SteamyTea

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/

You could rig up a ram pump to fill a storage tank/pond a few meters high, then run from there to a small turbine to deliver power when you need it. Not the cheapest option, but fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram Of course there are rules and regs for taking water from a stream, even if you put it right back again. Generally if you work on 15% of the lowest flow rate you should be within the rules (if I remember right).

I still wonder what Nick Johnson who taught maths at my first college in Bournemouth is doing. He was one of the better lecturers.

Sneaky f**ker Reminds me of those SMP maths books in the 70's. They ruined arithmetic for everyone.

Got a square in it as well hasn't it. So 6 + 5 + 4 = 15 Total when they are added together is 81

Where did you get the 11 from?

Right Burger + chips x Drink = Burger + (Chips x Drink) = 5 + (1 X 10) = 5 + 10 = 15 Clock at 2 + 4 Banana + 4 Banana x Hexagon = Clock at 2 + 4 Banana + (4 Banana x Hexagon) = 2 + 4 + (4 x 15) = 6 + 60 = 66

I need sleep.

15 and 66 I hate mental arithmetic, give me a spreadsheet.

Oh yeah, sneaky funkers

3 drinks = 30, so a drink is 10 1 drink (10) + 2 burgers = 20 So 20 - 10 = 10, so a burger is 5 Burger (5) + 2 chips = 9 So 9 - 5 = 4, so chips are 2 So burger (5) + chips (2) x drink (10) = 5 + (2 x 10) = 25 3 Grey Shapes = 45 So grey shape is 15 2 Banana + Grey shape = 23, 23 - 15 = 8, so banana = 4 Banana + 2 clocks = 10, 10 - 4 = 6, so clock = 3 Clock (3) + Banana (4) + Banana (4) X Greyshape (15) = 3 + 4 + (4 x 15) = 67 (I think this is a BODMAS question really) Not going to mention the 'you're' in it as I often spell that as your.

I am not allowed to tell jokes, they just get deleted.

a) Only if you don't understand them b) Only if the person compiling them does not understand them Example: The mean number of legs for the human population is less than 2. That means some people should have 3 legs.

Being more serious, it will take a complete rethink for our personal transport needs. Really down to how that is done. Will it be top down management, which usually falls short somewhere, or bottom up management, which usually reduces quality. Or will we have a Google/Facebook/Twitter model where we think we are getting a good deal, but with high hidden costs.

Where will the charging points go?

I read it too, can't remember anything about it to be honest. I liked the 80's too much.

There are so many separate issues that get clumped together with transport that it is sometimes hard to disaggregate them. So a few points: Lithium Sulphur batteries. The energy density may reach 5 times the energy density of Lithium Ion batteries, so maybe reaching a practical level of 1 kWh/kg. Gasoline is 13 kWh/kg. Now there are advantages in motor efficiencies that help electric vehicles (90% compared to 45% for an IC). So still a big gap. There is also a lot of life left in the IC engine. I don't think that the charge/discharge cycle numbers are that great yet, maybe 1000. Greenhouse gases. It is probably better to centrally generate (or at least MW locally) than burn fuel in a vehicle. The grid is getting cleaner and will continue to do so for a couple of decades. Other pollutants. The main ones are particulates and oxides of nitrogen. These are relatively short lived in the environment, but have a long term affect on health. Getting rid of high concentrations of these is a good thing. EVs will help greatly here. Traffic Congestion. This may not change greatly with the introduction of EVs. It is really a function of the economy. The better off we become, the worse the traffic becomes, unless there is intervention from governments/councils/planners. Walking/Cycling. While we still mix vehicles and pedestrians/cyclists, we will have a problem. Vehicles easily kill and main people, people hold up traffic. Major rethink is needed. Living in the South West, and liking both walking/cycling, it is not the vehicles that puts me off, it is the weather. I don't think that covered walkways are the answer though, they just feel like a good placed to get mugged. I don't know the best way around this one. I am sure there are many other things that affect transport and new technologies being introduced. One being costs. Oddly enough, in the past, generally the more you paid for a car the higher the performance and the less mileage you got from the fuel. With EVs it seems that the more you pay, the better distance you get from a charge. This is not strictly true as Tesla recently showed by remotely upgrading the battery packs for Florida residence (so they could flee when the hurricane hit). Because battery energy density, and power delivery is pretty poor compared to gasoline/diesel, vehicles need to be larger and heavier, not always a good thing. I saw a new Leaf today it is not a small car, nor is the ZOE, but then again, not many cars are small today.

Welcome Amanda Interesting that you think the look of the house should affect the performance. Without going to extremes of design i.e. a green house or a concrete bunker, I would have though that with the right choice of materials i.e. insulation, tinting glazing, that most houses can be made to look like any house i.e. traditional for the area. Interested on your thoughts as I see a lot of 'eco' places and they seem to consist of nothing more than thick windows and a bit of timber cladding. Really what is wanted is a maximum imported/CO2 energy usage figure for space heating. This should, ideally, be the same for all housing, but that is impractical, though an interesting challenge for an engineer. And just to add to @Nickfromwales comment, stick around. Self builders are often hostile to architects.