwards on climate issues The past 12 months featured constant alarming news on the environment coupled to a political class still not heeding the warnings from scientists. But there have been highs amid the lows, says Graham Lawton By Graham Lawton 13 December 2023 Youth from Fridays for Future organization stage a protest calling to cease fires and end fossil fuels Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/Getty I WILL remember 2023 as another year of sadness and anger, and not just because of my personal loss. Constant alarming news on the environment coupled to a political class still largely unable or unwilling to heed the warnings from scientists frequently make my job a gloomy place. This is especially so in the UK, where our shopping trolley of a government has veered alarmingly to the right on a lot of what ex-prime minister David Cameron – recently resurrected as foreign secretary – once called “green crap”. Pledges to max out North Sea oil and gas; motorist-friendly policies; row-backs on net zero; crackdowns on environmental protesters. Those in power obviously think these are vote winners, showing a depressing eagerness to seek short-term gains by dismissing or denying long-term problems. One of my big hopes for 2024 is that they are proved wrong at the ballot box. Fighting back against the green crap is all part of the war on woke, another thing that has made me despair this year. Somehow, attempts to make the world a fairer place for everyone and a greener one for nature have been weaponised by those for whom the status quo is just fine. I am a white, middle-aged, home-owning, heterosexual, able-bodied male (he/him), so the war on woke rarely touches my life directly. But I’m also a cyclist and a tofu muncher and I live in north London, so anti-woke politicians really wind me up. But that is what they are trying to do, so I will try to be zen about it. I have learned, though, how casual, careless use of language can offend. I am also a SOBS – a survivor of bereavement by suicide. There is a trigger phrase in that community: “committed suicide”. This is a throwback to the time when suicide was a crime. It isn’t any more, but the phrase has stubbornly stuck. When I hear people say my wife committed suicide, I have to bite my tongue and then gently point out that many SOBS find it offensive. Completed, please. Or just plain English: she killed herself. Some people will probably regard this as “wokeness” and yet another example of how “you can’t say anything these days”. But I hope it demonstrates that being anti-woke can be unnecessarily hurtful. It doesn’t cost anything to be sensitive to others’ feelings. It is a small thing. But it gives me a taste of what LGBTQ+ people, those with disabilities, ethnic minorities, environmental protesters and other marginalised groups must feel when their hard won gains or lifestyles are smeared as “wokeness”. Don’t get me wrong – I’m privileged to do the job I do and I will keep on doing it. And there have been highs among the lows. I travelled a lot this year, though narrowly avoided a few hairy situations. I was in Morocco just before the earthquake, Israel just before the Hamas attack and Iceland just before the volcano. I recently spent a few days in Dorset. My advice: avoid this English county, something bad is going to happen there. On top of that, I think our rivers campaign helped move the issue up the agenda. Our Rewilding Weekender was great, not least because I got to meet so many of our wonderful readers. Ditto New Scientist Live. And I landed a prestigious journalism award. I write this as COP28 begins in Dubai. Hopes aren’t high, but they spring eternal. There is still time to avert a triple catastrophe of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Just don’t get me started on the US presidential election.

That would imply about 10 MWh/year. If there are 30m homes, then 300 TWh of electricity a year. 2021 production was 310 TWh. So some phasing in of the introduction needs to be done. It may be better to drop all grants and subsidies for HPs and slowly, over the next decade, increase taxation on natural gas. If we put a 10% taxation on domestic natural gas, and started for 2 year ago prices (3p /kWh), it would take until 2046 to get parity between gas and electric prices, so the tax may need to be higher. Starting at today's prices, then it would be 2037 before price parity (with domestic electricity at 30p/kWh). So 14/15 years away. That should be enough time (political will) to meet the technical challenges. No new technology needs to be implemented, just more of the same. If we installed 1 kWp of PV on 25% of homes, then that would be 7.5 GWp of extra installed capacity. That is about half of what we have installed, in total, to date, so should be achievable (could probably easily double that). That would generate an extra 7.5 TWh/year (but not when we want it most). But we would have 22 GWp of reliable and predictable solar (weather forecasts are very reliable over a 3 day period). 22 GWp would generate, in December, about 760 GWh. If all that solar is put though a heat pump with a CoP of 2.2, then that is close to 1,700 GWh of thermal energy. so about 55 kWh of thermal energy for each of the 30 million homes in the country. 1.8 kWh/day does not sound much (two short showers worth). It is about 10% of what is needed to have all homes heated by renewables (in December). Just need to do that for the next decade.

