Reply to: Crazy ideas... discuss or add your own

[vetran]

Build all new houses to be nearly completely self sufficient energy & water wise.

Insulation, air source heat, PV, solar hot water.

Grey water & rain water reuse.

At the same time retrofit social housing the same way.

Street etc lighting to go LED.

Don't nationalise energy / water firms make them far less powerful.


Park & Ride for London. Huge multi storey and high speed one stop rail/dedicated route bus/water route at reasonable rate. We aren't going to stop people using cars, we can stop them trying to use them to go to office work in London etc. Heathrow Express could be extended out to say Colnbrook and a multi storey built. Ticket cost to be less than congestion charge. Similar could be done at other compass points.

Encourage home working by tax and infrastructure benefits.

Double decker motorways.

Double rail routes (2 tracks in place of 1) .Larger multi storey trains.

Force ticket to be a right to a seat on journeys longer than 15 minutes, maximum occupancy in tubes.

Distribute business around UK. all our eggs are in London.

[DimPrawn]

We could use the gas pipes - we wouldn't need gas if we had piped hot water.

Perhaps we could pipe all the hot air out of sasguru's gob?

[mudskipper]

Number 1 is already in place in Copenhagen where waste hot water used during the generation of electricity from the local power plant is sent to residences for their heating.

We could use the gas pipes - we wouldn't need gas if we had piped hot water.

[Scrag Meister]

My pet projects (completely unfeasable) are:

1) Heat water centrally and pipe hot water through insulated pipes to houses eliminating the need for individual boilers/storage tanks etc.
2) Under road heating for snowy/icy conditions

Number 1 is already in place in Copenhagen where waste hot water used during the generation of electricity from the local power plant is sent to residences for their heating.

[amcdonald]

Yes, but where will all the Polish builders work?

Tellytubby land ?

[DimPrawn]

If there was more home working there would be less congestion, throwing more money at a problem and hoping it will just go away is so New Labour

Yes, but where will all the Polish builders work?

[amcdonald]

Totally out there idea that no one will have thought about before and will never happen.

How about update the motorway network to be sustainable over the next 50 years and address congestion areas that cost us all so much time and frustration.

If there was more home working there would be less congestion, throwing more money at a problem and hoping it will just go away is so New Labour

[DimPrawn]

Build a modern mass transit system similar to the levitating bullet monorail in Swindon that links every part of the town with town centre, alleviating the need of road transport.

[OwlHoot]

Also, if we made lorries only travel between 8pm-6am...

Failing that, a "no overtaking lorries between 7am - 9am and 4pm - 6pm unless the overtakee was going below 40 MPH" rule on the motorways would vastly reduce congestion at a stroke.

[original PM]

[QUOTE=d000hg;1805778]Roads are fine, we just need to reduce the number of cars or make them self-driving in road-trains.

Also, if we made lorries only travel between 8pm-6am...[/QUOTE]

... what...

motorway service hookers would have to change their hours?

[original PM]

back in the day (industrial revolution type day) many of the major cities had centralised steam factories which would generate and pipe steam to various factories etc for the purpose of driving machinery.

Surely it cannot be a large leap to have that as a way of heating some housing/offices?

[d000hg]

Totally out there idea that no one will have thought about before and will never happen.

How about update the motorway network to be sustainable over the next 50 years and address congestion areas that cost us all so much time and frustration.

Roads are fine, we just need to reduce the number of cars or make them self-driving in road-trains.

Also, if we made lorries only travel between 8pm-6am...

[DimPrawn]

My pet projects (completely unfeasable) are:

1) Heat water centrally and pipe hot water through insulated pipes to houses eliminating the need for individual boilers/storage tanks etc.
2) Under road heating for snowy/icy conditions

New York City steam system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Under Road Heating | Heated Roads | Solar Road Systems | Heated Cycle Tracks | Black tarmac roads absorb heat | Under tarmac heating | A38 Haldon Hill | Blacktop temperatures | underfloor heating

[OwlHoot]

BBC News - Readers' big infrastructure projects

I like the 4000mph UK/USA tunnel one best.

It's bonkers - For a start the Atlantic is still opening, at about 1cm per year, and very hot at the constructive plate margin along the seabed in the middle. Also imagine the pressure of 25,000 feet of water and half a mile of rock. The tunnel would have to be made of titanium at least a couple of feet thick, and it would need loads of ventilation shafts and a cooling system all working away non-stop like the clappers.

Slightly more practical would be a tunnel floating near the surface. But even that would need numerous vast tethers to prevent it drifting away with the winds and currents, and it would be very vulnerable to sabotage and destruction in wartime.

It would be much cheaper to develop a large ultraefficient supercavitating underwater train that could travel across the Atlantic underwater at 1200 MPH or more.

Coming down to Earth, how about a floating airport in the Thames Estuary, or roofing over motorways for a huge amount of extra growing area (which the UK may need soon).

[bless 'em all]

1) Heat water centrally and pipe hot water through insulated pipes to houses eliminating the need for individual boilers/storage tanks etc.

This was the method of heating in the house I grew up in. One huge boiler room serving the whole estate.

The main issues were (1) Poor reliability of the boiler (2) Lack of capacity, meaning those at the 'end' of the curcuit often had no heat (3) Piss-poor insulation of the large pipes running throughout the estate.

Point (3) above did go someway to satisfy MS' other unfeasible idea though.