Crofter

That's what I get for not reading the question properly!

I've heard very good things about blown cellulose.

I'm not aware of such a rule. The closest I can think of is hutting. This allows you to build a simple, somewhat temporary, low impact structure for occasional, non commercial habitation. I think there is a size limit, which I can't remember offhand, but the main thrust of it is that it's really supposed to be a glorified shed, and it must not be continuously occupied. The actual rules around it are pretty wooly. I haven't done it, but I did look in to it. In our part of the world short term lets can be very successful, and whilst we wouldn't be allowed to rent out a hut, I considered building one to live in over the summer whilst we rented our own house out. That would have been within the rules as far as I could understand them. The hutting concept really has its roots in woodland huts and when I made some enquiries, it became clear that I would never get permission to erect something on open moorland, which is what my croft consists of. So I took the idea no further.

The Queensferry Crossing was pretty well handled. Scottish government rather than UK one though.

Just stumbled upon this quote from Antonio Gutierrez: "Today, governments around the globe spend nine times more to make fossil fuels cheaper than they do on making clean energy more affordable for consumers." The idea that switching from fossil to renewables will saddle future generations with higher costs is just not true.

I question the whole 'only well insulated homes can use heat pumps' argument. My house is very, very far from well insulated, nor is it in any sense airtight. And it's working very well with a heat pump. I can see why flow temperature and delta T has an impact, with a wet system, but that will hurt a gas or oil system too. And it's irrelevant to an A2A system.

Yes, pretty happy. For a house that's intermittently occupied, and usually empty during the day, the instant response of the heat pump is great. I don't know how my £4200 compares to installing a complete new wet system with boiler, rads, oil tank, etc. I suspect that oil would have cost more.

I agree, but I presume that the focus on replacing gas boilers is because they are far more common than direct electric heating. Does anybody have numbers on this? FWIW, last year I installed A2A to replace my storage heaters. Didn't go looking for any sort of grant, in my experience grant schemes just tie you up in their requirements. I spent £4200 for a 10kw system ducted to five outlets. I did a good amount of the work myself, but had the supplier of the unit do the refrigerant lines. It would have been nice to not have had to pay for that myself but I didn't think I qualified for any sort of help.

See also: 'green' hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, biofuels.

Are SMRs completely site agnostic? Nuclear power stations generally need to be built near water, for cooling. If that still applies to SMR I'm not sure that they'll be as helpful as people make out

France, acknowledged as one of the leading nuclear powers, has just commissioned its first new plant in 25yrs. It came in about four times over budget and timescale. And these are the guys that are so good at nuclear that the the UK is getting them to build new plants for us. I'm not against nuclear, but the cost and time just doesn't seem competitive at all.

Our cottage has a different type of license to our house, and doesn't need an EPC. If this project goes ahead we'd be prefer to offer the caravan on long term rental though. I'm just not sure if we're actually allowed. There's a dire shortage of affordable rental accommodation here and plenty of people would jump at the chance to have even a static caravan to stay in if the price was right. It would feel like I was being part of the solution rather than part of the problem...

Just waiting to check something. If I'm part way through building a house and end up with a serviced plot with a static caravan on it, can I offer that on long term rental? Or would it fail to meet minimum standards like EPC rating? I presume I could use it for short term holiday letting, but it would be very unlikely to be attractive in that market. I presume there would also be some planning considerations?

Hard to tell, it's in Russian 🤔

I think it's hard to persuade the general public that burning wood is bad, in the same way that it's hard to convince people that eating bacon is bad. If humans have been doing something forever, surely it can't be that bad? Unlike those newfangled heat pumps and EVs which are clearly not to be trusted.

Hard to tell from the pictures but it could be something like sarking boards with 20mm chips. You'd want a membrane underneath to prevent weeds from growing through. And ideally you'd be laying the whole lot over a good firm surface, like type 1. You can bed the boards in to type 1, packed down in little trenches.

How is V2G fundamentally different to home batteries?

My MVHR grilles are in the soffits, seems to work well but I can't remember where I got the parts from. Likely the same place as the ducting.

Obviously it won't work for everybody. But we're talking about emergency situation. If it's a wide area power cut, most people won't be going out to work. If it's localised, surely you can call a friend for a lift? Most EVs have five times the battery capacity of a house, and it's only needed a few times a month, or less, for longer journeys. It seems completely sensible to tap in to that capacity.

Is the power cuts thing a bit overblown? We live on the Isle of Skye, which has no installed backup generation and relies entirely on the power lines from the mainland and, to a limited extent, the connector from the outer isles (who have a diesel power station, but not really big enough to export). In the 12yrs we've lived here, the worst power cut we've had lasted 37hrs. I can't remember any other power cuts lasting more than ~12hrs. During the 37hr power cut, I remember being a lot more concerned that I was about to lose hundreds of pounds worth of frozen food (we do a big shop in Inverness every couple of months) than I was about getting a bit cold. Curious to see what other rural areas are like?

I'd have preferred to see a middle ground where a small wood burner was still allowed to provide backup heating in remote areas at risk of power cuts. You could achieve similar redundancy by mandating substantial battery storage, but that gets pricey. I'd like to think that a house built to proper levels of airtightness and insulation, with a correctly specced and installed heat pump, will be so warm and comfortable that most people would quickly get over the novelty of lighting their stove anyway.

I'm not sure this method works with tar planings? There's not really a surface there to cut. It's still a somewhat loose material, basically small stones that are slightly stuck together. Like a big bowl of sticky rice.

Perhaps that's why my A2A has some sort of fancy nanoscale filtration system, that supposedly cleans the air as it passes through? I thought it was just marketing guff.

Yes, it takes in air from inside the house and warms it slightly. Way more efficient than pulling air from outside and having to heat it up all the way. What health concerns?

The driveway to our cottage is fairly steep with a tight turn. We initially laid it with type 1 which rapidly began to form ruts and potholes, as soon as the rain had washed away the fines. I laid a load of tar planings over the top and packed it down with a walk-behind roller. What a transformation! It basically became as good as a tar surface but under a third of the cost. It's not been 100% perfect though. There is one spot where repeated vehicles have managed to scrub a hole through the surface. The cottage is a holiday let so we have had hundreds of people going up and down, and they tend to be a bit hesitant about the steep, tight turn. If you know what you're doing, you know not to take your foot off until you reach the top. I have had a half hearted attempt to repair the pothole, using some loose planings from the bottom of the drive, and mixing in some bitumen. It was extremely messy and without use of any heat the bitumen remained a sticky mess just under the loose chips. I think over time it will set, but it's taking much longer than I expected.