UK Politics Thread

I wish I hadn't read this thread today as it starts me on a bit of a rant.
Round my way all the houses (from 1953) have been insulated with cavity fill insulation. You can see as they are all pockmarked from the drilling and spraying etc. It is often done on a government scheme and back in the day especially common if you were older.
Home report flagged ours up as having had it done. I hated this but we went and bought the house anyway. 12 months after moving in and there were actual fucking mushrooms growing out the top of the wall paper at high level.

I got a company in to re-drill the walls and remove the insulation. Neighbours though I was mad but we now have a dry house and no appreciable loss of heat from what it was. Several factors - the original installation was botched and they never went above level 0, owners had raised the ground level and introduced planting against the house which brings more moisture above the DPC line, and general repairs of the render hadn't been done.

We have now decorated and repaired outside and house is back good.

Then the neighbour (semi-D) is getting his walls drilled one day. Turns out there is another scheme to get a free new boiler and insulation. They already have insulation but to qualify for the boiler they have to take the insulation. So these guys are taking out the old insulation, throwing it away and putting in new stuff just so he can save 4 grand on a new condensing boiler (which will be outlawed in a few years anyway) Where is the sense in that? This is about a month after having painted his house, which he needed to do again because of all the drilling.

Another neighbour got the exact same process done just last week. The generator for the drilling was running constantly for 2 days and when they left, the kerb was thick black with emissions. The saving in emissions for his heating will likely be dwarfed by the emissions from 2 days of a fucked up jenny. But a box has been ticked.

He really is. Houses are a balance. As soon as you upset the balance you're fucked. But so many people just blindly accept their houses being damaged because 'i'll save money on my heating bill'

Another thing that annoys me is when the boiler scheme people come round they ask if I want a free boiler. Then I say do i have to take cavity insulation. they say yes. I say, it's pish and had it taken out. They say 'ah that will have been the old poor quality stuff' like when they did it originally they would have said this is great stuff just like they do now.

I can see your point but loads and loads of houses have cavity insulation without any issues whatsoever. The real issues here is cowboys installing it badly. 

I'll join the "derail the uk politics thread to the cavity wall insulation thread". Used to do research on energy performance of uk housing stock and also had some experience with effects of cavity wall insulation in my 1920s ex-council semi. AFAIK (or remember), the problem isn't generally with the insulation itself but rather that older buildings weren't constructed to expect that level of airtightness and thermal resistance in the building envelope. This can lead to excess moisture getting trapped. Had some minor problems with this in our house but was relatively easy to fix using disposable dehumidifiers in affected areas (mainly the stairs and landing) where there was a lack of heating and/or ventilation.

If Richard fucking Madeley can justifiably laugh in your face, you goofed up really, really badly.

Starmer's "Road to Nowhere Ahead" essay is about as revolutionary and inspiring as you would expect.

14k words to get to this bullet point summary:


So, hard work and family = good, government and business = sometimes good, sometimes bad. About covers the platitudes.

(Still prefer him to magical-fucking-grandpa Corbyn, though they're approaching similar levels of uselessness)

Amazing takedown thread

Plenty of houses have cavity insulation yes. It is pretty much required now to meet U-Values.
Cavity Fill insulation is different. This completely fills the cavity and provides direct routes for moisture to travel from outside to in.
It is also exclusively installed in properties that do not have any moisture mitigation measures to stop passage of moisture from inside to out.
There are even certain types of wall tie manufactured in a certain time period that can be corroded by the materials used in cavity fill insulation.
As elstoof says, the long term benefits are far outweighed by the costs of manufacture transport and installation. Then getting the guy round to repair the render, and the painters round to paint the house.
And all these boilers that are only 8 years old getting replaced.

I understand that's pretty normal for Fabian Society guff. It's all just noise until Conference and Manifesto time anyway. No one pays any attention, certainly not your average voter.

Got to love how arrogant they are, pick a cause and claim you are the same. Sure there was brexit types were saying back in 2016 "HISTORY WILL PROVE US RIGHT!!!111".

Seems like a pretty fair argument to me.

🤷‍♂️

Well yeah obviously history will decide but I’d say you have a different weight of evidence to claim that about climate change rather than those other two.

It's so infuriating to see the BBC (and the opposition, frankly) pussy-foot around the issue, not asking representatives or experts the reasons. They talk about relaxing visa rules as a solution but that's it.

Statesmen-esque. Clearly.