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The technology thread

I've got a pretty sweet deal of it atm,
I pay for prime, brother pays for Disney + and parents pay for netflix then we share our accounts - if they crackdown hard then we're screwed but even Netflix's new crackdown shouldn't affect account sharing on such a small scale

BT Sport I get discounted through my phone but will probably cancel if the PRTV season pass is a reasonable amount (only use BT for rugby and UFC but I've been watching UFC the morning after recently so might as well torrent it if I'm not watching live)
 

Interesting. Turned my back yard into a drive way and next door neighbours have have fake grass in their garden.
Never been a fan of fake grass. Sure the nice green visually is nicer but when you can see all the other grass has gone brown and you've got this lawn perfectly green, it just looks odd. Too much emphasis is put on highly artificial "nice looking" stuff. If I get a place with a garden in the future, I'd keep a wild area as well as a lawn, assuming I have a garden big enough for both... Gimmi that lottery win or a Mrs Sunak equivalent.
 
IMO it doesn't even look nice in the first place - far too uniform at the best of times.

Mind, we got rid of all our grass during the first lockdown now have an enlarged patio, some raised beds and wildflower turf with pathways through it
 
Never been a fan of fake grass. Sure the nice green visually is nicer but when you can see all the other grass has gone brown and you've got this lawn perfectly green, it just looks odd. Too much emphasis is put on highly artificial "nice looking" stuff. If I get a place with a garden in the future, I'd keep a wild area as well as a lawn, assuming I have a garden big enough for both... Gimmi that lottery win or a Mrs Sunak equivalent.
We got artificial grass as our grass was all but dead and the garden is quite small and enclosed so cant see other grass to compare it to in winter, also livingroom is right off the back garden and wife wanted cream sofa and carpet....artificial grass was a no brainer given the dog would just run out then in with muddy paw prints.

There are different shades of green too as some are really bright in your face. Colour we chose was 2 greens and a brown so 3 different colours to add depth and honestly i wouldnt go back to grass now its just so easy.

Ive been away all summer but even before the heat waves it still got very hot at times. So will have to be careful when i got a kid playing there in the future.

Does feel good too tbh. Dog loves sleeping outside on it in the day as its soft.
 
To be honest, I am not a gardener, have no interest in it and maintaining a garden is a pain - cost and time. I can see why peeps do opt for the fake grass, but didn't realise the downsides until I read that article.
 
Each year there are more gardens lost and I subjectively see a lot less butterflies and birds as time goes by. For those looking for a lower maintenance but environmentally friendly option for a garden I'd suggest:

1) remove grass and make garden area exclusively soil plus only shrubberies/bushes/heather/small trees and add some paving slabs as stepping stones to walk around your garden. You'll need to cut some of the shrubs once per year, water them once a fortnight in summer and hoe the exposed soil about once every 4-6 weeks tops. This is not a back breaking commitment. Flowers are harder work as they need more maintenance and weeds grow in them which you can't hoe without also killing the flower. There are some flowers/plants that are almost zero maintenance though.

If you want super low maintenance can do the above but get someone to put a membrane down over all the soil and then cover it in decorative bark. The shrubs should still all grow (but watering them may be more difficult, so you'd probably want to read up about that).

2) don't get a privit hedge as they grow very fast. Get cotoneaster instead as you'll only have to cut it twice a year, bees absolutely love it and it gives birds loads of berries to eat in the winter.

Basically, grass and privit hedges are very high maintenance but there are loads of alternatives that are low maintenance and equally or more kind to the environment.
 
If you're going for the environmental option, then....
Put in a pond - the bigger the better, but any (including a small water feature) is better than none.
Minimise the lawn area - wildflower is better than shrubs, shrubs are better than grass, a mix of both is the best option.
Replace fence with hedge - mixed natives (or, for future-proofing, mixed Mediterranean) is ideal. If you simply don't have room for hedging, grow climbers up the fence (and create cut-outs in the fence for hedgehogs, frogs etc to scurry around)
Add trees - flowering and fruiting for preference, but any tree is a haven for wildlife (and cooling the garden as a whole as we look to the future).
Keep a patch of dead stuff - logs, branches, brush as a home for all sorts of insects.

