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World's First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Island
Albanach writes "According to this article in The Herald Newspaper, the island of Islay, on the West coast of Scotland is set to become the world's first Hydrogen Fuel Cell powered island. Scientests at Napier University wish to use the existing Wave Power Station to treat sea water and store the resulting hydrogen in fuel cells. The first plan is to power a building, moving on to powering the entire island in a decade."
"Powered Island" != "mobile island which moves because of Hydrogen Power".
but this is just one more reason to drink scotch from Islay.
It's not only delicious, but environmentally friendly too!
So where's my flying car. I'm sick of these antique wheels.
I can just see it now, a little island scooting around the atlantic using sea water as fuel. Hehe.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
why not use the power from the wave station to drive a laser which in turn will heat a boiler that can be used to run a turbine which will generate electricity to separate hydrogen from the sea-water?
i love the efficiency of green power. because it's so free, we can waste a lot more.
R.
So they're using a completely renuable resource, namely wave power, to separate sea water into O2 and (2) H2.
This is a great idea for any region with significant ocean frontage. Unfortunately, it is only a great idea in such locations. We can't fuel the US gas glutton SUVs via this method, there just isn't enough ocean frontage for all the soccer-moms.
Kudos to a truly self-powered island!
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
I've been hearing about hydrogen fuel cells for so long now, I'm glad to finally see some progress. What I've heard, though, about it is that "battery-ifying" the hydrogen (turning it into fuel cells) makes up for the pollution your saving by using the fuel cells. Is this still the case, does anyone know? Or is it actually environmentally friendly now from creation to use?
P.S. What's been up with Slashdot lately? It's been really weird.
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
Now we will have people fighting more than ever for water and Uncle Sam : *cough cough* All your oceans are belong to me *cough cough*. China : Fuck that small country we want all the water around it and India is going to be a regional superpower *cough* and United States of America will have a new state Antarctica...sheesh am i getting unreal?
:(.
All your water are still belong to us
Else, why would they have so many distilleries on that little piece of land?
I'm supposed to use electricity generating wave turbines to crack water to generate hydrogen so that I can use the hydrogen to produce electricity?
Sounds like a Rube Goldberg method!
Just skip the electrolysis and fuel cells and store the electricity made from the wave turbines in batteries (for cars and such) and feed it into the grid (like they already do).
Other than the obvious live laboratory for the fuel cells which is great, I fail to see how this system will save energy since there is loss any time you convert energy (waves --> electricity --> hydrogen --> electricity).
of getting some hydrogen! Surely it would be more efficient to use the electricity from the wave power and send it to people's homes rather than using it to electrolyse the water into hydrogen, then burning the hydrogen?
Video Game cheats, hints a
I haven't read the article yet, but I can tell you that they wouldn't use the wave power station to make H2. If they could do that, then they would probably just power the island with wave power and skip the middle step.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Once the hydrogen fuel cell is complete, my plan for world domination will be one step closer to completion! I must only get my secret island stronghold fully operational, then kick off all the islanders, and I can blackmail the United Nations for... 5 BILLION DOLLARS! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
The wave-power station is used to produce the electricity to electrolyse the water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Hey! I just read the article, and it appears that I was flat out wrong! Oops.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Why can't you stop playing these silly games and just say you love me?
I have been pwned because my
Hydrogen cells are a mature technology. Ballard makes a nice one.
I doubt oil companies will see this as a real threat.
All they have to do is keep people using oil until the island is underwater.
(Score: -1, Duh, duh dur DUH DUHHHHURRRHEY DUH)
This is bullshit. Cuba has been hydrogen-fuel-cell powered for decades.
I don't know if it was your meant to troll, but troll you did.
Cuba may have made some efforts to use clean, renewable energy sources (wind, wave, solar) but it's also made considerable effort to use dirty, finite sources as well, including nuclear power.
The nuclear power plant at Juragua has been under construction since 1983. It's not yet been completed, so it's not up and running, but Cuba is still trying to get the plant productive.
