epsilonGreedy

I just looked Boron up in the Periodic Table, it sits next to carbon in a middling position so nice and nonreactive and covalent next to my roofing membrane. I wonder how something chemically next door to carbon can be so poisonous? There are days I miss @Jeremy Harris

I gave the Barretine technical department a call, what a decent company with a nice west country twang. However I then thought it best to confirm with a roof felt manufacturer if fitting a modern membrane over newly coated wood was approved. I was not the first to ask and the clear answer was they have not tested therefore the answer is no. Barretine do a water based preservative but this is rare in the retail channel. I suppose the membrane manufacturer is concerned that a solvent based wood preservative might react when in longterm contact a little their product.

But in the space of 5 minutes two guys working behind the same counter gave a roof batten delivery date of within 2 weeks or in the new year. I suspect the "in the new year" chump just hates the job and customers

I need to slap a coat of wood preservative on my roofing rafters and in another thread @SimonDsuggested a preservative with boric acid. Further reading on the subject indicates that wood preservatives fall into three categories of protection and only the top category, usually with boric acid, protects against wood boring insects. I hope to felt and slate within in month so the current period of dry weather would be a good time to peel off the temporary tarpaulins and apply some preservative particularly to the rafter ends that were not 100% protected from moisture.

I went into my local BM to order 100m of roofing battens. The place was unusually quiet and the one regular behind the counter said "we have an artic load on order due December or January next year". I respond saying "I knew things were bad but no roofing batten for 6 months, really?". They could only supply cement in paper bags which I declined and so in the end I purchased a roll of 10 rubble sacks and while paying the senior counter guy returned from lunch and I reminded him I was on the May list for a roofing batten delivery in June. He responded saying "we have a shipment due this month but that probably means the 31st". How do these people expect to stay in business?

There is an App for that. Swmbo often points an app on her iPhone at a plant and a few seconds later it is identified automatically by the software. Too late for save @stormy, the App identified the photo above as TriffidusStrangarlaris which seeded in Penzance last month through a process known as Panspermia. To communicate with @SteamyTea in future I recommend the following soundstrack. https://www.audiomicro.com/triffid-talk-sound-effects-822191

Last month the Pollitt Bureau at 10 Downing Street decreed that the moratorium on evictions for non payment of rent on commercial properties has been extended for 9 months. The estimated £5 billion of unpaid rent debt has in effect been rolled over for another 9 months. I am not posting to suggest this is a bad decision but clearly Covid has shaken the economy to the extent that government by central diktat is the only way to stop the wheels falling off this Nation State.

50mm is ok with some screed materials e.g. anhydrate. Not all screeds are equal.

Steamy was right, however economic systems have inertia. Even when material prices rise by historic percentages there are still incomplete buildings. In most cases it makes sense to complete and get such new homes onto the market because of the financial commitment prior to prices rises. Then we need to overlay clumsy attempts by the Government to manipulate the market through tax holidays.

You did, it was a memorable day.

Do you think materials price instability is causing building projects to be postponed?

Microsoft Edge contains the Chrome web page rendering engine so there is little of Microsoft's own stuff in Edge. MIcrosoft threw in the towel when it gave up on Explorer and abandoned plans to develop its own web browser.

I would be more concerned that something has control of my PC or web browser than the inferiority of the impostor search engine. Something might have hacked your network routing at a lower level than the web browser. I would install the Microsoft Edge browser for mac to see if the problem goes away.

They run their own alternative data cable network to your front door. The rest of us are on OpenReach and the limiting factor is the length of copper from doorstep to the nearest roadside cabinet.

6mm sounds about right. I have gas central heating in the static. You might want a few more than 3 circuit breakers to keep some lights on in the event of a trip out. What about outside lights and an outside socket for power tools used on site? Your laundry facility will draw 16amps at times. I hooked up a shed containing a tumble drier and washing machine via a 13amp regular plug which burnout after a few months.

That will be a MAC peculiarity, 4 is the default on Windows. Many sites reject Ping tests because they don't like acting like a free performance test punch bag for the world, given the default Mac behavior I now understand why ? In your position I would run the Google speed test on a mobile phone first ensuring that mobile data is disabled and the phone is connected to your house WiFi.

I hope you meant 11 and 23 milli seconds? Ping times are mainly an indication of geographical distance between your PC and a web site. If you can find a US site the ping time will be 80 plus. Australia is 200ms or 300ms away. I found the A&A claim about inherently superior latency to be a bit of marketing snake oil. They might have superior communication boxes in their network which shave a milli second here or there and they might have paid for privileged server rack space at one of the UK's principal data hubs where international data traffic is exchanged. However you won't notice a few milli seconds of latency unless you are running a high frequency trading bot. Given your phenomenal headline data rates then you must be experiencing a gross inefficiency somewhere else to cause web browsing to feel unacceptably sluggish. The following table illustrates typical global latency between the data centers in the Microsoft cloud, note that UK South and UK West are 5ms apart, hops between European centers are 20 to 35ms. https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/RegionToRegionLatency

Have you left a VPN open to the office?

Is that 19.9 to 20 megabits per sec? I usually get 33 but today because the of the recent wet weather it is 22 and 5 up. Latency to London from mid Lincs is 11ms. If the test times out, then open up a window command prompt (terminal) and type "ping bbc.co.uk" the 4 returned times are the latency.

I would like to know how bad this latency is you are experiencing is? There will be a number for it. Enter "google speed test" into your browser, run the test that Google returns in your search results. Latency is shown at the end of the test. It should be under 25 but it has to be above 150 before web browsing starts to feel slow. I suspect you have another problem. Are you running some privacy VPN?

My local BM only keeps KeyStone lintels as a stock item, catnics are a special order. Might have been the same for your builder. What is the render edge detail along the lower edge of the blocks?

Given the photos and string line I reckon you are just seeing a dints and dings along the edge of the flange. As @Marvinmentioned above the strength is in the box section in the middle cavity section. I fitted KeyStone lintels and yours look very similar. In your situation I would be more interested to know if a heavy lintel variant was fitted over wide opening. Also if you can measure the clear span of the opening the experts here can work out if you have a decent amount of lintel seated on the blockwork. How heavy are your blocks?

I thought Catnics were black, could that be a KeyStone?

Not much weight on that lintel yet, I wonder if you are seeing some transport damage in a short section of the lintel or is it a progressive bend across the whole length? A photo of a taught length of string end-to-end would help. Is your lintel from the standard or heavy duty range?

I suspect the problem is with the large flat roof that I assume lurks behind the new parapet wall along the side of the extension. Does this side wall of the upper floor move towards the viewer by about 3m or 4m?