djbobbins

We changed from open fire to stove about 6 years ago. I can confirm it has made a big difference to the warmth of the house when the fire isn't lit - I remember sitting in the lounge one Spring and realising I could feel a draft under the door; it was the warm air getting connected up the chimney and out to the atmosphere. We used to burn a mix of logs and housecoal, I would say that we still burn about the same amount of wood, maybe even slightly more, but no coal. The house is warmer and when the stove is not being used, we can close the vents and stop the convection of air out of the house. I would say there are two things I miss about the open fire: (1) the stove running on logs does not give off the same fierce heat as the open fire did, and (2) the open fire was built of Cotswold stone and once hot would retain heat for a lot, lot longer than the chimney breast does now. Walking into the lounge on a morning and feeling the radiant heat from the chimney breast always used to put a smile on my face, but the stove doesn't heat the masonry in the same way so those days are gone :-(

On sale in stores today, £24.99. I have got one and Sod's law, the temperature has gone up by about 8 degrees so no need to light the stove! Reviews look pretty good though.

The company I work for runs a power station in Cheshire which abstracts water from a river for processing into boiler feed water (very high purity). The plant operators tell me that the chloride levels in the river water make it harder to get the right quality of finished water - so much so that they say they can tell when the gritters have been out.

+1 for buying shares via an ISA. My average return over the last 9 years has been about 8% although to be fair I have had some stinkers (lost all the money I put into Carillion, for example). Before my previous fixed rate mortgage came to an end, that was costing me 5.19% so we tried to regularly chip away at that too - the early repayment charges put me off doing it in a big chunk though. I thought that with the tax treatment on rental income, buy to let wasn't so attractive now?

Alan Carr, Keith Lemmon, not much of a Michael McIntyre fan, Shappi Korsandi does my head in as well... don't get me started!

I used to help my mate out with his drain clearance business when I was a teenager, suffice it to say that sh*t was in plentiful supply in that job. One of the time-served guys on the gang would stick his bare hand into a sh*t-filled drain to grab the blockage if needed, screw that for a lark. Not a problem for me personally, but I particularly remember doing one job on a posh estate north of Macclesfield, the houses had been built a few months at a guess. The plastic drains had been laid in gravel-bottomed trenches with a chunk of brick about every 6 feet. Unsurprisingly, even before the trenches had been back filled, the pipes were sagging and getting blocked. We jetted the drain out and got it flowing, at which point the Cheshire housewife came out of her house and wandered over for a look at the manhole just where the foul from her house joined the main. She was just in time to see a huge 'Richard' sail down the pipe. Let's just say the look on her face was priceless! Evidently, Cheshire housewives don't think they have all the same functions as the rest of us...

Why not leccy chippers? More places are being fitted out with high capacity power supplies to meet electric vehicle demand, loads of torque from an electric motor, less noise and no fumes. I am not talking about a battery chipper, as I think the costs of the batteries would kill it, but maybe an electrically driven one that could either run off the mains or a genny, that sounds do-able.

P.s. Beyond doubling up the dose of over the counter anti-histamines from what it says on the box, the other thing my doctor recommended was a spray called Magicool Plus. They do a few varieties but the one he suggested was the green top one. It is basically a cooling spray with some form of mild local anaesthetic I think, but has been effective in dealing with the itchiness to allow me to get some kip for the last few nights and hopefully not get the bites infected by scratching the tops off them. Not cheap at £8 or so per can, although saying that, £8 for two decent nights sleep maybe is a bargain after all!

Still not figured out what the bites were but fortunately they are going down and the itchiness is subsiding, although not yet gone away. I won't scare the world with a picture of my chest, but this is what my left arm is looking like...

Not sure about ticks but I moved an old concrete coal bunker in my garden over the weekend; pulled it apart into sections and manhandled them. Two days later I am f'in covered in bites, all down the underside of both my arms and across much of my chest and belly. Each bite is about 5mm across and red; most have a hard whitish middle. Any clues what could have have been so keen to feast on my blood?

You'll be telling us next she just happened to bend over to get something out of the fridge...

Some people have fears of things that others find pleasure in, some may fear spiders, some snakes and some heights. i once had a fear of Horse Chestnut Trees....but i soon conquered it.

Wahey - the app is back! Well, not back, 'cos it's very different, but there's an app and it works!

No, iPad mini...

Took it into DC Burgoynes and they had it sorted in a few hours - cleaned the carb and fitted a new plug. Out of curiosity / for future reference, has anyone any experience of using carb cleaner on 2 stroke engines?

