Big J

Possibly a case of stupid people not wanting a president who is less stupid than them. I still cannot comprehend how anyone can take SCROTUS (So Called Ruler Of The United States - can't take credit for that) seriously. He is utterly incompetent.

Very sad to hear of his death. Always enjoyed him on the media show and his candid interviews with Eddie Mair on PM were at times heartbreaking. Entirely inspirational. RIP Steve.

When it comes to firewood production, I'm a firm believer that air drying is the most sensible course of action (and I say this as someone with a firewood drying kiln). Either you get on the RHI scheme, or it's very difficult to achieve an economical result without a serious amount of wood waste.

Electric heating/removal of moisture is not economical. Electricity is too expensive. Forget the dehumidifier idea.

Look like nice clean stems. The width of the sapwood band will determine the value, as they are on the small side.

Pictures and measurements would be ideal. The root is rarely used. Fell it low, leave the stem as long as possible and get some good photographs of the butt end of the log

Yes, 2 years from now. Best stacked in a windy barn. Sheltered from the rain but not protected from the wind.

Very good. I much prefer the appearance of wood as a wall covering and when it can last 100 years, why wouldn't you? Good point on the sawn finish too. A fair bit more durable than planed (slightly rougher finish has a larger surface area and wicks moisture away more quickly). Also a lot less hassle for sawmills like me. I absolutely hate planing anything.

No sealing required. It needs at least 2 years to dry. Despite being a softwood, it's as slow as oak to dry, particularly when slabbed fairly thick.

The death count attributable to religion is far higher. One example is AIDS in Africa - the pandemic is massively exacerbated by the Catholic church's opposition to condoms. Humans are nasty, unpleasant creatures and I do not think we'll ever evolve past that until we realise that all we have is this and once we're gone, we're gone. You don't need the promise of final judgement and the threat of eternal damnation to make you a better person. Quite the contrary. I believe that if people understood that there was only the here and now, we'd make more of an effort to be decent. Mull - he probably would cope with it better but it is self deluding. I would rather be honest with myself than construct some fanciful story as a coping mechanism. I have not been in that situation though, so cannot say definitely.

I understand your point, but honestly in a situation where something awful had happened to me or a loved one, religious belief would leave me asking some pretty difficult questions. My wife lost her best friend to Leukemia 6 years ago. Her husband is religious and is also a very good friend. He reconciled it as being part of God's plan, but frankly if God's plan it to inflict incurable Leukemia onto a wonderful 25 year woman then it's not any God that deserves recognition, let alone respect If I were in a situation like that, the only way I could (possibly?) come to terms with it is to accept it as it is. Part of the cruel and random nature of existence. To seek greater meaning in existence, a purpose in life is to elevate ourselves beyond what we are. Which is initially animals and finally worm food.

But if that belief is patently wrong, and it's application inflicts suffering onto billions of people, then surely it is to be criticised? We would think nothing of mocking someone who believed that the earth was flat, or that certain races were superior to others (eh, matelot?), so why should we exercise restraint with regard to religion?

Just because we don't understand the entirety of existence does not mean that we need to start inventing stories to try to explain that which we as yet don't know. There is so much that has been discovered in recent decades that was entirely abstract prior to it's discovery. I accept that science is a belief system. I have no problem with that. I know that some of what is accepted scientific fact now will be disproven at a later date. I also have no problem with that. The very fact that rigorous peer review, continued and extensive research and inspired scientific hypothesis is at the centre of my belief in the scientific process gives me great confidence that it is the soundest, most logical and most progressive belief system to have. The best you can say about religion is that it's utter bollocks. The worst is that it is a cancer on humanity.

Precisely. The propensity towards a religious disposition is a redundant evolutionary relic. It was advantageous in times of strife and poverty to have a religious belief and if nothing else, it gave you something to look forward to after your brief, miserable corporeal existence. It also offered explanation for the unexplainable and was a most effective method of controlling the masses. All these purposes for religion are obsolete and in a modern world are offensive. Religion, much like smallpox, should be confined to history and much like smallpox, the world would be a great deal better off without it.

Well given that there is precisely no evidence for any kind of celestial being, I would think that the adherence to a religious belief system is a bit of an impediment to working as a scientist. Rather like being an advocate for equal racial rights and being a member of the KKK. I might not be able to prove absolutely many aspects of modern scientific belief, but I'd much rather have confidence in a construct that constantly peer reviewed, revised and updated according the best evidence available than an archaic text that was inaccurate when first written, and has been revised and edited X number of times through history according to the desires and motives of those that reproduced it. You'd honestly find more inspiring life lessons in an episode of Coronation Street than in any religious text.

Your application of the term hard facts to something that is clearly fictional is quite amusing. All religious texts can be interpreted in any way that the reader sees fit to support almost any preconceived viewpoint. The rise of Christian fundamentalism in the US worries me greatly. It's a fundamentalism that has at it's heart a rejection of education and scientific progress. It's frighteningly regressive.

With a large overhang it should be fine. Sun and heat won't do it any great deal of harm if it's correctly screwed into place (allowing for expansion). Same applies to moisture. What other options are there in Scotland for exterior wall coverings? Stone is not even remotely economical in this day and age. Brick is almost never used. Harling looks hideous within a couple of years due to staining and mould due to the aforementioned damp. I do think that wood is the best option and most abundantly available. And I don't just say that because I produce huge amounts of cladding annually!