Is that because: "Boiler manufacturers will be required to sell heat pumps equivalent to 4% of their boiler sales in 2024 and 6% in 2025, increasing to hit the overarching target by 2028. " https://www.current-news.co.uk/paving-the-way-to-net-zero-kensa-groups-optimism-in-the-clean-heat-market-mechanism/

The Police are not responsible for not catching speeding motorists. And if they do catch one, they are not responsible for any subsequent accidents.

Will be down to whoever designed the foundation system for that site. If they got their calculations wrong, then BC would probably be unable to check the numbers. In the rare case where someone 'gets confused' and says do A when they should have said do B, then that would be down to whoever is responsible for that site, probably the building company. Will really come down to a paper trail to find out where the mistake was made. What is important is that mistakes like this are spotted before any physical work takes place.

Getting 500 houses past planners is probably easier and cheaper than getting 1 past. I did say but that is true for all development be it a medical device or an aeroplane.

I was more thinking about spammers joining and wasting time. Though we are pretty good at catching them out.

I think they have the capacity to make 50 houses a week at the Redruth site (been a decade since I went there). Back in 2009 they were making 60,000 linear metres of panels, so that would do 1,250 8m by 6 m houses. I think the big boys are using them. They are just one of many factories that make houses. But yes, it does need to be scaled up and then purchasers have to be convinced that houses do not have to be clad in stone, brick or render.

Look pretty normal to me. https://www.framehomes.co.uk/case-study/5-traditional-family-homes-in-leedstown-cornwall/

Can send you message now. You make want to hide that as it attracts the spammers to the site.

Global manufacturing will reduce the price like it did with PV. The UK market will have no real influence on the price. I suspect the VAT reduction will magically vanish and will be touted as a 'discount' by the resellers. (I once worked for a crook who said that I had been given a pay rise because my mortgage payments had reduced, so he did not have to pay me more)

We build cars, and in October we built 91k of them. Very few of those people will have relevant qualifications in automotive engineering. What will change is the building methods, they are changing already. Out with the brickies, roofers and plasterers, plumbers and electricians, carpenters will be supervisors in the factories. The skills will be in groundworks i.e. digging holes (are there proper higher level qualifications in hole digging) and pouring concrete (probably semi automated). The skills, that will require some sort of technicians certificate will be on the logistics side and connecting to the services. Real Engineers i.e. the Structural, Material, Mechanical, Electrical, Logistics Thermal Engineers will be via design consultants, not employed on site as such. The really hard part will be on the legal and finance side. Buildings can be quite different but they share a lot of common components, a lot of it depends on the size of those components. Make things bigger, but still physically manageable between the factory and on site is the key. Building with brick, block and tiles, 8 by 4 sheets and over long timber that has to be trimmed on site is, when you think about it, bonkers. Nothing else with the exception of some furniture, clothing and food is made the same way. So I suspect there is not really a skill shortage, and once we get rid of the old building methods, not even a labour shortage. Maybe what needs to be created is a general Health and Safety course at GCSE level than can then have a secondary module that can industry specific, and make it compulsory at school, along with English and Mathematics. They are really all that is needed to get a job these days. Looking back at my academic qualifications and career, I should have just studied English, Mathematics and Physics (did them at 'O' Level and 'A' Level). With those 3 I could probably have stopped formal learning and become an autodidactic learner.

This is what happened the last time I pumped the old soldier on camera. https://metro.co.uk/2014/02/06/bus-submerged-by-sea-foam-during-storms-4294125/

Frigate NVR sound like something that is published on OnlyFans.