djbobbins

I’ll head to Lidl tomorrow then and hope they have one in!

I’ve got a few fruit trees to prune this winter - only three or four. Can’t decide whether to buy a (homeowner) pole electric pruner or risk a few quid on one of these - anyone used one? It is tempting at £13… Parkside Extendable Tree Lopper with Saw - at Lidl UK - www.lidl.co.uk WWW.LIDL.CO.UK Parkside Extendable Tree Lopper with Saw - Work safely without a ladder thanks to the 5-step extendable pole 2 attachments made from high-quality carbon

I bought one of these a while back (to add to Husky 235 POS and Titan electric saw from Screwfix). Starts, runs, cuts (including ringing up some 18” ash). I paid £100 for mine from Aldi online but it looks like they’re even cheaper here: Scheppach CSH56 20'' Petrol Chainsaw WWW.ITS.CO.UK CSH56

Sorry - just read the link. And yes, looks like it can :-)

Can one of those go straight onto a wooden floor? I am considering something for in my home office and that would be helpful if it doesn’t mean needing to lift the floor and lay a hearth.

What’s the difference between paraffin and petrol? There are two “f”s in paraffin but there is no ‘effin petrol!

Any hints?!

Hopefully! Built-in BBQ and a pizza oven about 65cm internal diameter, about 10cm thick in perlite concrete. Just need to get the last few bits then crack on with getting it built!

Gardening I guess, although probably more as a result of wanting to keep the place looking half tidy rather than it being something I desperately enjoy whilst doing it. I’m part-way through planning and sourcing materials for a brick-built BBQ and “exercise ball” pizza oven. Being a skinflint this has a few interesting challenges, thinking about the design, picking up good parts of other projects (YouTube!) then hunting Facebook marketplace and considering alternative solutions for parts - for example: - sourcing a section of 100mm stainless steel car exhaust for the pizza oven chimney as it was about a third of the price of twinwall - happening across someone giving away storage heaters locally (= free fire bricks for the pizza oven base!) - a few hundred leftover bricks from a house refurb someone had done locally at about a tenth of the price they would have been from a merchant - half a dumpy bag of sand, also free - chicken wire, vermiculite and other bits sourced via Facebook marketplace as leftovers from other people’s bigger jobs / projects. I suppose if I costed in the time I have spent searching bits down and fetching them, I would better off just sourcing off the web and paying delivery, but then that wouldn’t have been much of a hobby / distraction, would it?! And as I’m in a salaried job with no paid overtime, it’s not like switching the time spent to doing “proper work” would have brought more cash in.

Might be controversial but if you are having a timber building and can get if pretty well insulated as you build it, I’d say there’s a risk of any stove making it unpleasantly hot inside. That will particularly be the case if you end up with an over-capacity stove that you will be trying to slumber to keep the output down. Better to run something smaller, hotter, for more efficient (less smoky) flue. Personally I wouldn’t have thought a 3m high flue would be a problem, but then I grew up outside a smoke control area. I had a shed / man cave with a circa 3m, 100mm diameter flue running a small stove when I was younger and draft-wise it was fine.

Not yet, AFAIK. Electricity grids can be restarted (although it’s hard and getting more difficult as generation mix changes) but gas grids and pressurisation would be a ‘mare. A guy in my team at work used to work for a large utility dealing with the ancillary services to National Grid; he always said that the operability of the gas grid would get protected ahead of power.

£6 each for a Swedish candle in Asda, about 20cm long only…

The guy I heard it from is pro-rail (works in West Midlands transport authority) but not directly linked to HS2. FWIW there are a load of other projects that could be done which would help freight logistics by rail, from what I understand: - re-opening short rail links (like Stratford upon Avon to Honeybourne) which would mean goods and passenger trains could operate shorter routes - a v. senior manager at Liverpool port told me a few years back that there is an issue with “overage” (the height of bridges above rail lines) on about half a dozen bridges between Liverpool and Leeds, which massively curtails freight movement. So yes, HS2 definitely isn’t the be all and end all…

Wholesale prices have more than doubled since last summer…

From experience, there is definite limited understanding by BBC story writers of technical details. One particular memory from a few years ago was a BBC story saying that gas and coal prices had flipped, so that power station operators were switching their gas fired plants to run on coal. Put it bluntly, this was wide of the mark. The large majority of gas-fired power stations are gas turbine based, so have very expensive air filter systems to remove particulates from the incoming combustion air. It wouldn’t be pretty to start lobbing tonnes of solid fuel in…

I think time will tell on this one. It might be a massive white elephant. However, my understanding is that HS2 will free up capacity on the existing West Coast Main Line, meaning that more freight can be moved by rail - so it isn’t just about shaving a couple of minutes off a journey to London.

Yes, Starmer arrived with a bit of a fanfare and has seemed to fade into obscurity. BoJo boils my piss completely though - blatant dishonesty, lack of morals, apparent lack of backbone to sack some of the dross around him, “decision making” by doing FA until most options are timed out then being “forced” to adopt only what is left…. I was brought up in a staunchly Tory household and still subscribe to some of the principles of standing on my own two feet, investing for my future etc, but I can’t bring myself to vote for this lot. On that depressing note I’m going to get off my soap box and head for some sleep!

I can think of other terminology for him…

It’s one of those events that I think everyone will remember where they were, when they found out. (If they were old enough to know about it). TBH having been to the memorials a few years ago and heard some of the audio clips of voicemail messages people on the ‘planes left for loved ones, I couldn’t bring myself to watch.

Harsh on Chris Whitty! Swap him out for some of the other dross that makes up our so-called cabinet and you might be on to something!!

Anyone by any chance got a stove sitting rotting in a shed or due to go for scrap? I’m hoping to build a pizza oven in the garden and have sourced some bits, but would like to fit a door rather than have an open arch at the front. At this stage not too fussed about whether it’s a solid door or glazed (or double doors)!!

Cheers!

As a long-time member on here and having recently moved house to a place with three established apple trees in the garden, I’m wondering what time of year is best to prune them back? The trees have a good crown at about 12’ high which is where I want to keep the height to. I want to trim the spindly newer growth above that (which I realise will be a job I need to do every couple of years, most likely). So best to do the pruning after picking the fruit in autumn, during winter when sap won’t be rising, or next spring? Thoughts much appreciated!

Tell that to my aunt whose car got written off by a bale landing on it about four weeks ago… fortunately it landed just behind the driver’s seat and there was no-one else in the car, six foot further forwards and it would have hit the windscreen. Car was structurally not too bad but it has bowed the roof and as it was 11 years old, not going to be economic to repair.

It’s got to be https://youtu.be/erL2czOyNoc