Big J

I guess it still shouldn't preclude the idea of building properly insulated homes. We had friends who were in Devon (now Cumbria), one of whom was Swedish, from Mora (the start of the Northern Wilderness, close to the Norwegian border). She said that her parents visited in winter in Devon, they hated it and complained about the cold. Keep in mind Mora is a good 10c colder. Combination of the damp, the wind and the crappy houses. I was looking at the UK government data for new builds and energy usage. 2017 figures are 125kwh/square metre per year. That's a little over 4 times what our 65 year old house uses. How can the developers be allowed to build such atrocious houses in the 21st century? And to hark back to an old bugbear of mine, I think all season tyres are the best choice for the UK. You're not stuck up shit creek without a paddle in winter conditions.

Very interesting! If only the mass house builders took your approach of energy conservation. I've tried challenging them on occasion through Facebook, but their media teams are always incredibly vague about any environmental standards and just say they adhere to regulations etc etc. The UK climate, whilst mild, is actually quite difficult at times for maintaining a warm home. We always found (in the succession of shitty old farmhouses we lived in) that a few degrees above freezing with wind driven rain stripped the heat so quickly. And that is pretty much the typical weather of a British winter. It's been a bit damp and grey here this month, and we had a chunk of snow, but it's nearly always close to being perfectly still. Lack of wind also helps with lack of drafts too. We have a few windows open all the time, but it doesn't have much bearing on the warmth of the house. The geothermal heating system has a curious thermostat system on it too - it's external. It's preprogrammed to provide a certain amount of heat at certain temperatures, meaning if we use our secondary heating, it doesn't affect the heat output of the geothermal. So we set the geothermal to 17c and use the heat pump and fire a bit. Living areas are kept at 20c, bedrooms 18c and basement about 15c, though all windows are open a bit in the basement for drying clothes.

Nice. You've hit the nail on the head I think. The heat source is secondary in importance to the insulation. The UK has never had the incentive to insulate properly because of the relatively mild climate and ample supply of North Sea gas. Times change though. Here, highly effective insulation is none-optional. Your typical Wimpy home wouldn't last a single winter here, and we're in the mild part of Sweden! I wish your wife a speedy recovery

I am not sure. There is a lot of hydro production in the north of Sweden, and it's generally cheaper up there.

I reckon you're seriously underestimating the kwh in your logs and oil.... 1kg of 20% MC wood contains 4 kwh of energy, of which 3.2 - 3.5 kwh will be emitted to the room/heating system (assuming 80-88% efficiency). So, I reckon that our two heat pumps are using 20 kwh (the rest is hot water, dishwasher, washing machine, general house stuff) a day at the moment (at an average external temp of 0c, which would be considered a cold snap in the UK) which is roughly equivalent to 6kg of logs. I regard that as extraordinarily efficient. Similarly, 20 kwh is 2 litres of heating oil, though our heat pumps have a COP of around 4, so we're actually getting about 80 kwh to the house, which is equivalent to 8 litres.

It averaged £0.215 on the bill for October, but it might be a bit lower this month. We aren't on a great tariff as we bought our house just as everything kicked off in Ukraine with the subsequent energy crisis. The south of Sweden doesn't have much hydro and is more reliant on gas and to a lesser extent nuclear. Either way, it's probably one of the cheapest countries for electricity right now. Or least expensive, depending on which way you look at it!

I think it'll be about £175-200 for the month. Not certain as the tariffs are rolling.

I think you misunderstand. 30 kwh is the total electricity usage for everything. That's 98% of our heating too. Our house is about 240 square metres.

A lot less now than we used to. It's been averaging about 0c here for the last ten days (day and night average). We use the stove(10kw, in the kitchen, which is 35 square metres and open to the upstairs) to supplement a bit. I reckon we've maybe used a barrow a week so far. The primary heating is geothermal and the other secondary heating is an air to air heat pump in the living room. Total power consumption is about 30 kWh a day at the moment. If our house here was as thermally inefficient as our last house in Devon, we'd be utterly f**ked

Current polls put: Think we were right to leave: low to mid 30s % Think we were wrong to leave: low to mid 50s % Around 12% answer that they don't know. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/11/17/one-five-who-voted-brexit-now-think-it-was-wrong-d

I think that there is a general acceptance of it now, but also an increasing awareness that is was just a plainly bad idea. I imagine it's like losing a foot. It's gone, you can't do anything about it, you have to make the best of the situation, but you still yearn for the time when you had your foot and accept that life was better with it. I do believe that a lot of the sentiment that fuelled the Brexit vote stemmed from a feeling of loss of identity in the UK. If you consider how the UK's standing on the world stage has diminished since WW2, how the manufacturing sector has diminished and how issues of poverty are becoming more and more relevant, the context for a leave vote as a form of protest is much more understandable. It's now over 6 years since the vote took place. 6 years to process, negotiate, instigate, capitalise and make a positive case for leaving. And after 6 years, if the vote were held again tomorrow, the remain vote would be far, far stronger than the leave vote was in 2016.

