Early Risers.

[Ian Abel]

9 hours ago, grandadbob said:

 

 Double celebration today, Gemma is 19 and it is our 53rd wedding anniversary.   A meal and a few drinks are scheduled later.  

 

Congratulations on the double, best birthday wishes and happy anniversary @grandadbob

 

Chewsday - panic ensued early AM (I'm 1 hour behind the client, so still on breakfast when they called) on two report fronts, things not used for a while are now apparently "out of date"...

Hmmm, who's problem is that, when it's missing newly added accounts?!?! Rushing around fixing/updating for some big-wig meeting <yawn>

 

Yesterday - normal plodding work day, quiet evening.

 

Today panic mostly over, back to normal. 

Off to the PO later to ship some of the Lionel stuff I had on eBay for a friend. Something FINALLY sold  🤯

 

14c and sunny first thing, 27 the expected high.

 

Carry on.

[Coombe Barton]

... sops in wine, a very old variety of apple tree with purple flowers and red fleshed fruit ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2023/06/13/zoe-up-63-in-a-week-no-reporting-on-covid-enquiry/

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

is all too easy to find yourself doing 35 in a 30 just at the wrong time (though this wasn't such a time, fortunately). 

I checked my journey log when we got here (hotel in Troyes). The autoroute was very clear. For one 125 mile leg it seems my average speed was 74mph. It was on cruise control at 130kph for nearly all the time.  Other stretches were a little slower. 
 

[woodenhead]

That's it, done, second tooth extracted.  Much more prepared this time, no anxiety and no panic.

 

A week of liquid diet as I've now two wounds to heal but at least it came out without fuss and I'm just waiting for the anaesthetic to wear off, first dose of paracetemol taken.  Hopefully it goes like the last one which was painless after the first 12 hours.

 

On the bright side, I've needed to diet, the first tooth out has had visible results and now I've got another few weeks of careful eating ahead to really improve my physique.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Not done any cooking today, pork pie for lunch and quiche for dinner both with a bit of salad. Included in the salad was cooked beetroot found in the back of the fridge. No use by date but as they were vacuum sealed should be perfectly ok.

[New Haven Neil]

12 hours ago, Hroth said:

Loud and overcrowded?

 

Umm, more like vibrant and happening.  It really is a carnival atmosphere, there's no 'trouble', just the usual pixxed locals and a few, but not lots, of visitors the same - cells are never full, any more than a usual Friday night despite the numbers -people are here to enjoy themselves.  Now if there were 40k football fans....different.

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

21 hours ago, BSW01 said:

So, I spent the next 40 minutes alternating from outside bailing the area in front of the cellar door and inside the cellar as well, I must have emptied the buckets at least 40 times! But thankfully that was only about 1 inch deep, but I had to keep swapping from inside to outside to keep up the inside level low. By the time I’d finished I was soaked and had to get changed before I could sit down with a well earned glass of beer. 

 

 

 

Here in the sub-tropics its not all  palm trees and surfing and girls in grass skirts we also have tropical  storms with accompanying  flooding.  Maybe like here you can pick up submersible pumps pretty cheaply, for the occasional use the quality isnt an issue. Something like this will suck an average space like a garage  dry pretty quickly, down to about a quarter of an inch.

 

https://www.bunnings.com.au/ozito-350w-dirty-water-submersible-water-pump_p4816179

 

My 3D printing room under the house will flood when we get a Sydney downpour or floods, it only rises to about  a quarter of an inch before it runs under the door and down the back but its annoying. I bought a dearer version - called a puddle sucker that'll actually pump it down to dry concrete, cost a couple of hundred but it does the job in about 20 minutes, compared to the hours that I used to take with the wet-and dry vac, filling the vac with water then struggling outside to empty it out, over and over -  that was a mugs game!

Edited June 13, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[Ozexpatriate]

28 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Maybe like here you can pick up submersible pumps pretty cheaply, for the occasional use the quality isnt an issue.

Sump pumps were a standard for basements in Chicago. I had one in my garage - there was a little 'well' (a circular depression) in the concrete floor in the back corner where the sump pump was located.

 

It was arguably the wrong corner of the 'daylight' basement since it was above grade at that point. The other back corner in a finished part of the basement was below grade. It was required by code. 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[TheQ]

At the MRC tonight I was talking to a fairly new member who's very familiar with the areas Dave F is talking about /showing pictures of.. the new man has just moved from Alnwick...

 

Getting to the MRC had to avoid a white bmw driven by a woman who obviously thinks no white line , drive down the middle of the road..

 

Did some PAT testing for a lady member, who is currently clearing her Aunt's house, various items going to a charity shop that has to otherwise pay for PAT testing..

Got given a miniature bottle of Highland park that she found in the clearances. 

 

I made like a carpenter in 1/150 ish scale today, I would have done more but I forgot this gadget with the photos of the 1/1 scale item.