In terms of maintenance...
Ponds can be pretty high maintenance for the first few years, but there are various things you can do to reduce it (water black, algicide, solar pumps/filters/air stones).
Wildflower meadow needs mowing 2-3 times per year, and can be as easy to start as lawn (either on a roll or from seed). Shrubs need pruning once a year. If you have the space for both, do both, and make your own compost from the cuttings.
Hedging again needs pruning once a year. £150 will get you a multi-tool that can to the meadow, the shrubs and the hedge. 1 weekend is likely to be enough for any garden, unless we're talking "glorified field"
Trees need... basically no maintenance, bar leaf blowing in the autumn.
Bunch of dead stuff requires no maintenance at all once set up.

Most important of all - variety is the spice of life - any monoculture is bad for the environment.

If putting in a pathway, then stepping stones > gravel > self-binding > stone paving > concrete paving > asphalt. Ideally the same goes for seating/entertaining areas though the practicalities are different (and stepping stones not really viable).

My garden is small (6x8 metres, or 3x4 fence panels) in a modern (2003) housing estate. It started as a shitty lawn that wasn't surviving the builders' rubble, and a shitty "conservatory" that was too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and too damp to be used to storage. We took the conservatory down during first lockdown, and were left with a 6" deep slab of concrete for the first 3m out from the house.
We now have stone (slate) paving for entertaining, a gravel (slate) area that's always shaded, with planting through, a "large" wildflower meadow with a small pond and stepping stone (slate) path, largish raised beds, a small dry-stone (slate) wall-seat and a dead-stuff area (near the pond), climbers on the wall and part of the fence. I also have a home-made shed and bin storage with sedum roof and a few small trees / big shrubs mostly in pots until we find the best place for them.
Future plans include a "log store" bench, and replacing the fence with hedging when it does.
 
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As I had this DP...

This was after removing the "conservatory" and working out what we were going to do next
Before s.jpg

This was having just completed all the work
During s.jpg

And here it was about 2 months later, and starting to mature
After s.jpg

The "Plan"
Garden-2019.jpg

Currently, I mowed the "meadow" at the weekend, and it's all rather drought stricken, so I won't put any photos up from today. But I hope it shows what you CAN do in a small, shitty garden, with a limited budget (the patio cost about £3k, the rest was about £1k all-in.


ETA: Should probably split this all off to a generic gardening thread, as we seem to have strayed a little from the technology and environmental impact of covering your garden with plastic.
 
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Shocked Futurama GIF by MOODMAN
 
So by the end of next year 114 wind turbines in a single wind farm will power 1.1 million out of the 27 million homes in the UK. So the UK would only need roughly 2,800 turbines of the same size and battery farms (to capture energy all day and night and store the excess for use during lighter winds) to be completely energy independent and have the lowest energy prices in the world outside of places with mass solar panel coverage (which is still probably even cheaper than these huge wind turbines). The technology exists but the political will is absent so instead we'll just have the forthcoming trainwreck this winter. Bravo.

 
4EC778D5-83F6-4428-853E-DB749EFD20C4.jpeg
Loads of wind turbines off the cost of Brighton. But yes we need more, much more.
I read that solar panels are still around only 20% efficient. What else hydro plants?
i still think we will have to bite the bullet and build more nuclear power stations If we are going to get to net zero.
 
What about Hydrogen technology? I know its come a long way but am not an expert in any way shape or form.
 
So by the end of next year 114 wind turbines in a single wind farm will power 1.1 million out of the 27 million homes in the UK. So the UK would only need roughly 2,800 turbines of the same size and battery farms (to capture energy all day and night and store the excess for use during lighter winds) to be completely energy independent and have the lowest energy prices in the world outside of places with mass solar panel coverage (which is still probably even cheaper than these huge wind turbines). The technology exists but the political will is absent so instead we'll just have the forthcoming trainwreck this winter. Bravo.


