Ferdinand

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There is also an issue that much of the gas network is permeable to too great a degree as the amount of hydrogen in the gas increases - smaller molecules etc. Also pipe brittleness. I can see it being limited to a fraction for a long time. Given current political manoeuvres, I can even see our gas resources being stretched out for resilience, or even a new field being opened up. Arguably we are well enough ahead on decarbonising our power supplies that we can allow for it.

I think this will be the minimum distance between facing windows of habitable rooms in different dwellings they are concerned about. Normally it is more like 21m or 22m required, eg between houses so the back gardens would need to be 11m long each. One solution could be preventing a view between ground floor windows, so having say a 2m separating fence with permanant retention of that fence being enforced by a planning condition. Ways around it in your situation could be obscured (eg frosted or stained glass) windows, windows above viewing height such as a clerestory, non-habitable rooms (eg bathroom, hallway, storeroom), or the windows being at an angle rather than straight on to each other. Here is one example of the rule for East Staffordshire: https://www.eaststaffsbc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/planning/planningpolicy/spd/Separation Distances and Amenity SPD_Final_Jun19.pdf How different Local Planning Authorities approach it varies, also by nation. Also affected by varying ground levels between dwellings. Talk to your LPA as to what they mean by it, and then put eg "no clear windows to habitable rooms on the side" into the mix as to how you design your extension. Consider eg a frosted roof window on the side, and your viewing windows on the front and back. You will need to satisfy them or come up with an acceptable alternative. Of course if you can show that your neighbours have no habitable rooms facing you, then you may be able to argue that they have solved your problem. Potentially it could also be about you casting a shadow on them, so you may need to consider your roof height and profile, and do a sunlight model (there's a website somewhere that does it). ATB Ferdinand

It looks like I will be specifying Nuance panels, as the core cannot be damaged by water. Still some checks to do, however. 800x800 sounds nice and inexpensive. Mine are 800x1800 and there are 4 of them.

Speak for yourself, grandad... Well done on getting the project rolling. Though not quite my style, I'm afraid. ? IMO you really need to do more than a SAP for heat modelling. PHPP has been mentioned. Also try this available via Buildhub. And remember that insulation etc is spend once save every day.

IMO BoJo has got himself and his Govt into such a stinking political cesspit that he needs to stop their being any further energy price rises at all. Or whoever replaces him when he gets defenestrated will have little chance of winning the next election. I argued above that there are various things that can be done, as there is a fair chance that this will ease in this country to an extent for the summer, and *maybe* after autumn. The biggest Boris problem is that though he proved a decent marketeer to get Brexit over line (whatever your view), he is as competent at running a Government as a ... choose your simile.

In Germany I would put the decisions down to the Govt in power in 2014, rather than the Greens - who are only in Govt this year. But the German Greens are of the Realistic Green variety. Though they and German politics undoubtedly helped the groundswell. Germany also has the added pressure that they have higher power usage compared to other large European countries, due to their larger manufacturing base etc. Means they need a lot more windfarms per pop. Though again TBF Germany are strong on things like onshore wind. They also benefit less from exported emissions. The ones sitting most pretty at the moment are probably the French with their 70% nuclear, and 3-4 bn of electricity exports, and the Norwegians with their oil and their gas and their hydro.

Russia was effectively "working to rule" on their previous Nordstream 1 contracts to apply pressure (or as they claimed 'rebuild reserves'). Germany (Merkel and Gerhard Schroder her predecessor (?) ) had built Nordstream 2 in the teeth of EuCo opposition, and thrown Ukraine under the bus by making it possible for Russia to pivot to Nordstream 2 instead, which would cost Ukraine a couple of billion Euro a year in transmission fees. Schroder was employed by GazProm on a generous salary (600k Euro a year iirc) to help their Nordstream project. To the extent that a billion Euro compensation package was being set up for Ukraine. The new German Govt and especially the new Green Party FM (Fraulein Baerbock) is stronger towards Russia, and even under Merkel they had done a semi-reverse-ferret by being tough on regulation to try and put some back pressure on Russia. Germany has also - unlike a lot of European countries - failed to build LNG import terminals (we, for example, have 3 big ones, and pipelines from Norway and Holland plus our own remaining supply), and so have Russia's apron strings somewhat tied around their neck in a noose. We get a lot of our LNG from Qatar, Norway and the USA in tankers. There are a lot of USA gas wells coming back on stream this year after COVID which will help. LNG terminals: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/lng-europe-2021-current-trends-european-lng-landscape-and-country-focus#:~:text=The current large-scale LNG, Also Germany has a crunch because they decided to close all their nuclear power stations after the Japanese nuclear accident and keep lignite power stations open, and are now rushing to close those coal power stations a decade earlier than they were planning (2028 not 2038 roughly I think), for Green and possibly embarrassment reasons. They just closed 3 former GDR nuclear power stations (to be fair, they needed closing). So in the absence of Plan B, they need loadsa-naturalgas from somewhere. Plus Holland - a key source of gas for DE - are now running down their gas fields for green reasons. And there is pressure to keep them open, but earthquake problems in local towns. Plus there's all the Russian sabre-rattling on Ukraine, and Germany was preventing defensive weaponry being supplied to Ukraine via NATO schemes. Plus UVDL rather trashed the German armed forces in a previous position as German Defence Minister before she trashed the European Commission's vaccine procurement programme. They are still flapping around about a fighter procurement decision that should have been made more than a decade ago, and someone decided "no F-35s" and made a political announcement that makes it embarrassing to reverse-ferret on that one. It's all a bit of a complicated Dachshund's Breakfast, and not really the sort of comprehensive mess that Germany is in the habit of making. And now they have Mr Macron prancing around trying to turn the EU into a kind of Greater France Mk 2, at least for the next 6 months. All he needs is a Cuirassier's Uniform and a Martini-Henry rifle and he'll be as happy as a ranting hippo in a mud lagoon. Although we are not dependent on Russian Gas, we are impacted by contracts set with reference to the international price. Germany need to build some LNG import capability pronto, and drive real Green Energy as fast as possible - but that will take at least a decade or two to really have a big impact. We got we are today by being the single country in the world with the biggest investment every single year in offshore wind from 2015 to 2020 as the implementation phase of rolling waves of contracts, and we are due to add another 250% to our current offshore capacity by 2030. I see Germany doing a dash for gas in some way. For fairness, I should also perhaps note that we imo cocked up by not keeping a serious strategic buffer of gas; we chose to close our end-of-its-life facility in approx 2015. I think history shows that to be an unwise decision - a 90 day rather than 9 day buffer would have helped us last year, and we should have leased a tanker full of gas as our reserve. F