 

We have a sump pump, which we used to pump the well out onto the road one particularly wet winter, that lowered the water level in the garden that was heading for the back door. Might need it again if I drop something down the well while removing the cap.

 

Muggachoccy gone

Goodnight Awl.

[Barry O]

Long day..

 

Car tyres to be replaced tomorrow..wallet is in pain already!

I used to use a sump pump when the front garden used to flood.we made our bit of front garden surrounded by a waree proof fence... no more leaks!

 

Went out for a curry at tea time (Sgeesh Mahal on Kirkstall Road). Excellent as usual.

 

Time for some more eyelid inspection...

 

Sleepwell!

 

Baz

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

The outside cellar stairs and the cellar floor look and feel a lot cleaner now. A sump pump sounds like a good idea, so I’ll give the idea some serious thought outside the cellar in front of the cellar window would seem a logical place to put one, but I’ll need to dig through the concrete floor and put in a pit for the pump. A bit of research is in order I think. 
 

Happy anniversary @grandadbob

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[jjb1970]

Talk of sump pumps and wet basements takes me back to my early days in London. I worked at the City of London district heating and cooling scheme in Farringdon, opposite Smithfield Market.

 

Much of the power plant (including two V18 Wartsila 46 gas engines of about 16MW each) were below ground in old Victorian vaults. The plant was built into the shell of a Victorian building, the façade was listed. Water ingress was a constant problem with sump pumps running all the time and huge bilge wells around the basement areas.

 

Our senior management in corporate HQ had the brainwave of sealing the walls (it was an ongoing expense as the water was subject to discharge controls), it apparently never struck them that there might have been a reason it had not already been done. We actually had survey reports from our structural engineers advising not to do that. The problem wasn't so much leaking walls, it was that the vaults were below the water table. We were not allowed to renew the vaults with the sort of concrete structure that could withstand high hydraulic pressure, and there was no way Victorian brick walls could withstand high pressures. The problem with trying to seal any water vessel (which is what we were in effect, a box below the water table) is it is subject to pressure. Unless you have a tank or structure designed for that pressure it will find a weak spot and relieve itself.

 

Despite multiple meetings where I tried to persuade them it was a bad idea they were determined, the result was bricks being fired out of the walls at high velocity followed by what looked like a fire hose discharge. The next idea was to try drilling in structural anchors to strengthen the wall, again we explained that not only would that not do anything to address the problem but the more they tried to do the greater the chance of a major structural failure unless they were willing to spend many millions to do the job properly (which would not have been allowed by the heritage people and was in any case impractical without completely renewing the plant). After about 18 months they accepted defeat and we went back to just accepting that we needed to keep pumping the vaults out.

 

What amazed me was the decision makers were all engineers. It demonstrated a problem in engineering as they were mainly control engineers and clearly considered themselves on a higher echelon than the lowly civil and structural engineers trying to advise them. I'm not a civil engineer but you didn't have to be to read their reports and understand the advice. I found the wilful refusal of apparently intelligent chartered engineers to accept the obvious really rather odd.

[BR60103]

This is our second house with a sump pump.  The previous one had to deal with sewer pipes that were high under the roadway as the site had previously been greenhouses. We had had a bathroom put in the basement and it required a sanitary sump pump in addition.

We have one in this house.  I've never heard it go off in anger, but every few years I pour a bucket of water into it to see it run.

 

Major rainstorm tonight (heavy but brief) and tornado warnings a couple of counties southwest of us. 

 

[AndyID]

19 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

 The world has returned to a semblance of normal as the visitors have left, not seen any figures yet but there will have been about 40,000 or so.  As our population is about 83,000 you can understand how different the rock feels TT week!

 

It's slightly surprising the whole thing didn't sink under the weight 😀

[iL Dottore]

Afternoon/Morning All,

i’ve just returned from attending a sumo wrestling training morning at a sumo stable. It was brutal.. It makes the “hard training“ the overpaid kickball prima donnas complain about seem like a stroll in the park.
 

These young men, the beginning of their sumo career, go through the most gruelling training I have ever seen outside of the military. All but one wrestler wore black mawashi – indicating that they were at the very bottom of the Sumo hierarchy pyramid. the one wrestler with a white mawashi - indicating that he was in one of the higher sumo categories  - was s maegashira.
 

The stable master (trainer) made one young black mawashi wrestler take on the maegashira wrestler until the young wrestler literally dropped to the floor with exhaustion – the stable master, then made him do it again! Finally, after being thrown to the ground, pushed out of the ring, or had a part of his than his feet touch the ground (all way a sumo wrestler can lose a match) the young wrestler won a bout.

 

And these are big lads, sumo wrestlers in excess weighing in excess of 170 kg are not uncommon. I’m the skinny one!

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by iL Dottore
Typo

[iL Dottore]

Afternoon/Morning All,

 

The training area:

Edited June 14, 2023 by iL Dottore
Tidied up duplicate post

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Off to get beast reshod this morning, some on line meetings then interviews for the rest of the day. 

