Jeremy Harris

I think that one option discussed on that old thread elsewhere, years ago, was to use paraffin wax in a large, well-insulated, buried tank. Another option was to bury an insulated milk tanker tank. The idea was to use solar thermal panels to heat the heat store up. I can't remember the numbers now, but have a feeling that they came close to storing enough heat to last through the winter. One idea was to use the big heat store as the input for a liquid source heat pump, so that DHW could be delivered even when the tank contents got down to 20 deg C or so. Heat pumps only really have a temperature differential problem, when it comes to efficiently delivering high temperature, so if you can increase the source temperature you can also increase the output temperature.

Same story here. They closed the Salisbury police station, with it's custody suite, in order to sell the site for development into a college. They moved the police into the council office, where they share space with ordinary council workers. Apparently it's a bit of a nightmare trying to maintain privacy there. The major problem is that this "cost cutting" exercise has had a major impact on the way local officers can function. As one described it to me, if they arrest someone, two officers have to drive for 40 minutes to the nearest custody suite, spend several hours there dealing with the booking in, questioning etc, then they have a 40 minute drive back to get to where they are supposed to be on patrol. 9 times out of 10 they get back around the end of their shift or after it's finished. The net result is that they are very reluctant to make any arrests now, as they know that if they do they will be either incurring unpaid overtime, or they will just not be available to deal with any other stuff, as they are taken out of action for so long, largely as a result of the long journey to Devizes and back.

I looked into this a few years ago; I have a feeling there's a thread on either ebuild or the GBF about it. The challenges with using phase change materials are not that easy to solve. The first is the way in which you initiate the phase change, in order to get the heat back out. Hand warmers use a small nucleating device, a clicker disc usually, that provides the trigger to start crystallisation and the release of heat. You need to be able to devise a way to make the phase change stop and start when required. I put a fair bit of thought into it, and couldn't come up with a way to reliably control the phase change, and I suspect that this is one of the key things that Sunamp managed to do when they developed the heat battery packs.

I put a fair bit of effort into dissuading people walking on to our site, even though I don't really think we had a serious risk of theft from the site. My concerns were that I knew local kids were getting in, and I didn't want them getting hurt, and then there was the infamous council tax snooper, who just ignored the signs and fence and climbed in to look through the windows. As far as the law goes, I did find that you can rescind the common law implied right of access, the law that allows people to walk up your drive/path to deliver stuff, try and sell you stuff etc, by means of a clear notice at the entrance. You can make that notice specific if you still want to allow the postman in, for example. From that point on, anyone that walks on your land without your authority cannot claim that they are allowed to under common law, which removes one line of defence for any intruder who is challenged. I think that if I were in your position, then time spent rigging up some effective, but legal, means of dissuading intruders would be time well spent, as much for peace of mind as anything else. Temp's video of booby trapped bait would be something that might be worth trying. I doubt that a device that, for example, sprayed paint or dye on someone would be deemed illegal, as it's an old technique that has been used to protect cash for years. The same goes for alarm mines fitted with saluting blanks, they are legal and both the alarms and the saluting blanks can be purchased without a licence, AFAIK. Given that you have a prominent site entrance, you could also look at something like a chain that is normally resting on the ground, anchored at one end, with some form of rapid tensioning system that pulls it up to waist level when triggered (a simple weighted beam and bit of rope, with a pull cord to release a stop would probable do the job). That way you might get a chance to apprehend anyone running off, by triggering the chain to rise just as they are running out. You can also buy caltrops, spiky devices intended to puncture car tyres, and you may be able to rig something that hurls a load of them under the area where the car is parked, when triggered by an alarm.

Because an ASHP won't deliver DHW efficiently. Anything over about 40 deg C will very seriously hit the COP of an ASHP, and the Sunamp PV is designed to make use of spare PV generation, so giving DHW at a much reduced cost when compared to using grid power.

As a random observation, our combi boiler in the old house has 15mm DHW connections. IIRC, 15mm at mains pressure, over reasonable pipe runs, can sustain well over20 litres a minute. That's enough hot water (assuming the instantaneous power is available) to run around 3 showers at 10 litres a minute simultaneously. I think the pipe size isn't a problem, but the heat delivery power may be. The Sunamp PV is about the same power as a combi boiler, about 30 kW or so, IIRC. Two in parallel should be able to deliver a great deal more than any combi boiler that I know of. As another observation, the rising main in our old house was 15mm copper, and the flow rate was actually too great at the taps, so I had to fit a pressure reducing valve, just to stop the taps splashing. If the mains pressure is very low, then 22mm might be an advantage, mainly because the head loss in bends at 22mm is a fair bit lower than in 15mm (the straight pipe frictional loss difference isn't great between the two sizes).

