Re: energy in UK

On 4/21/2025 4:53 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

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.

That's likely the case.  "Let the next guy deal with those costs in
HIS budget...".  Individuals and corporations tend to think in different
terms (though many individuals are similarly short-sighted)

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.

I recall large car-sized boulders sitting on the surface (favorites
for young kids to play on/around).  But, note that any time I had
to dig, in the yard, it was just annoying "stones" that would impede my
shovel's progress.
[I also learned, at an early age, to shovel stone with a pitchfork,
not a shovel!]

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.

We had clay -- but clay is relatively easy to cut/extract as a
shovel edge will penetrate it.   (We had "clay pits" where
brick businesses had extracted the clay to make bricks and
left the holes to fill with water -- which they dutifully
retained due to their high clay content.)

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.

Colorado suffers from a relative abundance of bentonite.
It is a type of clay that retains moisture and swells,
considerably (~20% by volume) -- and similarly contracts
as it dries.
Building, there, *requires* a geological survey of the property
to assess the extent of its occurrence on the plot.  It
can easily fracture foundation walls, cause roads to heave,
break sewer/pipe-lines, etc.
[If you've ever seen images of the pronounced "cracks" in such
soil as a result of drought, you can understand how those layers
had more volume when wet than they now have, dry.]
Electing to build in the presence of such soils requires different
building designs to accommodate that expansion [and contraction]

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