SteamyTea

Having little to do over here, I have been walking a lot (better weather than a Cornish summer). I have noticed that nearly all the windows are set to the very front of the wall. The only ones that seem to be set a little further back are the brick places, and these were probably commissioned by English immigrants (like my family). So why do we set out windows so far back in England?

Yes, but the are so nice about it, I can almost forgive them. Even my bacon and egg sandwich came on a paper place. It was nothing like a bacon and egg sandwich though. And no HP sauce that I could see.

My overriding impression of my first trip to Nova Scotia in nearly 30 years is that every drink is served in a paper cup. Taken me 10 days to find a cafe that sells in a porcelain mug. Coffee was dreadful, bleeding organic. Give me the sweat of uneducated child labour any day. Mind you, it is only C$2.15, or around £1.30 in real money with the Queen's head on it.

Write to Kevin McCloud, I did. https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/kevin-mccloud/271-kevin-mccloud-on-how-he-welcomes-spring Fabric First At Grand Designs Towers, we recently received apolite email from someone called Steamy Tea complaining that I was very, very wrong to use the term thermal mass when talking about how buildings perform: ‘There is no such thing in science. There is thermal energy and mass; they are not connected.’ Unscientific it may be, but it’s an accepted term in the building world, like ‘coolth’ and ‘flying buttress’, neither of which are scientific words. Moreover, a quick trawl across the internet will reveal that thermal mass is a common term and used by, for example, the Passivhaus Institut. So what do I do? Steamy Tea’s email is not brilliantly helpful: ‘There is also the matter of thermal inertia, this is a difficult concept to understand as it is a six-dimensional problem – three physical dimensions, one of time and one each for heat capacity and thermal conductivity.’ Ijust about understand this, but know I'll have difficulty explaining it on television, unless I make a programme for the Open University that should have been broadcast on a Tuesday afternoon in 1973. This is an important point, because a ‘fabric first’ approach to building that employs stacks of insulation arranged around materials with high thermal mass (I mean six-dimensional inertia, I think) is the future for building in climates like ours. The idea needs communicating. So thank you to Steamy Tea for being the annoying physics teacher that I strongly suspect they are. If any readers can be helpful and elucidate as to what I should say, please write to me here at the magazine (info@granddesignsmagazine.com). I’d like to clear the terminology up, before taking on the Passivhaus Institut and the entire construction science world. Here is the reply I got from Tom from the production team. Dear SteamyTea, Thanks for your comment. We will will do our best to ensure correct terminology is used. Many thanks, Tom And Thanks for your email SteamyTea. I will bear this in mind for one of our productions. Many thanks Tom GrandDesigns Boundless And people often wonder why I think Architects and house designers are tossers.

Are they collectables now

He did use my Mega as well, his old wind up 500V one, in a Bakelite box, had perished insulation on the probes.

My sister used to cut lawns for a living (people in North Oxford have too much money). She tried just about every mower going, ended up only getting Honda ones. She said they were easy to start, even after a winter in the shed, never packed up and cost nothing to run really, just a basic service once a year.

My Father was an electrical engineer and used that method to check the earth. Glad to see some thing have not changed in 70+ years I have a feeling that I still have the bulb, holder and cable from when we wired my place up in Weymouth back in 91 (only seems like yesterday).

I bought a couple of small relays, I think they are either open or closed. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/220-240V-AC-Coil-DPDT-Power-Relay-MY2NJ-8-Pin-w-Socket-Base-FK-/232369299384?hash=item361a4a1fb8

"Kind words butter no parsnips" I don't wish to come across as brutal, but isn't dressing up property with misleading words missing the point. If a property is rubbish, it is rubbish, no matter how it is described. Should architects/estate agents/property developers really be misusing language to cover up short comings. It rather reminds me of this: So if a place is small, say it is small and give the dimensions.

I hit the cooker cable once (similar problem, cable was in an odd place). Made quite a bang. Also did a 100A fuse at work, that made a larger bang

As this is the house they is going to be knocked down oneday, just do a temporary fix with a bit of tape. You could solder a bit of copper in if needed. Make sure the earth is good. Is the light switch above or below the damage. If it is not, don't trust the rest of the house wiring.

"built it at your own risk" Just in case

Publish your design, stop others claiming they have rights over it.

Jeremy will buy something useful, or he could by a pint and a half every year.

Yes, and I am sure you will. But that 100 is only worth 97 in a years time, and then, assuming inflation at 3%. But if you can manage 11 years you will be better off.

I would have taken the 6 quid a year, it is a better return.

I think it is less than 10. It is really down to Standard Error. If the sample is small, and the variance large, then the error is large. In 'nice' areas, we are really into a secondary market. One unaffected by bank interest rates and the general state of the economy. These are generally bought by recent retired people who may well have downsized financially from a London home, have large pension incomes or are foreign investors. Car sales are the same. They are down nationally, but the local Merc garage to me me has increased sales, both in numbers and cash. The rest of us just buy ten year old cars. Yesterday, there was a Lamborghini Aventador parked in Wycombe High Street, it is worth more than all 6 houses where I live. I doubt if one has ever been in Cornwall, but if it parked in my street, it would double the wealth of the area.

Much of it is down to the lower volume of sales. The posh bit around here, when I last looked and I only looked at 3 bed houses, only had 7 sales, one of which was half a million. The others where in the normal range of 150,000. The people that live in the median priced houses still convince themselves that they are wealthier than they really are. Where my Mother is has gone up by 18%, so Saves me from working extra hours to save for my retirement. Must go and get my sister 200 fags and a couple of bottles of scotch as a 'thank you' for taking me to the airport, I feel she does not relax enough after her heart attack

I bet it would be impossible to build a place like that these days. Shame as this island would be great: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asparagus_Island

Not the whole story as usual, but at least I have only 'lost' 5% since 2007. If I had got the place I wanted, then I would have lost 27%. Interestingly, the 'snobby' town has risen by 1%. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41582755

Burgh Bramble. Belle de Nuit At those prices I would have gone to Cury Corner and got a takeaway and eaten on the walls of the local Art Deco swimming pool

If you used ELV and isolated LEDs, could you fill the jars with coloured liquids, or maybe just water and coloured LEDs for a novel effect.

I beg to differ. My Economy 7 vented cylinder is 200 lt, I only heat it to 50°C and did two of us no problems. If I had heated it higher, it could have coped with more. Did I not hear (on here) that an unvented store also needs an annual check from a qualified person as well as being installed and certified by a proper plumber. An ordinary vented cylinder does not need that, though it does need a feed and expansion tank above it (a UVC needs a pressure vessel to do the same I think). You can easily get a decent shower by fitting a small, twin impeller pump. Mine delivers 10 lt a min to the shower and double that to the bath. Been in over 10 years now and has not given problems. My vented E7 cylinder is 30 years old and the bottom element has finally given up the ghost, so just using the top element (so built in redundancy as standard). All in all, I think the easy and simplicity of a vented system and the fact you can DIY it is a big advantage.

Not got time to research this at the moment, but is there a generic Android app that can be loaded onto the Kindle (lots of things can be). Something like this: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/control-android-device-entirely-voice/