 

Enjoy whatever you get up to today!

 

Bas

[The Lurker]

Belated anniversary congratulations to Mr and Mrs GDB

[polybear]

8 hours ago, BSW01 said:

Good evening everyone 

 

The outside cellar stairs and the cellar floor look and feel a lot cleaner now. A sump pump sounds like a good idea.....

 

Bear suggested it first...Bear suggested it first......😁

Waddoo I win??

 

Bear here......

Architrave fixin' day in the Hallway methinks.  Could be a Big Tick approaching.  Hopefully.

 

In other news....

Junior Docs go on strike for 3 days from 7am tomorrow.  Go careful out there.

 

In other, other news.....

Bear should've been a L.T. Rolling Stock Engineer - I learned from "someone in the know" yesterday that their salary apparently goes something like this:

Year 1 £20K

Year 2 £32K (or was it £36K - can't remember).

Year 3 £60K.....

Bluddy Hell.

 

Bear gone.

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from a. Liff top eyrie overlooking the shining sea.  It's been a busy few days so far and will get busier today as Emily and her mums will arrive this evening.  I meanwhile am off to ride the train all the way to Swanage and back.  

 

Congrats to Mr and Mrs GDB. 

 

Jamie

[DaveF]

A good night's sleep but I still feel tired, I walked further than I had intended yesterday.  It is fine and sunny again, I hope to have a restful morning before going to a church meeting this afternoon.

 

The restful morning will be spent sorting out yesterday's photos and looking at the new books.

 

David

[Winslow Boy]

5 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Talk of sump pumps and wet basements takes me back to my early days in London. I worked at the City of London district heating and cooling scheme in Farringdon, opposite Smithfield Market.

 

Much of the power plant (including two V18 Wartsila 46 gas engines of about 16MW each) were below ground in old Victorian vaults. The plant was built into the shell of a Victorian building, the façade was listed. Water ingress was a constant problem with sump pumps running all the time and huge bilge wells around the basement areas.

 

Our senior management in corporate HQ had the brainwave of sealing the walls (it was an ongoing expense as the water was subject to discharge controls), it apparently never struck them that there might have been a reason it had not already been done. We actually had survey reports from our structural engineers advising not to do that. The problem wasn't so much leaking walls, it was that the vaults were below the water table. We were not allowed to renew the vaults with the sort of concrete structure that could withstand high hydraulic pressure, and there was no way Victorian brick walls could withstand high pressures. The problem with trying to seal any water vessel (which is what we were in effect, a box below the water table) is it is subject to pressure. Unless you have a tank or structure designed for that pressure it will find a weak spot and relieve itself.

 

Despite multiple meetings where I tried to persuade them it was a bad idea they were determined, the result was bricks being fired out of the walls at high velocity followed by what looked like a fire hose discharge. The next idea was to try drilling in structural anchors to strengthen the wall, again we explained that not only would that not do anything to address the problem but the more they tried to do the greater the chance of a major structural failure unless they were willing to spend many millions to do the job properly (which would not have been allowed by the heritage people and was in any case impractical without completely renewing the plant). After about 18 months they accepted defeat and we went back to just accepting that we needed to keep pumping the vaults out.

 

What amazed me was the decision makers were all engineers. It demonstrated a problem in engineering as they were mainly control engineers and clearly considered themselves on a higher echelon than the lowly civil and structural engineers trying to advise them. I'm not a civil engineer but you didn't have to be to read their reports and understand the advice. I found the wilful refusal of apparently intelligent chartered engineers to accept the obvious really rather odd.

 

As an ex CoL employee you have my sympathy. I suspect I may have been long after you as I had to deal with Ove Arup. It was my first experience of having to deal with consultants/contractors. I still remember it after all this time. Funny enough I know someone who works for them but I think they've have dropped the Ove part.

[Gwiwer]

Good Morning from the Distant (Signal) West. 
 

The sun is trying to break through last night’s fog. There is a very chatty Greenfinch outside the window and perched above acres of hayfever seedy grassland. Dr. SWMBO tells me she is off for a 10.00 swim which requires me to drop her at the pool. 
 

Some lovely people have been met whilst walking the South West Coast Path. Respects have been paid to all those Cornish men and women who had their lives cut short in or about the mines.  The mortal remains of a railway have been photographed almost ten miles beyond the buffer stops at Penzance 
 

The industrial wasteland has its own peculiar beauty. 
 

The South West Coast Path. 630 miles (all of which I have walked) from Minehead to Poole Harbour

 

Mineral staining on the cliffs below the remains of the Levant mine complex

 

Copper staining from a leat at the lower washing levels of the Geevor mine 

 

A weird landscape made spookier in fog. Levant mine complex - arsenic works 

 

The 2’ 0” railway at Levant mine used to move equipment as much as rock 

 

This way!  Wearing my South West Coast Path Association “completer’s” t-shirt (a different Shirt du Jour for @iL Dottore ) only available to members who have walked the whole distance.