Thursday 2 December 2010

Under-road heating

Courtesy of a raccoon I am led to this website.

So instead of pouring untold £bn into projects that will be of no value to this country (EU, Windmills, etc) why are we not investigating and utilising this knowledge? Or, as Mark Wadsworth asks:
"But if the warmenists have seriously pencilled in annual expenditure of £14 billion for the UK (one per cent of GDP), might it not be a good idea to spend a few quid on salt/grit, snowploughs & shovels, and maybe bunging some of the millions of unemployed people a few quid to go out and get it sorted? In theory, as long as the daily costs are less than £1.2 billion (or about 60 million man-hours, if you work on a full-cost basis of £20 per hour), we are ahead of the game." (my emphasis)
especially if those unemployed were granted tax-free status for their short-term efforts.

It obviously does take less than one brain cell to become a politician.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

Country's f***ed.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Interesting website, WfW. I always thought something like that should be possible, since every time we have snow and ice like this, manhole covers are always warm enough to be free of it.

I've often pondered if there is a way of channelling the heat from sewage into underground pipes along road tarmac, but the solar capture idea is far more sound.

I expect there is a huge initial outlay though, which is probably why politicians (being short-termist by nature due to our electoral system) have never gone for it.

Witterings from Witney said...

JH: at times, which I was! No seriously, quite agree as you are well aware.

DP: Appreciate the intial outlay would probably be large, but new road build - with a rolling upgrade progamme? Beats £45million a day to Brussels!

Also MW's suggestion is well worth considering....... Probably help cure the obesity problem in a few cases too!