Kelvin

sheesh. I need to re-adjust my timescales 😂

Population growth has been a ‘concern’ for a few hundred years. It was wrong then and it’s still wrong now. It’s the same argument people use when they say the UK is being concreted over when, by any measure, it’s mostly green. The issue isn’t too many people it’s the disproportionate way in which resources are consumed and the amount of waste. The energy crisis is forcing changes to energy usage in a way that no nudge economics policy could ever have achieved.

I’m finding it hard right now and we’ve not even started. 😂 We are waiting on the warrant application approval. All the waiting is killing my enthusiasm for doing it at all. It’s taken much longer to get to this point than I expected.

22 months to complete probate for my mum’s estate. The banks were the slowest to deal with.

The clumping variety can still shoot out occasional runners. Whenever I planted bamboo I always put bamboo root barrier around it or planted it in a big basket for the patio.

As an aside. Perth and Kinross council use a multiplier of £2320/m2 to work out the warrant fee.

I got our numbers back from the estimators online last week. Also significantly lower than I was expecting and frankly I don’t believe it. I’ve set aside tomorrow to go through it in detail.

I experimented with the this in my previous house and concluded that heating every area at the same time using thermostats as limit stops was the best approach.

When we first moved into our previous house it took some time for everyone to adjust to how the ASHP and UFH worked (and a bit of tinkering from me on flow temps at the mixer valves) The main thing was telling everyone to leave the thermostats alone!

What is the mantra on here…fabric first! What you just explained is exactly the problem we have in the UK building industry where long term problems are built into properties at the outset.

Two of the problems with ASHPs is that they are being installed in inappropriate houses and even when the house is appropriate they are often incorrectly specified, installed and configured. Even when they are installed in an appropriate house and are correctly sized and installed the owners need to change the way they think about heating the house and hot water if they’ve come from traditional boilers. I also think too many people run their houses far too warm although the energy price increase is fixing that. Gas boilers can also be incorrectly specified and installed of course.

The VCL doesn’t look well fitted anyway.

Making it ever easier to steal cars.

Yeah well we started the process in March and won’t get the final warrant until December. We also put the offer in on the plot last August so we are 14 months into this without starting the build. The planning application has been one of the quickest bits so far.

It’s all a lottery. Safe to say that it’s a slow process with missed dates at every point going by my experience so far. Presumably they won’t take calls and this is all via email? In my case I emailed and politely asked for an update and when to expect a decision. Planner replied quickly and said another week (so a week beyond the planned date) They missed that due to wanting more information. In the end they were 3 weeks over due but that was only 11 weeks from beginning to end for a full planning application. This is in Scotland so the process is different.

My neighbour got a horrendous quote from the DNO to supply two holiday homes he was building. (£65k) His son is a joiner and he advised him to buy digger as he’d make his money back. It cost him £14k and he reckons it’s saved him £50k in excavating work plus he’s done more landscaping than he otherwise might have done. Better still he thinks it’s worth more than he paid for it and has been reliable. He’s telling me to get one too but my challenge is my plot is rural with no immediate neighbour and loads of farm equipment gets stolen around here. I would do if we lived on the site.

We let our 1 acre paddock go wild at the last house. We cut lawn tractor wide paths through it with hidden seating areas. It was great and we used it more than the garden.

Movie watching, music streaming etc assuming the main internet hubs were still up which is pretty likely

Buying batteries and charging them just in case isn’t a bad idea if the charging is done off peak. My car has a V2L option and we rarely have less than 20% state of charge so we can run a few things from that. Most likely a few lights, a small induction hob, charging phones and Starlink.

Since we are correcting stuff. It’s fewer zeros not less.

It’s exactly what will happen like panic buying fuel which we know people will do.

The NG has explained this as a worst case scenario planning and say it’s unlikely to happen. Their plan includes bringing coal power stations back on stream to make up the shortfall and implementing load shifting which is the more interesting plan and something that should/will become the norm. If we do have an intense cold snap it’s not likely to go on for weeks so even if we do have rolling power cuts it will be very short term.

Good effort. Congratulations. You must be really pleased with the new hoose. Looks ‘triffic.

We did ‘blind’ testing and even my kids with their young ears couldn’t tell the difference between the various bits of kit.

Tannoy DC3000s. I also have a pair bought new some 30 years ago at a discount as my neighbour worked at the Tannoy factory. During lockdown a local HiFi place had the idea to loan out his demo gear as he figured it might be safer and he might sell some of it. At one point I had £30k of speakers and turntables at home. I was in the market to upgrade my old Tannoys so compared them directly against some big floor standers from PMC and Fyne Audio. After extensive listening I concluded there was nothing in it and kept my 30 year old speakers. Interestingly the Fyne Audio F702s I had on loan are technically the successor to the DC3000s as a similar design and the Fyne team are ex Tannoy.