One-off houses: Good or Bad?

Amtmann

ei.sdraob wrote: »

not exactly Dublin city is it


You missed my point (again) the people doing the moaning about one-off houses are hypocrites since they have no issues covering the countryside, especially coastal/western areas with windgenerators and pylons for this, which IMHO are much more damaging on the eye, also the "green" credentials of these windmills is questionable considering much pollution is generated in their making and the creation of their parts

btw I worked in power generation and have no issues with either large coal plants or pumped storage or wind generators
i also worked in cities and now countryside and see both sides of debates, I just have no patience for "green" hypocrites, they drive me up the wall, especially nowadays with the subsidization of wind at expense of whole economy

Can you clarify what you mean by "green"?
Are you labelling all those in favour of increased wind energy as "green"? And by that do you mean to say that certain posters here are ideological greens, i.e. environmentalists, or political Greens? I'm asking because some posters have requested clarification on this issue, finding your use of the term irritating. Some explanation might clear things up. Thanks.

antoobrien

ei.sdraob wrote: »

not exactly Dublin city is it

You missed my point (again) the people doing the moaning about one-off houses are hypocrites since they have no issues covering the countryside, especially coastal/western areas with windgenerators and pylons for this, which IMHO are much more damaging on the eye

Indeed there is a lot of hypocracy about this, much like the loney planet guide complementing the improved transport services and bemoaning the fact that you can no longer see the rural countryside due to the fact that we now have a (partial) motorway system.

I don't have any documentation to back this up but I believe that if wind is to be seriously used, the proposal is to have them offshore (like the ones off the merseyside coast - which i'm not sure can be seen from land).

That said calling them an eyesore is utter c**p. I remember outrage being expressed over the turbines near Indreaban saying stuff like "it ill spoil the visual amenity of the area". You can only see them from one spot of the road and the vast majority of people only use the R336 (I hope they've a good 4x4 for the boreens). Much like the windmills in Holland, they become part of the countryside. I often play golf in Gort, wondering how the turbines move when we can't feel a puff of breeze - we've gotten used to them and don't particularly care about the astetics

ei.sdraob wrote: »

also the "green" credentials of these windmills is questionable considering much pollution is generated in their making and the creation of their parts

The environmental cost is a one off, much like the construction of the massive generators that go into traditional fossil fueled or hydro plants. Moreover, because they are not buying fuel to be burned it must considerably reduce the overall environmental cost, not to mention the supply risk from failure of a single unit and the overall cost of running the power supply network.

I haven't been following this (wind, wave etc), but I haven't heard anyone seriously suggesting that we can completely cut out the traditional sources either.

marmurr1916

My sister lives in a one-off house in Co. Cork. They've been cut off for days at a time recently because of the state of the roads.

The road their house is on is surfaced for about 500 metres, then becomes a gravel track before ending at the bottom of a hill.

The surfaced part of the road has eight houses stretched out over 500 metres, not exactly rural IMO. A local farmer has nicknamed that stretch Ballymun!

That stretch of houses is neither truly rural or urban, or even suburban. It's a type of exurban development, although not truly exurban either, in the US sense of the term:

noun
a region, generally semirural, beyond the suburbs of a city, inhabited largely by persons in the upper-income group

http://www.yourdictionary.com/exurban

Amtmann

I prefer 'rurban', though it doesn't roll off the tongue very easily.

Daegerty

I'd hate to live in an estate or a flat. and just because someone lives outside the city doesn't mean they use up more energy than an urbanite, these things.

Someone living in a shoebox and regularly travels by plane easily uses up more energy than someone in a countryside with a TDi-engined car. except the fella living in the city probably boasts to all his friends about how 'green' he is for installing a few poor quality CFL's and being a vegetarian

No time for these shaggers who just want to excersize social control and deprive people of living where they want because they want the countryside to look perfect and unspoilt for them without all these annoying people 'living' there and then trying to justify it with some 'green' bs.

Electric cars will be common soon enough, at that point any extra energy usage by people living in one-off houses won't be worth fighting over

dubhthach

Daegerty wrote: »

I'd hate to live in an estate or a flat. and just because someone lives outside the city doesn't mean they use up more energy than an urbanite, these things.

