jack

Beat me to it. Obviously someone had a good time at the festival!

No-one will ever talk me back into a petrol chainsaw for occasional small-medium tasks around the garden. A decent electric provides more than adequate performance, with none of the drama if you don't use it all the time.

Oh, I agree. But as a matter of principle, I'm even more against local councils ignoring the law when it suits them.

There's a town-centre development near us in a place called Farnham (west of Guildford, and south of Farnborough). According to family friends who've lived here since the early 90s, this development has been a political football for over 25 years. The current scoop: http://farnhamherald.com/article.cfm?id=127472 "WAVERLEY Borough Council has been accused of handing Brightwells developer Crest Nicholson “a licence to kill” - after councillors agreed to relax measures safeguarding a colony of protected pipistrelle bats set to be displaced by the redevelopment of East Street." At least they aren't GCNs, eh @recoveringacademic?

I don't like leaving windows open overnight due to insects. If I were building again I'd spec insect screens on at least the bedroom windows. We open everything up first thing in the morning and close up once the outside temp warms up. Peak temps are much lower than if we'd kept everything shut up.

@JSHarris is your man, having been through this in some detail. He details some of what he did in various posts on his site, such as: mayfly.eu/2016/07/part-forty-two-water-treatment/

From memory, ethanol can softens seals and fuel lines in older cars. Most newer ones are okay.

Ah yes, I remember that feeling, before my innocence was ripped from me by the rest of the build Gorgeous setting. You got me with the building inspector comment too, until I scrolled down.

Nope, you're good.

He's still stuck up there.

ICF, as mentioned by @PeterW above, can be done DIY, and is also quick (not TF quick, but quicker than B&B)

Wonder whose house they just coated in foam? Not theirs, I assume!

You got me. For nearly three full seconds, I was about to do my usual trick of silently editing to correct typos...

Manchester it is then!

I have no advice, but thanks for the laugh to start the morning. What's that old joke about asking a farmer for directions and being told "Well I wouldn't start from here..."

"Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much."

Welcome to Buildhub. Not sure about nails, but what about a concealed beam hanger at each junction? More work, for sure, but likely a better result. Edited to add: there's also quite a lot of weight going to end up on the long beam where the left end of the short horizontal (in the pic) meets it. No idea if that's an issue given the size of the beams.

I'm completely with you on this goal. Our nailed-chipboard-on-easi-joist-floors creak in our bedroom. We used extra screws in the other rooms, and they mostly don't squeak, but somehow our room was overlooked when we suddenly had to get carpet down at short notice ("In by Christmas!") It. Drives. Me. NUTS! Most nights as I creak my way across the floor on the way to bed I idly wonder how much effort it would be to roll back all the carpet and add some screws.

An economist is shooting at a target. The first shot is 3 feet to the left of it. The second shot if 3 feet to the right. The economist yells "bullseye!"

Depends whether Dave is doing something wrong with them! A guy was going to take a bomb onto a plane. A friend asked him why, and he said he was worried about terrorists, but that it was incredibly unlikely there'd be two bombs on the one flight.

Welcome aboard. Out of interest, roughly where in the country are you?

I don't think the definition of "regressive" has anything to do with policy. Energy is a basic and essential commodity to everyone in society. Energy pricing is, today, whatever it is. Increasing its price would absolutely be regressive in the sense of making things more regressive, in exactly the same way that increasing VAT on food would be regressive. So in that sense, yes, increasing the cost of any of any basic necessity by adopting or changing a tax or subsidy system in such a way that it has a greater net impact on the poor is "regressive". I also agree that the alternatives may be even worse, hence my reference to a "planet-sized can of worms".

The term "regressive" has far wider usage than just taxation. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/regressive: "used to describe an economic or tax system in which there are advantages for rich people and disadvantages for poor people: Economists generally regard sales taxes as regressive, since the poor spend a greater part of their income than the rich. regressive policy/subsidy/measure Two decades of regressive policies have doubled the numbers living in poverty."

Thanks, I didn't know that. I honestly assumed that the scheme was funded by government but administered by the power companies. Just did a quick bit of research. With some rounding (and possibly ignoring the impact of Northern Ireland): There are ~27m households in the UK. The average electricity bill is £592. Assuming one electricity bill per household, you therefore end up with ~£16b spent on domestic electricity. FiTs cost ~£1.1b a year (not sure whether that factors in the cost of administering the scheme - unlikely I guess). If I'm looking at the right numbers, this suggests that the cost of the FiT scheme is around 6% of the domestic electricity market. I haven't got the time, energy (pardon the pun) or knowledge to dig into the impact of the payments for deemed self-consumption. However, it also a fact that I export a lot of energy to the grid over the year, for which the electricity company pays me relatively little. I don't know how cheap the electricity I supply is relative to their wholesale sources (it's likely very complex to work this out accurately), but it would be interesting to know how far, if at all, this goes to mitigating the cost of the FiT scheme to other consumers. I agree that energy is much too cheap, but increasing the price to better reflect the real cost would be hugely regressive. To avoid this, you'd need to bring in some sort of means-tested energy pricing system, which involves opening a planet-sized can of worms.

That assumes that if the government weren't paying me for this, they'd be doing something better with the money. Seems unlikely given their track record!