Hot weather, effects on electricity demand and production

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 26 Jul 2018, 16:51

Just had first rain since early June. Lasted about 5 minutes and the ground is dry again in under an hour

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 26 Jul 2018, 22:13

We havenâ€™t had any rain at all. No problem though, Anglian Water says there is no need for a hosepipe ban. They have provided an alternative solution, and so at present we have no water at all, unless you count the bottles we have for drinking water.

Lurkalot · Post by **Lurkalot** » 27 Jul 2018, 23:27

Going back to the original question of energy consumption . A fair bit of my work is garden maintenance and I normally keep quite a few lawns mown. With much of the country resembling a hay field that has pretty much come to an end so the petrol mowers haven't been doing a lot recently and as a result my petrol consumption has fallen. On the flip side that has meant I've been doing more work on buildings. I'm a joiner by trade ( or carpenter depending on where you live) and power tools do figure more in that line of work , saws , planers , drills and vacuums to name a few so I suppose my electric use or consumption has increased.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 28 Jul 2018, 00:40

I have only used my mower twice this year and most of my power tools are battery operated so I try and charge then during the day when the solar panels have been working overtime.

We had a few drops of rain this afternoon after I had finished filling my grandchildren's small swimming/paddling pool. We're connecting it to a reed bed system in an IBC cut in half so water flows from one half to the other and then back into the pool by gravity. We've got a 50W pv panel driving two 25W 1000 ltr/hr submersible pumps to lift the 5000 litres of water up to the beds. One half IBC sits on another IBC to get the height. The other half sits on the pool edge, made from braced Europallets, ratchet straps, insulation and a pond liner and some concrete blocks. Last summer we used straw bales padded with old carpet and the pool liner for the walls but the straw rotted over winter.

The original thought was to put the IBCs on the ground and pump in and out using one pump for each function but I was concerned about matching the flow in and out so the pump in the IBC didn't run dry at all and we were also concerned about siphoning the water out of the pool and having both pumps running dry (and loosing the water, of course).

I did say it was the grandchildren's pool but they were an excuse really! We've got an old SolarTwin hot water panel heating it to take the edge of the chilly water for us adults.

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 28 Jul 2018, 04:30

I have only used my mower twice this year....................

I have used my mower about a dozen times this year, only three times to cut my grass, mostly to cut other areas usually larger than mine.

But then my mower is a scythe, supported by a steel, doesn't even need batteries.

Lurkalot · Post by **Lurkalot** » 28 Jul 2018, 09:33

I can see a certain irony discussing petrol mowers on a forum where the subject of peak oil comes up so regularly. I also use a forum more devoted to self sufficiency and can see another irony in that I make a living tending to what are largely unproductive gardens . I really would like to use a scythe more t comes down to a compromise of time and accessibility in some of the smaller awkwardly shaped lawns I look after.
Cutting grass and so on does give me plenty of raw material for composting. I have compost heaps at home and another couple hidden away on larger jobs so perhaps some good comes from it.
I probably overegged how much I use power tools too. Only this week a customer commented on how I was cutting skirting boards by hand rather than using a power saw and on yet another forum which is more building based quite often get derided for suggesting hand tools over power tools.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 28 Jul 2018, 16:49

By the age of about 55 you'll be slim & fit while all the b***ers currently taking the mick of you for using hand tools will be nursing bingo wings & beer bellies.

Lurkalot · Post by **Lurkalot** » 28 Jul 2018, 18:18

Less than six months before I'm 55 and while I'm not stick thin I've yet to grow a decent size belly. I did recently have a medical appointment and when asked the usual questions , exsiisting aiilments , medication , smoker etc practically every "no" box . Got was told I'm a rarity as there ed nothing wrong with me . At this rate I'll have nothing to be grumpy about as I get older

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 28 Jul 2018, 19:35

By 55 you're expected to have at least 50% blockage in your arteries and be on several regular medications. This is what I was told by a nurse a few years ago.

I'm approaching retirement with zero artery blockage and on zero medications. I'm an oddball alright.

Oh, hang on, I had a sore toe recently...at death's door, I was.

Lurkalot · Post by **Lurkalot** » 03 Aug 2018, 17:04

RenewableCandy wrote:By the age of about 55 you'll be slim & fit while all the b***ers currently taking the mick of you for using hand tools will be nursing bingo wings & beer bellies.

