openspaceman
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Everything posted by openspaceman
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That pinging opening and newsreel pictures of grunts walking down a dusty road evokes such memories. This played on the 8 track in the bug as we drove to finthen.
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Yes that is probably the easy way, voltage from panels converted to AC by an off grid inverter and then charge car with a Zappi. I suspect that will be a 15-20% poorer performance than if you could run DC straight from the panels and into the car battery via a MPPT charger.
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Well of course I agree, I bought my panels at the same time my car was new, they were similar in price, and I chose to forgo a modest new car at the time and acquired it five years later instead. BTW in the absence of panels and battery my electricity bill would still only be £1050 at today's capped price so one needs to be careful with what is used anyway.
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Well I agree with you to a large extent but the problem is the old houses,like mine, that defy straightforward solutions to insulate them. They are a very large portion of the housing stock, no reason that new builds couldn't be better though. Does anyone have figures for number of houses, semi-detached, terraced verses flats, apartments etc, Also it is something to do with the extremely poor standard of policing building regulations that means a lot of techniques for preventing things like cold bridging are compromised by poor application. I do actually have a bit of experience in trying to get building workers to adhere to the instructions. BTW the latest bit of building regulations seem to make use of plastic insulation nearly obligatory over rockwool (which I prefer).
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It is not free and when you consider the return on capital it is not actually a good investment compared with quite a few other investments but...
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It's down to freedom of choice. I'm a bit perturbed by the amount of agricultural land that is being taken for solar pv arrays. Given that also our farmers are not being given a nod to get on and produce food in the face of similarly increased fertiliser prices I think government is failing in its prime purpose to steer industry. We have already seen a large reduction in grain protein this year because farmers did not risk spending on fertiliser and in my view we should maximise agricultural output for human consumption because food on the global market will be needed for the poorer countries where people are going to starve. For us to exacerbate that problem by out bidding them is going to be tragic.
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Will you just go for charging off the 13A supply then? Should work out a lot cheaper than that, 6 panels for £1600 the inverter will be the interesting one because it will have to run off grid?? to avoid an application to the DNO. The obvious cheap way would be to stay DC but I wouldn't know how to charge an EV that way.
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Everything is tracking the gas price as that is used for most of our electrcity so the wind farms and other generators with fixed costs must be doing well and yes but not by much. I just hope the big players' shareholders will let them re invest in renewables with this windfall. I still cannot fathom why, in this street of 100 dwellings almost all of which have available roof space like mine, no one else has invested in panels. I have just ordered 1.5kW more and that might extend my grid free season by a few days in March and November
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You should do the sums, the heat the blocks hold will be the highest temperature they get to minus the temperature in the room you take them to times their mass times their specific heat, it will be less than you might expect. I have a fan sucking from the convection ports in my 4kW stove and blowing into the next room, through the wall, 3 meters distance. It sends 30-40 degree heat and is good enough not to need heating in any other rooms, this is a small house but solid walls. -
Ah but I predate you by 20 years so might be
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Moving a lot OT; do you use an electric pump for the borehole and also treat all the water with UV?
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I wonder if that was the bloke that sacked me, I was similarly "self employed" and that was typical of small firms and what HMRC has sought to stop.
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+1
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Harvesting timber on potentially unowned land
openspaceman replied to RobHeskin's topic in Trees and the Law
Firstly all land is owned by somebody. As there is a public right of way passing through it it may belong to the landowner either side, be highway waste or common land. If the ownership has changed since 1948 details will be with the land registry. You may well find no one objects to you taking (stealing) it but more sensible to find the landowner and ask. I have found most public landowners are too risk adverse to allow powered machinery to operate on their land other than their own contractors. Not had a problem from the farmer I pick up logs from.- 25 replies
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If that £50 day rate was also from 1995 he would need to be asking £115 now and that is likely to rise steeply here on in.
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Yes this is my understanding also. I should push for it but wanted to install a plastic pipe in place of the iron one currently and just haven't prioritised it, which is silly as my annual water bill is higher than my gas or electricity bills singly. I have tested my well and it passed on all counts so given an electric pump and filter I could use that for bathing, flushing, DHW etc. and just keep the cold water main for cooking and drinking. There is some resistance to bathing in it from the other occupant. Anyway I was asking Dave about how the water rate was managed if it is paid within the general rate when unmetered but then how is it paid if metered? I pay Affinity for my water and they reimburse Thames Water for the sewerage charge even though I am unmetered.
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How does that work with a meter then? My water unmetered charge (includes waste as the bigger portion) is £400/annum. If I had a meter it would be about £150/annum, but priority for meter fitting is to people moving in to unmetered properties so they are not rushing to fit one.
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I never used a guide but more recently with the 5/32 files and down I do as they snap too easily unsupported. I'm not so good now, mostly lack of practice, but like @Stubby used to touch up frequently, it was amazing how sensitive you became to a slightly dull saw when production cutting. I copied the other guys back then but never see people doing it my way nowadays. I straddle the saw with the bar slightly tipped up clear of the ground for left hand cutters and then rest the saw at 40 odd degrees across my thigh to the right hand set.
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Magic stuff, far stronger than welding or brazing, dumbbell inserts on mine were nickel I think, back then I paid about £10/inch but the firms seem to have disappeared now. Yes and replace the fluorescent tube with an LED one.
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non sequitur or what's that got to do with the price of fish
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80% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, nitrogenous fertiliser is in the form of nitrates (nitrogen and oxygen compounds of ammonia being a major one), if this is applied badly the nitrates end up in the water supply instead of in the growing plant. IC engines produce oxides of nitrogen when the combustion temperature is high, diesels produce more because of the excess oxygen used and the higher pressure, the nitrogen oxide emissions become nitrates as they fall to earth as rain or in combination with other emissions and also leach through to the water courses. Adblue and the exhaust catalyst turn these nitrogen oxides back to nitrogen.
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Tis the season to see Fungi, fa la la la la....
openspaceman replied to David Humphries's topic in Fungi Pictures
Dyer's mazegill beneath one dead mature scots pine and an apparently healthy one. Many of the pines have historically suffered from wildfire. -
Yes but they lined dew ponds and clay by puddling it but I thought any clay subsoil did the job. I worked at a clay pit at Ewhurst and it was just ordinary clay which was pug milled smooth and formed into tiles and the gloopy stuff out of the pugmill would have made an impermeable lining.
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What's special about puddling clay? There are quite a few brickworks around Horsham that may do a deal.
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Looking back at the pictures I should have noticed that from the wear ring showing on it. I suspect there is also an element of springiness used properly, like a bellville washer.