Unsurprisingly, for what it calls "safety concerns", the US isn't too keen to see that happen - apparently, it's OK for the US to have nuclear power plants all over the country, nuclear powered ships and submarines and even to launch nuclear powered satellites but God forbid that some communists 200 miles off the coast of Florida should want to use nuclear power too.
It's true that these concerns aren't totally unfounded as the type of reactor that the plant uses (the Soviet-designed VVER-440) doesn't have an exemplorary track record but let's remember that while the USSR had Chernobyl, the US had Three Mile Island.
By withholding its funding to the International Atomic Energy Agency - an overly-aggressive and short-sighted attempt to pressurise that body into abandoning all assistance that its giving Cuba to safely complete and operate the plant - the US is effectively shooting itself in the foot. By doing everything it can to make sure that the Cuban plant isn't built, the US is only ensuring that cost-effectiveness and completion at any cost are the paramount in Cuba's considerations, at the expense of safety.
Yet elsewhere, the US is spending millions to make sure that similar Soviet-designed plants are as safe as possible. Overall, a rather naive approach by US legislators - not the first time and it won't be the last either.
(So, in a way, there is a capitalist conspiracy, but not where you were looking.)
But I digress. Cuba obviously isn't 100 percent wave powered and, frankly, it's never likely to be. Wave power stations cost money too and, if you've got chronic power shortage problems like Cuba has, they're far less cost-effective than the alternatives.
On the other hand, Islay is hoping that its wave power station may soon provide all the energy that it ever needs - a noble goal, well worthy of our praise and good wishes.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This development of alternative fuels powering large areas is indeed quite encourageing...
OK, I know you're trying to pass yourself off as CmdrTaco but can you spare us the obvious atrocious spelling mistakes please?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The thing is... once you spend the initial money on the system it is self sustaining w/ moderate maintenance... far cheaper than drilling distributing and refining gasoline. Plus it is self contained, ie no taxes or outside control forces, etc.
It doesn't matter how inefficient it is if the source of the all the energy is free (minus startup costs).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I think if you re-read the original article you will see that hydrolysis is powered by wave energy, you know, ocean waves, not light waves.
Also, may I point you at a simple explanation of how fuel cells work? It has this cool animated gif, displaying the process. Note: no turbines.
There is this really cool tool on the web, called google, it is a search engine. You can use it to look things up, before you post stuff, preventing you from looking like a complete dope. You should try it out!
Yes, let's. You certainly don't.
1: Seawater is made out of Hydrogen and Oxygen (with lots of energy in the bonds)
No, the energy of a water molecule is lower than that of hydrogen and oxygen in pure form. You have to add energy to the system to break water down. It's an endothermic reaction. If there were lots of energy "in" the bonds within water, water would burn.
2: Solar panels at the sea locations provide the energy, albeit slowly, to electrolyze the water to the gaseous components. H 2 and O2.
Yes, they're electrolyzing hydrogen out of the seawater. No, they're not generating the electricity from solar panels. They're using a plant that generates electricity from the motion of the waves.
3: The H2 is stored until used in Hydrogen Fuel cells. Combining of Hydrogen gas, Oxygen gas and heat give lots of heat. This turns turbines.
No, not even partial credit for this one. The hydrogen is stored in tanks of some kind: "bottled" is the term they used. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells generate electricity directly from a reaction with the hydrogen (which is fed to the cell from the tank) and the oxygen in the air. You get electricity and heat, along with pure water for exhaust. There's not necessarily a turbine involved at all, although for maximum efficiency in a stationary installation you could conceivably capture the heat and use it to drive a turbine so as to increase your electrical output. But that's not really necessary; a fuel cell makes electricity all by itself.
No need to comment on your blather about solar cells; there aren't any involved. Nobody stores hydrogen in metal form as this requires temperatures near 0K. You could store it in liquid form cryonically, but it's more often stored as compressed gas at high pressure.
And the brethren went away edified.
We all know that when we use hydrogen power the waste is water vapor.
:)
Won't all this vapor make the climate much wetter causing it to rain more and so on?
