Early Risers.

[polybear]

2 hours ago, PupCam said:

And what a lovely greeting when he arrived "Grandad, can we play with your train?"   Of course we can little man.    Little acorns and all that .....

 

Alan

 

I wonder if in a few years when he says "Grandpa Puppers - can I borrow the AyJay...." you'll have a similar view?

 

59 minutes ago, Barry O said:

In shock....

 

Herself and I had a sandwich and a coffee (she had a tea) in Harrods..

 

2 sandwiches, 2 hot drinks plus a service charge....£56.. yer wot!

 

But a superior Christmas pudding has been collected.

 

Off for a lie down in a dark room...

 

Bas

 

BLUDDY HELL - HOW MUCH??

Bear would want two three-course Dinners for that.  With a drink each,
And I'd still need a lie down....

 

Edit:  Just had this come thru' via email - estimate £3 - £5K.  Who's first.....

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/richard-edmonds-auctions/catalogue-id-ibri10079/lot-616aed3d-c76f-4753-8e48-adbe0118a0e1?utm_source=sr-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=toppicks&utm_term=20211019-pr&utm_content=ibri10079-imagelot3

Edited October 19, 2021 by polybear

[JohnDMJ]

 

11 hours ago, grandadbob said:

First job today is a trip to the butcher as the freezer needs "beefing" up.

 

Not planning on pigging out then?

[simontaylor484]

1 hour ago, Barry O said:

In shock....

 

Herself and I had a sandwich and a coffee (she had a tea) in Harrods..

 

2 sandwiches, 2 hot drinks plus a service charge....£56.. yer wot!

 

But a superior Christmas pudding has been collected.

 

Off for a lie down in a dark room...

 

Bas

I could have made a couple more sandwiches at lunch time and a hot drink no service charge and charged you £30

 

 

Where is the how much button when needed

Edited October 19, 2021 by simontaylor484
Further thoughts

[simontaylor484]

All I know about heat pumps are that there are 2 types ground source with pipes under ground and air source which have like an a/c unit outside your house I do believe that they a bit noisy 

[simontaylor484]

Special thoughts and sympathy to @Winslow Boy

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

... there are 2 types ground source with pipes under ground and air source which have like an a/c unit outside your house I do believe that they a bit noisy 

Is geothermal heating/cooling common in the UK? (I would not have thought so.)

 

Despite a lot of boosterism from energy efficiency enthusiasts, it is relatively uncommon in the US - mostly due to the cost of drilling (particularly in a retrofit where the pipes are usually installed vertically in a deep hole). I do know of someone decades ago who installed one around the perimeter of his property for a home he was building.

 

I have seen it done on home improvement television shows. The drill rig for the vertical installation looks very expensive. 

 

It is a very sensible proposition for both heating and cooling.

 

Coincidentally, I just noticed a whole Wheeltapper thread devoted to the topic currently at the top of the Wheeltappers listing.

 

Most modern equipment is relatively quiet, with an emphasis on "relatively". Certainly noisier than nothing. Much depends on the sound-proofing quality of the home insulation and windows and whether equipment is mounted to the home where vibrations might be transmitted. I don't really hear my air conditioning* at all, though of course it's quite audible standing outside next to it.

 

* Other than I can tell when air is being forced through the ducting.

 

Edited October 19, 2021 by Ozexpatriate
Added thread link

[New Haven Neil]

A pal is having air source heating installed as we type - the ground has to be of the right type for ground source apparently.  Another pal will be building a house next year designed from the outset to be very green - despite being in 2 acres the ground is of no use either for it, and the Mrs owner is a Doctor of Geology - she knows a 'fair bit' about it.

 

But the crunch, apparently, is you have to have a very, very efficiently insulated house to make it all work - pal one, may suffer with this in a 70's house.

[Coombe Barton]

... and a wonderful name for a Renaissance poet - Francesca Turina Bufalini Contessa di Stupinigi ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2021/10/19/more-precautions-needed/

[iL Dottore]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

BLUDDY HELL - HOW MUCH??

