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Alan Ambrose

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Alan Ambrose last won the day on January 12

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    Trained as a general purpose engineer and industrial designer - i.e. no use to anyone :)
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    East Suffolk

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  1. >>> Wouldn't have the first clue. I don't mean to be antagonistic, and I'm all for the owner / DIYer improving their understanding and learning enough not to be taken advantage of .... and I know that many on here, myself included, know that they'll do a better job of some tasks than a lot of 'professionals'. But ... there is a time when you know you need to get the advice of someone who really knows what they're doing. Now, I also know that it's often difficult to tell a good professional from a bad one and that's a skill in itself. So, this may be the time when you need to get one or more people in to quote and see whether what they've got to say chimes with some of the very good advice you have got here.
  2. There used to be a Pilkingtons office a mile or so away and I used to source replacement DGUs direct from there. But no longer. Can anyone recommend a best quality source for DGUs and/or also one that will do the more unusual outer panes e.g. solar control? TIA, Alan
  3. “it shows that modernism was rooted in a faith that society would be better off with new ideas — a design philosophy focused on making people’s lives better.” https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/25/style/aluminaire-house-albert-frey-history-palm-springs/index.html
  4. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/26/style/pompeii-roman-construction-methods-scli-intl-scn/index.html And the super-strong concrete again.
  5. Well IMHO the Americans do tend to do stuff big and well if they do it at all - which is why they have a lot of the West’s tech giants. >>> 'learned to get humans and robots working together’ Possibly marketing BS, but there is a modern trend to make industrial robots at least ‘aware’ of how soft and squishy humans are. Imagine self driving cars that ignored this.
  6. Well the numbers are probably not published anywhere for those products, but they will have similar-ish thermal expansion coefficients as they're all some kind of stone-like powder with a binder. That is, we're not looking at something like glass bonded to steel at one end and stone at the other. So, I think, along with the flex, you're good
  7. If the bar is perfectly flat with no sticky-up bits that will cause 'stress risers' to induce cracking then 6mm should be fine. Toughened gets a huge strength premium over standard. I assume it's not so crazy big that it can't be manoeuvred into the horizontal by hand without overly stressing/flexing it? I would double check the flatness with a long straight edge.
  8. Extract: In a state where housing is expensive to build, to rent, or to buy — and not especially energy efficient — can a big blue robot make a difference? The Boston Globe reports on Reframe Systems, one of the companies "trying robots to make construction more efficient" — in this case, "working alongside humans in an assembly line to build small houses in a factory."[Its cofounders] learned to get robots and humans to work together while at Amazon, which has built more than 750,000 bots in Massachusetts and deployed them to distribution centers around the world. Advising the company are Amy Villeneuve, former chief operating officer of that Amazon division, and Charly Mwangi, a veteran of the carmakers Nissan, Tesla, and Rivian... Standing at one end of Reframe's factory, [cofounder Aaron] Small explained that the company's ambition is to build net-zero houses — houses that produce as much energy as they use — "twice as fast as traditional methods, twice as cheap, and with 10 times lower carbon" emissions. That means using large screws called helical piles to fix the house to the site, instead of a concrete foundation. (Concrete production generates large amounts of carbon dioxide.) The company buys recycled cellulose insulation to fill the walls. Solar panels go on the roof and triple-paned windows in the walls... Reframe's "microfactory" can produce between 30 and 50 homes a year, [cofunder Vikas] Enti said. Eventually, the company aims to set up larger factories around the country, all within an hour's drive of big cities. After a home is trucked to its final destination, "Electrical wires and plumbing are installed in both floors and walls as they're built," according to the article. "Employees toting iPads can refer to digital construction drawings and get step-by-step instructions about tasks from cutting lumber to connecting pipes." One of the co-founders says, "We like to compare it to Lego instructions." See: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/can-robots-lower-housing-prices-this-andover-startup-thinks-so/ar-BB1iI2ah
  9. ... not used it yet, but it looks promising: https://drajmarsh.bitbucket.io/daylight-box.html
  10. >>> What am I missing 🤯 A bit of graph paper, a ruler and a biro maybe?
  11. I'm seeing "Material - Stone/Stone Resin"? I would just fit it, that's what the flex is for in Sikaflex. Sure, you could do some 3D heat flow calcs, some differential expansion calcs, and check the expansion allowances for the mastic etc ... but ... my guess is that the temperature would equalise fairy well / the differential expansion would be minimal for 'stone' vs. your (screeded?) floor / the mastic would absorb that expansion. Does anyone actually do any calcs or tests for any mastic joint unless you're, say, an EWI system designer or industrial plant designer?
  12. Ah, the old 'pass the buck' thing. Of course the warranty supplier wouldn't want to take any risk (they are an insurance business after all) and would prefer you spend your money to cover their arse. The modern way...
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