Plus since from what I've been told the vapor comes from the hydrogen mixing with oxygen in the air. Won't this also lower the oxygen content of the air?
Please tell me I'm completely off my rocker.
Or better yet explain why
Thank you.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Oh yeah and since they've already invested in the highest priced component (the wave turbines) their initial startup costs for this are significantly less.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
---"It doesn't matter how inefficient it is if the source of the all the energy is free (minus startup costs)."---
That's the key. The BIG issue here is break-even. You cant go over 100%(cause of thermodynamics), but you can compare efficency of that plan to that of Standard Oil (semi-pun intended). And no, it's not all startup coses and minimal maintenance. YOu know those big heavy propane drums? Well, the hydrogen drums will have to be much heavier and costlier, because H2 can break open microfractures in seals.
I know I'm volatile and prone to inflammability after downing a few measures of Lagavulin!
According to the article, the plant produces 500 kilowatts.
Btw, even if these answers aren't so great, it's still a cool experiment - but you have to cite more details than the article does to reasonably brag that you'd save the world except that the evil oil companies won't let you. :(
Someone joked "Won't anyone think about the rotation of the Earth?"
The question has a much more serious ramification than the jokester may have realized:
The Earth is slowing down and will eventually break this system.
The Moon ya see is creating these things called tides that this generation plant is at least partially dependent upon.
The friction of the water being drug across the surface of the Earth by the moon is slowing decelerating the earth. Eventually the Moon will become geosynchronous with the Earth, and the lunar tides will cease.
If lunar tides cease to exist, ocean temperatures will likely equalize a little (less water movement at all), and so winds will become less intense. Lower wind speeds mean lower waves (wind and tides are the major causes of waves).
This may not really be the long term soution they think it is.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Well, their whiskey is clearly too good to use for fuel...
Mats
How appropriate that my favorite C2H5OH, made by Laphroaig on Islay, will one day be manufactured entirely using H.
::Colz Grigor // I'll take donations of it, too!
is this sponsored by any eco-freaks?
Are you one of those fake readers created by US oil companies?
Can't be less efficient than drilling oil in some far off country like the USA and shipping it 3000 miles to be used...
.. to try this.
Actually, I was going to have a play with it to make a self-running radio transmitter stuck up a tree.
Either way, check out this site http://www.bullnet.co.uk/shops/test/hydrogen.htm - they sell hydrogen fuel cells and have some information on them.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
I'm sorry but isn't waves renewable, it would be even better than wind-power if they switched from oil to water in the hydralic system that gives the power.
Hydrogen and fuelcells is only the infrastructure for the energy. There would probably not be a better solution than getting the oilcompanies to transport hydrogen over the world. The origins are still electricity which would probably come from wind or solar power which there are plenty of everywhere. Even if they were to use natural gas from oil-production, hey they burn it for no use today anyway...
So, will we be seeing oygenated whiskey as Islay's Next Big Thing? It could conceivably slow or prevent the loss of brain cells. It's a pity they're not going to produce Helium (squeak)...
(this is not a
Hey, there are priorities in life :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well, I don't know particularly what this group are planning to use to store their hydrogen, but there are a number of possibilities - some more futuristic than others.
e n_ storage.html is a good place to start.
http://www.fuelcellstore.com/information/hydrog
1 - Metal Hydrides. A bit futuristic for now, still a little expensive to produce and bulky (but that's not a problem for a storage plant, as opposed to a moving vehicle)
2 - Carbon nanotubes etc. etc. The hydrogen equivalent of vapourware at this stage.
3 - Hydrogen Tanks. Either as liquid (cryo) storage or compressed gas storage. Your point about 'heavy, costly H2 drums' breaking open is really for the gas storage - where pressures must reach around 6,000psi!
4 - Liquid hydrogen tanks. These are probably the best idea in a system such as the one they're proposing. It's horribly inefficient (the H2 must be kept at around -250C - that's 25 Kelvin!) meaning that lots of the hyrogen will boil off (around 30%).
