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From: Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: energy in UK
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:11:54 -0700
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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