@AliG The boss of Centrica was wailing about the price of wholesale gas staying high for 'up to two years' on R4 this week - Today Programme. Presumably in search of lower taxes on gas and more free money. And predicting bills of £2,000. Unfortunately the BBC parrot presenter did not challenge his facts or his motives. Can you make like Putin and block your pipeline ? ? I think you have one next to your house?

Correct. He's been a bit of a Jeremiah on the inertia built into the systems since last Sept / Oct. He says It will stay high for 6 months because it is set according to 6 months of data. To my eye that means that the formula can be adjusted, for example by a one off or short term change. I'm not worried that some intermediary companies have gone bust; there are still more left than anywhere else has and the trend everwhere is towards a more open market, even in France with its unreformed economy. Essentially the ones that went bust used their capital to give their customers cheaper prices than turned out to be justified given their setup. We'll be paying high wholesale prices for it, but we'll be using quite a lot less of it given energy trends - which will help with bills. And we have an extra 10% of renewable / nuclear Electricity Capacity coming on stream soon from offshore wind and the interconnector being repaired. That will reduce the gas we use to make electricity. And summer demand for energy is much lower than winter. UK boss of Centrica was saying it could last 2 years, and that lots of costs must be taken off Centrica and similar. Just another subsidy-seeker. Mons. Macron just pulled an interesting trick. He has told EDF (French nuclear monopoly) to supply 20TWh of power to distributors at reduced cost. That is, about 5% of total French Elec usage in one year. The boss of EDF says it will lose his company nearly 10 billion Euro, and it immediately cut the share price by 25%. Given that 85% of EDF is owned by the French government, it is a transfer from Govt assets that does not appear on any borrowing numbers. Just call him Emmanuel Broon. There are plenty of ways for the Govt to keep bills down. I would do it for 6 months then reassess as demand comes back in the winter. Politically they are in such a hole that they need to stop bills going any higher than the current cap imo. All interesting stuff. The question is whether our current Boris Govt has the competence to do something practical, or whether BJ will refuse to do it and lose the political benefit, then be forced to do it anyway. He's enough of a shortsighted divot. F

Put a window seat in the corner, or an open shelf or something at window sill height for an ornament or pot plant? A sticking out end of a cupboard across a window will look bizarre imo.

You run the numbers, then use your skill and judgement. (Except you aren't guessing where the ball is; you are guessing where the judges think the ball is.)

So worth perhaps £1000 of extra initial investment ignoring inflation.

Major military projects still suffer from incredible optimism bias, however.

8500kWh for a house that size sounds OK. But does that price change calculations around eg solar pv or battery storage? IME SAP is a decent guide to a 'normal' house, and as your house becomes more extreme in any way it becomes less reliable. If the SAP numbers were up in the 80s or 90s I would treat it as at best an approximation. I had a free trial copy of the SAP software from Stroma and did my own calculations to understand the workings. This may still be possible. I would suggest building a heat model of your house using the spreadsheet available here, as a supplement to SAP Do you know about this? HTH. Ferdinand

Having caught up on the thread, wishing all strength to your arse and your elbow, @ToughButterCup.

They do. Not sure if currently available. https://en.paperblog.com/new-nestle-quality-street-my-green-triangle-bar-636563/

I have a green triangle tax on all Quality Street traversing this site. Though TBF I'm just back from the Lindt shop.

And savings at current E-prices?

Bow and arrow?

Like curry; beware of logs. (I'd say yes you will be OK.)

There's a thread about this. Also, @newhome: "Assumption is the mother of all f*ckups."

Why are the garden chairs from The Range?

I'm hearing good things about Nuance panels, and bad things about Showerwall.

One comment is that Multipanels come with a 30 year warranty. https://www.multipanel.co.uk/products/product-literature/ But in this case I'll be whistling in the wind ?.