The good thing is that the hydrogen that does boil off can be used to generate energy for liquifying new hydrogen from the electrolyser. This closes the loop somewhat and reduces wastage. Likewise, because there's a steady stream of hydrogen coming into the system, any minor amounts escaping (boiling off) won't be so important, because some of the incoming stream can be diverted to maintain refridgeration.
A good retort, but just one small point:
Metal Hydride storage functions at room temperature. They require energy input to liberate any stored hydrogen. The best idea is to use any excess heat liberated from the PEM (proton exchange membrane) to do this, thereby minimising wastage.
-Nano.
Plus a few hundred thousand who are there in spirit.
...that Islay is pronounced eye-la, not eye-lay.
The world's finest whiskies come from this little tiny island! Who does NOT know where it is? (At least, somebody with a small interest in whisky?)
:-)
Bowmore, Laphroiagh, Ardbeg, Lagavulin, Port Ellen, Bruichladdich, Caol Ila and Bunnahabhain -- eight distilleries on this island, each one of them producing a fantastic malt. (Though my favorite right now is a 17yo Ardbeg.)
Sadly though, some of these stills have been dozed...
Seriously, what do they need hydrogen for? They have plenty of fuel, just tap from the stills
I wonder what the efficency is of wind and wave powered electolosis of water is.
could green power derived from nature be the best way to extract hydrogen from water as it is constant and basicly 24-7?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The Dinorwig pump storage station in Wales.
I'd guess that hyrdogen cells have an even faster startup time than the claimed 12 seconds of Dinorwig though
then you are right back to where you were with water.
Hydrogen is very stable with out O2. I see no reson why people can not just by canisters of H2, and plig them into the car like you do a propain tank.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The US concern isn't really with a melt-down, its with by products. The soviet style reactors are world famous for producing material that can be made fisionable. Do you want Fidel to have an array of nukes, just as the dementia starts to kick in?
Cuba can't even make cigars right anymore. Seriously, talk to any tobaccanist, even if they still prefer Cubans, they'll concede that they're not overwhelmingly considered the best as they once were. If Cuba can't even make cigars well, then I'd say concerns about nuclear power plants are well founded.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I'm shocked - SHOCKED! -- that you could think such a thing! Next, you'll be suggesting that the US forced out the head of the body that monitors compliance with international chemical weapons treaties -- even though the USA had ALREADY been granted an unprecedented waiver allowing them to just deny the inspectors access to any facility, without needing to give even an explanation -- because he was saying that it wouln't be a problem to get into Iraq and verify that, in fact, they have no more WMD,and that would remove the US's pretext to bomb a few thousand more women and children to bits.Good heavens, people may then start to wonder if the US forced Mary Robinson out of office as the head of the UNHCR (high commission on refugees) because she spoke up for the human rights of the civilians being massacred in Jenin, and that might slow sales of US tanks, planes, bombs and so on to Israel. They might even suspect that perhaps the Bush administration feels that, because they've got more hydrogen bombs than anyone else, they can do whatever the fuck they feel like, to anyone, anywhere, any time, without needing an explanation more valid than "it's in our best interest". You must surely be some sort of anti-American terrorist hippy communist drug-dealer.People like you should be secretly arrested,imprisoned without trial or access to legal representation, or in short, "disappeared". Oh, wait --
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
If I remember correctly, solar panels are running at about 15% efficiency right now. But who's counting?
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Perhaps the most important and certainly the "cleanest" storage method for H2.
Sodium Borohydride (soap).
Chrysler even made a minivan that uses it. It acts as the H2 storage medium and is easily 're-energized'. Think about it. No explosive H2 to mess with. You get in a wreck and the only thing that leaks out is soap and water. Clean streets!
Why not do one even better? If there was a way to safely store H2 in a medium that required no special containers or pressurization, would you buy it? Chrysler hopes so. Check this out. If I had a way to refuel it, I would already have one.
It took eighteen years to get one on-line in the US... what's so bad about 20?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Hell of a lot more died at Chernobyl, though. Intentionally skewed sample.
