SteamyTea

Worth a mention we do have some house rules

If all the houses get sold, then they are too cheap. Not that often I agree with @Roger440, but he is spot on when comparing house and car quality. It is why kit car manufacturers don't make very good products. The components parts may reach a set quality level, just as they do in the housing industry. Then then get put together by morons. It is often quoted that you cannot have speed, quality and cheapness. You can, it is what production engineering does every hour of every day.

https://downsizegeek.com/elon-musks-6789-tiny-house-finally-hit-the-market/ Don't think it has made any difference.

Maybe @Dillsue can shed some light on this, he is in the PV business.

Well worth a listen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002tf9x Britain is turning electric, but the shift to renewable energy will require a major rewire. Business and Economy editor Douglas Fraser follows the journey of power generated on the north coast of Scotland to the socket in your living room, to discover the scale and the challenges of re-hauling the near century-old national grid. From windfarms in Caithness, pylons in the Highlands and huge undersea cables transporting power from Aberdeenshire to North Yorkshire, Douglas looks at the environmental and financial impact of the planned changes to the country's energy infrastructure. He also asks if Britain can meet a future surge in demand for electricity to power electric cars, heat pumps and AI data centres, while achieving its ambitious net zero targets.

From the inews.co.uk The hidden £200 charge to install solar panels on your home People looking to invest in solar panels to combat soaring energy prices will be hit with a hidden fee of more than £200 from this month, The i Paper can reveal. The Government is throwing its support behind solar as a way to cut bills by offering low-interest grants and loans towards installations, including paying for installations for low-income families up to a cost of £12,000. But while demand for solar panels is soaring, customers are being hit with a new fee for connecting to the National Grid. As part of any installation, customers must complete a G98 or a G99 application, a registration for connecting solar panels or battery systems to the grid. The two different types of application relate to the size of the system that is being connected. Until now, this was free for most customers. But from 1 April, National Grid says it will be charging £183 plus VAT for the service. National Grid said the cost had previously been absorbed by other customers and the new fee is being introduced to ensure people are treated more “fairly and consistently” from now on. However, John Bloomfield, who runs Green Energy Solar in South Wales, is concerned that the charge may have an impact on business and is sending “mixed messages” to consumers. John Bloomfield, owner of Green Energy Solar, says he does not understand why the new fee is being introduced “It’s confusing to homeowners,” he told The i Paper. “You feel like the general message is ‘do it [install solar panels], this is the right thing to do, reducing carbon emissions, increasing your energy security’. “But then National Grid are saying ‘we want to charge you to do it’. It’s a shame they are doing it, I don’t understand their reasoning.” Bloomfield mainly installs solar systems and batteries to private homeowners and small businesses and said demand has gone “totally crazy” with orders more than doubling between February and March. He thinks the new fee is unlikely to put customers off an installation in the current climate but says it will create extra admin that could lead to delays. He also said communication from National Grid on the issue has been unclear. “It complicates the process for us a little bit because.. we can’t just get the acceptance [from National Grid] and go ahead,” said Bloomfield. “We have to get the acceptance with the cost and then give that to the customer and make sure they accept that.” Installers have been waiting for clarity from National Grid to be able to inform their customers, he added. The grid was privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1990. In 2023, shareholders received £1.6bn in dividends and profits increased to more than £2bn in its latest half-yearly update posted last year. As a result, campaigners have long called for the company to be nationalised. Johnbosco Nwogbo, from lobby group We Own It, told The i Paper: “It’s something we’ve been demanding for several years. “If you are incentivizing homeowners, or small businesses, to go into solar generation on one hand, but then disincentivising them by charging them a fee on the other – it’s not a completely joined-up policy.” A National Grid spokesperson said: “We’ve made changes to how we handle some solar PV connection requests to help improve customer service and ensure a more consistent experience. “From 1 April, we’re applying an assessment fee of £183 including VAT to certain connection offers. This reflects the detailed engineering and safety assessment work we already carry out and ensures customers are treated fairly and consistently. “Until now, this work has still taken place, but the cost has effectively been absorbed and covered by other customers. Introducing the fee means that those requesting this service are charged fairly for the work involved. “For schemes connecting to our low‑voltage network, the fee will only be payable if the customer chooses to accept the connection offer.” A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “We are making solar cheaper and easier to install with our £15 billion Warm Homes Plan, the biggest homes upgrade programme in British history. “With grants and low interest loans, alongside new plug-in panels soon to hit supermarket shelves, we are ensuring everyone can take advantage of the benefits of home solar technology.”

I had a tour around Frame's Redruth factory. The production manager told me about the great pains they go to ensure the quality and fit is right. Then electricians and plumbers come along and drill holes wherever they feel like it, totally ignoring all instructions and drawings.

Sorry, thought you'd be too busy chatting up your new llm girlfriend to notice What do you think he calls her?

