ProDave

All our planning drawings were done with heights referenced to a temporary bench mark which was a row of nails driven into a fence post on the highest corner of the site. That is still there. Surely a ridge height is only important when it does not want to exceed that of neighbours. Nobody ever checked any of our heights.

Blame Mrs T. It was under her watch we closed down the UKAEA and with that development of our home grown reactors which we used to build a lot quicker than that.

It is the shape of the gravel that is important. You will regret getting round pebbles, whatever size, they don't interlock and will constantly move around when driving on them. Instead you want crushed or otherwise irregular shaped gravel that interlocks together better and so does not move around much as you drive over it.

Insert an extra strong back, or equivalent through the web close to the bath to help ensure the load is spread

As I keep saying. Scotland has enough wind generation for now. It is further south that needs more so time for them to have most of their hills covered in wind farms.

Try SIG, Sheffield Insulation Group, there is probably a branch near you, they were way cheaper than anyone else and I got all my Frametherm from them.

It is not normally that deep. There must be an extended neck for it to be that deep.

As above, a basement under an existing building is NOT in any way a DIY job.

If the level in the STP has got that high then there is something seriously wrong (blocked outlet) and the original VERY low inlet pipe would be completely swamped and blocked long before that. If that original low level pipe has never given trouble, then the new higher one is not in danger.

Looking at gridwatch right now, Wind is supplying 9% of demand and solar 24% Clearly solar will drop to 0% when the sun goes down. Just where do they think we are going to get to 100% carbon neutral without many multiples of the wind farms we already have? And just what will we do when the wind does not blow (not uncommon)? Battery storage won't cover a week of winter anti cyclone. The "plan" is at best based on hope, not a proper plan.

I went to a local information meeting for 2 more wind farm proposals near here. It was a bit of an eye opener. Yesterday was reasonably windy here (enough to need a reef in the sail) so you would expect wind generation to be reasonable. Yet in spite of that, wind was producing about 11% of our electricity while we were at that meeting. Lets think about that. Wind would need to get up to about 80% of our needs to ever stand a chance of net zero. So we would need 8 times as many wind farms as we have already to achieve that. Now go and stand on a Scottish mountain top. count the wind farms you can see. Imagine having 8 times that number of them. That is not going to be pretty. The wind farms we have are overloading the 2 high voltage pylons south from the Highlands already. If we have 8 times as many we will need at least an additional 10 similar high voltage pylon lines just to shift the power down to the south where it is needed. I am getting more and more angry at the sheep thinking we can build a few more wind farms up here because there is plenty of land and it's windy and it will solve all our problems. No it won't, not unless you completely trash the Scottish mountains so there is no unspoiled landscape left. Enough is enough. Build the bloody things down south where the power is needed. Cotswolds, Chilterns, Downs, etc don't have many do they, lets see them on all those hills before we get lumbered with any more. I am sure all those in favour of building them up here would object to them on the "nice" hills down south.

We were looking at 3-5 year old used cars. Not a single one of anything like that was on offer. So lack of used ones suggests not many buy them new.

The A96 desperately needs dualling, like the A9, and Nairn desperately needs a bypass.

We should all be encouraged to do what we can. I have built our new low energy ASHP heated house which has saved us burning the nearly 2000 litres of Kerosene we used each year in the old house. That has probably saved more CO2 emissions than if we had stayed in the old house and changed both cars for EV's. But there comes a point when you have to say, I only have one life on this planet. I am going to live it, and enjoy it, not restrict what I can do and where I can go. And that means having a car big enough to do things and go places. One of the things that gets my goat about the present push for all things to do with net zero, is they try and pretend you can go green without changing what you do. That is utter rubbish. They need to come clean and tell the truth, the only way we might ever reach net zero is by changing what we do and where we go a LOT. Our lives will be very much more restricted. That is hard to stomach as an older person used to being able to do things and go placed.

For us April and early May is best. The leaves on the trees now are filling in and the shading then caps our generation for the rest of the summer. Off to my boast shortly hopefully for another lovely day on the water.

The number of cars thing is an issue. In practical terms it does not matter how many cars you own, it's how many miles you drive. I have my classic MG sports car, so having a third car does not mean we drive more miles than if we had 2, it means when the sun is out and I drive the MG, I am not driving one of the other cars. 1 car between the 2 of us would probably mean more total miles, because if we both wanted to go to different places, the sum of miles travelled to drop one off then come back and then go where you want, and repeat on return. The problem with multiple cars but doing the same mileage is the insurance and tax regime, you would have to insure and tax all 3, so your fixed costs rise. That only works for the classic car as that's (for now) £0 historic vehicle tax and very cheap classic car insurance.

