Onoff

Something like this. This is the foot of the kid's spiral staircase. The timber is up off the ground by +6" 10/12mm thick galvanised shoe (had these made special years back). M16 stainless stud goes through the 4x4 post. I didn't have any long bolts so I made some by permanently fixing a nut to the stud. I "just" drilled through and fitted a stainless scroll pin. You'll note the white nylon washer between the stainless one and galvanised bracket. This done to isolate between dissimilar metals. The other side. All the bolt heads and nuts were once capped with white plastic caps. Most have disintegrated now. This the foot of the spiral staircase. It was a couple of inches off the deck but the soil / veg had grown up around it. Note how it looks a bit "rotten". We now print our own nut caps here. Could even do you an audio amp related nut cap shape! 😂

What about a couple of decent telegraph poles as possible cheap posts? You could machine square faces at the top to fix through. Black to match your downpipes. Be careful sliding glass straight into wood. Any warpage will crack the glass. Better to have an intermediate "channel" to deal with expansion. You can of course recess the channel flush with the balustrade uprights.

Drill through the shoe from each side and the holes will line up. Knock through a bit of stainless steel studding. Put a flat washer, spring washer and full nut each side. Leave 3 thread pitches projecting out of the nut either side. Finish off with a plastic nut cap. I could probably send you some M10 bolts but they won't be stainless. How wide is the shoe?

Picking up new hinges today.

Pair of reprobates! Thanks for bring my thread down to your level 😤

A structural engineer would know! What did yours say? 😂

I presume you'll have worked out your post length already, that it's long enough or that you'll have to cut it down?

Christ it's like summoning Beetlejuice. The mere mention of a tight butt and he appears 😱

It's let in to the timber.

Right, the shoes have a pointy spike on. The flat bit of "rubble" is for that to bear down on. If you put your spike into the rubble, even if it's tamped down, the spike might slip or go into a void chucking your level out of whack. Rest the spike on a flat bit of (Welsh?)slate, quarry tile offcut etc then slide another bit under to level it etc.

It's just the crappy bog door catch in the upstairs ensuite won't slide into its hole. It's either the hinges worn a fraction or the timber frame of the dormer shifted! 😂

Going to sound like I'm super tight but rather than replace a pair of worn rising butts, can you simply add a couple of washers over the hinge shafts?

Nearly done but for no white heatshrink! 😤 & redoing that 4,5,6 label...

Won't the electrolytes migrate to one end? 😉

You can also run earth tape in a trench. Think it's the French that like big, flat, buried copper plates. Here that equates to the old hot water cylinder having been run over a few times with the digger... My favourite, favourite, redneck earth electrode was the scaffold pole and mole grips for the earth clamp...

That chap the cameraman was following looked well insulated. "Jernay svollich" I think it is though I'm not going to Google the correct spelling.

I'd get my holes dug with a layer of tamped down rubble in the base - fairly level. Drop a flat 'ish piece of rubble in last. I'd then "hang" the 6"x6"s with the brackets bolted on, into the holes - the bracket sits on the flat 'ish piece of rubble. Then lift and pack under the legs. Knock 'em square with aid of the aformentioned post level (tweak one to the other by eye) and get the concrete in.

Forgot to add...the final duct into the gate pillar is only 32mm. I screwed up there. Should have made it "big" all the way. It was a fight to get the SWA and couple of smaller cables through the last metre. Hindsight! 😂

Worth having a look on Gumtree, eBay, Freeads etc for a short length of ducting. Or approaching another, local self builder: https://www.gumtree.com/search?featured_filter=false&urgent_filter=false&sort=date&search_scope=false&photos_filter=false&search_category=all&q=ducting&tq=&search_location= I scored a length (20m?) of black DNO ducting for a tenner. Goes from my garage to gate pillar in a 700mm deep trench. In that I've an SWA, then a couple of 20mm flexible ducts for wired video doorbell, separate CCTV etc. Though a bitch to dig the trench by hand and a fight to get the duct through an existing, reinforced concrete slab, it's done, in and has some future proofing.

Just the Monkey Pocs to sort...

The Bear & Twink, where we first met.

The pub is high up on the North Downs...205m above sea level in fact...

It certainly is. Just back from my local after 3 pints of Thistly Cross and a bag of steak ridge cut McCoys. Just me, the pub cat and a paperback in the sun trap garden.

Could you use some of the panel output to power a fan, blowing air under the panels. Would that cut it down to say 10% loss overall?