Re: energy in UK

On Mon, 21 Apr 2025 14:54:43 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 4/21/2025 9:48 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

The 5-to-1 is installation only, but it's hard for decreased
maintenance and repair to make enough difference to tilt the balance.

>
Hmmm, I would have thought damage from storms (branches falling on
overhead lines), "accidents" (drivers skidding in snow; drunks)
and the inevitable "road widening" operations would be very costly.

When the business folk do the analysis, if the payback time is longer
than two or three years, it simply isn't worth the investment, so
isn't done.

The service life of our lines was originally stated to be 20 years
though the utility managed to leave them in place for 40 before
they began to fail.

That's typical.

In US's New England (where I live), there is enough rock that burying
is often impossible without blasting.

>
I recall lots of "stones" in the soil but few residential area
built on "rock" -- noting that every home had a basement which
would have had to be excavated.
>
I do recall places where natural springs were common near
the surface.

It varies.  In the last house that my parents had built (in the 1960s
if I recall) had an immense boulder (with a spring) in one corner of
the basement.  They considered having it removed, which could only be
done by blasting.  While this was easily done safely, it proved far
too expensive, so the boulder remained, with its own drainage system
leading to the sea.

A house that my then widowed father bought many years later also had a
granite ledge under one part of the first floor, so the basement was a
third the size one would expect.

Here, we are plagued with /caliche/ making digging very difficult
(probably one of the reasons that basements are eschewed in favor
of slab construction).  Planting a tree requires renting a "jack
hammer" with shovel attachment to get through the caliche.  And,
digging a hole as large as you expect the root system of the
tree to become as the caliche is so impermeable.
>
[E.g., I dug 4 ft diameter holes to a depth of 4 feet for each of
the citrus trees.  The soil removed from the holes was *discarded*
and replaced with fresh topsoil.  As the arborist said, "you are
basically excavating a FLOWER POT for your tree; consider how large
a pot it will need as it matures".]
>
After excavation (for utilities), the lines have to be shaded with
sand and other fine materials to prevent "stones" from impinging
on the cables as the ground shifts (subsidence from groundwater
pumping).
>
Yet, this is the norm for new developments.  Hard to imagine it would
be mandated solely for aesthetics...

Thankfully, in New England we don't have such problems.

Closest was New Jersey, where our back yard was hard-pan clay - it
took a pickaxe to dig that stuff up.  Which I did, precisely to make a
flower bed.

The original US example of burying all services is Columbia Maryland,
which was created from cornfields as a big development, so it was
practical to install the services using very large vibrating-blade
plows before anything else was built.

Maryland is mostly mud around there.  Very fertile soil.

Joe