openspaceman

Any reason not to make it from vermiculite sheeting?

What's your point? People are free to charge what they like and customers are free to choose whether to buy as long as the product is properly described

Shouldn't it retail with 5% Vat or has something changed?

I remember mica as being thin, flaky and fragile. Our original baxi before I ripped it out 40 years ago had borosilicate glass (pyrex) in 1" strips, to allow for expansion I think. The current Morso has a curved ceramic glass of some sort, ridiculously expensive and I am sure one day I will shut the door on a log that is too big for the firebox.

Did that evolve from the trekkasaw, I used one of them but it didn't have stellite tipped bands that I recall.

The trouble with that idea is that air will pass through the mesh and spoil the air control, it would become half way between a n enclosed stove and one burning with its door open (or an open fire), so the efficiency would go down.

Kev it would probably be better for the OP's client if it did have a TPO as then NR would be the only ones who could touch it. It's on SPC5 the St Pancras to Sheffield line, I've no way of checking any more if that line is in line for electrification, if it is then NR will have to side it up. It's difficult to tell from photos but it seems to be over the slow up line. If there were no immediate danger the old firm would be looking to see if there were to be any possessions in the coming year. Having said that and as the rails are on an embankment I would say the overhanging branches could be rigged during normal running on a Sunday. Once over your own property and more than 3m from the line shouldn't be much concern to NR given a sensible working method and risk assessment.

In railway speak it's called Any Line Open working. The rules changed as I was retired but up till then there were 3 different types of situation, the one that affected us was that our machines, tracked 1928s, had to be kept far enough from the rail that if they overturned they would not obstruct the trains. Diggers, cranes and such had to be fitted with movement limiting devices so that they could never impinge on a working line.

It would make an interesting experiment. I have never see an almond tree but did get involved in some orchard pruning and yes, most bits were long and thin without much branching. So on that basis if you laid the wood out evenly then you may have a low volume to space ratio, it's about 70% in stacked roundwood. We know there's about 30% solid wood in chip. Once you get up to 100mm branches that could be cut into cordwood lengths you are certainly going to decrease the solid to air ratio. Which reminds me of a tale: there were five lime trees being re pollarded just up the road from me, about 250kg arising from each tree. I asked for the roundwood to be stacked for me to collect after. The foreman said no because their 8" chipper could take the limbs whole, which would be quicker. The firm were out of area and at about midday he asked me if I knew of a local tip where he could dispose of the chip, he was away for a couple of hours and the team went home late with the second load of chip. If he had left me the firewood...

Before wood chippers were so ubiquitous in UK one of the adverts for a woodchipper claimed they reduced the volume of branches by 15:1, So if true a 15m3 heap of branches would end up as 1m3 of chip.

Yes, I used to fell and stack cord around March and often sell the oak at stump just prior to extraction, there is often a spot of good weather in May. oak tended to be from clay sites but there would be other work year round on sandier soils. It was explained to me by an old chap that in the south the farm horses would be used for extraction and they were only available between the hay harvest and the corn harvest. It wasn't at all unusual for my forwarding tractor to sit idle in the winter months but anyone buying a £100k plus forwarder needs to keep it working day in day out.

Well I wasn't going to butt in as I never was much of a climber, always used DDRT, never progressed further than a petzl shunt instead of a prussic knot and have been out of it for 20 years, though I did a bit 8 years ago. However it struck me what the HSE was after was a self tending belay/fall arrest system rather than arsing about with two duplicate climbing ropes. Now over on UKTreecare Bill Anderson, who seems to have a common sense approach to most things, said much the same a week ago, and suggested using a eddy current braking device which is apparently in use for climbing walls. As long as the two anchor points aren't too far apart horizontally the safety line could be redirected to be coincident with the climbing line thereafter. HSE seem concerned about a line being cut, so perhaps the attachment to the chest harness part needs be cut resistant, or perhaps the fall arrest line be a wire. Spring recoil isn't going to work over a 30metre plus range so it will need to be an active system. Some thought will need to be given to mounting and retrieving the belay, same as SRT if it is mounted at the base of the tree it will double the load on the top anchor point. BTW I'm no fan of the AA or any other club that tries to establish restrictive practices to favour members but see no point in attacking them over this sledgehammer attempt to crack a small nut.

Yes I have repaired fuel tanks cost effectively because the machine was valuable, not the same with a combi can.