It's overly simplistic to look at it in this manner. £450 a day is lovely, especially as an increase from £200, but that money has to come from somewhere. Massive pay rises are inflationary, and the money to pay for them isn't coming from efficiency savings. It's coming from charging the customer more, which is also inflationary. Couple that with the massive amount of red tape around our borders on import/export, and you have further inflationary pressures. These factors are all part of the reason the UK is struggling so badly to reign in inflation. I'm all for improving the quality of life for people, be that through better pay or whatever. It cannot be done overnight though.

Apologies. I missed it before. £200 a day seems like less than brickies were paid up in Scotland, which is the last time I engaged with them. £200 is what I used to pay my chainsaw operatives as a minimum, provided they were good. Chainsaw operation is more expensive than brick laying and just as hard work, I dare say. It's a decent enough living, but maybe not quite so much now with the cost of living increases.

Yep, very much agree. If there was a single, solid benefit of Brexit, the Tories would have been shouting it from the rooftops. Their silence is very telling.

Now you're asking! It's about ten years since my wife last worked with it (kids and life and all that). Firstly, it's a massive carbon store. Secondly, low grade timber is something that's grown in large quantity in the UK. The climate produces fast growth, low quality timber. Thirdly, wood is naturally insulative, whereas breeze block is a thermal bridge. Fourthly, wood is hydrophilic, and plays a part in moisture regulation of the internal environment. Not the case with masonry. There are loads more, but those spring to mind.

Acharacle. Acharacle Primary School : Timber Development UK TIMBERDEVELOPMENT.UK Acharacle is a small, remote community on the south-west tip of Loch Shiel. For many years the village had campaigned for a new primary school and community space to replace the old... I stress that the issues were resolved and the school has been performing beautifully. The climate there is truly one of the worst imaginable. Constantly windy and extremely wet.

Kept punching holes in it with nail guns, amongst other things.

With architectural and engineering projects (as I am sure you are aware), you have the local contractors and the lead contractors. The school is constructed using a technique called brettstapel, which involves using low grade timber doweled together to form structural panels. It was at the time very specialised, the panels were made in Austria and transported over. The Austrian team's job was to erect the shell of the building and get it airtight. I went up for the airtightness test with my wife - the tester (an enthusiastic Yorkshireman) said it was the most airtight building he'd ever tested that wasn't underground. The local contractors were employed for the fitout and finishing. Being a Highland Council project, the architects had only limited control of who was chosen, and I was not saying blaming the local contractors for any kind of negligence, only saying that they were not used to working at the standard set by the Austrian team. I used this is an example of the sometimes apparent skills gap in certain professions between local contractors and foreign contractors.

It's too late and I'm too tired to address every point, but I'll address this one. It's probably the most thermally efficient school in Britain. It requires no heating except for Monday mornings and is subject to all the weather on the West Coast of Scotland. The very last thing Highlands and Islands Council did on this school is cheap out. It's just built to a higher standard than the British contractors were used to. And apologies for forgetting you're in Angus. Not quite Aberdonian 😁

I do not mention your wage as a mark of disrespect, far from it. You bring it up fairly regularly, and today is the first time I've referenced it. My point is that your lofty salary (when compared to the UK average), along with the fact that you mostly work offshore, means that you are inevitably going to be a little disconnected from what constitutes normal. Plus Aberdeenshire is a bit odd anyway I agree that some trades need to be paid better. I'd also argue that some need to have their pay cut. There is also the question of productivity and skill. UK workers are often less productive and less skilled. A school that my wife's architecture practice built over ten years ago ran into difficulties when local joiners didn't seem to understand the concept of air tightness and kept breaching the air tightness membrane on an Austrian timber kit. This caused issues. I don't know what the answer is Andy. Yes, some wages need to go up, some need to come down and there needs to be a general wealth transfer from the top 1% down to the lower echelons. Society is getting progressively less equal and Brexit isn't helping this.

Not at all. But to have to jack up the wages of construction workers already on £50k plus, often by £10k or more, is only going to fuel inflation. Andy, the difficulty is that your perspective is warped by your income. For the great majority of people, their wages are far far lower and they manage OK. If everyone was on your level of income, then inflation would be catastrophic and the UK wouldn't be competitive in any market. And also, wages can only go up if economies are made elsewhere. How else would they be paid for except for with end product price rises? I am sure that your average Brexiteer didn't vote leave in order to increase their cost of living.

Well there is that, but another example would be construction workers. I remember my brother saying that they had to dramatically up the wages of construction workers on their engineering site just to keep them as the exodus of European builders meant there was a serious shortfall on the housing developments. Brickies weren't exactly on minimum wage before hand!

Beware of the leopard!!