Canal Navvy

Pairs of neodymium magnets sewn into pouches could work, it doesn't take that much jiggling to get them to join around a stem. I've only ever used them to get a pull rope around a tree branch that was stuck in a fast flowing river 🙂

With the caveat that a historically underpinned building with its new foundation on desiccated clay can heave. I've only ever seen it once though and haven't read about it either, so not a significant risk 🤔

Waste of good ratchet straps 😕

Thanks for the update, it really is helpful for future searchers 😀 I found your observation on the pm2.5 being higher than in the city sobering and thought provoking 🤔

Air con is pretty power hungry, a fairly common hatchback like the VW golf has 8kW of cooling while having an alternator of 2kW.

The alternator on your vehicle adds load to your engine which adjusts by burning more fuel. The fuel you are burning carries road tax and electrical generation from internal combustion is reckoned to be 30% efficient on a dedicated direct coupled set 😒 Currently the most expensive electricity is coming from gas fired power stations that are up to 60% efficient and don't pay road duty. You have further inefficiency by having to convert the nominal 12 volts DC to 240 volts AC and then back to the charge voltage of the batteries on your tools. Having mains voltage out on site can give operational efficiency but in itself can't be cheaper, conservation of energy and all that .....or don't get owt for nowt 🙂 Cheap inverters are cheap for a reason and their "dirty" waveforms don't go well with electronics, a lithium battery charger is most definitely electronic 😁

Being able to charge from a vehicle is for convenience, it's never going to be less expensive than plugging into the mains 🙂

Quite definitely the best hat stand I've seen on arbtalk 🙂

Have you tried a hot pressure washer/steam cleaner ? , they usually seem pretty efficient at taking paint off machines 🤔

Seen it this year in a still establishing mixed species farm hedge, be very surprised if the bird cherries survive 😐

Fascinating observation Wondering if the white combusts with less knock than the red and the drivers are subconsciously using more of the right foot 🤔

Worth being aware that the standard snap in rubber tubeless valve is only rated to 65 psi 😉

I'm on the same tyre but 255/85 r16 and on a 110 hi-cap. I run 35psi front, 50 psi rear. I started with getting the front tyres to a pressure that they looked and steered nicely then upped the rear pressures until the rolling radius was the same.

When she's finished you off ................................................................... ................. any plans for Daisy's future ? 😁

Generic 1600 kg tirfor, ifor tipper behind land rover with mini-digger aboard, cut stems to five foot , track up ramps with stem 😀 Distance is always the killer with bulk on haulage 😔

I wish somebody would offer me free standing firewood for the pleasure of felling it 🙂

If you remove it now pre-planning you'll remember it with a gentle regret 🥲 If you leave it and try to work round it you will certainly grow to hate it with a passion 👹

I used to think that the Duddon Valley was where I ought to be, trouble is all of the other visitors thought the same and now it's dead. Twenty five years ago there were two school minibuses and the pub had local accents in. Virtually any property that comes on the market gets snapped up by those who visited for all night drinking sessions and a good campsite when university students 😒

I was not totally convinced of the test, petrol car filled and returned to the same spot for refill (pretty standard practice), EV have a squint at what it's showing and take it back for another squint. Would have been much happier if the producers had used a site where both vehicles could have had consumption measured to weights and measures standards 🤔

In the past I've had some very nice brushed stainless steel thin sheet recovered from old redundant farm bulk milk tank 😀

They always used to be November the 5th specials ........ and when you see how quickly and how hot they burn you'd never want to live in one. The axle and wheels are worth saving if it's been boxed in out of the elements 😉

That is just trawling for a bite ....

Overcampacted clays are pretty resistant to water being able to get through. Plant roots (not just trees) can desicate clay to the point that rehydration is into years or decades. I have worked on structures that have sunk on desicated clays and are still supported on boulders of dry clay with cracks that water and the odd root use as a passage to the moister clay below. Old houses would have a well in the cellar so the water level would have been artificially lowered. Rain water butts and watered gardens were fairly normal. Old houses get bought by a different sort of people and adapted, ground water level rises and the building experiences changes that it hasn't seen in a a couple of centuries and people are alarmed to see a few cracks. Generally the problem is in the building industry particularly since it's been possible to get ground works signed off by an independent surveyor with no local knowledge of the local pockets of soil types, rather than the good old local building control. On puddle clay liners of canals it takes water something like six years to get from the top of a two foot layer to the bottom! Different types of clay have very different behaviours, some are good engineering materials, some are unreliable and some are destructive. It is quite easy to get a bit obsessed by clays 🙄

Subsidence and heave are terms related to how a clay soil acts on a man made structure, shrink and swell go on every year without anybody noticing. Railway tracks on Victorian embankments can change level seasonally by three inches and the speed restriction is just called engineering works. When a building sits on the ground it helps the shrink cycle and hinders the swell cycle, as Dr. Biddle puts it "a ratcheting effect"

Not actual comeback, but observation of a circa 1800s farmhouse being "underpinned" post removal of a monster leylandii. My best guess is that the corner of the building affected had previously been underpinned due to moisture deficit and subsequently returned to closer to the original level. In effect the house had only been made vulnerable to heave by attempts to remediate seasonal settlement, it probably would have been better historically to have diverted the downpipes to that corner to keep the clay hydrated 😉