sgt_woulds

Possibly, if they used a liquid piston (fluidyne) stirling generator, which reduces the count down to a single moving part (the floating magnet in the linear alternator), but AFAIK these have never been made outside of the lab and efficiencies were very much lower than a 'traditional' stirling engine - probably not much better than TEG. There is a fascinating book about stirling engine experiments conducted by Phillips that I read a million years ago. Well worth a read. I was obsessed with Stirling engines at the time, but there are good reasons why ICE is the more dominant technology.

Well, yes, if by 'better' you mean more efficient. But they also have moving parts to wear out and require expensive and dangerous maintenance. A TEG could be positioned off a continental shelf and just left to work for 20 years. In an open sea environment, 'better' has a different meaning. HAWT are much more efficient than VAWT, but they are also more difficult to assemble at sea (blades have to be fitted after the tower is up), have higher maintenance requirements, and require repairs at great hights as the generator is at the top. New VAWT designs are starting to make more financial sense, even though less 'efficient'. They can be floated out fully assembled, then (after anchoring), the ballest end is flooded and they pop up almost ready to go. VAWT have less stresses induced in operation, and maintenance on the generator can be done at sea level. Over a 30 year operating life the cost savings outweigh the lower generating efficiencies. Deep sea is where the real wind blows - the further away from a continental shelf you can get, the better the generation, but then you have to anchor floating turbines. It is much harder to install a floating HAWT. Logically, the next 10 years should see alot more VAWT in deep sea locations, despite being 'worse' than other types of wind machine. Now imagine the same scenario, but with no moving parts to maintain. I doubt that 3% efficiency would provide enough generation to cover cost savings though! There must have been some TEG advancement in the 30 odd years since I was last interested in this. What happened to all the carbon nano magic everyone was talking about a decade ago?

At the time I wondered if it be simpler / cheaper / more reliable to use a TEG (Seebeck device) instead. Power output would be extreemly low, but with no moving parts, maintenance costs would also be low with an almost unlimited lifecycle. At the time, TEG were very inneficient (I remember 3% for one back in the 90's using a depleted uranium heatsource). Have they improved since?

I remember this was a big thing in the mid 90's (when all the real interest / progress in renewables kicked off). But then? Nothing! Open cycle OTEC was the really interesting version since you didn't need working fluids such as ammonia; they claimed fluid based was closed loop, but there is no such thing in reality, so there would have been some leakage into the environment. As a plus, open cycle OTEC produces desalinated water as a by-product, and in the next few decade that will probably become as valuable as oil. You'd think the Saudis would jump on it.

Will this change the FF conversation in any meaningful way: As Europe swelters, Paris judges say consumers aren’t to blame — TotalEnergies is – EUobserver I'm guessing usual people will jump on this straight away as a flawed decision or deepstate interference, and that the science (the OIL companies own commissioned research) it is based on is biased/wrong.

What if was one of those knitted bed-throw blankets with all the holes in like your granny used to make? Actually, if you invested in a small herd of sheep or angora goats they would keep the shed warm in winter and you could skin them for extra insulation each year.

You cannot make changes without the capacity already in place; having heard him speak, I'm sure that 'Ed' get's this, and that is why he is pushing for as much renewable capacity to be built whilst they have the ability. I doubt if labour will get back in at the next election, so it is the right call to make for the country in the long-term, even if at the moment, you cannot see an immediate benefit to your personal bill. As others have pointed out (but some on here cannot see past their blinkers), the increased renewables capacity has already reduced the impact of the oil wars on our economy and personal budgets. Once we have enough capacity we can encourage things like this: Giving away excess daytime solar for free - pv magazine Global Personally, I believe this should already be happening in Scotland, espescially for businesses, as this would encourage the 'Northern Powerhouse' that everyone is on about at the moment. The only way for the rest of us to 'see' future benefits is to invests in them. As someone once said, 'if you always do what you've always done, you'll only get what you've always got'.

Replace the hardcore with a sufficient depth of foamed glass aggregate (e.g. Geocell) and you remove the need for additional insulation under the slab and also for a DPM. (Unless it is a radon area, all you need is a geotextile membrane seperating the concrete from the foamed glass). I'd be interested to know more about RRP of SCC. I used floated conrete over Geocell, but unfortunately it still required a leveling screed since my builders were a bunch of amateur monkeys.

