SteamyTea

Must be a Kentish thing. When I was at school there (was a boarding school), one of the boys got caught with a catalogue in the wood at the end of the grounds. Probably a Barrister now.

I only have a tiny patch of earth to work with, so have most things in pots. Last year I decided to get rid of a lot of the pots, so just tipped them out onto the ground, levelled it off, and decided to see what would happen. I also had some bamboo that I dug up and put in pots, then neglected, for 6 years. This spring I made a planter out the front, moved the small grass that was growing and put the bamboo next to it. All taken very well. Including the wind blown/bird pooped echiums.

This will account for a lot of your heat losses. Because there is little insulation, the UFH will have to run at a higher temperature, which increases the losses to the ground. You may find you are better off having radiators rather than UFH.

Yes. I could teach people in a day how to do it. After that it is just practice. Having said that, it is the subtle things like corner radii, varying thickness and multi-mix layups that catch people out. And how to put it right after it has gone wrong, or is going wrong. There is also a big difference between sheathing some plywood and making a chassis for a vehicle.

Have a read though this, I cannot remember what I said. I find GRP easy and versatile, but other find it problematic. The biggest problem is keeping everything dry and at the correct temperature. Why I always suggest laying up the roof sheets indoors, then only the joints and edges to do on site.

I was a bit bored earlier, so thought I would look at the CO2 usage of my house. Rather than go into the nitty gritty, which I may do later. I just looked at what the fraction of low to high CO2 generation happened and compared it to my temporal usage over since the beginning of April 2020. I did not both to add in the interconnect intensities, and treated pumped storage as a 50:50 split between high and low, though I suspect it should be treated as low. This captures 89% of all the generation though, so not bothered about the small uncertainties. The generation data came from Gridwatch as usual. All I have to do now is shft my usage forward by 1 hour to fit my usage to the low carbon generation a bit better and at a reasonable price. If we had a tariff that was based on carbon intensity, I would use lots during the day, rather than lots at night.

Still magic.

And @joe90 It is really not looped at all, just twisted, but with some fabric between each twist, this creates the illusion of a loop. My Mother told me that a woman has to have secrets. That is good enough for me.

It is the quality of the components as well. Makes a crank case or a wishbone on a car look like it was knocked up by a pikey on the side of the road. Fishing reels are the same, they are a work of art.

I can ponder things for decades, and often revisit failed projects. Two weeks ago I got my sewing machine out that I bought 12 years ago to do a project. May get around to doing it now I have the most complicated of machinery working right. I still want to know how these machines pick up the thread from the bobbin and loop it into the needle thread. Magic I think.

Not me. To true. I worked at a place where all the fitters where called engineers. Same place that looked at me oddly when I said that there is a pressure drop over a long pipe run. Then it became my fault when the installation did not work properly.

Had a girlfriend called Ruth. Off to buy some new underwear at touchingcloth.com.

Be interesting to see how it works on OSB, someone one here wanted to know what the best paint for OSB was. Just had a look at @Onoffvideos. Roof really are made in a most ridiculous way. Almost as if they are made from the leftovers on site. I am surprised that there is not a modular, mass produced in a decent factory, system.

Makes sense, lot less fiddling about. Almost the same as my idea of GRPing a flat room. Just do the joints on site.

@MJNewton Did you use glass fibre mat when your builder did it, or was it just painted/rollered onto a board of some sort?

No, and it may have been the predecessor site, or even the other place.

Think this is the system that someone on here once used. https://www.apolloroofingsolutions.co.uk/market-page/liquid-coating/ How do you get brown in the sun? "Come on Brown, it is lovely out here"

Would this work https://www.siliconeforbuilding.com/products/air-water-resistive-barrier-coatings I need a litre of it to try something out, but rather you bought it, then I can send you the things to coat. Will include a SAE.

Sheets of PIR/PU and GRP it. Why much about with thinking. Good place to put some walk on glazing, if only someone had a spare bit the right size. Could work well to hold a tarp down.

When paying a mortgage, you are, in effect, paying rent. Should mortgages be subsidised? (I have often thought that there should be a variable surcharge on mortgages to help stabilise prices, nothing to stop that surcharge going negative). Interesting about building council housing, if you lump council and housing association housing together (because we have, rightly or wrongly privatised social housing out), then between 20 to 25% of new build housing falls into that category (the percentages varies in the cycle). Here is the link, not that you will read it. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/875361/House_Building_Release_December_2019.pdf

That is about environmental policy, something I think needs to be tightened up a lot, not housing policy.

Why should I pay my local council to build a house for someone else. Did you give a new car to anyone that could not afford one?

Trouble is what is derelict to some, is a wasted opportunity to others.

Down here in Cornwall, some small town have a policy that only 'locals' can have houses built. The definition of 'locals' is so wide that most people can claim it. It has also stopped development dead in some towns. In the town I work in, my council has subsidies housing though a shared purchase scheme. So the locals borrow money on 25% of the property and pay the council a rent on the other 75%. Then they get stung for service charges. And, and this is what narks me, I am, though my council tax, subsidising the building of other peoples homes (I am also topping up council workers pension funds, but the council is not topping up mine). I don't understand 'localism'. I looked at my birth certificate and never noticed that it said I have the right to buy an affordable house where my mother decided to give birth to me. And if that was the case, should it mean that is the only place I can live. I was involved with a planning consultation group a while back, they were objecting to some houses being built. I suggested that the easiest way to stop the development was to buy the land. For some, unknown reason, I became very unpopular. Seems to me that people think that everyone else should pay the price to preserve what they have. If you like a view, buy it, if you can't afford it, tough. Regarding remote locations, that some people desire, there are other ways to make them exclusive, increased transport costs, utility surcharges, council tax surcharges (though I was a fan of the poll tax) etc. There are also ways to make urban living more acceptable. Mainly better design of housing, services and open spaces. There is a bit of a myth that larger houses cost more money, but when 2/3rd of the value is in the plot, and there is a limited amount of money to spend on housing, then the plot prices drop, this evens everything out. As for building on agricultural land, not many farmers sell off there most productive land, they sell off the rubbish. Down here most of the farm land is grade 3b and below. Or usually refereed to as wasteland. The good land is generally used to horticulture, as that is currently profitable. The land below it is generally used for early crops because we are a month ahead of the rest of the country. But that is a bit silly in a global economy, we are not a month ahead of the Spanish, or the USA (no one really tastes the difference between English or Dutch new potatoes, or Welsh and New Zealand lamb, people have just bought into a marketing campaign and pay extra for their stupidity). So I am all for relaxing planning laws, but tightening up environmental ones. We could then end up with better housing, and probably at the same prices we currently pay.

Try putting the swear filter to the test, I got away with it once.