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4SH 61 at Moore Group

The 60th session of the four stone hearth blog carnival is up at Middle Savagery. As usual there’s a lot of great reading material and Colleen’s pointed to some great anthroblogs I hadn’t encountered before. Head on over by clicking here….

We’ll be hosting the next one on the 25th of February so, as Colleen clamours, ‘cowboy up and submit your best!’

Just send us an email at info@mooregroup.ie, including the link to your blog post and any other interesting info you like and, well, that’s all. We look forward to your submissions.

Feb 12, 2009 | Categories:About Archaeology | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments »

The Greens attempt to retain hot air

In a dramatic volte-face this weekend The Green Party announced an initiative that might actually make some difference, albeit to individual home-owners rather than the planet at large.

In stark contrast to Minister Ryan’s usual pie-in-the-sky imagining of hordes of merry ‘nouveau-pauvre’ merrily cycling to work through fields of buttercups, or some such similar nonsense that seems to pass for ‘policy’ in the ranks of the sandalistas these days, his recently unveiled €100 million ‘National Insulation Programme for Economic Recovery’ actually involves real people doing real things to real houses for a measurable benefit.

Sounds far too scientific to ever have received the minister’s imprimatur, but there you go.

photo owned by thingermejig (cc)

Report from the paper of record here:

The lowest grant available is €250 for improved attic insulation, which will provide 30 per cent of the cost for a typical suburban house of carrying out this measure. The largest single grant is a €4,000 contribution to work on external wall insulation. This will contribute an estimated 21 per cent of the €19,000 cost for a typical home. Householders are entitled to avail of all the grants that are applicable to their own situation.

and The Green Party website has the following:

http://www.greenparty.ie/en/news/latest_news/govt_announces_new_national_insulation_programme

I do suspect that the estimated payback time on investment will turn out to be rather more estimated than intended but at the very least, this is a step in the right direction and can only be of assistance to homeowners looking to reduce their energy costs.

Also included in the available grants is a sum of €200 towards the cost of a before and after BER assessment.

The ‘before’ assessment can be carried out in advance of the grant application being processed and is intended to help the home-owner to identify the works that they should undertake to improve their home’s energy performance.

Moore Group are happy to assist with all questions you may have regarding the HES scheme and can provide any assessments required along with help with your grant application if required.


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Feb 10, 2009 | Categories:About Energy | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments »

Friday Flora and Fauna

Well bloggers, today’s entry will be a short one as I’m up to my eyes (thank feck).  While researching the (Draft) Galway County Development Plan 2009 – 2015 for policy on visual impact assessment and protected views, I reviewed the section on Guidelines for Heritage, Landscape and Environmental Management and noticed that Galway County Council has included a Development Management Standard on Designated Environmental Sites (DM Standard 38 ) regarding “Eco-hydrological Assessments”.

This is an interesting and welcome direction given that somewhere in the region of 70% of Ireland’s bedrock is comprised of limestone.  The implications for flora and fauna are obvious.  Let me spell it out briefly; in areas that are well drained any major changes in the hydrology could affect the water table and thus the flora and fauna dependant on that water level.  This is more applicable in those areas where flora and fauna are intrinsically linked to the amount of water available to a greater or lesser extent.

not-a-wetland

Not a wetland (idea blatantly stolen from Otte. M. (ed) Wetlands of Ireland

Take the flora of a Turlough, an Irish phenomenon where summer meadows are seasonally inundated with winter rainwater and turn into wetlands.  Grassland habitats in the summer are replaced with roosting sites for winter visiting birds.

The need to understand the potential impacts of a proposed development on the ecosystem as a whole is a given.  This guideline will hopefully ensure more comprehensive assessment of development sites and those impacts.

belclare-turlough

Belclare Turlough - a wetland (enough to bring tears to the eye of a southiesham)


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Feb 06, 2009 | Categories:About Environment | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

4SH Submissions at Middle Savagery

Middle Savagery will be hosting the next Four Stone Hearth on February 11th, so send your submissions to colleen@berkeley.edu.

And over on AWOL, there’s the second part of a game originally initiated by geologists and now adapted by Shawn Graham at Electric Archaeologist, which has taken up much of my valuable leisure time – When on Google Earth. The host posts a google earth pic, asking ‘What are we looking at, and when was the major period of occupation?’…

Post your attempts at an answer in the comments at AWOL, and the first right answer gets to host ‘When on Google Earth #3!

Feb 04, 2009 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Bronze Age Roundhouse in Clare – Pt 1

During the course of archaeological monitoring of groundworks for a proposed reservoir site at Barnhill Wood, Dromoland, Co. Clare, a number of archaeologically significant features were uncovered. These features consisted of in situ articulated human remains, fire shattered stone, charcoal enriched material, associated pits and occasional burnt bone. This a part one of a three part post part 2 is here and part three – the references – is here and is quite long – continued under the fold after the first pic (if someone can tell me how to make a fold {figured it out!})…

This construction contract involved the provision of improvement works to the local water network in Newmarket-on-Fergus and was financed by Clare County Council. In addition to this new reservoir construction, the contract involves bringing treated water to Newmarket-on-Fergus from Castlelake Water Treatment Plant, near Sixmilebridge in conjunction with upgrading works at the Water Treatment Plant.

In consultation with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, it was recommended that the subject area be hand trowelled, removing loose spoil and overburden and subsequently manually excavate two trenches to determine the nature and extent of the archaeology. Following this testing regime reports were lodged with the National Monuments Section of the DEHLG and The National Museum. Further consultations with the relevant authorities recommended that the proposed development area be fully excavated.

img_0565

Work in progress

(more…)

Feb 04, 2009 | Categories:About Archaeology, Papers & Reports | Tags: , , , , , , | 5 Comments »