Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

michaels

MK I wouldn't buy one without A/C especially if you are mostly short trips in town as then you are often stationary and hence no air flow to keep you cool. Are you likely to ever do any longer motorway trips? If so I would look at the next size up golf/astra/focus, you would just feel more secure.

Petrol vs diesel - diesel is a lot cheaper on fuel but tends to cost a fair bit more to buy especially in smaller cars where diesel engines are less common, especially 5 years ago so if you are not going to do too many miles petrol will probably be cheaper overall.

What is your budget?

lostinrates

misskool wrote: »

I'm more confuzzled than ever about cars, anyone want to go on a trip with me to buy one? Needs to be cheap as chips, but last more than a year (think I may have to take the train for a bit to save up)

If you find two I'll have the other one

PasturesNew

If you're really really stuck and need it, I have an occasional acquaintance who is a dairy farmer, on a small island .... who might be persuaded to answer the question "do you have any??" perchance to send some, or divulge a supplier. But it's not in the UK, it's in the British Isles ... and he's a flakey drunk to be honest.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

If you're really really stuck and need it, I have an occasional acquaintance who is a dairy farmer, on a small island .... who might be persuaded to answer the question "do you have any??" perchance to send some, or divulge a supplier. But it's not in the UK, it's in the British Isles ... and he's a flakey drunk to be honest.

OK, I'll bear that in mind. He probably knows exactly the bit we need. Its all traditional dairy plumbing, held up with baling twine and propped up with random bits of wood. we found a bit today where an upright beam...can't think of name has been secured into another proper beam, obviously having rotted out at some point, with a long arm gate hasp:eek:.Sadly its now almost rotton through at the bottom too and I don't have a spare gate hasp, but I've pushed half a breeze block there to offer it some moral support, because its certainly not practical support!


Here's an interesting note, relevant to economy too. we have saught quotes for various things locally, including different types of surveys. we've gone local because, well....its what you do, innit. You don't write off to fancy pants places in London, but you cut your cloth. Only new ''team'' suggested we get a quote for one thing from some real fancy pants peoples surveyors. The sample work thy showed us was of seriously fancy pants clients. The kind of client who wouldn't notice if you stole one of their gold records or one of their private planes. The sort of homes that appear in architectural digest or something. We sniggered when they left and felt ''what were we thinking?'' they are going to be well out of our league and we hoped they wouldn't be too narked or put out by the long drive and the waste of their time. And you know what? They can do the survey before christmas at 60% of the cheapest local quote. And their guarantees and post sales care seems to be better. They were nice enough without being slimy, weren't obviously horrified at the considerably humbler state of our place than what they are used to, or the budgets we are working with. These fancypants London people are showing the rural operatives a thing or two on price and service.

edit: its also very hard to get samples of warrantees that people boast about. I'm guessing I'm finding a lot of cowboys because the architect said its a way to weed the good from the bad. No good woodworm people it seems!

Malcolm.

Poster watch, a list of regulars who have disappeared.

fc123 - occupied running business.
treliac - occasionally pops in.
wageslave - looking after people?
carolt - missing.
chucky - missing.
inspector monkfish - missing.
mewbie - monetising his words elsewhere?
brodders - multiple ppr's, missing.
fungusfighter - missing.
pickles - missing.

Can someone please update for those posters I've missed (or when news arrives).

Cheers.

lostinrates

Malcolm. wrote: »

Poster watch, a list of regulars who have disappeared.

fc123 - occupied running business.
treliac - occasionally pops in.
wageslave - looking after people?
carolt - missing.
chucky - missing.
inspector monkfish - missing.
mewbie - monetising his words elsewhere?
brodders - multiple ppr's, missing.
fungusfighter - missing.
pickles - missing.

Can someone please update for those posters I've missed (or when news arrives).

Cheers.

Monkfish obviously too busy with his daughter: she's still in hospital,hoping,hoping,hoping to be out for Christmas having had some complication/infection according to last email.:(

michaels

We seem to have heard\less from Hamish of late - may be more to do with the\outlook on house prices than because he has suddenly remembered he has a wife...

Talking of missing pqrdef sounds like someone else but I'm not sure who?

Malcolm. wrote: »

Poster watch, a list of regulars who have disappeared.

fc123 - occupied running business.
treliac - occasionally pops in.
wageslave - looking after people?
carolt - missing.
chucky - missing.
inspector monkfish - missing.
mewbie - monetising his words elsewhere?
brodders - multiple ppr's, missing.
fungusfighter - missing.
pickles - missing.

Can someone please update for those posters I've missed (or when news arrives).

Cheers.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

OK, I'll bear that in mind. He probably knows exactly the bit we need. Its all traditional dairy plumbing, held up with baling twine and propped up with random bits of wood. we found a bit today where an upright beam...can't think of name has been secured into another proper beam, obviously having rotted out at some point, with a long arm gate hasp:eek:.Sadly its now almost rotton through at the bottom too and I don't have a spare gate hasp, but I've pushed half a breeze block there to offer it some moral support, because its certainly not practical support!