It's got to be time to rig some trip alarm mines around the place, I think. If these guys are so persistent and brazen I suspect that only something seriously scary is going to dissuade them. Trip mines are pretty cheap and safe (if rigged properly): http://www.henrykrank.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2964

Start with sodium acetate trihydrate and then add some magic stuff................

The only downside with boiled linseed oil is that it can take a fairly long time to dry. I believe that a lot of the commercial wood oils use boiled linseed as a base, but they add drying agents so that you don't have to wait so long before recoating.

It stores thermal energy in phase change cells, a bit like thermal batteries. These use a compound very similar to that used in the "jelly bag" hand warmers you can buy, the ones that you charge up in boiling water to make the solid content into a liquid, and that you can then later use to release the stored heat by clicking a small actuator that initiates a phase change, from liquid to solid, so releasing the stored heat. Think of a Sunamp PV as a combi boiler or instant water heater. It doesn't store water, but will instantly heat water that flows through it when a tap is opened, just like a combi boiler, thermal store or instant water heater. It normally runs at mains water pressure, perhaps with a PRedV if the water pressure at the main is too high. No it won't work as a buffer for an UFH system, as it delivers water at typically around 55 deg C (before the supplied TMV), plus it's designed to be a domestic hot water unit, not a central heating unit. If it's not sunny then you can charge a Sunamp PV up from the mains. Our system is set so that the Sunamp PV is boosted by the mains at 4 am, for two hours, using a time switch, so that it is always charged for morning showers. If the Sunamp PV thermal cells are already charged up from the previous days excess PV, then no power is drawn during this boost period. If the thermal cells are discharged, or partially discharged, then they will draw power from the boost system until they are fully charged, then stop drawing power.

One problem is that the abbreviation PRV can refer to either a Pressure Relief Valve (one that opens to vent an excessive pressure to a drain) or a Pressure Reducing Valve (one that limits the incoming water pressure to a certain safe value). Here we seem to have adopted the terminology PRV to means a Pressure Relief Valve and PRedV to mean a Pressure Reducing Valve, but that's not very widespread elsewhere.

I think that refers to a PRedV, not a PRV, to ensure that the water pressure cannot exceed the 4.2 bar limit of the unit.

I'd be inclined to just give them a coat of the cheapest oil you can find locally. Even a thin coat of oil will make the beams easier to dust and keep clean and will bring out the grain. If you want to be really cheap, buy some linseed oil and boil it to drive off most of the volatile compounds, so that it dries, or just buy boiled linseed oil. It used to be available cheaply from the sort of marine suppliers that deal with fishing boats, as boiled linseed is a cheap and effective anti-corrosion treatment. I used to use it on the spliced eyes on the galvanised rigging of my old boat, for example.

That's interesting, as our boiling water tap has an under-plinth boiler, with a PRV that connects to the sink waste, no expansion vessel and it's supplied as a kit for DIY install, including being pre-wired with a 13A plug. The MIs make no mention of it needing to be fitted by a G3 competent person, in fact they are written for a DIY type install. The PRV lets by regularly, every time the unit heats up, and the integrated trap that's part of the PRV waste connection relies on the PRV regularly letting by to keep it topped up. The PRV in question is also the pressure, and hence flow rate, regulator for the tap, and has a knob on top for pressure/flow adjustment. This unit can be supplied with a TMV, so that it can also feed a hot tap at a safe temperature, as well as the boiling water outlet.

Except they are, like other media outlets, getting their chemistry very confused. For some reason, the media seem to consistently assume isocyanate is isocyanide, when it's not even really a related compound. This Wiki entry is reasonably accurate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isocyanate , note this sentence: The reported "cyanide poisoning" cannot be related to the insulation, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, isocyanates do not produce hydrogen cyanide when they degrade under heat - there are no cyanide compounds in the stuff. Secondly, hydrogen cyanide has a flash point of around -18 deg C, so will ignite and burn if there is any naked flame nearby, and by burning it will become relatively non-toxic. The reported "cyanide poisoning" is most probably either irritation from isocyanate (a strong irritant, but not very toxic) or it may be a cyanide compound given off by the degradation of furnishings in one or more of the flats. The latter seems quite likely, as a lot of older soft furnishings contained pretty nasty compounds.