If anybody is interested in this kind of tech for doit yourself applications, I found this nifty guide
build you own fuels cell at homepower mag.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
How is this groupthink?
It's my personal opinion, which also happens to be shared by most of the intelligent people in the world.
And quite honestly I'm more worried about the rate that we're chewing through our oil reserves than the environment. The environment's a lot hardier than people give it credit for.
*flame off*
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Less so than they get killed by being dashed upon jagged shoreline rocks. The illustration on one of the links shows a smooth inner chamber that is partially filled with water. The water level rises and falls with the 'motion of the ocean', thus creating changes in air pressure inside the chamber, and driving a Wells turbine to generate electricity.
In fact, it just occurs to me that one maintenance concern of this generator is that operators must occasionally scrape the insides of it to clear it of mineral deposits and sea growth. Otherwise, the amount of water in the inner tank slowly diminishes, making the conversion of wave energy to electrical less efficient.
Oh well, there's no such thing a s a free lunch.
Probably because you've never taken a look at the real numbers.
Never mind the economics. Take a look at something called the theory of the mine. Price is a measure of scarcity. If oil was becoming scarce the price would be going up. It isn't.
> Metal Hydride storage functions at room temperature.
a lhydrofact.h tml
u 48 8-1.htm says "Livermore physicists have the best evidence yet that deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen, is metallic at pressures as low as 50 GPa with temperatures near 8000 K. These conditions are near those expected in Jupiter's interior."
Yes, but when the original clueless poster said "in metallic form" he probably meant metallic hydrogen.
Which apparently can exist as a liquid at relatively high temperatures and huge pressures:
http://www-phys.llnl.gov/H_Div/GG/met
"they found that metallization occurs at pressure equivalent to 1.4 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure, nine times the initial density of hydrogen, and at a temperature of 3000 K (5000 F). Because of the high temperature, the
hydrogen was a liquid."
(They did cool it to 20K before hitting it with a shock wave though).
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2000/split/pn
Not that we're likely to be mining Jupiter's core for fuel anytime soon.
rant
... Iceland? I thought they were going to be first.
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Probably.
But no matter how good it is, I can guarentee you the greens and other enviro-nazi's will be protesting it eventually.
They protest -anything- that generates power effectively and that people use.
A lot of the discussion has been around the production of the hydrogen for the fuel cells. An interesting side note: California Solar Center has a weekly new clipping service that, this week, has this article about scientists discovering huge, natural stores of H2 gas. From the article:
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Plus a few hundred thousand who are there in spirit.
Or perhaps you meant "in spirits"?
It'll be a sad day when some greenie activists get around to declaring the traditional methods of producing a nice peaty single malt to be environmentally unsuitable and go about forcing a change. Some things just weren't meant to be good for us, just good.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
excerpt, from robin williamson's
"rab's last wollen testament":
Water is the strong stuff
It carries whales and ships
But water is the wrong stuff
Don't let it get past your lips
It rots your books
It wets your suits
Puts aches in all your bones
Dilute the stuff with whisky
Aye, or leave it well alone
I don't understand why wave power is touted as an eco-friendly power source. If anything, it is worse than gas or nuclear.
In order to provide a decent amount of power it is necessary to essentially pave a large section of the coastline - one of the most ecologically sensitive habitats around!
The most ecologically sound solution would be to put four high-efficiency nuclear plants in Siberia that do nothing but produce hydrogen. The hydrogen could then be used to power cars and contribute to the power grid. Bury the nuclear residue in the wasteland and leave the coast to the fishies.
Cheers,
Colin Benning, EIT
The existing infrastructure for transporting natural gas is unfortunately insufficient to transport hydrogen gas.
The hydrogen atom is the smallest one around and tends to leak like crazy if given the chance. This is part of the reason why hydrogen power is so expensive. A valve that would stop propane or methane flow looks like a wide open door to hydrogen gas!
Cheers,
Colin
Energon cubes! :P
I read somewhere (can't remmember the source) that if you use too much tidal energy, the moon will slowly crash into the earth! and i do NOT want that to happen...
