epsilonGreedy

His first two posts are historically correct.

I have not heard that song for years. Back in 1967 my Dad was working for Unesco in what was then Ceylon and let my Mum choose a new house to relocate the family back to South Wales. He was not impressed with her new-build choice and used to sing Little Boxes when back home. In retrospect he had a point as I can still remember all the neighbours along the avenue of 4 bed detached 60's houses. In order: Head teacher of the local primary school and his high school teacher wife. Professor and department head of local university biology department. City chief planner and his GP wife. Senior engineer (MBE) at the Royal Mint. Professor & Chair of local university maths department. High school teacher and her retired vicar husband.

@Caroline PI think you are asking the wrong question, builder/tradesman insurance is a mundane matter. Your priorities should be: Verify you own the land on which the extension is to be built. It might be communal land shared by the other flat owners or your property Deeds might restrict what you can do. Next port of call is your local authority building control department. They will need to approve your plan and will likely take a keen interest in your structural alterations and also the heat insulation of the proposed extension. Finally someone needs to review your Deeds and management contract to confirm if you are allowed to mess around with the structure of the building without consent of the other co-owners.

Would a hire place stock these or are these best sources on eBay or Amazon? I don't want to mark my part painted wooden fascias.

I did three shows in 1 year and found the Bicester show a small fraction of the size of the big NEC show earlier in the year. Within 4 hours I was bored with the limited scope of the Bicester show whereas after 2 full days at the NEC I could have stayed longer, I hope the NEC show restarts. All these shows have filler material from hot tubs to overpriced ceramic knives and coleslaw makers.

Supply contracts are another dimension of complexity, for example today as solar rose from 1 Gw to 7Gw I thought they would have throttled back on CO2 emitting gas generation but instead we are now exporting 1.4 Gw to Norway while gas generation has remained level. Maybe Norway, Sweden and Denmark are struggling with low wind generation due to the large high pressure system and there is a premium for our solar output. There is a large software development project for energy trading in London that seems to be in trouble judging by the extra £500 to £600 a day bodies they are throwing at it.

I visited when the main annual show was running and liked the combination of talks, manned commercial stands and the static year round displays. I doubt the static displays alone would provide more than an hour or two of interest unless your plans are very well advanced and you need to take detailed how-to notes. We stayed at a hotel 20 minutes down the road which turned the visit into a treat rather than the more typical option of an M4 motel. https://oldbellhotel.co.uk/

I wish the politicians would abandon their pursuit of complete coal eradication. Keeping some coal stations on standby for an extra 5 years does not affect annual CO2 emissions and is surely cheaper than quadrupling our national gas storage capacity. The pending closure of about 5Gw of coal capacity combined with the premature closure of nuclear stations due to cracking graphite cores could push us over the edge into blackouts. The present warm summer conditions should not stress the national grid but right now the European interconnects are running at about 80% capacity, coal stations have been fired up to make up a deficit and the global gas market is unstable. £0.30 per Kw hour by Christmas anyone? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-04/global-gas-price-surge-threatens-to-dent-the-economic-recovery

We should have built the Seven Barrage because the moon does not have odd years. Too late now to solve the 2025 generation challenge, meanwhile I will put more thought into running a beefy armoured cable from my CU to the generator location in the garden garden via some fancy switch to flip the whole house from mains to garden generator.

Not sure though I missed 0.3Gw of hydro plus 0.24 Gw of pumped hydro.

Pssst don't tell anyone Gridwatch is one of my favourite web sites. I just visited the site and the current generation numbers are a surprise for a late summer morning: 53% Gas (16.25 Gw) 16% Nuclear 14% Inbound via European interconnects. 6% Biomass 3% Coal 3% Wind (0.97 Gw) 1% Solar -2% Exported to Ireland

To uncover more information on this subject I resorted to Googling for "UK" + the German term used in this debate "Dunkelflaute". As an offshore sailor who has spent hours waiting for the wind to return this issue is not a surprise to me but in the UK media there is a reluctance to feature any negative Green story. Since refreshing my understanding of this subject it appears global gas demand is now triggering concerns over the UK's poor gas storage capacity. As we become more dependent on gas imports we might run out of gas during a cold snap because LPG dock-side import capacity is finite, this assumes there is spot gas on the global market to purchase just in time.

There is surprisingly little data on wind generation capacity during slow UK weather but I eventually found this covering the winter of 2020/21. The graph highlights periods when the capacity of wind generation dipped below 20% for a day or more. A quick scan of the graph suggests 4 sub 10% events last winter. https://www.drax.com/press_release/experts-issue-weather-warning-for-britains-electricity-grid/

So in effect the hammer travel can be adjusted? I was thinking these nailers worked like an air gun. One of my concerns is that the fascia nails will travel too far though the relatively thin softwood board. I assume different sizes of nails can be loaded?