I want to know how much carbon these big wind turbines take to manufacture, ship and install. When I was in uni a lecturer once said that due to their complexity and size + the fact that they're shipped around the world during manufacture + can't generate energy during either high (spin too fast and break themselves apart) or low winds (not enough energy to spin) + extended downtime for maintenance, all meaning that they take a long, long time to even break even. I don't know how accurate that was (it was a lecture on energy use in buildings), or if things have changed, or if it factored in the current surplus of energy currently wasted during high output/low consumption periods (windy nights).

They're undoubtedly great for the UK's advertised carbon footprint, but we might be offsetting that carbon somewhere else in the world where they're manufactured.

I hope I'm wrong here, because I'm all for capturing the abundance of wind energy we have as an island. I lived a couple of miles from a wind farm growing up and used to go mountain biking around the gravel roads used to service them, and have zero issues about their noise or visual 'polution'.

An ideal solution for capturing the waste energy is by generating hydrogen, I believe this would be better than huge battery farms, at least for the time being.
 
I've done a little digging and looks like my fears might be unfounded/outdated. Found the following articles discussing the environmental impact of wind turbines, and other than the obvious carbon footprint of the materials used to construct + some issues over waste blades they're very green - far greener in fact than anything other than nuclear (which brings other issues of waste).

www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/04/28/how-green-is-wind-power-really-a-new-report-tallies-up-the-carbon-cost-of-renewables/amp/

Also came across this atricle on BBC which states that in 2020 97% of Scotland's energy was produced via renewables - way to go Scotland, showing the rest of us how it should be done!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56530424
 
That's a bit depressing that a lecturer would come out with that sort of thing. It's amazing that many are conditioned to default hostility towards almost literally a licence to print free money and ensure energy independence. It just shows how much influence the fossil fuel lobby have on news outlets. The Forbes article was good thanks specifically:

"...wind power has a carbon footprint 99% less than coal-fired power plants, 98% less than natural gas, and a surprise 75% less than solar."

The main stats in my head about wind turbines are:
- they are getting larger, the larger the turbine the more cost effective they become and the wider the range of wind at which it can operate (including lower winds which seems counterintuitive)
- they'll typically last at least 20 years before needing replacement
- we can bizarrely get these suckers to float, meaning they can pretty much be deployed anywhere.

 
I want to know how much carbon these big wind turbines take to manufacture, ship and install. When I was in uni a lecturer once said that due to their complexity and size + the fact that they're shipped around the world during manufacture + can't generate energy during either high (spin too fast and break themselves apart) or low winds (not enough energy to spin) + extended downtime for maintenance, all meaning that they take a long, long time to even break even. I don't know how accurate that was (it was a lecture on energy use in buildings), or if things have changed, or if it factored in the current surplus of energy currently wasted during high output/low consumption periods (windy nights).

They're undoubtedly great for the UK's advertised carbon footprint, but we might be offsetting that carbon somewhere else in the world where they're manufactured.

I hope I'm wrong here, because I'm all for capturing the abundance of wind energy we have as an island. I lived a couple of miles from a wind farm growing up and used to go mountain biking around the gravel roads used to service them, and have zero issues about their noise or visual 'polution'.

An ideal solution for capturing the waste energy is by generating hydrogen, I believe this would be better than huge battery farms, at least for the time being.
One thing uni taught me is that many lecturers actually don't know all that much whilst having massive egos (plus acting like uni is just an extension of school rather than students are clients and they are providing a service).

I remember when I had an open day at Bath uni, the lecturer did more to put me off going there than anything else. He just spent OUR open day ranting about architects and saying the people of Hong Kong were stupid for building vertically and they should build outwards instead. The guy was a complete fruitcake just using what should have been an episode in selling the uni to just air his own misguided grievances.

Another at the uni I actually went to tried to make out we were less resourceful than Africans he met because they knew how to repurpose a car battery and we didn't. He also went on and on about how we absolutely must meet deadlines or he wouldn't mark out work but then would return it a week late.
 

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