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
The point is, they are working on the implementation of this system now. This is called real-world research. At some point in the future, producing hydrogen WILL become cost effective. This project, and hundreds of others, will help give data on reliability of equipment, and storage issues. Not to mention the fact that they will already be set to take advantage of the cheaper sources of hydrogen, when they come into being.
In short, just because it's expensive now doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. By that reasoning, computers wouldn't have ever developed, as they were only marginally faster than a human working the same problems at first.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
"It's true that these concerns aren't totally unfounded as the type of reactor that the plant uses (the Soviet-designed VVER-440) doesn't have an exemplorary track record but let's remember that while the USSR had Chernobyl [chernobyl.com], the US had Three Mile Island [tmia.com]."
eh.. if i remember correctly chernobyl actually caused a huge disaster and lots of people died as a result of it, while tmi, though it had the potential for disaster, was not disasterous. the us does have valid concerns for a little island 200 miles off its coast using a crappy reactor and presumably unsafe precautions. but i guess b/c the US is worried about what a junky dictatorship w/ a pseudocommunist ecomonomy is doing its capitalist propoganda
and nothing exposes the ignorance of the anti-nuke morons like the fact that coal mining releases more radiation into the environment in 1 year than all the nuke power plants ever have...
Hydrogen is, imho, the only hope we have for the survival of western civilization. We simply cannot continue to rely on third world countries to supply our energy needs. 9/11's will continue until we become self sufficient and stop "exploiting" the third world nations. (sarcasm in that)
mje0w!!!1!
/. Groupthink:
...
Freedom to choose porn = good, freedom to choose vehicle = bad.
More like freedom that does not hurt others = good, freedom to do something that damages others = bad. Seems reasonable don't you think?
Please publish some sort of evidence to back up your claim about Cuba!
There are these cute little things that you find on many web pages called hyperlinks. If you followed the first one that I included in my posting then you'd have the evidence that you want.
Of course, you could try using your own initiative and perform your own web searches on Juragua, the IAEA, and Cuban power generation in general but I guess that would be too much to ask.
After all, if you can't be bothered to follow a simple link what are the odds that you'll fire up Google, Alta Vista, Yahoo or whatever to do any research of your own?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I like the thought of converting sunlight into energy using solar panels on roof tops. And maybe combine that with this wave energy and run all our vehicles off electric/hydrogen engines. You could have a small hydrogen generators in everyone's car that just hooks into their home. I think electromagnetic energy is far more powerful than what you get from combusting oxygen and hydrogen, but hydrogen engines might be more efficient. We just got to think up new efficient ways to transport electricity and ourselves.
For vehicles I like the idea of storing mechanical energy, like a flywheel braking system. If we had a few flywheels to store the energy when we stop we could use those flywheels for quick acceleration and the eletric/hydrogen engine to keep the vehicle in motion. Combining that with solar panels and wind power generators on the car and the thing should be able to run for at least few hundred miles with a tank of water.
But if you think about it. All the energy on Earth came from the Sun. It seems only natural that we learn how to harness that energy to coexist with our environment: a hunk of rock with lots of water orbitting a giant ball emitting photons. Using nonrenewable living or dead organisms for energy is almost parasitic and certainly not a permanent solution. Lets hurry up and find a permanent one, because I'd really like to get on with my work.
Imagine your neighbour was putting up a shed in his back garden that overlooked the sandpit that your kids played in. But, because he's never done something like this before he's enlisted the help of the expert builder who lives down the street to help him make sure that the shed's built safely (using the appropriate materials and methods, etc) so that it won't accidentally fall over and squash your kids one day.
In that scenario, why on earth would you stop the good samaritan from making sure that the job was done well? Especially when you know the alternative is that your neighbour will still build the shed but is bound to do a less than perfect job of it?
Why wouldn't you want that shed to be the safest shed in the world?
Hint: because not wanting your neighbour to have a shed at all is clouding your better judgement.
Some people would call this pig-headedness. Others would call it cutting your nose off to spite your face. Or shortsighted. Me? Well, I just call it dumb.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg