openspaceman

We are such a long way off having enough renewables that it is hard to see what might happen, I think we will depend on imports of LNG for a long while. Currently we rely on gas because it can load follow when wind and solar cannot provide. From a personal level I can manage without grid electricity for 8 months of the year,I need to import about 1MWh from mid November to March, just with solar PV and it has been fairly consistent for 12 years. In summer I export more than 1MWh so I am a net exporter. I would bet that if the money paid out bailing out electricity companies and consumers had been invested in rooftop solar PV and domestic storage the energy crisis would have been a mere blip, plus we might have doubled our PV production. I am off grid now because my supplier is running a saving session 17:30 to 18:30 as wind has fallen to 8GW and gas is nearly maxed out at 24GW. My daughter is exporting 2.5kW from her battery ( for a reward of ~£5) but I cannot do that. Imagine if 25% of households could do this. I heat by wood which makes a big difference for me because my house is poorly insulated but even here the technology exists to make electricity in a micro chp generator which would guarantee I would never need grid electricity, except the technology never got developed for domestic use.

Which is a problem about 10 days a year around now, as I said we are burning coal and gas today as well as the Drax pellets. Drax burns 7.5 million tonnes of dry pellets a year, I think our total harvest of wood is only 13 million tonnes of green wood. We lost production from 3 nuclear power stations since Xmas which exacerbated the problem. A lot more foreign owned wind turbines are coming online this year to add to the french government owned nuclear power stations. I wonder how French prices for electricity compare with ours? Yes storage is a bottleneck to more renewables as are new electricity grid lines

This is a lesser worry for me as shipping is so efficient per tonne mile and I don't think UK could supply the demand, let alone manufactur the pellets. Drax is a coal fired design and pellets can be crushed and blown in in much the same way coal was, so it re uses the power station which otherwise would be demolished. Radcliff is the only other coal fired power station, running flat out atm but that will be gone next year. The thing is the 3GW Drax produces becomes insignificant (although currently essentail) in the face of 20GW of wind and 6GW of solar PV for most of the year. It is the current hungry gap that is the problem where we are dependent on 25GW of gas. We have imported the vast bulk of our wood since before Nelson's time which was fine when we could rip off our colonies and therein lies the problem of why our leaders' business culture has never managed to adapt to the competitive world we live in. Re wilding is becoming a worry, it all seems to be grant dependent, and it detracts from food as well as timber production. It looks like the latest problems with pesticides for break crops will lead to farmers accepting public money to not plant 30% of arable which would previously been down to wheat the next year. We already import over 50% of our food and a lot of that is wheat. With the war in Ukraine, a big wheat producer, disrupting exports we will be buying it from the global market and affecting the supply to poorer countries.

Yes I think that is done with purpose built masonry stoves but impractical in my case as there is always some air passage open to my stove and even if I could plug the top of the chimney there would be an increased risk from carbon monoxide. Here is a picture from the same spot in the morning, before the fire is lit and some 8 hours since the stove was left to go out.

American homes tend to be much bigger than UK and the masonry stove is built in to a central position, we couldn't afford the loss of space. Old houses, like mine do have substantial brick chimney breasts. I have said a number of times about my cement lined chimney retaining heat which keeps the two reception rooms above 18C even with the fire not being kept in between 23:00 and 07:30. It also keeps the bedroom above warm (as well as the loft). Picture of the chimney in the above bedroom with the solid uninsulated wall to the far left and outside temperature -3C.

Have a search on masonry stoves which are becoming popular in north America and Canada. Same principle in that you load them with dry wood and burn fast and clean but without the ceramic tiles. The flue takes a torturous path through the substantial brickwork which allows the bricks to absorb all the heat and then deliver it into the room over several hours, and at end of burn the air inlet is sealed so air cannot carry the heat out of the chimney. Soapstone is also used instead of tiles as you get into asia as this can stand the heat without cracking.

Would you expand on that? My inference is that you required an owner to replant, which was done, and hence there was no need to take the matter further.

As I said at the beginning it's a challenge which I just have a go at when I have some spare time between all the other retirement projects I have started and may not finish. When I took the saw repair on I expected it to be just a matter of adjusting the Hi and Lo screws. As to buying another saw, I have plenty which I will never wear out.

I was wrong, main jet pushed out and it has a functioning check valve. I'll reassemble the carb and try again but this time I'll clamp the tube to the purge bulb.

So right

Your earning to expenses ratio is too low

That's my thought too, IF the logs have been dried to below 20%mc wwb they won't sprout mould and inside the garage they will gradually reach an equilibrium with the Rh of the air in the garage. In most of UK this will be below 17% . In the SE logs in my open sided store go down to below this, much at 15% now (air dried over one summer) You only need airflow around the logs if they are damper than the equilibrium mc of the garage.

My £10/month smarty sim is 60GB ( goes down to 30GB after 6 months) on the 3 network . I can use it on my PC by making my samsung tablet a hotspot in an upstairs window and with a usb wifi dongle in the pc. For some reason I cannot get it working with the purpose made router with its external antenna.

Rupert and the pongos fire, matelots shoot.

Yes while I wasn't aware the BR800C was a 4mix I have used them in pole saws and they sound quite different. From what I recall they are a 4 stroke as you say but they have the advantage of using the crankcase pressure as the piston descends to act as a scavenge pump, supercharging the intake a bit.

Sorbus alnifolia??

With a bit of luck the bottom end and small end bearings will be fine but I expect the piston will have transferred a bit of aluminium to the bore and the rings will be seized in their lands. Whip the exhaust off and look, maybe post a picture of the rings through the exhaust port. The bore will probably be okay as it is hard but will need the aluminium chemically cleaned off and then "honed" with some wet and dry paper. Probably worth getting an OEM piston if it is that young.

That's best but I would call them as the message looks right apart from the time of sending but that may just be a computer thing.

Very little flooding here but I turned round and went another way once the sills were in water today. It's the same with snow, once you cannot distinguish the verge you can end up in the ditch.

The last picture looks just like frogspawn that has been frosted

Near you? I recall there was a drainage problem at your house.

That's right, it's over 30 years since I sold firewood but it was a luxury good here, so thin slabwood and small rounds were complained about, customers wanted uniform split sections. Very few people depend on wood for heating here or fewer still. like me. that heat only by using wood. Today is exceptional as the fire is not lit but I reckon wood saves me about 64kWh of heating most days between October and April, saving a fiver a day. @wills-mill let me have some slabwood that had been through a branch logger and I punted them around the narrow boat community, they burned well but the price was not competitive with smokeless coal mainly because of the price of nets and filling them and of course the fire could not be kept going overnight. I would love to use a branch logger for the small birch and pine we clear off heathland but there are issues of storage which would take more space than a stack of ordinary firewood, plus I have no access to a branch logger.

I''l push it through next year but I think it will not have a check valve in it and its annular groove will just take fuel from the un serviceable check valve I ringed in blue, as does the idle circuit, we'll see. In the mean time HNY to all and especially @bmp01,, @adw and @spudulike for help on this thread.

...and likely to become heavier as batteries move from lithium ion cobalt with flammable electrolyte through lithion ion phosphate to sodium ion.

They are the lyrics on spotify, I had to look it up as I hadn't heard it, far too modern for me. I'm trying to remember an earlier song about a bloke the singer envied until the last verse where it seems the guy topped himself. Got it, Richard Cory-Simon&Garfunkel, maybe I'll get to sleep now This one quoted above seems to have a similar theme to "ode to billie Joe in that the mother is sad about something.