2010 Gear Test Camps - Autumn At Tignes

Thanks Trencher,
I think you did tell me once which sort of skis I ought to use carving, and I think I wrote it down somewhere.

I also need to practice moguls. I went all the way to the Manchester snow dome and they'd cancelled their mogul lessons, and there weren't even any moguls on the slope at all. So we didn't stay long and went to the Lake District instead - only 1 1/2 hours from Chill Factore, and very nice. I got off the 'slope' at 4 p.m. and I was having a cruise on lake Windermere by 6 p.m.

I haven't actually booked Tignes yet, they are holding a place for us while I think about it.

Ally

Just giving this a bump - I'm off on 5th Nov for 3 days with two other buddies.
Flying from Luton - this is what we calculated it would be...
£125 + £36 + possible currency supplement of £18 + £58 flight + £20 carpark = £257 for everything excluding lunch and drinks.
We didn't think that too bad and as a weekend away from husbands and kids it actually a bargain :)
Has anyone else signed up?
Zwee

Zwee,
My daughter and I are booked up for 3 days with them over October half-term. We are flying with Easyjet and staying in a hotel in Geneva for the night.

We try not to fly, and we usually go by train instead, but this time it didn't work out by train. So I'm buying some more attic insulation for 2 houses under one of the government's 50% grant schemes, and hoping that this will save enough CO2 to 'pay' for our flights.

I hope you have a good time in Tignes,

Ally

AllyG wrote:Zwee,

We try not to fly, and we usually go by train instead, but this time it didn't work out by train. So I'm buying some more attic insulation for 2 houses under one of the government's 50% grant schemes, and hoping that this will save enough CO2 to 'pay' for our flights.
Ally

For different reasons to you, I have carried out the first phase of attacking energy use on my place. I previously had about 150~200mm of Rockwool in place. I have now deepened this to 800mm, or 32" deep, throughout the main part of the house.

I didn't bother with grants, just waited for a good offer, bought and laid it. I expect to have recuperated the outlay by April.

Dave Mac,
32" is an incredible amount of insulation - nearly 3 feet!

I should have said 3 houses though, not 2. One has been done 1 foot deep in the attic, with a 50% housing renovation grant (also had the house re-roofed and some new double glazed windows put in), and the other 2 are yet to be done with a 50% grant from our electricity company - and only 6" to add to the 4" we already had. The problem is we still want to be able to use the attics, and if we had 3 foot of insulation there'd be no storage space left. I think the cost is somewhere around £150 per house, after the grants.

That's good going to pay yours off by April - I was thinking more like a couple of years to save enough to pay for ours.

If we all do it, maybe there will still be some snow left for us to ski on in 20 years time.

Ally

This winter will be the second winter of the new insulation, although last winter, it was only half completed, then I had to go skiing!

For my own place storage was not an issue.

For one of my sons, we put insulation in to two feet thick, and made a board platform above that for storage. Their bills are very low.

For the other on, I converted his empty roof spave into a huge bedroom, 8m x 7m, plus a large bathroom. In the small space above, two and a half feet depth of loft insulation. On the sloping ceiling and coombe walls, thermal boards plus 200/300mm rockwool.

For me, this is an investment, with very quick returns. If the whole of Britain did this, it would save a lot in energy costs, but make not one jot of difference to climate change.

If I believed that we could affect climate change, then I would have to stop using the gondela. :shock:

I would have a job to lag my loft..........I hav'nt got one. My house has a flat roof :lol:

Rose,
You can still insulate your ceiling, although you would lose a bit of head height and it is more difficult (you'd have to move the electrics for the lights etc.).

I am thinking of doing this in one of our rooms where the sloping ceiling is against the rafters. They now sell insulated dry-lining plasterboard for fixing to walls and ceilings. Depending on whether you can work out where your rafters are, to fix to, you could attach it to your existing ceiling. You can glue it as well, but I'd be a bit worried it would fall down - plasterboard is quite heavy.

The best thing would be to take down the existing ceiling, batten it out and start again, but it would be a messy, slow and expensive job. You wouldn't need to put 1 foot of insulation if you used the ultra insulation board, like celotex double R, which has twice the insulation value, so you only need half the depth.

Anyway, for now, I've opted for the easier loft option, but I will have to do something about these other rooms.

Dave Mac - what's so particularly bad about gondolas? Do they use masses of energy or what?

Ally