SteamyTea

I got this all up my legs from the Bedford LC spa bath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_tub_folliculitis If anyone remembers The Brittas Empire, they were usually referring back to his time at Bedford. There was a reason for that.

Led my first climb in a 50MPH wind, was cold as well. Realised that a 'walky-talky' headset is not just a toy for posers. I was shouting for ages before my mate started up the climb.

With the proper words I hope.

There have been studies done on the embodied energy and CO2 for PV modules. I can't remember the figures, but it is pretty low. http://info.cat.org.uk/questions/pv/what-energy-and-carbon-payback-time-pv-panels-uk/ That report seems to say that it is about the same time as I have taken to grow those twigs.

The worse job I ever did was cleaning out the spa bath filter at the Sheffield YMCA, I have do idea what those young men got up to in it. Real adult content and 1970's language. But this is the cleaner version.

All I have really done is grown enough for a bit of coppicing in 5 years. And to root ball probably accounts for half the mass (can't ever check now as I went to the woods and planted them to see what happens in their natural environment). I think the point is that a mature tree has greater environmental benefit alive than burnt.

Some of the longer standing members may remember that I got into a debate about how useless biomass was as a fuel. There is a bloke over an the other places that decided that Dr. David MacKay was talking total rubbish and that the UK could be run from a few grass clippings, and another bloke that claimed that he had fitted a domestic biodigester that could run a house off a few poos, food waste and anything else that could be digested. I was not alone in thinking that all this did not add up, so I planned an experiment. I found a very small sycamore sapling in my garden, put it in a pot and let it grow for a year. Then every year of 5 years I pulled it out the pot, leaned up the roots and weighed it. I also measured the height and diameter. I also did the same with a second sapling starting a year later. So that gives me 3 full years worth of data, but on a small sample and not grown in ideal conditions. I am not worried by this as it would take whatever magic was in Jack's bean to get to a decent mass to be worth burning. So here are the mean masses for 2015, 2016, 2017,2018. 41, 88, 193, 330. They are grams not kilograms. Now at the moment I don't know what the dry mass will be, but if it is 20%, that gives me 66gm to burn. If it has a specific energy content of 5 kWh/kg (quite optimistic that is), then I have grown, in 5 years, 1/3rd of a kWh, and it has taken up a couple of square metres of my garden. So that is about 20,000 kWh of insolation to get a whopping 0.33 kWh back at winter time. That is a conversion rate of 1.65%, which oddly enough, is pretty high for a plant (but I have not included leaf fall, but have included the root). So if anyone thinks that it is best to grow timber for fuel, it just isn't. PV is better by a factor of 10. And if you want to store PV in a battery, you don't need a very large one to store 0.165 kWh.m-2.

S1 and S3, thought they were Audis. I had no idea that there are different categories of safety shoes. Probably best not to step on any loose planks.

Just remember that as soon as you walk into SportsDirect you are treated as a shoplifter. It really is one of the worse places I know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penwith My Mother has had the same water softener for about 20 years, I shall ask her if she know what make it is. It is just one you put salt into and it backwashes at night.

Best I have found is called Penwith

Did you not see that Black Mirror episode with the 'dogs' in it. Metalhead.

Save yourself 25 quid https://www.sportsdirect.com/dunlop-safety-iowa-mens-safety-shoes-181001?colcode=18100103&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9tiFwdKA2gIVECjTCh0WMw_KEAQYAiABEgKE8_D_BwE

Part of an MCS installation involves a structural engineer signing off the roof structure. I think this was driven by the insurance companies.

Just cleaning up a lump of DS does not stop the seals getting infected. Quite pitiful when you see a blind seal trying to survive.

Having lived in Buckinghamshire where the water is actually just damp chalk, without a softener of some sort, the cylinder used to get split open within 5 years with all the rocks in the bottom. Trouble with a softener I find is that I feel I am constantly covered in soap after a shower. Down here, most places are on a meter. There are two standing charges, one for water at £54/year and one for sewage and surface water at £53/year, then the water is £1.92/m3, and sewage at £3.57/m3. There is a secondary charge of £3.15/m3 for highway. So before VAT, that is £107 + £8.64/m3. The reason our waste is so high is because we have to keep the beaches clean so that people can take their effing dogs down there to shit on it, usually after they have bitten me.

We do have the most expensive water and sewage costs in the country though

The way I see it is that you don't loose getting payment, but you never gain going down the DIY route. Ideally they should end up costing the same and the export part is inflation linked.

This is the inside of the kettle. Was the one from work so boiled about 20 times a day and is probably 5 years old.

Think so.

Thought I would drag out the 31 year old elements from my old cylinder. They came out easier than expected. The one on the right is the lower 'night' element and lasted 30 years before it went, the one of the left is the top element and is still good. What is that jelly though, have I created a new life form.

Export is 5.03 and 3.93 for generation. so as near as damn it, 9p/kWh. Really not to be sniffed at as it is worth about 300 to 400 a year on a 4 kWp system.

High fences make for good neighbours. Simple as that.

The GCN is common in the UK, but not the rest of the EU. Now you can argue that this shows that the EU is a really bad thing, but you have to start somewhere and shows that we should have engaged with the process more rather than sulked in the corner. We don't argue about the Iberian Lynx holding up developments in the UK, but I bet it happens in Spain. One of the other problems with planning is that it is city-centric, it really does like to consider countryside as a museum that has to be protected. Next time you are out in the countryside, count up the number of separate farmers fields that you can see. Then imagine that each one had one house built in the corner. I also think that if we stopped building in floodplains we may also reduce the GCN problem. Build on dry land.

What do you think it is, there are two parts to it, and both tax free for domestic use.