Get some metal mesh, chicken wire or similar. Tie a bit of wire to the middle of it, then screw up the mesh into a ball and stuff it down the ends of the duct. Leave the bit of wire accessible so you can pull the anti-rodent plug out when needed.

Perfect timing! I need to stabilise a small area of bank at the top corner of the path around our drive. There's a fence, with concreted in posts, but the soil around the concrete for the last post is eroding away. The fix I had in mind was to bore, one or more deep holes down slope and adjacent to it, and create reinforced concrete piles, to underpin and support this area. The plan was to use a combination of a post auger running inside a length of PVC pipe to create the pile (the PVC is to stop the hole from collapsing), but the pressure washer in a pipe method in that link looks a lot easier, and probably less likely to cause as much disturbance.

I found that there were no fumes or smell, and although I wore a dust mask I'm not convinced it was essential. When I've sprayed using a conventional compressed air spray gun there has always been a visible mist in the air. With this system there is nothing visible in the air at all, as long as you're painting right in the sweet spot where the gun is square to the wall and at the right distance from it. The dust that was generated was solely from times when the gun was at a wonky angle, like getting paint into corners, where the distance inevitably varied a bit. The technique is the same as with any other spray gun, long straight runs, bending your wrist as you go to keep the gun perpendicular to the surface, and stopping the spray at the start and end of each run. To get a good finish it seems best to have the spray pattern set to vertical first, and do a series of overlapping horizontal passes, then rotate the nozzle to get a horizontal pattern and go over the painted area again with vertical passes. I found that the real need to wear a Tyvek suit wasn't from the spraying, but from mixing the paint up and cleaning the kit afterwards. Cleaning is messy, as you have to flush a bucket of clean water through the pump and gun, with another bucket to catch all the waste. Inevitably this makes a bit of a mess.

That explanation sounds like the right one - the heat causes the boards to expand, and as they are constrained at the edges that expansion causes them to bow out. Once they've bowed out they may well have pulled the fastenings out a bit, probably the batten fastenings rather than the panel ones. That then stops the panels going flat again when they cool down.

Coverage is a LOT better than with a roller, as you can apply an opaque coat with just a single pass, as the paint goes on thicker, with a nice surface finish. The down side of this is that the drying time is extended, so re-coating times are a bit longer. I waited overnight between coats, and that seemed fine. You do waste around 200ml or so of paint when you clean it, so it doesn't make much sense to only paint a small area at any one time; it's better to try and use as much paint as possible at each go. I'm not sure how that compares to wastage from a roller, but I'd guess that it might be around double the wastage, if you were careful with a roller and made sure that there was no paint left in the tray, then a roller would have less wastage, I'm sure. It's worth either buying tall tins of paint, or dispensing the paint into a tall, narrow, pot, as the pick up pipe leaves about 20mm of paint in the bottom of the pot. This isn't really wastage, as you can still use that paint to cut in around tight areas where the spray gun pattern is too wide to paint easily, much as you'd have to do with a roller.

Taking paracetamol and ibuprofen together is both safe and effective, and as the main constituent of Co-Codamol is paracetamol then there's no reason not to take ibuprofen as well. The only caution my GP gave me a while ago was that he would rather that I take Co-Codamol than ibuprofen, as there is some evidence that ibuprofen poses a greater risk to those over 60.

I've used one brand exclusively, on three bathrooms now, the oldest being around 8 years old. I would not use anything other than AB Multipanel. It has a birch ply core, so is far stiffer and easier to cut and fit, plus it has a very good hydrolock joint system, that really does work long term.

I can vouch for this. When I did my back in again a couple of months ago, the doc prescribed the stronger version of Co-Codamol. One glass of wine plus two of those and I was unconscious on the sofa in front of the TV. It got SWMBO a bit worried, as she had apparently been trying to wake me up for about five minutes before I came to enough to crawl into bed. Another side effect was some really weird dreams, like nothing I've experienced since being a student and partaking of some rather well-known hallucinogens.............

The stuff we used wasn't like wire wool, but was more like stainless steel lathe turnings, rolled into balls. I bought it from a big catering supply place, not sure which one, but they were around £30 for 100.

That used to be our problem. Every bonfire that filled the valley with smoke was mainly fairly green hedge trimmings, one bloke used to try and burn his grass clippings, believe it or not! The three persistent bonfire-creators have now stopped, thanks to a long battle that eventually involved the local authority getting involved because of the road safety hazard that the thick smoke created. It seems that road safety trumps public nuisance by a couple of orders of magnitude when it comes to getting action.............