SteamyTea

Legalise cocaine and tax it, should bring in a few quid and save prison costs.

Takes away the H&S issues too. Have they got all their toes and fingers?

https://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/SAP/2012/SAP-2012_9-92.pdf Only 234 pages

IoW is Up North to me as is Plymouth, Exeter and Bude.

IoW has an OCGT 140MW unit at Cowes, the Gateway to the World.

Some years ago I looked at the total tax take of the UK, then worked out the percentage we would have to pay if it was only on income tax. I think it worked out at around 65% on every single pound we earn. But goods would be cheaper and we would not have to pay any council tax, road tax, fuel duties etc... And companies would not be able to avoid corporation tax, as there would not be any.

I remember that Paul in Montreal (from the other place), did not go for a particular good U-Value when he did his refurbishment. He spend his time and money on air tightness. He got good saving on his running costs. I once started a spreadsheet that balanced the losses from air leaks so that they matched U-Value losses. I never got around to putting in cash values, might have to revisit it sometime.

I wish the only tax was on earnings from/in the UK. Then we would have a much simpler and clearer system. It would also get rid of a lot of opportunities to avoid paying. It seems odd to me that some people can claim benefits while working, or not working, while others cannot i.e. me. But it is OK, Boris is sorting it out for us, he want to reduce tax take for the rich again.

I feel the same. When he has been on Radio 4, he seems to be pushing an agenda of some sort, not really sure what though. I know it is the job of environmentalist, and I include myself in that group, to set a high bar, but it does piss me off when I talk to people in my profession that seem to be fixated on just one or two issues, especially when they think that it will solve all problems. The use of selective data seems to be worse in the environmental industry than in the medical industry. It is a shame as no matter how much I point out the misconceptions, it just does not sink in.

Welcome As far as renewables go, look at roof integrated PV and ASHPs. Make the big decisions first and the rest falls into place. Purely as an aside, I have no idea what water and sewage costs on the IoW, but if it is similar to Cornwall, you may want to look at a borehole and sewage plant. May work out cheaper after a few years. Avoid any type of combustion for energy generation, even though you have lots of wood.

I use E7 with an additional timer that limits the E7 window to the last 3 hours i.e. 4AM to 7AM. This helps limit standing losses during the night and gives me enough DHW for a day. I use about 3 kWh/day for DHW. So about 30 pence worth. My water and sewage costs me about 50p.

Better off taxing vehicles on mass rather than peak power, that is real the physics. This is going well off topics. Time to go out in the sun.

What are those problems, every day, the world gets a better place to live in. If we only focus on the big personal disasters, we miss the bigger picture. It is true that we can do things better, but we are slowly working our way towards them. Global infrastructure change does not happen overnight. All my life I have been told by the older generations that the country is going to the dogs. Where are all the dogs (or hand carts, rack and ruin, or other doom monger scenarios).

Does that not include energy prices then. China buys in a lot of coal and gas from Australia and Russia. A lot of other things can be done too, export guarantees, government subsidies, different employment standards, pension payments (good reason to not limit population). If life was as simple as just taxing and subsiding the bad and good, then we would have sorted this back in Roman times. Just not as simple as we like to think.

Good old Tom

No it isn't. The Earth can easily support 3 billion more people. Been shown in so many studies. Not just the cost of energy is it. As an example from the automotive world. Tesla started work on a new Chinese factory back in February. They hope to make cars in it come this December. The UK would not even get a planning decision is that timescale. Plus they have a well educated and skilled workforce.

Do ground mounted systems

Not if the developed world keeps using the up supply of renewable technologies. What you have done there is to look at one metric, CO2/Nation. How about looking at CO2/Land Area, or CO2/GDP, or CO2/Goods Export Value. In a globalised world, something that many do not like apparently, it is wrong to compare at a national level when we buy in the goods they make.

As for the economic arguments, they tend to be way off the mark as people seem to look only at the cash side of it. There are 3 pillars to environmental economics, financial, environmental and social. It is impossible to get they all to balance. Once that is accepted, game theory can be used to get the least worse option. This casts a very large net across the planet. Most people accept that burning coal to generate electricity is not a good thing, and with current technology, probably unnecessary now. But I don't want to be the person, or government, that denies Sub-Sahara Africans an improvement in life because the Developed Nations have nicked all the resources. Climate change, environmental pollution and poverty are a global problem so we have to be equitable about it. It seems odd that we are now, in the UK, trying to use as much of our self generation as possible and whinge that we are not getting paid much for exports. Globally we would be better off paying to install a system in a country that has less restrictions, as it is cheaper to do so, and all the generation would be used all the time. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

That is it really. I am no fan of regulations, but they are needed. We can't have a free for all when it comes to installing micro-renewables, the local grid was just not designed to handle it. As an example, when I worked for a PV company, we installed 4 systems in the same street. That attracted the attention of the DNO, who warned us that we may be liable for a transformer upgrade. The odd thing is that if 4 different companies had installed the same system, then the DNO was liable for the upgrade. It is also not, as Jeremy points out, just to do with the electrical safety. There is mechanical safety as well. None of us want PV modules falling off roofs in a storm, or a leaky roof for that matter. There is also a certain need to protect ordinary customers. We tend to be out of the ordinary on here, and some if us are capable and qualified to do an install. But my neighbours aren't, so I don't want them thinking they can jump about on the roof, with a drill, fitting a PV system.

Leave your endoscope in there pointing at the lights. Then view on the screen. Or a PiZero with a a camera attached and view on the phone/tablet.

Apart from cleaning any heat sin and vents, what is there to service?

Needs a correction to 0.022 W/m.K This foil board, is that similar to multifoil?

As the plot is already owned by a family member, it is not going anywhere, so no real hurry to build on it. You could, for a laugh, find a suitable, and cheap house, and refurbish it. Or you could wait and see if the value of property crashes and buy up a bargain, cash is king here.

By the time you are ready to start you will have 3 years worth of accounts, probably more.