SteamyTea

You know how some adverts would stop you buying a product, they have managed that for me.

There may be some with fake DS18b20s shipped with them, but you can swap that out for a genuine one. The display will only be reading of the probe, so should be as accurate as the probe. @TerryE and myself have both calibrated them independently, and via different method, and found the DS18b20 to be very good.

Why not something like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/113641431380

Welcome Have a read of out old mate @Ed Davies blog. https://edavies.me.uk/ Maybe go up and help him finish it.

I seem to remember using some old, but we'll stored plaster, it had a very short working life. The plasterer with me whined like a little boy about it. Gave home 50 quid to get more, he returned with some from the same batch, from the same merchants. He happily finished off. I would think that old cement, if it has absorbed moisture, would not be as the manufacturer intended. This might not matter in a lot of instances, but might be catastrophic if the elements were key to the structural integrity.

https://www.swanage.news/swanage-man-and-corfe-castle-woman-charged-with-drug-offences/

Minus a lot of your inputs i.e. van, fuel, consumables, marketing etc.

Not just pressure, flow is important. If your 'water heating device' cannot deliver enough power you have to reduce the flow rate, regardless of the water pressure. One way around this is to use a store of water that is heated in advance. Then you can have a smaller device heating the water that can be delivered to the shower at just about any rate you like.

Well done. Part P next.

From the local rag. Retiring Visit Cornwall boss Malcolm Bell says the future of tourism is to attract 'friends' not 'effing emmets'

Poison, there is a reason it is used around food places.

Have you ever been tempted to copy a Machintoch? I like things to be really simple and intuitive. Most people understand a basic thermostat, and most can set a basic timer. Where it gets too much is if you have to delve into sub menus to do that. I did suggest that it should be possible to replace a basic wall thermostat with something a bit smarter, but easy to revert back to a wallstat. It would help immensely if plumbers and electricians would stop putting controls in inaccessible places, with unmarked cables and no manual. It would also help if all manufacturers would agree to just supply one type of switching i.e. zero volt. If you need power to something, run a separate power lead. The first topic I created over at the 'Other Place' many years ago was about Open Source house design. Within hours there was disagreement about the best formats to use i.e. which software packages. Pencil and paper and a book of rules/tables was all that was needed, but no, everyone wanted to make it way to complicated. It is strange, most people, most of the time, understand and stick to the rules when driving. As soon as they become pedestrians they set their own rules that they think will benefit them the most. That is why it takes to long to walk down a busy street, to many random actors (expletive deleted)ing it up.

Isn't that part of the problem to uptake. Way too much choice just paralyses potential customers. You only have to look to the different 'flavours' of Linux to see why it is struggling in the marketplace. All the talk at the moment is about Rust. I do t have a clue what the (expletive deleted) it is, or why I might need it. Computer aided design packages have the same problem.

Yes. All going to end in tears these cloud services.

I still think you should write a book, you explain things so well.

All giants to me. I like being in the wherethefukarewe tribe.

Some LED lighting systems use a constant current device that converts the mains AC current to one suitable for LED lighting. This can be switched either before the device i.e. on the AC side from a normal wall switch, or can be switched on the DC side, after the device. If it is switched on the DC side, the voltage conditioner is always on and may be using a bit of power. Why simple design is generally the most energy efficient.

Farting couch pig

There aren't any really. I think the rise of home automation is going to be an energy problem for many. Really just comes down to sensible engineering. Take a fridge, the ones that have lower annual energy usage have better insulation, not better compressor. A smaller oven will have a smaller surface area, not a better heating element. So just go for good thermal engineering i.e. more insulation and better airtightness, a simple heating system, avoid too many gadgets that need to be on stand by all the time and get a washing line. If you want to switch a light on an off, use a wall switch that cuts the mains, not one that cuts the DC supply to the actual light.

It is not as simple as that.

Get one, they are so useful. The right sort is.

For the same price as a wood burner, you can get 4 kWp of PV (ish). If you exported all your generation at 5p/kWh, that would be £200/year. At today's electricity prices that would buy you about 500 kWh of power. Or to put it another way, 250 hours of running a look alike, 2 kW output stove.

Get an angle grinder and a sanding disk. Can shape anything you like with that. Or just stick down with this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Everbuild-Lumberjack-30min-Polyurethane-Wood-Adhesive-Glue-310ml-tube-/180911267156

A letter in this week's comic. Thanks for shining light on solar's clear advantage (1) Published 16 November 2022 From Fred White, Nottingham, UK Thank goodness Michael Le Page highlights the rarely stated gap in energy yield between crops grown to produce biofuels and solar photovoltaic panels, of 50 to 110 fold. Those figures need proclaiming in headlines(5 November, p 27). What possesses Western governments to press on with subsidies for biofuel crops so large that farmers literally can’t afford to ignore them is beyond comprehension. Such a huge difference in yield makes biofuels (as opposed to energy from bio waste) technically, morally and economically indefensible.

I like threepenny bits.