Going completely off topic but what's the mental equivalent of bingo wings and beer bellies? On the same forum where they take the mick for suggesting hand tools came a question of calculating the angle of plumb cuts on rafters. There are evidently apps out there to help one out but as I pointed out it's really basic maths. There's a horizontal and vertical axis with the hypotenuse of the triangle ( the rafter ) set at an angle to the horizontal at 40 degrees and people really need an app to work out the angle between the rafter and vertical plane

it's primary school maths at best , but I was criticised for being negative when I suggested an app wasn't really needed.
To make matters worse while the app gives the technically correct answer ( 50 degrees , just in case) it makes no allowance for mitre saws being marked the other way around. A saw will cut square when it is set to 0degrees so to give a 50degree cut the saw should be set to 40degrees. Irony is that 50 is the perfectly correct angle if one is cutting by hand.
In the same thread I was further criticised as being probably the only carpenter in the country who doesn't own a nail gun or hinge jig.
Sorry to go off topic .

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 03 Aug 2018, 18:41

I'm no carpenter no less a joiner but I did build my own house and all the info for cutting rafter bird mouths was pressed into a carpenters square and in a little book that came with a speed square. It is not always 40 degrees as different roof pitches require a different result. I remember cutting the valley rafter birds mouths too deep and as they were the longest sticks in the lumber pile I could not try again so had to shim them up a half inch to line up with the jack rafters. Of course I had made it difficult by having the chimney come up through the point where the ridge poles and valley rafters were intended to meet. Building this house I wore out a cats paw which is a bar for pulling out nails driven in the wrong place or into a piece cut the wrong size.

Lurkalot · Post by **Lurkalot** » 04 Aug 2018, 09:03

Always remember one site agent saying that we don't make mistakes , we just provide the possibility to show how well we can get out of a situation.
Agreed pitches do vary and are commonly something other than 40 degrees , that was just the example given , but the maths is the same , calculating the one unknown angle in a right angled triangle.
I've snapped a bar in my time but for a lot of my time we used screws and normally stainless screws. This we said was because the architects were very bad at visualisation and things could be easily dismantled ( which actually was more common than it really should have been) but the primary reason was screwing causes less vibration and is kinder to the fabric of the historic buildings I worked on. Apologies for taking the mick out of one of your countrymen but on one job we were screwing a floor down above a fragile old ceiling on a 16th century building when an American walking in. He asked what we were doing and I explained. " what did they use originally " he asked.
"Nails" I said . He responded by asking if they had nails then. Naughty of me I know but I pointed to the church next to where we were working and said " you could always go and ask how the romans fixed Christ to the cross fifteen hundred years earlier" .

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 04 Aug 2018, 09:21

vtsnowedin wrote:I'm no carpenter no less a joiner but I did build my own house and all the info for cutting rafter bird mouths was pressed into a carpenters square and in a little book that came with a speed square. It is not always 40 degrees as different roof pitches require a different result. I remember cutting the valley rafter birds mouths too deep and as they were the longest sticks in the lumber pile I could not try again so had to shim them up a half inch to line up with the jack rafters. Of course I had made it difficult by having the chimney come up through the point where the ridge poles and valley rafters were intended to meet. Building this house I wore out a cats paw which is a bar for pulling out nails driven in the wrong place or into a piece cut the wrong size.

I think we call that a crow bar here. Or, at least, a crow bar has that function on it. But, I may be wrong and you might be talking about a more specific tool.

Lurkalot · Post by **Lurkalot** » 04 Aug 2018, 09:37

I seem to recall a tool sold as a cats paw in the UK but essentially the same thing . Some have diffferent sections but they all perform the same function , crowbar , wrecking bar , pinch bar all the same thing really.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 04 Aug 2018, 12:27

Little John wrote:I think we call that a crow bar here. Or, at least, a crow bar has that function on it. But, I may be wrong and you might be talking about a more specific tool.

We have crow bars of different sizes. A cat's paw is similar but smaller with very sharp claws to get under nail heads and some have a flattened section on the curve where you strike it with a hammer to get it under the nail head and past the shank.
Today I use a lot of screws driven in by cordless drills and for anything big I will rent or borrow a nail gun. The nail gun saves on carpel tunnel inflammation and gives a lot less vibration and noise.
Of course you trade the sound of the hammering for the hum of the generator and compressor.