openspaceman

In that case it is immaterial whether it meets building regs (and they are not post dated on installs prior to Part J 2002 IIRC). From looking at the picture it could comply depending on the height above the roof and horizontal distance from window and ridge. Either way having the extension fitted by someone who is qualified to self certify the flue makes sense, if you can find someone, else whole new flue.

I doubt shooting will be much of a control, can get expensive too. Yes and getting a trapped rodent, or two, out of a live trap and killing it humanely can be problematic. I never did grasp how to break a squirrel's neck as it poked out of the trap cleanly. So I favoured tunnel traps but some of the new tree attached re settable ones look useful.

From research Judith Rowe din in the 70s it is not numbers of squirrel per se but young males displaced by males with territories that cause the damage. Also damage is related to phloem width, so if the tree puts on a spurt of growth, say after a thinning has removed a bit of competition, then they are attracted to that tree. Often the damage will start from a "stance", either the ground or a branch, so formative pruning may reduce the chance of damage to the valuable part of the stem. When I started the damage was virtually only on beech and sycamore but now the grey squirrels are more catholic in their species. Yes I do not expect the younger foresters will appreciate the form and size of beech trees we used to sell into the furniture industry any more than they could appreciate the huge field grown billowing elms of my youth. As a nation we have not appreciated the damage to timber nor the effect on wildlife (especially dormice) that grey squirrels have done. It is also a reflection on how badly incompetent the workforce was in the application of a useful control, warfarin, whose use had to be banned because of universally poor practice.

Well I doubt they did, originally when testing smoke you drew it through a paper filter and compared the greyness against a chart, then they started talking about PM10 (microns) and then PM2.5 as the equipment got to be able to discriminate better. My cheap PM meter takes snapshots of the air and counts the size and amount of reflections off particles in just the same way a CD player responds to the pits in the CD. The PM values are a subset of the overall particulates and the smaller particulates are a yet different subset. BTW I think petrol engines emit more ultra fine particulates but they are too small to impact on mucous tissues and get exhaled.

I've nothing against diesels, still have a pre dpf car, it's the fuel that makes the problem. Back in the day I mostly ran petrol work vehicles (pug 504, LR and hilux), true they used more fuel (about 1/5th) but they were cheaper to buy and service but then I always aimed to work withing 20 miles of home.

That's right; I volunteer on some rights of way vegetation and surface maintenance and we are not allowed to remove any wood. Actually since covid the organisation has fallen down and only three sessions have taken place, none since July, which is of course when the major vegetation problems arise.

Not sure what that is about but the machine looks quite similar, I wonder if that engine unit would bolt on my gearbox.

Is that the single cut model sold by Barrus? I preferred this for lightness and still have the handle, cutters and gearbox in the hope of finding an engine. It's real old school with a throttle lever that you had to learn to operate with finger or thumb. Much better cut than my current makita.

AKA a hovel

Ah I see.

Actually the circulation due to buoyancy is quite small so a very low power fan can have a big effect, think why hot air balloons are so much bigger than helium ones. I have a ceiling fan, mostly used for circulation on hot days but we did use it to de stratify the air when the wood burner was in that room. The instructions were to reverse the flow when using it to de stratify but we found it better just to blow down,

Yeah I would go on a Stirling engined one just for that reason but don't use my peltier one anymore.

I cannot see that as being necessary as hot air rises up the stairs anyway, it is getting it distributed on the ground floor where a fan comes in handy,

Tends to jam the single roller on the Dosko which can make chipping tedious. It's the same with any wood than has a punky exterior but have not experience the problem with more modern chippers.

Are you sure that's not woolly aphid, it looks a bit fluffy for mildew

That pinging opening and newsreel pictures of grunts walking down a dusty road evokes such memories. This played on the 8 track in the bug as we drove to finthen.

Yes that is probably the easy way, voltage from panels converted to AC by an off grid inverter and then charge car with a Zappi. I suspect that will be a 15-20% poorer performance than if you could run DC straight from the panels and into the car battery via a MPPT charger.

Well of course I agree, I bought my panels at the same time my car was new, they were similar in price, and I chose to forgo a modest new car at the time and acquired it five years later instead. BTW in the absence of panels and battery my electricity bill would still only be £1050 at today's capped price so one needs to be careful with what is used anyway.

Well I agree with you to a large extent but the problem is the old houses,like mine, that defy straightforward solutions to insulate them. They are a very large portion of the housing stock, no reason that new builds couldn't be better though. Does anyone have figures for number of houses, semi-detached, terraced verses flats, apartments etc, Also it is something to do with the extremely poor standard of policing building regulations that means a lot of techniques for preventing things like cold bridging are compromised by poor application. I do actually have a bit of experience in trying to get building workers to adhere to the instructions. BTW the latest bit of building regulations seem to make use of plastic insulation nearly obligatory over rockwool (which I prefer).

It is not free and when you consider the return on capital it is not actually a good investment compared with quite a few other investments but...

It's down to freedom of choice. I'm a bit perturbed by the amount of agricultural land that is being taken for solar pv arrays. Given that also our farmers are not being given a nod to get on and produce food in the face of similarly increased fertiliser prices I think government is failing in its prime purpose to steer industry. We have already seen a large reduction in grain protein this year because farmers did not risk spending on fertiliser and in my view we should maximise agricultural output for human consumption because food on the global market will be needed for the poorer countries where people are going to starve. For us to exacerbate that problem by out bidding them is going to be tragic.

Will you just go for charging off the 13A supply then? Should work out a lot cheaper than that, 6 panels for £1600 the inverter will be the interesting one because it will have to run off grid?? to avoid an application to the DNO. The obvious cheap way would be to stay DC but I wouldn't know how to charge an EV that way.

Everything is tracking the gas price as that is used for most of our electrcity so the wind farms and other generators with fixed costs must be doing well and yes but not by much. I just hope the big players' shareholders will let them re invest in renewables with this windfall. I still cannot fathom why, in this street of 100 dwellings almost all of which have available roof space like mine, no one else has invested in panels. I have just ordered 1.5kW more and that might extend my grid free season by a few days in March and November

You should do the sums, the heat the blocks hold will be the highest temperature they get to minus the temperature in the room you take them to times their mass times their specific heat, it will be less than you might expect. I have a fan sucking from the convection ports in my 4kW stove and blowing into the next room, through the wall, 3 meters distance. It sends 30-40 degree heat and is good enough not to need heating in any other rooms, this is a small house but solid walls.

Ah but I predate you by 20 years so might be