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SteamyTea

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Everything posted by SteamyTea

  1. SteamyTea
    Yes, that is what I thought.
  2. SteamyTea
    If it really has a RPi as the controller, pull it out and connect a monitor and keyboard to it, power it up and see what IP comes up.
  3. SteamyTea
    Yes, The MacD's AP caught me out too. With cheese it seems the harder it is, the less heat it holds. But I dislike cottage cheese.
  4. SteamyTea

    Cheese

    SteamyTea posted a topic in Boffin's Corner

    I have just burnt my mouth eating a cheese omelette (had 3 of them really). This got me think about the latent heat of fusion and what it was for Cheddar. So a quick google and I found out it is 123 kJ/kg [0.0341667 kWh/kg], water is 334 kJ/kJ. Now it is always best to use a material that can store the most energy, but water fuses at 0°C, so is of little use. But the melting point of Cheddar is about 65°C. It would be fun to make a thermal store out of cheese as it would store a decent amount of energy, smells nice at first and you can eat it if you get hungry. Anyone have any other favourite foods that they would like to try out?
  5. SteamyTea
    Shall try with the latest version and see what happens, seems Windows Creator update has caused some problems, thanks.
  6. SteamyTea
    Is anyone using VirtualBox on a Windows 10 machine and had trouble since the latest MS update. Mine has stopped working in both the installed version and the portable version.
  7. SteamyTea
    CO sensors might be that cheap, I don't think that CO2 ones are. They are a different beast. There is such a good correlation between CO2 levels and humidity differences once temperature is taken into account, that I think you can rely on just RH and some simple arithmetic to control an MVHR. Re the web/app control interface, how would you deal with the controls if the manufacturer stopped the cloud service? Would you end up with either a dead system or one with just very basic functionality? Was it Nest that pulled the plug on home monitoring and control?
  8. SteamyTea
    You can get self etching polyester resins and there is a paint on liquid to help bonding to PVC (can't remember the name, it was a white coloured liquid, possibly a silane). If you try and bond to the internal surface of a pipe you will almost certainly have problems as the GRP will shrink while it cures. This may not be obvious at first, but it will in time. Also worth applying a gelcoat to the PVC first as this can allow for a better mechanical lock if the surfaces is scored (roughed up). It also allows the base resin to adhere better. Or you could apply a release agent to the inside of the PVC, then a gelcoat and a 'fast mix' for the layup. This will shrink away. Then you can release the pipe from the GRP, smear it with silicone sealant and reassemble.
  9. SteamyTea
    Back in the early 90's, there was an incident with a sauna. Apparently the cable was sub-standard and the cleaners had managed to trap and crush it under the panel (the rules for installation got changed after). Either fault on its own was not enough to cause a fire, but the combination of the two was. So this is not a new problem.
  10. SteamyTea
    combustible kəmˈbʌstɪb(ə)l/ adjective adjective: combustible 1. able to catch fire and burn easily. "a combustible gas" inflammable ɪnˈflaməb(ə)l/ adjective adjective: inflammable 1. easily set on fire. "inflammable materials" flammable ˈflaməb(ə)l/ adjective adjective: flammable easily set on fire. "the use of highly flammable materials" Aluminium combustion temperature: 600-650°C
  11. SteamyTea
    Penzance has just had a drop in temperature of 5°C (26° to 21°) in 3 hours 22 minutes. That is 1°C every 40 minutes. Inland a bit at Carnkie, it has dropped 1°C every 27 minutes. May have to put my jumper on.
  12. SteamyTea
    Too true. What a small amount of storage can do is help the national grid by smoothing out spikes. Think mornings with electric showers and kettles boiling. If a home runs a 10 kW shower for 20 minutes (more education needed) that is 3.3 kWh, if 10 million homes had 4 kWh of storage that was dedicated to that task, then we could defer that 4 GWh load. Now I have know idea what people pay to have an electric shower fitted as it is a relatively cheap part of a bathroom refurbishment. At the moment the cost of battery storage is prohibitive, but if the cost can be reduced to £1000 (highly unlikely for the foreseeable future), then it would become viable. One way to incentivise would be time sensitive electricity pricing, say 70p/kWh between 6:30 AM and 8:00 AM. This would make the daily shower cost £2.31, compared to 40p. Over a year that would be a price difference of around £700. Trouble is that at £700 a year, a simple vented storage cylinder and pumped shower would be cheaper to install and run (size may be an issue). Or maybe an Sunamp. I think than rather thinking of payback times, comparing it to alternatives is a better idea.
