Heard recently that the govt is going ahead with bringing in a subsidy for domestic solar hot water systems, whereby you get paid 18p or so per kWh of heat that you generate (as well as saving off your gas bill, of course).

It's estimated that a typical 20-tube installation on a south-facing roof will pull down somewhere around £400-500 for you per year through this subsidy: not bad.

There is a snag, though, which is that the subsidy isn't payable for installations on houses with combi boilers: only for those with the more traditional cylinder-plus-boiler setup. Not because there is any technical drawback to using solar-heated feed to a combi, or efficiency penalty, or anything like that: that's not an issue. It's simply a policy decision.

This is probably a bit galling for anyone who thought they were being nice and eco-friendly by installing a combi boiler, as previous govts persistently urged us all to do. But fair enough, maybe they are thinking that encouraging solar adaptation of older boiler systems is going to clean up more of the low-hanging carbon-emission fruit.

But this is where the title of this post comes in. It'll cost you about £3000 (say) to rip out your lovely efficient new combi boiler and replace it with a cylinder-plus-boiler system. With the subsidy guaranteed to rise with inflation for 20 years, you'd repay that and be quids in before too long.

Hmm.

Has anyone got experience of, or knowledge about, collecting grey water for garden use?

My current plan is to attach a water butt to the external downpipe from our shower, like the one that collects rainwater on the guttering downpipe. What do I need to consider?

For example, does gribble collect in the butt, that might need clearing out or treatment? What's the pH of the collected water going to be like? Do you need to let it stand before using it on the garden? And other such things that I haven't thought of.

We had the voting session for our book group at the weekend, where we decide what will be read over the next 18 months or so. It was combined with "cook group", a one-off variant in which we all brough along some food of a literary nature, rather than reading a book as normal. (My effort was a pie with the words "Life of" in pastry on the top.)

You might remember I asked you for suggestions a little while ago -- thanks to everyone, especially to secondhand_rick whose offering won popular approval with the group.

( Bookage )

If I was a good person I'd link each of them to the appropriate Amazon page, but I'm not, so I haven't.

( Etceterage )

This interested me:

( Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance )

( Curtains for the office )

( Taking drastic steps )

( Housey housey )

Anyway, that's probaly enough rambling, those of you who got this far without falling asleep. Have a good day!

I'm back online now after the house move, although only via 56K dialup at the moment -- will be another week or so until ADSL activated*.

I don't think I'm going to be able to read through the acreage of old friends' page, so if you've posted anything which I ought to know about, could you please tell me about it again here?

I won't blurge on about the house etc now, as things are still pretty hectic with redecorating and so on. Suffice to say it's all basically lovely and everything is good with us. Hope likewise with you!

---

* (Thanks to more BT useless-bastardry, which I won't go into here.)

It's all suddenly got official -- we exchanged contracts this afternoon, and we're moving house next Thursday. Yikes! Goodbye Kings Avenue, hello London Road!

Preparatory to moving we need to replace some skirting-board in the living-room. I've pulled the old board off, but the nails which were holding it are still embedded firmly in the wall and I can't work out how to get them out without pulling out large chunks of wall. But they're too flush for me to get a hacksaw in and cut them off. Or should I just make hollows in the back of the new board (which I'm going to be gluing on) to accommodate their heads? They're big old rectangular-cross-section things and look like they've been there for some time...