Ferdinand

I am with PeterW in drinking more coffee than team so my water needs to be deliverable at 90 degrees C. So I still go with the thermostatic insulated kettle, and Gaggia.

No it is not OK. I feel ignored, and will not recover for at least 4 minutes. That sheep has a beautiful Ziggy Stardust type lipstick-pout. *Flounces out to remove wedges from reinforced fence*

A logo for Dai King, a "Dai'd" Sheep.

"I will be doing some work next week with the BBC xyz programme / station. You can contact this BBC person to confirm my identity. Do you mind if ...?" (Love the avatar but you need *cats*).

Having done it, Postcrete does have a change of tone (as you would expect) when hit with a batten or a mallet when it becomes very solid. This seemed to occur after 2-3 hours for these braces in these cold and miserable conditions. The setup was fence wedged in final position after storm Doris had moved the knocked-in posts (never had that type of fence move before in years in the same location) a little, and 45 degree struts wedged against bricks, with the bottom end and brick postcreted.

Love this bit: And more soberingly: On concrete curing slowly, I have read about that somewhere. It might even have been in the autobiography of Albert Speer.

@JohnW I am thinking that perhaps you need to be questioning that concrete screed. One question to ask might be by how much it increases the "thermal mass" over concrete. The not very meaningful answer is likely to be to do with the increased density - and I suspect the increase is not very much. The cost per cubic meter difference and the pfaffing involved in 2 materials means you may be able to fund a West End theatre weekend (or a posh meal out) to help you unwind from the difference while it starts to set. You can never have too many unwinding weekends.

Cheers. I love the idea of concrete curing over the years. Green oak goes off more quickly.

Yes .. I know it is solid in 10 minutes, But how long is there value in leaving wedges etc in place for? The context is that it is bracing on a fance that was wobbling in the storm, where I installed a few braces last Saturday, and the wedges to hold it solid are still there. The place is one where the wind howls like a "triggered" member of a student union if some reprobate claps rather than uses Jazz Hands, now that the company I sold it too have removed all the trees which slowed the wind down. It needs every ounce of strength it can get. I would guess it is definitely at 100% by now, but that 24 hours was probably beneficial. Ferdinand

The somewhat high value of Traction Engines was a surprise to me. It is on a house scale of prices. http://prestonservices.co.uk/item/ruston-proctor-traction-engine/ I always wondered if there was a business in it, but I suspect that having something made is eye watering. You probably need in house lathes and water cutting. Ferdinand

He built a huge engine shed . It was actually two engines.

Is there a safety issue with some of these? Today I saw a so called 3 in 1 tap in Wickes reduced from £699 to £399, and they said it was a boiling water tap. I think it was Franke. Interested Peter W? ;-) However, there seemed to be only a single spout, which means that someone not used to one or a child(?) might run boiling water on the hands by mistakes. Can anyone who has one of these clarify?

I may have posted this before on Ebuild, but my former Fred Dibnah style Traction Engine owning neighbour got himself a table saw in 4 easy steps. 1 Get table 2 Get saw - circular 3 Cut slot in table using saw 4 Attach saw under table poking through slot. Simples.

TBH it looks high enough to move that small chunk in the middle of the carriageway and drive under. Good tree, though. Greenpeace will be crying into their watercress-juice at the loss of habitat for beatles.

If the tree has bats do they leave it there until someone has installed a bat-sanctuary in the adjacent field?

No. This is Berkshire, where the berks live (and where I used to work). It is a floating version of the Range Rovers which use their peerless 4WD off road go-up-a-cliff-backwards-under-the-guidance-of-an-intelligent-drivetrain to get the tins of tuna for Tibbles from Waitrose. There is an engine and the mast is for literal virtue-signalling, like the waders they wear when changing the water in the goldfish bowl. F

Perhaps it hasn't sunk because it is on the bottom.

Have PMd.

Here is what happened to our neighbour's fence. Half a dozen panels disturbed. I would say the culprit was attaching 1.8m panels rigidly to 3x3 posts. One panel was blown right across the garden. A neighbour down the road had a plastic shed blown away. Ferdinand

What about a half height extra handrail for the 'winks? Even make it removeable for when they grow up? Ferdinand

Returning to topic :-), have we got a good and practical solution for these door thresholds? This has been niggling at me. The option of adding a concrete tongue to the slab by cutting out a slice of insulation seems OK and, as has been said, reducing 200mm of insulation to 100mm is not exactly a huge sacrifice even in the context of a very low energy house. However, are there low conductivity materials which can be inserted as a threshold instead of using a concrete tongue to slab level? One detail would be to make the concrete tongue below the level of the slab to create space to insert a (more) insulating material, which also needs to be sufficiently strong in compression and have a lifetime of perhaps 40-50 years. What could that material be? One option would be Terry's Porotherm blocks, or maybe something with Leca as the aggregate (Leca-crete blocks)? Others that come to mind are the driveway pavers that are made from 90-95% recycled rubber products, or a composite plank (thinking of something like the plastic decking planks but more structural), or even wood (an oak threshold - we use oak as soleplates?). Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Ferdinand

.. for a week or two.

I would say loadbearing from this, based on those being orientations relative to the wall itself. Ferdinand

He has lots of varieties of those already :-). I was trying to match some late 1970s buff bricks, and some Butterleys match, but the Butterley Brick company is now down South somewher - Bedford I think. So none to pick up locally. The Repton conglomerate is Langley's, which came out of a small business which used to supply the mining industry. Now 4000 people internationally and £800m+ turnover. F

It is wonderful that people do this. An entire site about bricks and brickworks from my area. https://eastmidlandsnamedbricks.blogspot.co.uk/ And a wonderful "walking" steam engine from a different site, made by the Butterley company. It ran at 3mph up a 1/50 gradient. Designed by someone familiar with a horse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Horse_locomotive Commendable nerdery. Found due to following a reference to the billionaire with a global conglomerate who lives in Repton. Not, unfortunately, @PeterW Ferdinand