Insulate article in Green Lib Dem website

[Robin]

Whereas now a truly better technology has come along - viz LEDs - it is being adopted without the need for massive subsidies extracted from billpayers or taxpayers.

[damduck-egg]

Exactly, I meant to add that. A good number of the "Free" CFL's we have will never see use now and are destined for a WEEE bin when I remember.

G H

[Huge]

Damn those free markets, eh?

+1

[Tjoepstil]

+100

[tabbypurr]

and all that money wasted on silly lampholders wouldn't & shouldn't have happened.

It's the usual game of politicians enforcing their ideas of what's good for us on us, on matters where they're too ignorant to avoid being a nuisance. Ignorant & patronising.

[George Miles]

So there are no mistakes of physics in my article,

Just things i could have said and didnt, andor things maybe you whouldnt have written, andor things i could have explained in more detail apart from those of you who hate all Liberals ?

george

[The Natural Philosopher]

wellyes, there are.

Only in the same way we hate flu viruses.

[Peter Parry]

There was physics in the article? Where were the calculations of heat loss, the measured (not guestimated) savings in heating costs? The evidence of drop in fuel bills? The cost benefit calculation?

Where are your temperature profiles for the wall before and after insulation? Your dew point calculations, your psychometric chart? Heating only one room makes knowing these more important if you are to avoid condensation and mould growth elsewhere. You headline interstitial condensation but then ignore it completely and talk very briefly about the quite different cold-bridge condensation.

For varying weather and time of the year what were the Relative Humidity measurements in each room in the house before and after your efforts?

because they didn't support your predefined agenda?

Subjective waffle is no substitute for objective analysis. You claim to have been blobbing foam for 10 years yet seem to have not a single measurement to prove the value of your actions.

I don't hate LibDems, especially green ones. It isn't worth the effort as they are never going to achieve anything nor in a position to do much harm.

I do dislike the muddled thinking and wilful misrepresentation of facts and distortion of reality by politicians with little knowledge. Their obsession with "image" over truth.

On the one hand you say "The solution is not to strip all external insulation from all buildings - that would cause even more deaths from cold. " (when talking about buildings which have no external insulation) yet on the other you propose that "I, we, the country, the planet, cannot afford to heat every room in every big house to summer temperatures in winter. In the winter I heat just one room, and long johns are compulsory for all guests...". Is the LibDem solution for deaths from cold to issue all vulnerable households with a free box of long johns or should poorer families turn the one and only heated room in their house into a thermal refuge and live, cook, eat wash and sleep there from September to April?

You have been told that more regulation does not mean better "protection" (from what?) nor does it make lives better. You have ignored this and the falsehood remains. You still wrongly claim "Deaths from fire and electrocution fall as building regulations improve" .

You state

No it doesn't, unless you have used the correct emissivity factor. It may not even tell you if one surface is warmer than another. It also doesn't tell you the temperature of the spot but an averaged reading biased towards cold of a circle very roughly (in the case of cheap £30 thermometers) based around the spot. Unless you know the dimension of the spot your readings may be inaccurate.

An infrared thermometer can only accurately calculate the surface temperature of an object if the emissivity of the material is relatively high, and the emissivity level on the thermometer is set close to the emissivity of the object.

You claim "Modern homes are full of flammable plastic rubbish. Especially at Christmas and Halloween." Do you have any facts to back this up? How many house fires have the fire service claimed have been started by gift wrap? What has it got to do with insulating your house?

You say "George Miles argues we need better regulation not less regulation ...Building Regulations aren't unnecessary red tape, they are Green Tape" .

You didn't respond to "Do you not think it is a good idea to reduce the burden of unnecessary red tape by properly assessing the cost and effectiveness of regulations before and after they are introduced?"

You didn't say how much you had to pay and what bureaucratic hoops you had to jump through to get regulatory approval for your alterations.

You have not said by how much UK energy consumption dropped because of previous green "initiatives" "programmes" and "obligations" which cost a fortune and promised to save vast amounts of energy. This should be bread and butter to a member of the GLD executive - facts you would have at your fingertips and publish widely to show objectively how much has been achieved for the expenditure of millions of pounds and ongoing inflation of fuel bills.

You treat draught proofing (the cheapest and simplest improvement you can make in most old buildings) ) as a bit of an afterthought and make no mention that while it can be effective there is also an essential need to have adequate ventilation. Old houses were built for several air changes per hour in cold weather as open fires drew air through the house. Curing draughts, especially if combined with heating one room only, can produce horrendous problems with condensation and health issues with mould growth especially in bedrooms..

[Andrew]

If only.

The Lib dems managed to control west Sussex county council back in the

90's.

The only two things they achieved were :-

a) Put the council tax up by 10%

b) Painted stupid red markings on all the roads in a dumb attempt at 'traffic calming'.

Over the years the red-painted road surfaces, usually at the entrance to a settlement or approach to a junction, have deteriorated very markedly because the red stuff has cracked and allowed water to collect and freeze, destroying not just the surface but the entire sub-structure too.

The local primary school used to have this stuff splattered all over the approach roads, which are now the most severely potholed roads I know of locally. Numerous 'repairs' have been made over the ensuing 20 years at god knows what cost, while the road surface is still a patchwork quilt of previous repairs and failed previous repairs.

Thanks Limp dems.

[John Rumm]

In Southend when they held balance of power, they painted red stripes round every bollard.

[Tim Streater]

Don't worry. Rumpole will soon sort out Bollard.

[bert]

CFLs should not be disposed of in normal household refuse bins but taken to a local recycling centre and treated as a standard fluorescent. Of course how many people will do this and no doubt millions will end up in land fill - so much for saving the planet.

[Peter Parry]

A few years ago a major redevelopment of a local factory near here led to the silly "low energy" pin fittings being installed everywhere. Or at least until the local building control jobsworth had been around. Immediately after that the same electrician went around taking the "low energy" fittings out and putting normal ceiling lights back in.

[tabbypurr]

that quickly became standard practice on uk.d-i-y. A total waste.

NT

[Max Demian]

So you /drive/ there in a /car/ just to dispose of a couple of CFLs? Even if your recycling centre is within walking distance, they usually won't let you walk in, and I doubt the sets of bins on street corners or in supermarket car parks take them. The same with the "small electricals" bins which are few and far between.

[bert]

In theory yes, that is what has been foisted on us, just as one would for a 6ft tube.

[charles]

we are permitted, nay encouraged, to put "small electricals" in a marked bag beside our recyclable waste bin.

[Tim Streater]

Tesco takes old CFLs, and batteries and printer cartridges. I think they are obliged to, as they sell them.

[Max Demian]

That applies to batteries, but not the other items AFAIK. I wonder what they do with the printer cartridges? Dell used to give you reply paid envelopes so you could return the old ones to them, to be disposed of I assume so they aren't reused. Charity shops and supermarkets used to collect them and the Alzheimer Society used to receive a pound for every one, so they could be refilled and sold for £10 or so. A scheme which /can/ work all right if it's done properly, though some duds are inevitable.