I am thinking of hiring a Paslode for a couple of days for my roofing job. There will be 4 jobs for the nailer: Beef up the joints where the 122mm x 35mm jack rafters meet the 150mm x 35mm hip rafters at 45 degrees. These are currently fixed with 80mm and 100mm wood screws. Fix 80 linear meters of 2x1 roofing battens to trusses that have a fairly slender cross section ( its a dinky roof of 4.25m by 3.3m plan view). Fire a few extra nails into rafter ends to secure them into the wall plate. attach 1" thick software wood fascia and soffiit. I assume this assortment of jobs will require something less than 90mm x 3mm rinkshanks with the gas nailer on full power?

That sounds about right, think I got through about 5 bottles doing 60 m2 last summer, so yes about 9 boards or 12 m2 per litre.

Some floors are laid before the roof goes on. Later there will be moisture near baths and shower trays.

If your latest photo is the example of your builder trying to do things correctly following your initial complaint, then yes time to part ways. He has not used the right glue because there is no evidence of any foaming, it looks like a thin contact adhesive. This is not just a caberdeck specific thing. When done correctly the fastidious self builder will spend an hour or two scraping the foam dribbles off the floor below.

Your acceptance of my claim represents some progress. And thank you for posting a graphic which illustrate what I have been saying about 2025 being the crunch year. What surprises me is how undeveloped the debate is in this country. In Germany my claims about the pending supply problems are recognized and quantified issue. Serious people have modeled the vast oversupply in headline renewable capacity that is required to keep the lights when the wind stops. The debate even has a catchy name = "Dark Doldrums". The degree of ignorance in this country is startling but not surprising for a failing State.

Apparently so, I clocked your claim of 50% and though that's strange @SteamyTeais not familiar with typical industry capacity factor numbers. The real-world capacity factor is lower than the official 26% to 38% range because when the load factor graph is overlaid, the result is wind farm operators being paid to feather their turbine blades on a windy winters night in Scotland in order not to over supply and fry the national grid. As I write this on a relatively breezy day in northern Europe just 8% of demand is being produced by wind power and in the UK the figure is 6% https://windeurope.org/about-wind/daily-wind/

I think this is a reference to the two stations owned by a business currently in receivership? This highlights another problem that gas generation capacity is looking dodgy in the medium term because of under investment caused by a confused national policy. It was but with EVs and ASHPs that fall is likely to reverse. With the latest Government u-turn on domestic gas boilers we can atleast now assume the rise in demand will be less steep. Indeed the situation is worse now that the nuclear station closure schedule has been shortened and there is likely to be more news form the Scottish stations.

Viking Link is being dug through the countryside 2 miles from me and will add another 1.4GW of European interconnect capacity with Denmark. The problem is we are heavily dependent on the existing interconnects and the UK already pulls 4 to 5GW across these links during high demand. I read a report today that warns we should not depend on these links because the climatic conditions that would stress the UK's generation capacity could also affect Holland, Denmak and Germany. If they are struggling to keep the lights on will they be prepared to send GWs to us?

Technically known as the "capacity factor" which was 26% for all of Europe's wind farms in 2019. The capacity factor for offshore wind is better at 38%, presumably because the wind is not disrupted by local land topology. So at the moment best divide the UK's headline capacity by 3.5 improving to 3 by the end of decade. https://windeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/files/about-wind/statistics/WindEurope-Annual-Statistics-2019.pdf However this factor is an annual average. When a high pressure is sitting over the north sea I guess the point in time capacity factor will drop to 5% on some critical days.

When the wind stops during a mid winter high pressure system over the UK what happens? It is misleading to describe the pending reduction in nuclear capacity as partial. Only Sizewell looks likely to generate power until the end of the 2020's, the rest are operating beyond their original retirement dates and being closed sooner rather than later as inspection programmes discover the extent of the graphite core cracking. Further delays to the Hinkley C build are currently being blamed on Covid as a result we could see the loss of 4 to 5GW of capacity before it comes online. Look at the nuke closure dates in the following pictorial calendar and also note how far beyond their original closure dates our aging reactors are currently running. https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-lifetime-management As I told you all 2 years ago 2025 is the crunch date, how many candles will the population of the UK burn between 2025 and 2030?

Since I last posted a warning about the closure schedule of the UK's nuclear power stations the things have got worse faster than I predicted. Nuclear core cracks and closure notices have been occurring faster than you scan say "horseshit". https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/060721-edf-energy-permanently-closes-dungeness-b-nuclear-plant-in-southern-england https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/edf-warning-of-plant-closures-limits-britains-nuclear-options-rgwgz67ps