openspaceman

Which silver port? The oil looks like it's coming out of the correct hole and into the channel that matches up with the hole in the bar to me

I support your original contention that charity workers should be unpaid volunteers and while that site is several years out of date some of those institutions with top pay don't look like they deserve charity status to me. Does anyone have figures for staff salaries at: RSPCA, British Legion, Red Cross, DEC, etc. I might just not donate to charities with chief execs earning more than £100k/annum

So did I and had been considering adding evacuated tubes to a lean to roof that was too low for extra PV. Now I have decided to switch excess PV to an immersion during sunny days ( full sun even in February, only 2 days last month) means I have 4kWh to spare.

That's an interesting one, I know someone who has done just that for over thirty years now but it didn't meet building regulations then. In the old days a solid fuel back boiler could only be sited near enough directly below the feed and expansion tank and had to have a 1" pipe going directly up to it. The reason being if a pump failed and the stove was fully stoked up and blazing there needed to be a means of boiling water getting out . The trouble with piping in a boiler in place of a radiator (which is what I would have to do too) is if the pump failed would there be enough thermal convection to dissipate the heat? In my case no as we do not use any radiators upstairs, indeed we have not even has the lounge radiator on this year and that is the only one we use (I could run a pipe up in a high loop in the loft to over the F&E tank but the loop would have to be high enough to prevent pump over when the CH is running normally). Also radiators are balanced by variably restricting their outlets so that all achieve the same temperature when they are on, the backboiler would effectively look like a short circuit to the gas boiler. The regulations changed to allow pellet and chip stoked system on a pressurised system, this was allowed because there is only a small amount of woodchip or pellets in the combustion chamber at a time, so less chance of boiling but there also has to be a pressure relief venting in such a way no one can be scalded by it. Someone more up to date may be able to come up with a lawful work around, if so let me know and I might do the same.

Apart from the solar thermal panel in summer suggested can you fit a backboiler?

@Billhook what happened to Navitron and all those forums?

I haven't got back to that because access got too wet but did get to deal with a hung up leylandii windblow, 30" through at base but the Jonsered 920 ripped through it, which is interesting as it wouldn't sell at £100. Homeowner had gone and bought a Titan (einhell) and just about wrecked it before he gave up. My 30 year old 262 and 38 yo 920 did the job fine. I even got some climbing in to the birch it was all hung up in but no LOLER inspectors present let alone two ropes😀

That's firewood price isn't it. When we cut chestnut coppice the art was in selecting out the right pieces from the tree to maximise production of rails, if a 10 ft length for cleaving at least 4 rails couldn't be had it was 6ft or 5ft 6" for stakes, smaller diameter stiff was for assortments of tree stakes. Specialist stuff like hop poles was dead in my area and the walking stick trade was sown up by the best coppice within a couple of miles of the factory (the shoot had to reach over 4 ft in its first season). So my thought is already randomly cut to length chestnut coppice is not the way to optimise value. Actually fairly small diameter chestnut coppice after you have lost the butt sweep mills well with little chance of shake.

Yeah. I'm very dependent on wood fuel I have self sourced so my domestic heating bill for gas has only been £13 so far this year (and I need to find a way of decreasing its use for DHW by using excess PV) so stopping wood burning would be a significant cost to me.

I'm dreading this problem, a lady three doors down has said to me she thinks woodburning stoves are bad so I'm careful not to emit smoke but the smell is a bit inevitable.

I'm sure it can be made to fit and in any case I need to modify some dogs for the Jonsered 920 (which was used on some leylandii windblow today, 25 years old and 30 inch through near the base) and it can be used on that if not the 2100.

That's a kind offer I'll PM you and send some money to a charity you designate or cancer research.

yes there's no question that a diesel engined tower light is better but if you only have a trolley and are tabbing in half a mile...

It must be six or seven years since I went on a night possession but by then we had progressed from a pair of 2kVA chinese gensets each with two cheap halogen stands from screwfix to battery flood lights like these

Oi!

I know nothing about this saw or its carb but it occurs to be that if the metering arm is low then the needle valve will not let fuel past, on older saws it was possible to depress the centre of the diaphragm through the hole to atmosphere. with this depressed and a clean gauze filter there is no obstruction between tank and purge bulb. Mind adw still doesn't think it is a carb problem.

Firstly that air is getting in somwhere around the purge bulb because there is no air in the line from the carb. Secondly if it is not sucking fuel into the carb are you sure you have not blocked the small hole between the metering diaphragm and the return nipple/pipe on the carb? The gasket may be upside down and 180 degrees out. Have you checked Spud's suggestion of the gauze filter between the pump and the inlet needle valve?

The hole is through the middle of the rubber AV, the bolt is there so I cannot understand how the catcher was missing but then it is 30+ years since I last used it and memory gets blurred. If you're thinking of dropping by then yes please else I'll just order one. PM sent earlier

Best shift this off Sean's question and on to its own topic

Chain Catcher for Stihl 084, 088 - 1124 650 7700 | L&S Engineers WWW.LSENGINEERS.CO.UK Chain catcher Genuine Stihl Part OEM Part No. 1124 650 7700 Suitable for the following Stihl Machines: 084, 088, MS 780... Do you mean this one?

Now that's wrong, brake lights should come on as soon as regeneration slows it more than traditional overrun would to be fair to other road users.

Sorry missed this post but see my reply above and as you note petrol has about 90% of the calories of diesel.

It needs to be a bit more refined than that but I hope someone critiques my figures; a petrol engine at maximum torque is more efficient then a naturally aspirated diesel, except most diesels are now boosted by a turbo and the common rail injection means they burn their fuel much higher up the stroke so they become more efficient. Then cars seldom work in their most efficient range (40% with a big old diesel) . Again IC cars don't recoup energy as they slow down (even though this is actually a small amount in normal driving air and rolling resistance use most energy) and tend to use fuel when stationary. For our purposes we only need to consider the energy input verses mileage. My little diesel fiesta when I got it at 4 years old managed 80mpg 17.6 miles per litre on a long run. As each litre of DERV contains about 10kWh of heat energy that means I did 1.76 miles per kWh of heat. An average car is probably worse than twice that. Your lower figure of 30% heat to electrical power to a consumer is about right for a steam turbine power plant but only coal, nuclear and biomass power plants use them now as far as I know. Most of our electricity comes from combined cycle gas turbines which operate at 60+% heat to electricity, a lot comes from renewables which have no heat input. So even at your lowest generation to consumer figure of 30% the EV doing 4 miles per kWh is doing 1.2mile per kWh of heat and if it is charged off peak it will be having input from a combination of wind and nuclear so even less heat energy and of course much lower cost if you can get an off peak tariff. And that's even before we start looking at the comparative pollution levels from centralised generation versus a diesel engined vehicle.

Ok that's good so charging losses don't skew the mileage. I doubt I will ever have an EV as I have 4 cars sitting here, one classic, one 4wd and mine and my wife's small runabouts. What I would be interested in getting a handle on is the effect of charge efficiency as the battery ages, I'm, guessing internal losses will build up over time so would expect less of the initial electricity put in to be available. I think my home battery is warranted to give 80% of its initial capacity for 8 years but that doesn't tell me what percentage of what I put in I will get out.

So do you measure electricity you put in by your home meter or just use the indicator in the vehicle?