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Tuesday 9th Heavy overcast and very windy again. 25F/-4C outside, 47F/8C in the living area and 43F/6C in the kitchen and bathroom. The forecast is for -12C overnight lows at the end of the week. It reached 50F indoors after a whole day of 25F and gales.
A walk to the lanes in an unpleasantly cold wind. I had my jacket hood fastened firmly under my chin but still needed my gloved hand to protect my face at times. The main road was clear today. Though the lanes still a passable mess of thinly packed and crumbly snow. Probably blown off the unhedged [prairies] fields.
By sheer coincidence it has just been announced that a Danish, home owner's, energy improvement fund will soon become available. Probably no later than March. 675million Danish Kroner is about £80 million British pounds. Claimed to be double that which was available last year. Which I never heard about in the news. That'll be the present government being elected on a "climate" mandate. 😎
Compare that sum to the 200 billion to be spent on a planned, offshore wind farm. Which will ensure huge, quarterly bills far into the distant future. For those few who can afford them. The "stick and carrot" system of Danish, national CO2 reduction. If nobody can afford the bills then they don't use any energy.
Except in defeating the Danish tax system using the Black Economy. No builder's or tradesmen's receipts? No 25% VAT. 👍 I wonder if that works on luxury Tesla model subsidies? For the landed, Danish upper classes and absentee, Russian landlords? Wont the planned "energy island" be a sitting target for terrorism or attack by rogue nations with gas and oil to sell into a dwindling market?
How many decades before the vast CO2 footprint [in concrete alone] is "paid off?" Hasn't anybody heard of democratising energy? Now would be an excellent time to develop low voltage DC domestic systems to get rid of the hundreds of billions of power supplies. Putting solar panels on domestic roofs while they are being properly insulated? Nah. Where would be the [fat] profit in that?
The previous arrangement for Danish home improvements has been only a slight reduction in taxation on the cost of the whole project. Not an actual monetary grant for home improvements per se. So the home owner has to stump up literally hundreds of thousands of Kroner [tens of thousands of pounds equivalent] to receive a paltry tax reduction after the event. Heat pump installation? £15k? External insulation? £15k? New "energy" windows? £15k?
No doubt with all the usual petty limitations, time wasting paperwork and a complete lack of monitoring on cheating. So most of the allocated funds will go straight to local civil servants salaries and big business.
All sitting in the comfort of their centrally heated and palatial offices. Decorated with original works of Danish modern "art" and costly but horribly uncomfortable, Danish architect designed furniture. The more badly designed and uncomfortable, the more costly it is. The same goes for the "art."
Once the "home improvement"project has been completed, the home will be considered improved and instantly gain an increase in its official valuation. Leading to increased taxes for the life of the building. Plus all of the endlessly multiplying, assorted, extra taxes of course.
Though, hopefully, offset against the slightly reduced cost of heating. Or, far more likely, improved comfort, but at slightly increased expense. Because most Danes seem to wear only their underwear while at home in winter. Mind you, I am basing this observation on having seen less than ten "locals." Usually running out to the official dustbin site on the verge in their undies. While [always] leaving the door wide open behind them. Perhaps they were all paying lip service to the government's admonition to open the windows several times a day? To clear out the stale air and carcinogens from their wood stoves.
Perhaps I'm just a [rather old and bitterly cold] cynic? I slept with two thick jumpers on, last night, over full, thermal long johns and thick, loop pile "farmer's" socks. Even the mouse mat is too cold for comfort this morning. So I have pulled the cuff of the stretched [charity shop bought] jumper down over my hand. I have my fleece hat and thick down jacket on over a fleece jacket and two jumpers as I sit here at the keyboard. I could see my breath in the kitchen and bathroom just now. Best avoided! 😱
It's not all bad news though. At least we don't have a huge stack of filthy, industrial pallets. Or demolition waste "decorating" the entire garden. To be regularly chainsawed into firewood year after year. Then fed into a pre-war, water heater that looks like an oversized, cast iron radiator. Like a number of my neighbours have for literally decades. Including during record breaking, heat waves. Are we witnessing a "thriving" traditional, Danish, cottage industry? 😉
It took years to get the system working [almost] properly. Probably because the clowns who dug the trenches for the new pipes used upturned, repeatedly half-empty, beer bottles as "bubble levels." 😇
The pumped sewage system still floods after heavy rain. Causing stoppages and backup in the pipes. So the toilet cannot be flushed without the risk of a free "shoe shine!" They have dug up the pipes on the front field a couple of times over the years with only marginal improvement. The bath plug hole still gurgles loudly when we flush the toilet after rain. 😝
When we bought our rural home hovel there were no drainage pipe joints, at all, under the bathroom floor. As I discovered when I dug up the badly crumbling concrete myself. To allow shiny, new, PVC drainpipes to be fitted for the new, officially approved system. Whereupon I discovered a large sump of stinking, black sewage under the entire bathroom floor! With the toilet emptying directly into "the dark grotto." It's no wonder the house is subsiding!
Only a short length of concrete pipe was aimed roughly out through the wall below ground level into the septic tank. The outlet of which was carried into an open sewer/beck at the bottom of the garden. Before wending its way picturesquely though the Danish countryside.
Leaves and twigs would regularly block a drain grating out in the middle of the back field. Leading to a large lake of free "fertilizer" for the farmer who owned the land. We used to joke that we should start a boat hire business. Because the flooding happened so often. It still floods, but in a more modest way than times past. I often see the bright reflections of the sky in the overgrown back gardens. While I'm out on my morning walks.
Let's be careful out there! 😊
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