SteamyTea

TL;DR We looked at phantom power draw a while back with regard to crankcase heaters, has this been ruled out?

Polyurethane foams will break down quite quickly when exposed to moisture, UV and thermal cycling (why they are not used in small aircraft manufacture anymore). Cut out what you can, refill with a suitable foam, then as soon as you can, cover the gap with a combination of silicone and trim.

Not a very large window though.

Yes, I think my search picked up the value for basalt wool insulation ((expletive deleted)ing AI results). Is glass wool emulsion bound like chopped strand mat (eglass) is. If so, that would account for the itching. Powder bound CSM is not so itchy.

"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it" Jonathan Swift 1710

The press tends to print stories that are rare, not common. Why we read about EV fires, but not ICE ones. Nor only has child mortality dropped, so has birthrate in most countries.

You can go and see all the best data there currently is here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix-uk?tab=chart&country=~GBR But a quick précis below. You can discus population growth, but it is not the problem, bad management and denial of technology to others is where blame lies.

Rain is warmer today than yesterday.

I just had a look that the thermal properties of glass and basalt. Glass has a conductivity between 0.9 and 1.2 W.m-1.K-1. Basalt 0.03 and 0.04 W.m-1.K-1. But that is only part of the story. Density, and therefore the ratio between fibres and air (which does the real work), water absorbing, combustion temperature and flame spread, insitu slumping and cost are important. They will both make you itch.

I got paid quite well. I was approached about using some of my storm footage a few months back, no pay, told them to not bother. They seem to think that giving an 'amateur' just a credit is enough. We should really point out that we have minimum wage in the UK (why I dislike voluntary work). Though we do all contribute days and weeks of hours on here, for (expletive deleted) all, except the occasional abuse. But I pay for entertainment.

The TV work I have done is not far off that. 2 people, the camera operators, who also did the lighting (Best Boy) and the director, who also did the sound ((expletive deleted)ing helicopters taking off from Culdrose). Was all very easy and relaxed on site. The studio side was a different thing all together. About 20 people, tonnes of gear and wires everywhere. The director/producer was a tyrant, the Best Boys had to sort all the mess out. Was good fun, especially the time I had to find, control and be filmed with some rare breed farm animals for a medieval film (that got canned).

Perspex is a trade name (like Fibreglass and Hoover), but if it is a proper acrylic it should not yellow (acrylic is the only true optically clear plastic). You can get acrylics that have rubber nanoparticles (smaller diameter than visible light wavelength) in them, this improves toughness, these can discolour over time. The reason for picking cast over extruded is to do with the way that the polymers are aligned during manufacturing and processing. Cast has the polymer chains randomly 'scattered' during curing, this makes for a homogeneous mix (thermal and optical properties the same in all directions). Extruded, on the other hand, has the chains aligned in one direction (as it is a hot process that rearranges the already cured polymer). This means that there is a difference between directions, especially with thermal expansion, this can cause the sheet to ripple more in one plane than the other. Cast usually costs more than extruded, but is easier to cut. If hot processing acrylics i.e. vacuum forming, the sheets have to be baked in a drying oven for many hours to expel moisture. Polycarbonates, while immensely strong, do weaken with age as they are susceptible to chemical attack (mainly petrochemicals) and ultraviolet light degradation. Another alternative that is extremely cheap is polystyrene, I have made my secondary glazing from it. 2 years on and it is fine. There are UV stabilised mixes for outside usage but I did not bother as it was an experiment (and one that paid for itself in 2 years). (Even after 25 years out of the plastics/polymer industry, I still miss it in some ways)

Ask for cast, rather than extruded, acrylic. 5mm is really quite thick and will be plenty strong enough, you could probably use 3mm. https://plasticonline.co.uk/clear-cast-acrylic-sheet.html

So peer review evidence is one viewpoint, the other is opinion. How about backing up the opinion with peer reviewed evidence. That will level the playing field surely.

