SteamyTea

There is a good joke about this. Flobber dob-a-dob

It is the only thing that keeps the county united.

On Off, Chamber Pot Rhymes. On off Chamber pot He has a Ford Crapi He took it to the parking lot Just to have a wee Over to others now

Not a bad term for people with no access to mains sewage. Nicely describes a container full of shit in the garden.

Is the most popular hobby on here cars. I think we should design a very basic 'formula' boat that runs off electric drills. I know @Jeremy Harris has done this. Then meet up at the Hayle estuary and see who gets to St. Ives first.

You could have fitted a humidifier, but I find that after a few days of dry air my nose gets used to it. If designing from scratch, it would be possible to put in larger ducts to increase the energy flows. Solar gain from windows is a problem as we tend to like large windows. May be worth having a rethink on how practical they are really. Would save money by not having 60% of one side of a house as triple glazed, low U-Value frames.

Quite simply you have to run the numbers, including prices, to see what is worth while. Remember that solar thermal, once it has heated the DHW, then does nothing. If combined with a PV module, it may well use lower efficiency one. @Ed Davies has a bit on his website about it (though it could do with a bit of updating). As a rule, keep DHW and space heating separate. They do different things, at different times, and at different temperatures.

With 3 studs. The French copy no one.

Just try getting the wheels balanced on a 2VC. That can be challenge if the week.

As does education. I did little work for my BSc, in my final year I was virtually blind because my cataract operation had been delayed. But when I then did my PGCE, I got stressed. Was not the teaching side of it, that I was used to, and the stress of a new class is quite normal, and probably healthy. Halfway though the first term, I realised that the PGCE was really a box ticking exercise. Then it became easy. I have spoken to a few people that have done the same course, and they found the same. So I think, in the academic arena, it is a change of subject, rather than ability, that is the stressful thing. It is the not knowing what is expected of one that hurts. I think building may well be like this, more on the planning and designing, rather than the brick laying and carpentry.

You could set yourself some other building related challenges. How about designing and building a home automation system. Or designing, prototyping a new roofing method. Or go surfing.

I know that is the case, but it would be fun to reduce each house to a basic cube and seeing how much difference it actually makes. Would need a reasonable estimate of how much energy each house has used (gas/oil/wood/electricity) and detached, semi, end terrace, mid terrace. Then there is the really odd ones that may be triangular or third buried. But as a start, just a cube would be a good starting point. Or maybe a sphere.

And a real time clock to be on the safe side. Could use the hotspot on a phone, even if there is no 3/4G signal. Not sure if that uses the phone clock when no signal. One advantage of using wireless is that it is pretty simple to set up a Raspberry Pi, or similar Linux box, to get the data onto a PC.

I always bought mine from these people. https://homechip.com/collections/ibuttons-1/products/ds1920-f5-temperature-ibutton You do need to get a reader for them.

This is a similar to the problem of using heating and cooling degree days, if the base temperature is not set the same i.e. 15.5°C, then individual results become meaningless. This is the problem we had over at the other place when we started to collect usage and house size data. Too many people thought they would make their houses look better by changing the base temperature.

If you don't want to make your own (not hard or expensive, and can be very flexiable). Then consider iButtons and a reader. https://uk.farnell.com/c/semiconductors-ics/memory/ibuttons-accessories/ibuttons

Ah right, it is your 'must' not the M&Es, or anyone else's 'must'. Misunderstood.

No, but Wikipedia will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-area-to-volume_ratio

So you can never see the problem before it is too late.

Why 'must' and not may or can?

Must have been in a book of his I had not read. I liked 'A Step further out'. Think I still have my copy from the 1981. I never realised he had died, but he was well into his 80's.

Yes, not sure why I put the year in, probably still had 8760 in my head. W.m-2 is the mean power the house is emitting, regardless of anything else.

If we reduced our houses to cubes, for calculation purposes, then divided the annual energy usage by that area, and then, divided by hours in year, we would get a number. The lower the number, the better. Mine is 3.5 [W.m-2.year-1]

And this penalises small houses that use less energy overall.

Be fun to calculate the energy usage for the sum of all built areas.