His £mill gaff has been in the family for 400 years.... one of those old types.

lostinrates wrote: »

... These fancypants London people are showing the rural operatives a thing or two on price and service.

One thing I noticed when I had a house was that tradespeople just asked ridiculous prices because there'd always be some fancy pants visitor with a 2nd home who would pay it thinking they'd got a local bargain. For a lot of stuff, including building work, it would have been cheaper to have had some blokes turning up in a van from 60-100+ miles each day, or even putting up a bunch in a local B&B out of season.

Local, rural, workpeoples..... have been taking the pee.

PasturesNew

Somebody's sent me an old phone, with a camera!! So I could snap snaps for my site/s. Having a proper camera, in a bag, having to have it with you and unpack it and fiddle for a shot is too much overhead. I figured if I had a nifty phone in my pocket and could snap stuff, it'd be good enough for small illustrations on my sites. I can even use it to snap foods for my recipes I write.

Anyway ..... I took it out today for a small run around - take a few snaps, see how it works. Well, you point it and press a button and it takes a picture. After that it gets tiresome and tricky as I don't have the necessary gubbins to do much with it beyond that, but I did manage to bluetooth the pics to my laptop. So job's a good 'un.

Problems are that you can't see the screen, so have to guess what you're snapping - and, I don't think, there's no control over anything else (which is probably a good thing, I just want to point/snap and be away).

So, to keep it topical, here's an apparently deserted development that I drove past (snapped by spotting it and hanging my arm out of the window just after I'd driven past) .... yeah, I know it's naughty, but I was the only person on the road
(warning: un-resized bigguns)

http://i51.tinypic.com/nffm88.jpg

And off topic, here's a beach I walked down to: http://i52.tinypic.com/vgj48x.jpg
Where the tide was in and there was a lot of seaweed: http://i53.tinypic.com/qs36ti.jpg

That last one seems to have some odd white dots on it, not sure if the lens is dirty, or if that was the exceedingly strong sun catching on spray from the surf.

It only took me 4 hours to get those off the phone, with all the faffing around I had to do trying to work out how to work the card (which didn't work, formatted then error'd), then giving up and wondering what bluetooth was all about and getting the phone/laptop to talk to each other. I need a proper place to put them all online really

John_Pierpoint

lostinrates wrote: »

OK, the plastic/rubber pipe goes from the metre side towards the copper side. There was (and is) a brass stiffener.

Screwing it up is the problem. What was there doesn't seem to fit correctly and hold. Probably pipe imperial and joint metric?

My dad has been here with the DH and they have both been measuring and shaking heads. Dad reckons he can find something tomorrow. (he knows less than dh and I but known as little for longer ).

The metre is already iunderpressure because the leak/or spring is near there and the metre area is filling and freezing. The water from this doesn't ick our metre over and the water company swear its not theirs either. we're trying to find out if we can sink a well or otherwise divert this (e already collect own surface water here) to be less reliant on metre water

OMG a muddy frozen hole in the ground job ?!?

I had a similar problem when those nice people at the electricity company put a pick through my black pipe and wrapped a bit of insulating tape round the split. It did not take very long for the mains pressure to make its way to the surface, past the insulating tape and through the 18 inches of packed clay. I made the judgement, having found the cause of my leak, that fixing it myself would be less hassle than trying to get the electricity company to do anything about it. I took along a bit of the pipe to a good plumbing supplier and said "got anything to fit that?".
I would think that use of an electric heater would allow a slightly over sized stiffener to be introduced. The problem I found was that if you remove any length of pipe you then have two joints to make waterproof.

On the meter front, the water company flushed the mains in the area and outlying properties like mine got an interesting precipitate of brown gunge settling out in every glass of water. Eventually my supply started to dry up. The Water company tried to deny liability saying there was nothing wrong with the pressure at the meter (then some 400 yards away). Eventually the water company discovered a huge tap/spigot/valve with a body the size of a small car engine complete with gear box, on my side of the meter.
Perhaps there was enough corroded brass in it to pay for their efforts.
[Back in the inter war years there were grandiose plans to build a housing estate where I live - the 30's depression followed by the agri. board during the war followed by green belt legislation, has returned everything but my place to agriculture. The buried car engine valve was probably intended to service the new estate. Those of you on the South Coast have Peacehaven as a more "successful" example of the same situation]

John.

PS Peanut butter : 50% fat 7% sugar but with a smell that could cross the yard - I will give it a try on the rat traps.
In the past I have had some success with half a monkey nut in shell,
the raw peanut then encourages the rat to get stuck in trying to extract it from the shell, when his exertions will set off the trap - that is my theory anyway. Perhaps the smell will be the deciding factor.

Talking of planning and agri boards - there is a news item doing the rounds today, that local housing "improvements" will be left to a star chamber of neighbours rather than the local government planning department