Why not a retractable canopy? Less faff than shutters or brise soleil. Need about 300mm above windows to allow fixings which you have. Rollar shutters fitted external to the opening and above the reveal shouldn't block access for a leaning ladder (gutter access) either. If you are set on using shutters, why not fit strips of a less reactive timber either side of the windows and flush with the existing trim. Screw non-stainless into these? (with stainless screws right through into cladding). This would also spread the weight accross the Chessnut boards that already have visible shakes/splits

Cut some EPDM gaskets to fit between the hardware and the boards? And use double dipped galvenised hinges to stop any ferrous run-off (not the so called 'galvenised' stuff sold in the big sheds). If using stainless screws it is also wise to pilot dill the boards before screwing them in, as stailness has a habit of rounding off or snapping the heads off - nearly always when they are 7/8 of the way in so a PITTA to remove again!

Shifting spoil at 7pm last night I cut down the cheap cotton work trousers they sometimes sell in Lidl / Aldi just below the knee pad pockets. They work quite well as pirate pants; all the extra rips and tears just add to the ventilation potential and I still have all my pockets and a hammer loop and knee pads. Cut upwards behind the knee for extra relief. Drives the girls mad... Straw hat with built in solar power fan Work boots was the worst bit. Last time I was in Hungary I found a shop selling steel toe sandals but didn't have enough pocket money. I'm deffo buying them the next time I visit!

That's right. It tends to be stronger in pine / spruce /cedar woods due to the high resin and terpene content, and yes, it does smell nice! But it also drops of quickly to background levals after cutting and airing. Even quicker with LVL due to the production process. Thinking about your list of 'desirable' VoC, we can add historic smells, like the aroma of freshly laid Tarmac. Of course, we don't experience it that much these days in Pot Hole Britain, I doubt if Gen Z even knows what smell like! Creosote? I'm pretty sure that Brut aftershave could fall into this catagory too! Personally I prefer the 'old car smell' (pre-war) to the new car smell, but I'll never be lucky enough to have either on my (non-resin) driveway...

They still outgas VOC, albeit at slightly lower levels than 50 years ago. In France & Belgium they have mandatory VOC warnings on furniture containing PUR and strictly enforce VOC emission limits. Ditto for construction materials. All has to go through mandatory VOC testing (28 day testing). We have had some dealings with this as a supplier of LVL and woodfibre to a major flat pack furniture company. (Even natural wood emits VOC, the difference is that it tails off below safe after a very short period). They couldn't sell furniture already supplied to the UK into Belgium until they had swapped the facing materials and foam padding, (our LVL/woodfibre was fine though 🙂). I personally would not have a resin based floor in a well sealed house unless it met the Belgium standards.

Without NIMBYism, we would all be living in modernist monstrocities and concrete landscapes: no St Pancras Station, no protected view corridors that ensure that ensure that St Pauls is not smothered by high rises, no greenbelt, no ancient woodland. The environs we grow up in are as important as the culture, and a big part of what it means to be British. I don't think we'd sing a song about the the wonderful 'White Container Ports of Dover...'

From the perspective of a sassenach, the Scottish government seems to do a better job of providing for their citizens in a manner that makes the majority content. We look slightly enviously at some of the more joined up thinking that seems to prevail north of the wall. Most of the issues there seem to stem from deciscions further South... I'm not a fan of Adam Smith - even for his time (when there was a greater sense of civic and brotherly duty in all classes of men), he overstated how well self-interest promotes the common good. His neo-liberal free market ideas have a lot to answer for in recent governments policies, and they have hastened the predictable decline of societal cohesion and the rise in social economic inequality. With modern political and societal morality norms, he wouldn't earn enough shillings to pay for a single sandal he could stand on. The amount of aggregate employment depends on the amount of aggregate demand. The amount of aggregate demand is composed of the sum of the amounts which the community spends on consumption and on investment. The propensity to consume determines how much of a given level of income will be devoted to consumption, and consequently determines the amount of employment which can be sustained for a given level of investment. Thus, for any given state of technique, resources and costs, the level of employment depends on the level of effective demand. John Maynard Keynes Or in the contemporary language: Low demand (or competition) = unemployment / low pay / lack of incentive to do better for the customer Private sector won’t spend enough Therefore, government must regulate demand or mandate outcomes Pure market economies always fail to deliver socially desirable outcomes. Therefore, government intervention is necessary to ensure fair access and prevent abuse of market power. But it does depend upon a sense of civic duty in those who govern, and the idea that making the poorest lives better can raise all the boats so to speak.