Someone living in a shoebox and regularly travels by plane easily uses up more energy than someone in a countryside with a TDi-engined car. except the fella living in the city probably boasts to all his friends about how 'green' he is for installing a few poor quality CFL's and being a vegetarian

No time for these shaggers who just want to excersize social control and deprive people of living where they want because they want the countryside to look perfect and unspoilt for them without all these annoying people 'living' there and then trying to justify it with some 'green' bs.

Electric cars will be common soon enough, at that point any extra energy usage by people living in one-off houses won't be worth fighting over

How many people living in shoeboxes own private jets though? :rolleyes:


You know within a generation or two there where won't be any countryside left. You'll just have suburbia pretending to be countryside. The traditional rural way of living in Ireland was based around clacháns which were cluster of houses which formed "proto-villages"

At least when houses are in clusters (cluster could be only 10-20 houses) it's alot easier to provide services such as:

• Water
• Sewage
• Broadband
• Public transport

There is a reson why rural postoffices/garda stations/pubs are closing. It's because settlements have become too disperse. "One off houses" as we currently understand the format only date back to the late 1950's/1960's when people could afford to buy a car. They are completely car dependent.

ei.sdraob

dubhthach wrote: »

There is a reson why rural postoffices/garda stations/pubs are closing. It's because settlements have become too disperse. "One off houses" as we currently understand the format only date back to the late 1950's/1960's when people could afford to buy a car. They are completely car dependent.

Nothing to do with the country being ran into the ground from Dublin :rolleyes:

antoobrien

dubhthach wrote: »

You know within a generation or two there where won't be any countryside left. You'll just have suburbia pretending to be countryside.

Talk about rubbish, do you seriously believe that?

BTB the census figures disagree with you. To take Galway for example, there's a major shift towards urban living - in the '56 census there were about 45k people living in towns/villages of 200 or greater, out of a population of 155k. In 2006 the urban figure had increased to about 115k (out of 230k). An increase of about the size of Galway city (which accounted for 2/3 of the county's population growth). At the same time the population still has only recovered to levels seen in the 1880s.

dubhthach wrote: »

The traditional rural way of living in Ireland was based around clacháns which were cluster of houses which formed "proto-villages"

You can't even get PP near one of those anymore in Galway, but you can put 100 houses in a townland that only had 400 people living in it. How the hell does that make sense?

eia340600

antoobrien wrote: »

Talk about rubbish, do you seriously believe that?

BTB the census figures disagree with you. To take Galway for example, there's a major shift towards urban living - in the '56 census there were about 45k people living in towns/villages of 200 or greater, out of a population of 155k. In 2006 the urban figure had increased to about 115k (out of 230k). An increase of about the size of Galway city (which accounted for 2/3 of the county's population growth). At the same time the population still has only recovered to levels seen in the 1880s.

That may be, but the new, so called, urban dwellers are actually living in vast housing estates on the periphery of the city, most of which are as dependent on the car as a one off house.Also, 1/3 of the entire population living outside the city is too many.

antoobrien

eia340600 wrote: »

That may be, but the new, so called, urban dwellers are actually living in vast housing estates on the periphery of the city, most of which are as dependent on the car as a one off house.

Oh dear, but I do I love the hypocriticism that you get on here, you can't have large scale developments or small scale developments. Make up your mind.

I won't speak about the west of Galway City, as I know there have been complaints about services for years in Knocknacara but I do no there is a fairly comprehensive bus network on that side of Galway.

But you're dead wrong about the east side of Galway City, there is nowhere that doesn't have immediate access (<10 minute walk) to reasonable PT.

So any "dependency" on cars in Galway City is based on perceptions (oh look it's raining, I'm not going walking to the bus stop or making the kids walk to school in that) rather than enforced (such as someone living in say Turloughmore and working in Galway).

eia340600 wrote: »

Also, 1/3 of the entire population living outside the city is too many.

Very lazy comment that. If you actually cared to look, the population of the county outside Galway city is vastly more than 1/3 of the population (72/230=31%) 69% of Galweigans don't live in the city, but about half do live in towns & villages (counted by census). The 1/3 referred to is population growth that happened outside of the city - which according to the census has mostly been happening in towns & villages.