Are you for real? But to answer it, energy, from what ever source, has/is contributing to higher global standards of living. We also produce more, with less energy, but as we have, apart from the bottom billion people, managed to secure our food, shelter, healthcare and educational needs, we have all got better off, we are demanding more non essential goods i.e. cars, consumer goods, international recreation travel, second homes etc. But I know deep down you want to blame it on other countries having too many people, and all the problems are really to do with overpopulation. The Club of Rome's Limits to Growth, still lingers in the British thinking as if it was a religion, even though it was debunked as soon as it came out. If it was true, a gallon if gasoline would cost 50 quid and a potato would be a tenner.

Right, I have answered quite a bit about this (mainly restating what I have said before, many times). Can I also say that I spent many years at university studying at degree and above level, renewable energy, environmental science, climate change, risk management and especially the local effects of weather on PV production. Most of the arguments against climate change and RE have been voiced for decades, and are nothing new. It is becoming very tiresome to have to go over the same ground over and over again. My favourite is 'the UK only accounts for 1% of global emissions'. Swap the word emissions to waste. Then make it local to yourself. Imaging if 1 in 100 household just scattered all their waste around where you lived. Would you consider it minor, remember that they are going to do it everyday, all day, and not stop.

Was a combination of different orbits, comet bombardment, shifting and fragmenting landmasses, totally different plant and bacteria mixes, volcanic eruptions. All been explained pretty well by the geo-physicists. There really is not that much mystery about what has happened in the last 4 billion years of the Earths history, just very finer details of more localised events.

Did you hear this week's Moral Maze. I must relisten to it as missed parts. Was about Net Zero. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002j5w6

But targets are needed in everything. Can you imagine a moving target for the standards if driving? Under your system, if there were not enough people to drive busses and taxis, you would drop the qualification. How low would you drip it? Let 14 year olds drive a train, bus, aeroplane. Maybe medical surgeon only needs to say they can do a heart bypass for 50 quid and they don't need a hospital.

They have forgotten about the industrial action by the miners in the 1960s that caused our electricity to be rationed. So much for energy security and jobs (it also caused the dash fir gas). We also had the 2000 fuel protest that caused as much disruption as COVID, though over a much shorter timescale). Then there was the Yom Kippor War in 1973, that (expletive deleted)ed the global economy and we are all still paying the price of that. 52 years and we learnt nothing, not even to stockpile energy.

That article has been floating around for a while now (dates get changed). Unfortunately, Williams is relying on people not understanding the difference between power, energy (very common), installed capacity, peak demand and so forth. You are right though, we do need storage. If you remember 3 years ago when the Ukrainian war started, the UK gas storage was deleted, this was reflected in the gas price. We also quickly imported stored gas in ships. So basically, natural gas relies on storage as well. As dies gasoline, diesel, coal, biomass and hydro electric. To say that there are times that the wind does not blow, and the sun dies not shine, is just missing the point and wrong. As I have shown many times, over the last few years there has not been a time when some RE has not been contributing to the grid (and a decade ago the contribution was quite small).

This has been a trope for decades. Wine is made in many places, including the British Isles, for centuries. I have an 'English' grape vine with in my garden. The main reason we stopped making wine (made it when the Celts got pushed out by the Romans) was two fold. It was dreadful. Trade routes opened up (mainly because of the Romans). You can read up about it in John Smith's Wealth of Nations (the part about division of labour). As for the Thames freezing, it still would freeze up in some winters. The Thames, from Cricklade, down to the Thames Barrier, has been made wider, deeper, flood controlled and totally navigable all year round, it was a major trade route from the East to the West, canals have joined it up to the Avon to make cargo transportable to Bristol (and other parts of the country). If you look at the bridges that were in the Thames in London, they were quite short (the river is 3 or 4 times wider in places), with many arches, only a few feet apart (boat were small back then), road travel was the primary form of transport until the industrial revolution in the mid 1700s. So with slower flow rates, shallower depths, basically a lot less water, freezing over happened easily (but not every winter and not for very long). Hope that has knocked that zombie myth on the head, but I doubt it.

Well at least is was identified as a screw (threaded all the way to the head) and not a bolt.

Really. Explain more?

That is just an ordinary silicone sealant, it is the frame and glazing that are structural. I suspect it is a high modulus sealant (don't move much in service), similar to what I used to stick the steam rooms together with.