Helium is essential for making all electronics these days. Helium is a byproduct of oil and gas extraction, as well as radioactive geological processes. We are basically running out of helium, so if you want some RAM, keep filling your car up with fossil fuels. If, by chance, you own a small BEV, say a Renault Zoe, and you want some RAM, then you only have yourself to blame, you selfish (expletive deleted)er.

True, or seagulls, dogs and emmets. Cornwall is shit this time of year.

Snap

Magnet maybe.

Old Jason explained a bit about costs by comparing a Ford Lightning and a Tesla Powerwall.

Had many wives, just not mine.

Our old member @Jeremy Harris used an ozone generator, instead of a UV lamp, to kill the nasties. Worked well. Having said that, it was before cheap UV LEDs were available. I like the ozone method as it, by it's very nature, gets well mixed in with the water stream, and works better at elevated pressures.

The Physicist have sorted it out (with help from his mum). From this week's comic. Physics Physicists create formula for how many times you can fold a crêpe When you fold a flexible material such as a pancake or a tortilla, its behaviour depends on a competition between gravity and elasticity Bas den Hond 19 March 2026, updated 27 March 2026 There is a limit to how many times you can fold a crêpe If you gently fold a disc made of some flexible and possibly tasty material, what makes it stay folded? And how many times can you fold it before it puts up a fight and flips back? A physicist from France, home of the crêpe, decided to find out. He discovered that just one number tells you all you need to know. The perfect boiled egg takes more than half an hour to cook Tom Marzin at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, wondered about crêpe-folding when he was on holiday in his home region of Brittany, France, where this thin pancake is especially popular. Just folding a tip of it would result in it flipping back, but with a larger fold, friction and gravity would conspire to keep it still. What rules could govern this behaviour? Marzin turned it into a research project, the results of which he will present on 20 March at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver, Colorado. His work is different from the origami-like folds some physicists study, which are permanent. “What we’re dealing with here is what I call a soft or smooth fold. And it is just a competition between gravity and elasticity,” says Marzin. One way to observe this competition is to stick part of a pancake to a tabletop, let the other end hang over the edge and measure how much it sags. Marzin worked out that the answer can be predicted with one number, dubbed the elasto-gravity length, which combines the material’s density, its stiffness and the force of gravity. He suspected that this number would also govern the behaviour of flexible materials in other situations, and in a computer model this turned out to be the case. To check his simulations in the real world, Marzin experimented with plastic discs, store-bought tortillas and, of course, crêpes. He started out making the latter himself, but scientifically they weren’t fit for purpose. Physicists discover the secret to perfect cacio e pepe pasta “I didn’t control the thickness well,” he says. “So I asked my mom to perform the experiments over in France. I asked her to buy the callipers and rulers and a bunch of crêpes from a commercial brand. Those were probably made by a machine, [so] that guarantees a good uniform thickness. And she did it really correctly.” Marzin’s experiments confirmed that all aspects of crêpe-folding depend on the elasto-gravity length. For instance, it governs how much of the area of a sheet that’s folded will go into the part that loops over. This determines if there will be enough flat area left for another fold. His equations correctly predict that a crêpe 26 centimetres in diameter and 0.9 millimetres thick can be folded up to four times, whereas a 1.5-mm-thick tortilla of the same size, with an elasto-gravity length 3.4 times as large, will allow only two folds. “This length captures all t he physics underneath,” Marzin says.

I have kept quiet all morning, safest way today.

And true to a lot of people.

Bit about a small kitchen here.

Right. Memory must be failing, maybe he discussed a wet system to reduce slump, but did not bother in the end.

Down here, when the weather is good, quite a lot. Usually up country folk that think it is normal Cornish behaviour to sit out and drink a bottle of fine wine. Truth is we prefer dark, damp and windy high street doorways with a shot of heroin. Why the pace of life is so much slower here, no (expletive deleted)er can be bothered.

Most are now flooded. The water has to be managed to reduce the contamination risk. Not a case of close the mine and walk away. At the place I work I thought I had hit a wall early in the morning. Then realised I was a few feet from it. Had a look around and the ground was leaking water. During the day, a 40m strip of tarmac got distorted and more water started coming out. It eventually went up the slope to, what looks like an old vent shaft. Millions of litres of water have come out of it, into the stream. 104 years since it closed. Going to cost £200k (ish) to put right. We really should not be mining for energy when cheaper alternatives are now available. Shafted.mp4

Tungsten mines are nothing new down here, but may give a good proxy as to how long it takes to start mining again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemerdon_Mine Six years and not much has happened.

Was a decade ago. Not saying I am certain, just seem to remember it being mentioned at the time. Easy way to find out is to pull a fill hole plug out and see. Sometimes it is quicker just to try things out than constantly speculate.

Why I typed I seem to remember that Jeremy's place was a wet system, he had no problems when he cut a hole for his A/C unit.