  13. SteamyTea
    Can you monitor the extra energy used. 26°C sound comfortable to me, but then I grew up in the Far East and the West Indies.
  14. SteamyTea
    Thanks Dave I have not heard any mention recently of overheating problems, I think it is because the sun is high in the sky and sets in the north west at the moment. Air temperatures down here have not been exceptionally high, around 22°C, but the sea is not fully up to temperature yet.
  15. SteamyTea
    As we have had a few sunny days recently and pretty close to the longest hours of daylight, has anyone suffered increased overheating? Decent temperature data is always welcome, but a general response is also useful.
  16. SteamyTea
    Avoid Crown Brilliant White Premium Matt. Leyland Trade Brilliant White seems good though.
  17. SteamyTea
    I would have thought that the main structural engineer would have raised concerns about failure in a fire. This must surely be taught very early on in any mechanical engineering course (I learnt about Young's Modulus in my first year).
  18. SteamyTea
    And these days it is probably cheaper to use 1 decent and safe SSR than two or three mechanical relays.
  19. SteamyTea
    30 years ago we used to add a melamine powder to the polyol to reduce the burning risk, not sure if that is still done these days. It used to play havoc with the machinery as it was an abrasive.
  20. SteamyTea
    Yes you are right, I failed to mention that side of it as I was in a rush. Purely out of academic interest, do solid state relays have this problem?
  21. SteamyTea
    On one of the sunbeds we used to supply, the contactors had a habit of sticking on. These were large commercial sunbeds, 7 to 9 kW ones. We redesigned the power circuit to include 2 contactors in series to activate the that side of things. This reduced the probability of the timer being unable to turn the lights off as the chance of two contactors sticking on was greatly reduced. I have seen this done with relays in quite a few control systems, but probably less now with solid state relays.
  22. SteamyTea
    Isn't the biggest risk the wiring to the ASHP (or any other inductive load i.e. a motor). If the circuit breaker is faulty, or the wiring damaged, that could cause a fire. When I was in Australia they were experiencing some huge forest fires (could see the smoke 2 hours before we landed). Visiting a work mate at his house one day, he asked me if I could help 'water his roof'. Apparently most house fires (near a forest fire) are caused by leaf debris in the gutters being set alight by wind carried embers.
  23. SteamyTea
    As most things can be burnt at a high enough temperature, what temperature does aluminium burn at? and if it was next to a bit of PUR/PIR (insert insulation of choice) would that also burn at that temperature. When we sent samples of furniture foam to Hemel (the old BSI testing place), we could sent 3 identical samples, two would fail and one pass. We never observed a test, so don't really know what the procedure was, but it was always frustrating as we never really knew if our foams were safe and compliant (was all new legislation after the Woolworths' fire). Car seats did not have to be fire resistant at all back in the mid 80's, not sure if that has changed.
  24. SteamyTea
    Eventhough I started this thread, I have kept out of the conversation (mainly for other reasons). It seems to me that my initial gut feeling that the cladding system failed was right, that can be easily corrected in the future and I would think that anyone using EWI will use incombustible materials from now on. On a more general note, is it sensible to house people in these types of buildings. If we relaxed out preoccupation with planning and allowed out town and cities to expand outwards a bit, even building on Green Belts, SSSIs, Heritage areas and AONBs, we could easily house people and improve living standards (maybe a bit of garden. Like Jeremy, I feel angry that this has happened and feel that no hiding behind regulations is acceptable.
  25. SteamyTea
    If it was the insulation/cladding, then it really needs to be incombustible rather than just slow burning in my opinion. I wonder how many tower blocks have this system installed in the UK.
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