When it comes to eyesores, there is nothing worse than garage door(s). The front of the house is mostly a massive ugly garage door. I don't see people ever not having a garage because its an eyesore and it is right in front of you, can't avoid looking at it. Roof stays out of sight unless you want to look at the roof.
Americans come up will all kinds of ridiculous reasons for not using clean energy.
2) Also, we are now bird lovers! Wind turbines killed 2 dozen birds (but cats kill billions of birds). Wind is also an eyesore. Ruins the views from $_.
3) Solar is an eyesore.
4) Electric cars don't work in the cold. (lets ignore Norway, a tropical island)
5) Range anxiety, because I might drive from Florida to Wyoming.
Hey cool this is like those myspace surveys. Let me participate.
1. I support nuclear, really stupid not to use anything else. Blame politicians and the hippies.
2. Yeah wind imo is useless, and it's more than 2 dozen. Quite high, I don't think comparing kills to the top predator is a win. Also windmills are in raptor's paths, generally cats don't eat raptors. Noisy and ugly too.
3. Solar is nice, will use it as aux, but panels and batteries don't come close to a propane generator. Different use-cases.
4. I own a cybertruck and a trailboss, but it's Texas, can't really speak to cold weather ev experiences.
5. Owning an EV I know how they work, anxiety no issue, just hop free SCs and enjoy the ride.
Bonus: Garage doors can look stupid if it's the entire front of the house, like those mcmansions, but can be subtle with a long ranch house for example.
Solar panels may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they're fine, you get used to them. I think windmills look cool as shit. But then I think cybertrucks are one of the ugliest things created by man, so I guess the point is we each have our own taste.
What energy installation improves the landscape? Do oil wells look nicer? If I had a choice of minimal impact on the beauty of the landscape, I'd choose solar and wind.
Great that you like your car, windmills and solar panels are also functional and fucking cool, so I don't know why you've bought up them being ugly. You're happy to drive an ugly car, but draw the line at looking at ugly roofs?
...and don't get me started about all those tin cans with wheels parked all over the place outside of garages! I consider myself lucky to have several windows in my apartment where I usually don't see one of those eyesores when I look out of it...
There's a third way: in-roof or roof integrated photovoltaics. Normal panels, but integrated into the roof. Those look amazing. Very popular in Switzerland where some villages have strict aesthetic rules for buildings.
Next best thing aesthetically are full-roof racks, where one face of the roof is 100% covered in panels. Nowadays you just have to select the right panel and you can make it tile the plane perfectly.
The previous owner own my house installed these (it was mandated by law here at the time). About 90% of the time they leak after about 10 years, and mine did. I had to have the installation re-done over the roof.
Building codes on that are going to vary locally. They are doable in most of Switzerland if you plan for it: no sky lights, no chimney (there's setbacks and fire codes for those), ect.
I thought the IFC International Fire Codes were a bit more ubiquitous than they are. Apparently whole roof is possible in a few EU countries. Probably not a good idea for the stick-built houses prevalent in US though
It took about three weeks of labour and just under three grand in cost to redo the shingles on my roof. It was just over two grand for the shingles, the rest for misc. Not including me taking two weeks off of work.
About three weeks because I didn't do it all at once, an 11/12 pitch is tiring to work on. One week per side of stripping/waterproofing, then a couple weekends of shingling.
Edit: the stripping took a week from having two layers of shingles, first layer was cedar than asphalt.
If he had been paying a crew and not doing it themselves most roofs can be done in part of a day with shingles. And most often by meth addicts or illegal immigrants because nobody else will do that horrible job for the prices they ask, not to mention a skilled tradesmen.
In some areas when big enough hail or storms goes through a town 1 or 2 crews will jump on the insurance payouts and take the low bid if they can do them all at once. And within a week or two at worst the entire neighborhood or small town is reshingled.
Yep, I only did my roof because I had some free time (planned for, excluding weather).
That and saving $20 000 or so in labour. I was quoted $8000 just to remove cedar shingles not asphalt as well (off-hand by a buddy). This is in $CAD.
As well as doing a better job than most of the roofs I've redone, whole lotta hack jobs on roofs since you'll never see the problem or deal with it till the contractor is long gone.
Someone else suggested that you have to replace your roofs every 25 years though. People definitely live for 25 years!!
Also even if you personally don't live that long, it does affect the value. For example a 99 year lease on a property is considerably less valuable than a 999 year lease, even though very few people live more than 99 years.
25 years is common but most places allow 2 or 3 shingle overs that don't require a tearoff. They just slap a naked layer of new shingles over the old which is even cheaper than the first roof/layer.
The shingles used in the us are a good compromise. They are cheap and easy to repair. Clay lasts well overall but one broken tile is going to be expensive to repair.
Americans come up will all kinds of ridiculous reasons for not using clean energy.
1) Nuclear is dangerous, even though it has the safest profile of all energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
2) Also, we are now bird lovers! Wind turbines killed 2 dozen birds (but cats kill billions of birds). Wind is also an eyesore. Ruins the views from $_.
3) Solar is an eyesore.
4) Electric cars don't work in the cold. (lets ignore Norway, a tropical island)
5) Range anxiety, because I might drive from Florida to Wyoming.