the daydream fund challenge thread

RAS

choille wrote: »

Worse night in the caravan - horrid, like the back wall was being spattered with ball bearings & the windows were gonna come in. And massive thunder again. It sounds like we missed the worse & further inland there are big trees across the roads & quite a lot of structural damage & quite heavy snow falls. Think it's to get bad again tonight & then move down the country but house build looks untouched, no panels moved - so that's alright - surprising.

Glad the house is OK. It was pretty wild here so I thought of you; loud last night and this morning the train came to a halt. Something had blown onto the track and needed shifting before anyone could go anywhere.

choille

RAS - what course was it? It all seems to have gone more upmarket - of course we've left that'll help! It used to be old bangers down at the pier car park, now it's 4X4's & newish ones at that.

The wind calmed this afternoon but it's picking up again. Some night last night.

RAS

Hugh Piggott's thing http://www.scoraigwind.com/

choille

He' s a great bloke & incredibly knowledgeable AND explains things really well. He came when we had problems with our windmiill & told us what to do where to get the bits from.

RAS

I liked the fact that they build from scratch, wind the copper cable for the coils etc. Not sure I would ever build one, but thought I would learn so much about basic electrics. I can do the household stuff (wire a house) although I do not know the new rules, so would have to bone up. Mainly the changes seems to be things like cable size to allow for the higher loads these days.

On the other hand, if I knew how to build one, I suspect the opportunity to get involved somewhere somehow would happen.

Just looked at this year's dates. Might just be able to do the May course, the CAt one is out.

PS - just seen quite how bad the winds have been up your way -130 mph on Aonach Mor - wow. The Aussies were freaking out about Yasi pushing 114 mph (183 kph) before the meter brokedown.

choille

Well Hugh knows more than most on a very hands on practical level - he's done it all his adult life I suppose.

There were some very dodgy wired houses - it fact the one we moved into was lethal - he said he couldn't get round them all & no money in it but he was more than helpful. I really don't understand electrickery - even though I have wired up panels that were for computers. I only can do what a plan says - I don't understand it in the slightest - but it's jolly handy stuff!
We hope to put in a micro hydro here eventually - when I've made a pot of gold on ebay.

Re the wind: they reckon it was a hurricane. I think it was far worse on Lewis & Shetland. It's picking up again but it isn't anything like it was.
Funnily enough the lamb shelter was smashed up last night(thought it'd escaped) - yet OH was up in the house build as we were trying to get some boards up there today & we had some little slats - 1inch by 4 inch - sat exactly as they were left - weird.
Like a few years back when our poly-tunnel was riped out of te ground - we'd cemented in the feet & they were up in the air all mangeled - yet there was my plastic seat with all my seeds in a box still sat amidst all the havoc.

Anyone know how I could calculate the root spread of an Elm tree by its canopy spread - where I could glean this info?

RAS

MY guess is the the root spread is going to be similar to the canopy spread.

Davesnave

soupdragon10 wrote: »

To be honest I have toyed with the idea of buying one and then selling it on when I've finished the jobs that need doing. Looking at the hire charges (even without a driver) I'd probably save a mint in the long run if I could find one local to buy.

I thought that, but my man+ digger costs £12 /hr fuel included, and he knows how to drive the thing, so I decided not to bother. Most work still needs someone on the dumper and someone else running about like a mad thing doing everything else, like putting good building stone to one side/removing rubbish, so we found it more efficient as a 3 person activity.

I'm getting more efficient at dealing with pheasants too; two in 25 minutes. Why didn't someone tell me you can skin them like rabbits?:(

Stop Press: another load of chicken food has just fallen off the back of a lorry outside. How careless they are around here!:rotfl: There's so much this time we'll have to share it around.....:)

Davesnave

RAS wrote: »

MY guess is the the root spread is going to be similar to the canopy spread.

I'd say the same, but with our elms here, when they get to about 20' the beetle does for them.

RAS

With respect to leccie, ex and I wired a house using a book written for people fitting up squats. It worked. Only one wee problem; fortunately we taped up the ends of a cable that appeared to have no purpose before tucking it into the ceiling space ( I had got a bit happy with the sledge hammer and removed the whole wall to which it was attached, not just the door frame as we originally intended). When we traced the existing cables back to source, we realised it was live. Fortunately we did all the work with the power switched off at the mains. And we were pretty neurotic about ensuring that all exposed cable ends were taped. So we disconnected it very quickly.

Here, I did the first circuits and then got a colleague (our chief spark) to run a megga over it before it was wired in to the mains. It was amusing discovering the confusion caused by this besuited woman who not only safely wired circuits but also built in the infrastructure for extension of the circuits (like a loop for extra sockets for household stuff I had not yet bought). Since these guys worked for me, they suddenly realised that I had half an idea about their job, which made life a bit easier after that.