Cladding is an expendable wall covering and is a very effective and replaceable barrier against the weather. The durability of the cladding material is largely determined by the detailing (as in where the water run off occurs) and the overhang of the roof. Spec this right and the life expectancy of the cladding is at least 30 years. My wife's architecture practice saw houses in Bergen in Norway (similar climate to us) with untreated timber cladding over 100 years old. It's important not to treat it so that when it is eventually replaced that it is not a landfill product. I personally like natural greyed cladding.

Most of them do need to be removed. The inadequate nature of the houses extends further than simply the ability to retain heat. They are damp, poorly laid out, cramped, dark and unfit for purpose. The issue with new building in this country is that the only concept that we have of modern houses is that which the mass developers like Barratt and Wimpy inflict on us. I use the word 'inflict' deliberately as they fit your description of 'no character, soul and look like shite'. The house that I referenced in Kincraig is a beautifully crafted house of about 110 square metres, two bedrooms, spacious with huge amounts of natural light and living spaces that flow organically into one another. There is no need for us to accept houses as crap as the mass built developer homes as the standard for modern building. That would be like exclaiming that Dacia was the pinnacle of modern automotive engineering. For reference, this is my friend's house under construction (it is now complete):

The stove is only 20kw - it's the boiler that is 28kw. Our annual electricity bill is £950, but that's with daily use of the dryer and I have two large aquariums and a pond, which use a reasonable amount. Our oil cost annually is about £600. The wood is pretty much free. The estate have had our house surveyed for eaves insulation. The house is a traditional 1.5 story Scottish cottage, though the eaves section of the bedroom roof is only about 3ft or so. As I said, we really don't lose much heat from the house as this has been demonstrated with a £20,000 thermography camera. We keep a warm house. I never, ever wear a jumper in the house and I'm not even keen to wear trousers (excepting guests visiting, obviously!). I make no apology for this - I work outside in the crappy Scottish weather and wish to be warm and comfortable when at home. The climate around Edinburgh is almost uniquely pants. We have more cloudy days than almost anywhere in the UK (the famous haar that skulks up and down the Firth of Forth means every third nice day in summer is ruined by low lying cloud and mist). We have a lot of wind, rain and very little sun. I don't think that 3-4 cube a month is excessive for heating the whole house. Even if I was paying for it it would only be £220-240 a month. I had a Rayburn at the old house - no interest in boiler stoves. Without an accumulator tank to smooth out the peaks and troughs in heat output, they're a PITA to operate and I'd never have one again.

Every house up in the hills there has 10-50 cube stacked by it. It's mostly beech forest and easily 75% forest cover, so processor grade timber as far as the eye can see. Going back to the issue of insulation - the house we rented in Aviemore for a couple of years was near enough unheatable. Traditional stone built croft, minimal insulation in the roof, though it did have secondary glazing. A 15kw stove on full chat would just about get the living room to 18c (when minus 5 outside) but you'd struggle to get the bedrooms above to double digits. Even with the electric heater in the bedroom, 15c was impossible. Contrast that with a friends house in Kincraig built two years ago. 200mm Kingspan in the walls, 250mm in the roof. Three logs on the fire every two days and the house stayed at 25c. Best thing we could do is demolish these dreadful old buildings and start again.

Not to my taste personally, but such things are changeable. The only country in which I find almost all interior design to be lovely is Sweden. In the UK, we seem to have developed this awful habit of putting up massively loud flowery (and often rather shiny) wallpaper. I'm certain that in 10 years we'll hold such decorative choices in the same contempt as we do avocado bathroom suites now.

They just reduced the price too. Was 175k until earlier this week. They have lovely weather up there too (it's about 450 metres above sea level). For almost the entire month of January the temperature did not exceed 0c.

It's a rented estate house, so there are no economical grounds for doing so. Well remembered about the missus too. Internal insulation is indeed the best way to sort these old buildings out, but again, the estate aren't interested. The issue up here is that generally speaking, the nice houses outside of cities are owned by the big estates or are stupidly expensive. Given that we'll be emigrating in 2 years, there is no point thinking long term about this house. At the risk of a serious thread derail, this is the present favourite property on the house hunt in Germany: https://www.immowelt.de/expose/2CUKG4R

Takes very little time. I don't have to split the firewood small at all (45-50cm long, and about 4 times the cross section of an average log) so three or four cube an hour through the processor. 45 minutes for my wife and I to stack a 4 cube load at home in lines outside (initial drying) and then 6 months later when it goes into the store (which holds 21 cube but is still too small!!) it took three of us 90 minutes to chuck 20 cube into the store. Having a big stove that takes big logs really cuts down on handling. Not sure what else we could do to increase the thermal efficiency of the house. The loft is insulated, most of the windows are double glazed and there are no noticeable draft. Additionally, a friend of ours who took a pHd in Thermography (thermal imaging of buildings) did a quick survey of our house and said for it's age, it's quite well insulated. It's just the incredibly rubbish climate here!