Yes, and for the time being we rural and high mileage drivers can continue doing that. But as the thread title TB recognises the current plan is not going to work. What are people like me supposed to do in 10 years? 20 years? when ICE cars have been banned from sale and the old ones are at old banger stage? We need a plan that stands a chance of actually working before people will get on board and support it.

Which is what I have said before. EV's may be the future, but they are not the present solution. Not for me at least and I am sure not for the majority of us. Perhaps in 10 years? I don't want to be the early adopter buying a sub standard in development product and paying the price for it.

Fred drift perhaps be we are changing SWMBO's car. Presently she has a hybrid, but not plug in. We can't consider an EV as there is a regular monthly journey of 300 miles each way and we cannot pallet the idea of having to stop half an hour or more for a recharge and then having to plug in at the house you are visiting to charge. We thought a plug in hybrid would be a good idea. A car that on our local journeys would function as an EV but not have the range limitation of an EV. We were disappointed to find the pure EV range of most PHEV's is a pathetic 20 to 40 miles. That won't do many of our local journeys so not worth the extra purchase cost for what would be a very small saving in both cost and emissions. So sadly we are buying another simple hybrid. There seems to be a huge disconnect between what the customer wants and what would be a practical way to reduce emissions,and what is actually available or "they" would like you to buy. And it seems from our discussions recently with car salesmen, most people feel the same which is why EV sales are falling short of the targets they have set. You cannot force people to buy a product that does not meet the requirements of the user.

I have sympathy with this situation. When I moved up from England over 20 years ago I had no problem operating without being a member of a competent persons scheme. About 15 years ago building control started to ask for an EIC for a new build, and that was no problem. I did new builds in Highland, Moray and Invernessshire without issue. Then a few years ago the rules for rental properties changed and landlords needed to be registered and have more checks done. Then I hit the first bit of official stupidness. Highland council started to require you to be e member of a competent persons scheme or self certify by showing your qualifications which must be no more than 5 years old. Well sorry mine are more than 5 years old and so near to retirement I could not be bothered to go back to college. So for the last few years I have been able to wire a new build and one part of the council would accept my EIC but if that very same property came up for rental the other part of the same council would not accept an EIC from me. Anyway I am retired now and glad to be finished with that sort of nonsense. But even when I was working and before this recent nonsense I was often asked to work 100 or more miles from home simply because the customer could not find anyone closer. A day trip to the Isle of Sky for a simple job was a pleasant day out on a nice day but the customer had to pay all expenses so it was not cheap for them. It is possible to do short courses which were aimed at Part P in England. Most proper electricians frown on such schemes and call them 5 week wonders. It seems to me the unexpected consequences syndrome. The government seems to think they can demand higher and higher levels of qualifications and certification expecting that everyone will just stump up the extra time and cost involved in jumping through the extra hoops, and then act surprised when some of them can't be bothered and quit (or like me retire) and there are no longer enough tradesmen.

I suspect the issue is until now, nobody has practised a cold grid restart. They are now working out how to do it.

You do need "spinning mass" to maintain a stable frequency. Wind turbines yes they spin but they then use an inverter to synchronise to the grid frequency. So does PV and battery storage. The unknown is when there are no real spinning mass generators, has anyone worked out how to synchronise a grid supplied entirely from millions of inverters, which one is the master for instance? It is not net zero that caused this, but the drive to more and more renewables may be making it harder to re start the grid.

I used my little 3t digger to spread it all and compacted with the bucket then tracked over it. It was certainly not over compacted. That's the point of tracks to give a low ground pressure as the load is spread.

Since Grangemouth stopped as a refinery, our fuel now must come from somewhere in England. That is 300 miles or probably more to the nearest refinery to get our fuel.

I would settle for not being charged extra. At the moment. we in "remote" parts are charged MORE for our electricity due to distribution costs. Back in the day when electricity came from a small number of big power stations and there were none of those up here, then you could just about follow the thought process that they had to build lots of long high voltage pylons to get the electricity to us. But NOW more is generated here than we can possibly use and they are building more pylons to transport the power south. So at the very least charge the cost of that to the users in the south and reduce our charge for being "remote"