Sulphuric acid H2SO4 made by dissolving SO3 in water after a complex synthesis of oxidising sulphur dioxide over catalyst (contact process) Sulphurous acid H2SO3 made by burning sulphur compounds to sulphur dioxide and adding to water. but yes it should only be a problem if it condenses as the liquid. I think I have posted pictures here of a stainless (316) flue pipe perforated with a multitude of pin pricks where a condensed weak acid from burning treated wood had run back down the flue.

Sulphurous acid, it should only be a problem if the flue temperature falls below the dewpoint

Didn't come through, I think:) I pressed the wrong key, it should be there as an edit now.

I'd be wary about repairing a leaking plastic fuel can. polythene is quite difficult to glue but can be welded with a hot air gun. Hot melt glue sticks are generally ethylene vinyl acetate and will stick polythene

Yes we can fairly easily calculate the amount of propane used for a given power output and thus the amount of latent heat that must be supplied from the surroundings but there will be so many variables that the proof of the pudding...

That's right and there is always a certain amount of each I imagine that is because they are separated out in the fractionating tower at the refinery. Calor blue bottles are more butane I think whilst the red bottles are predominately propane. Autogas at shell stations is near 100% propane in UK, NB Autogas is owned by Calor. The issue about the gas in the bottle staying liquid is a different thing. Plainly in the summer there is not much of a problem but in winter if it remains liquid it cannot come out of the top of the bottle as vapour whereas it will still flow out as a liquid from the bottom. So for instance as long as the coolant that flows through the evaporator in a fork lift gas truck can vaporise the liquid lpg the truck will keep running. As liquids turn to vapour their hidden energy increases, enthalpy, without the temperature going up. Consider vigorously boiling water never exceeds 100C at normal pressures. This energy has to be supplied form somewhere. What happens with a vapour take off is that as the liquid turns to vapour it cools the liquid surface, the faster you draw it off the more it cools. Thus the temperature rapidly falls below ambient if the air outside cannot supply heat through the sides of the cylinder. Hence you see a frost ring develop up to the propane level in the tanks as water vapour is frozen from the surrounding air. It's the same if you have ever tried to refill a cigarette lighter and some of the liquid spills onto your fingers, as it evaporates it makes you cold. Thus in cold weather and a bigger engine, like the 13hp Honda even a 47kg cylinder may struggle to supply vapour as the propane level drops.

A mutifuel morso squirrel on my mate's narrowboat. Mostly it runs on smokeless coal as that will keep in overnight and it gets really damp and cold if it goes out.

That's it they have got them the wrong way around. I was on the RAC site the other day and that says post 97 licences are limited to 3500 GTW instead of 4.25

Some documents include horticulture, I don't know if it has ever been tested in court On a similar subject perhaps one shouldn't believe what a .gov.uk site says Towing: licence and age requirements - GOV.UK WWW.GOV.UK

Depends what you mean by practical, I had a device made out of a 12 X 38 tractor wheel some pipe and a vacuum cleaner that was quite successful at burning stumps out. The main thing to understand is that heat rises, the next that you need to raise the whole mass, including dirt, up to 300C and it is largely self sustaining. It is also not very controllable, or insurable, I am sure I have told the story from around 1976 and the irate householder?

That's my view Also finding a back street garage is becoming difficult as they are driven out of business because manufacturers make it difficult to source information on analysing faults. not to mention how difficult it is to do trivial jobs, like having to lift the body off a Range Rover to change an alternator, or is that an urban myth?

Yes the thing is coal is mostly a solid bit of carbon, it gives off some volatiles (that's how town gas was first made) but then it just sits there glowing and not doing much. If you allow air underneath it (primary air) and a bed of hot coal to build up, the coal at the bottom produces a lot of heat and carbon dioxide, this heats up the coal above which then reduces the carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide. So the carbon is changed from a solid to a gas. The gas then combines with air supplied from over the coals (secondary air) which produces the purple-blue flame we see when the char burns. As wood pyrolyses in the fire it evolves offgas which gives 70% of the heat we feel so only 30% of the heat that comes from burning the char. Thus wood needs little primary air and that which diffuses down from the overfire air is sufficient in a little stove. It is a bit more complicated than that as unlike a petrol engine, which needs almost exactly the right amount of air to fuel, with a wood fire we always supply quite a bit more air than the ideal (stoichiometric) amount and even more as the moisture content of the wood goes up. Keeping this excess air to a minimum increases stove efficiency, hence why dry wood burns better and more efficiently.