ProDave

Hi and welcome. This post needs pictures. We like pictures.

I will stick to glyphosate daily for a while and see what happens. 2 new shoots popped through overnight. I always believed when spraying with glyphosate you do not cut the weed, you just leave it. Cutting or burning might kill what you see but won't kill the roots will it? The glyphosate I have is concentrated, Gallup XL. Is there any merit in making up a stronger solution for this job?

Just how do you expect me to do anything to the "soil" when the only place this weed is present (so far) is coming up through my drive. The soil is nearly 400mm down, and no I am not digging up the drive. This is the baffling thing to me, why is the only place it has appeared through my drive? If the roots had come from next door, where I can't see it, why did they travel so far before coming to the surface? It is just baffling to me.

Where does the ash go with a solid bed? Our (Mendip Stoves Churchill 5) has an open grate, never a problem burning wood, you just riddle a little through to the ash pan and leave plenty to build the fire on.

So will just persistently spraying it with glyphosate kill it? I am bemused how it got there? Has it been dormant in the ground for years? Have it's roots travelled underground for some distance before it decided to pop up there?

Tarmac laid about 2 years ago, about 80mm thick that was laid on about 300mm of MOT1 that had been down for many years right from the start of the build. Before laying the tarmac, the MOT1 was re levelled in places and wackered down and there were no weeds growing in the MOT1. Noticed yesterday, this has appeared in 3 separate clumps close to each other on part of the tarmac that does not get much traffic, under our touring caravan. It appears to be growing through the tarmac. I don't think a seed has just landed there and grown. There is nothing else, yet growing through the tarmac and I can't see this weed anywhere else locally. It is getting a daily dose of Glyphosate week killer until it shows some sign of dying. Any idea what it is? I don't think it is JKW but it must be something nearly as determined to grow through tarmac?

The market for renewable generation is there already. Even with no more heat pumps. There is a market for more renewable generation until we are not burning any fossil fuels for electricity generation. It should not be left to market forces, there should be a plan stating how much renewable generation is needed and by when and then everyone know how it will happen and when rather than guessing and I suspect hoping.

I keep saying this so apologies for repeating it. There is no point switching to heat pumps for every house until there is enough green energy to power them. If the whole of London switched to heat pumps tomorrow I bet a few mothballed coal power stations would be brought back on line to power them. When are the environmental lot going to start talking about a properly planned progressive move to renewable heating at a rate that matches our ability to to build and bring on line more renewable electricity generation and update the grid to transport that extra power? If there was such a well thought out plan, I would give them a lot more credability than I do now. The other problem of course is one I have thought for a long time (and voted with my feet) that if you all choose to live together crammed into such cities with such high population densities, then ANYTHING you do is going to reduce your air quality. But I do accept we can't all live in low density rural housing.

This just reinforces my view, why on earth does everyone want to place reliance on some third party "cloud" service to enable their tech to work? Right from the start of cloud based serveces I have thought it was a stupid idea that I have not taken on board. It is obvious in many cases there is no guarantee that such a service will continue or might become a pay service once they have a captive group of users locked in. Hive thermostats next?

What makes that a £2K bath? I bought a new old stock bath that looks just like that for £300 without any damage. Keep looking.

I wonder if there is a typo there that has been copied and pasted? It would be very unusual to assume an air tightness of 0.3 unless it was being built by a passive house company with a track record of building very air tight houses. A much more common assumption for a design SAP would be an air tightness of 3 That is three not zero point three. In Scotland at least, 3 is a critical value, get better than 3 in an air test and you must install mvhr, so if you are not planning mvhr a value between 3 and 5 would be a reasonable target.

Thank you. A BIG step forwards, lets hope other suppliers follow this lead and finally an end to MCS dominance.

You will be treating the wood with something won't you? If it were me, I would paint both sides of the mating t&g profiles before slotting them together to protect from water that WILL get in the gap

It's one sentence and a rectangle box drawn on the plans to get official permission for the static caravan. But plenty just do it without explicitly getting permission. You will need some drainage system to connect it to, so it may mean your first job is to get services installed and a treatment plant for example if you need one so the 'van is habitable.

We had a variation of this in the old 1930's semi I used to own. That was 9" solid brick walls no cavity. The stuff used there was very thin polystyrene on a roll, fitted with wallpaper paste and then papered over. It did make the wall feel warmer to the touch than other bare bits of wall and it seemed to stop condensation. I doubt it made much of a difference to the heating bills.

It should pump up to and hold at the level of "seal" in the smallest trap. Any attempt to go above that just blows bubbles through the trap. I think 80mm was my smallest trap. If you can get to 20 and it holds where previously you got higher, go and check ALL the traps in the house are full, by pouring some water down them. If one has not been used for a while some of the water in it may have evaporated.

What covenant do you think you might be breaching? We extended a previous house in breach of a covenant "No building without the permission of xxxx Council" I mistook getting planning and building regs from that council as having their permission under that covenant. It was not until we sold the property that the buyers solicitor said we were in breach of that covenant and that is when we bought the indemnity policy to allow the sale to proceed.

This of course show the "replace gas boilers with a heat pump" is NOT a simple swap in the majority of cases. I think most of us new that, but it is not the impression being given to the general public.

It really did do a good job of showing just how hopeless the present plan is. No hope of getting enough heat pumps installed and houses insulation upgraded. No hope of getting enough green energy built in time and the electricity grid upgraded to cope. No hope of getting enough new nuclear built on time. No hope of Hydrogen ever being a viable green energy source. The spokesperson they kept putting these points to had no answer other than waffle and pretend all was okay.

They are featuring an £18,000 heat pump install. They say the heat pump costs about £4000 and "takes a team of 6 over a week to install" So lets say 18 man days? and lets say £400 per day each, that's £7200 labour. Lets say £1500 for new hot water tank and controls, and £2000 for new radiators (that one is a pure guess) I still only get to £14700

It will be interesting if they analyse the present costs of a heat pump install to see if they are reasonable. Somehow I doubt they will.

Have you chosen your stove yet? some like the one we bought can be fitted just 100mm from combustible materials and ours is just over 1oomm from plasterboard.

Unlikely to be successful. If the builder supplies stuff "supply and fit" on a new build it must be zero rated for VAT. If he supplies stuff but does not fit it, he is right to charge VAT but you will be unlikely to be able to re claim that. If buying stuff for self install, buy it in your own name so your name is on the VAT receipt so you are guaranteed to be able to claim it.

Well as @joe90 said, Just stop Oil want us to stop using oil right now. Totally unrealistic. We are transitioning to more renewable generation, just as fast as wind farms and the electricity distribution network can be built. Banging on to "the public" about the need for change is not going to speed that up. We have already discussed how there are artificial hurdles put in the way of installing heat pumps. Buying an electric car now is just likely to result in more fossil fuelled electricity to charge them. Constantly being told "we" are not doing enough just makes me feel like "well I bloody well will buy a historic V8 petrol Range Rover and drive it all around the London LEZ then"

Sounds to me like a realisation of reality, that it is simply not possible to power everything from renewables and a realisation that electricity demand will double. I think it is the first time i have seen such an admission. What strikes me given the growth in electricity demand and the growth in renewable generation, which we know to be rather dependant on the weather hence unreliable, is just how little energy storage there is in that mixture. I have said for a while people are more likely to get on board and support the changes if the targets are realistic and achievable, and some praise is given for the progress we have already made. Set an unachievable target, and treat everyone as though nobody has done a thing yet to reduce emissions and you get a disinterested public.