Anyone else having problems with the Arbtalk app? Mine stopped updating topics a few weeks ago; I have just uninstalled and reinstalled to see if it was some kind of hiccup; now when I try to sign into the app it says the forum isn't available??

I mainly use a saw for domestic logging so have got a Husky 235 for this purpose. It is about 6 years old but hasn't done a huge amount of work. Most recently, it has been stored - empty of fuel - for about the last nine months in my garage. Earlier this week, I bought some fresh petrol, mixed up 50:1 with Stihl 2-stroke oil, fuelled the saw, primed the carb and it fired on the second pull of the cord. It bogged down a bit during cuts and on a couple of occasions died after the end of a cut, but always restarted straight away. I was therefore thinking it needed tuning. Anyway, the next evening I got the saw out to do a bit more logging, tried to start it but it was having none of it. There is fuel getting to the cylinder, but when I took the plug out, earthed it on the cooling fins on the engine and pulled the cord, I couldn't see any spark - even in near darkness. I'm guessing that's the problem but wondered if anyone had any bright ideas?

Second number slot on the chassis plate is blank so I assume that means it is not homologated for towing.

Can anyone help me out with a query? I have recently had, as a works vehicle, a Kia Niro (petrol electric hybrid). When the car was launched, they said a towing option (for up to 1300kg towing) would be coming at the end of last year, but have since change their mind and are not going to offer this as an option for the UK. The company website towing capacity is nil, which was backed up when I spoke to Kia UK before ordering. However, now I've had the car delivered, I read the manual and it says (for European spec vehicles) that you can tow up to 600kg unbraked or 1000kg braked. I'm therefore curious as to which should take precedence. Can I reasonably rely on the handbook, get a towbar fitted and not invalidate the warranty / be in trouble with VOSA if I was to get pulled?

If anyone wants them, I have got six empty builder's bags left from some work we've been doing. You know, the ones that hold about 850kg of sand or gravel, or about 300kg of loose thrown logs, which apparently is known as a "tonne"... 😚 Collection only from Hatton Station, just west of Warwick. Completely free but if you happened to have some arisings to drop off in return, that'd be even better!

Google Venice Verte as well, that's a region of drained marshland with loads of drainage canals which are navigable by boat plus some nice (not very strenuous) cycling. Same area of France.

We went to the west coast (Vendee, between Brittany and La Rochelle) a few years back, but later in the year - October half term I think. Lots of beaches and resorts, the Ile de Re was very pretty but I would imagine would be absolutely heaving during summer. We got the ferry to and from Le Havre and from there it was about 4 or 5 hours as I recollect. There are a couple of different routes, one of which saved about £30 in tolls for the sake of doing an extra ten miles or so, all still on dual carriageway.

I have done Cannes to Calais in about 10 hours, once when I was young, single and daft. Wouldn't want to do that with family in the car though. Off to the French Alps this summer which we will do from Dover as a single day's travel and I think will be a bit of a killer.

Here you go Steve... https://www.hochschwarzwald.de/Card It looks like the card is "free" although I suspect you would have to pay the tourist tax! The list of attractions might have change but if it's anything like it was three years ago, it still made for a good holiday. Plus which, a case of 20 x 500ml bottles of pils supermarket can be had for about six quid, if you are happy to drink non-mainstream brands (which was what my German colleague recommended).

Steve, we did the Black Forest a couple of years ago and I would highly recommend it for a few days. We stayed in a place called Todtnau, which is about 20 miles south of Freiburg if I remember correctly. There are camping grounds etc and it is not too far from the border into France and Switzerland (Basle, nice city, has a zoo, bloody expensive though!). In Todtnau area itself there is great scenery but brilliant thing (in my opinion) is a gravity rollercoaster, which descends about 500m in altitude down the mountainside. There are a couple of Freibads (open air swimming pools) and a smallish theme park, barefoot walk etc. If you want an idea of the scenery, think along the lines of "Where Eagles Dare", albeit without the spectacular mountaintop Schloss. If funds are not brilliant and you want a holiday with plenty to do, I'd recommend it - when we we we stayed in an apartment owned by an old German Doris who must have been about 90 if she was a day. Anyway, when we got there she made us fill in these little cardboard forms and pay the 'tourist tax' which I cynically thought was a bit of a get on, about €2.30 per adult per night I think it was - so something like €26 for us for six nights. Turns out included in the tourist tax is all public transport all the time you are there (which included the train into Basle), entrance to the open air swimming pool, entrance to the theme park, once up the ski lift and back down on the gravity coaster and a range of other stuff that we didn't have time to do before we moved on to our next accommodation in Munich. Will see if I can find a link to the tourist card now for latest prices and what is included...