Bear would want two three-course Dinners for that.  With a drink each,
And I'd still need a lie down....

I had a look at the various Harrod's Cafès. Their afternoon tea IS rather expensive - as the menu below shows:

But the quality will be extremely good! (besides, what is a mere £59 when the average Chinese visitor drops £3500 during the course of a store visit [according to the FT]).

 

I'm perfectly happy to pay a goodly sum for an utterly superb meal (a few years ago my GP friend, Mrs GP Friend, Mrs iD and Me ate at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal - an utterly superb evening - and with two Michelin stars, well it should. Definitely an evening to remember. Amazing food). But if you want to talk about stupid prices - you'll need to go to a Salt Bae steakhouse (an excerpt from a Jay Rayner review)

 

There are now 19 Salt Bae steakhouses worldwide, trading in stupidly expensive steaks, many of them entirely wrapped in gold leaf, flogged to people who should know better. They include David Beckham, Leonardo DiCaprio and the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The gold-wrapped burger is £100. The gold-wrapped eight-hour short rib is £765. There’s the 2kg Tomahawk at £1,450. Finish with gold-wrapped baklava for £50. Shortly after the London branch opened, a photograph of a £1,812.40 receipt for a table of six went viral, including £1.40 cans of Red Bull at £11.

 

Now that IS stupid money! (and even if I did win big on the lottery, you couldn't/wouldn't get me into one of those steakhouses - even at gun point)

 

I'm not sure why so many British aren't comfortable paying for high quality food and service and yet will happily pay anything upwards of £50 for a single football match ticket (I've seen £157 quoted for a Man U ticket!) or £257 to watch England play Samoa at Rugby (see https://www.rlwc2021.com/tickets/ticket-prices).  Inverse snobbery perhaps? And yet whether attending a top level sporting event or eating at a Michelin starred restaurant aren't both things really the same? The enjoyment of experiencing top class professionals in their field perform at the top of their game?

 

 

Edited October 19, 2021 by iL Dottore

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, Ian Abel said:

... we are embarking on a major rewrite of the "Cach Flow Statement"

Am presuming this to be a typo - or perhaps a pun on something that flows downhill. Perhaps it's much the same.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

We were promised a sunny day! (The final one before a string of rainy days.) Where is it?

 

A morning fog was lifting by mid-morning and a bright sun was spotted. Now the skies are a mostly uniform (if slightly mottled) grey but the forecast is changed to "partly sunny". I don't see any sun. Rain is forecast for the evening.

 

The corporate masters of a local television station were victims of a ransomware attack over the weekend. Apparently their networking/storage/email is encrypted. It had a noticeable effect - some bad and some good.

 

Curiously none of the teleprompters seem to be functional - suggesting they are a networked appliance. It is odd to see the newscasters reading from paper on the desk. Weather reporting is completely unimpacted. Apparently whatever computing resources that are used to present the weather are local and unaffected by the ransomware. On Sunday night's broadcast, (presumably quite proximate to the attack) in lieu of other content more than half the 30 minute, late night broadcast was weather which was a bit hard on the weather presenter.

 

This particular corporation has a mission to mandate an editorial perspective from 'corporate' to their many local stations. Their highly editorial "must run" content is missing. While I don't condone cyber attacks to any entity, as a viewer and a proponent of local editorial control of local television, this is a blessing.

[JohnDMJ]

54 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I'm not sure why so many British aren't comfortable paying for high quality food and service and yet will happily pay anything upwards of £50 for a single football match ticket (I've seen £157 quoted for a Man U ticket!) or £257 to watch England play Samoa at Rugby (see https://www.rlwc2021.com/tickets/ticket-prices).  Inverse snobbery perhaps? And yet whether attending a top level sporting event or eating at a Michelin starred restaurant aren't both things really the same? The enjoyment of experiencing top class professionals in their field perform at the top of their game?

 

Which achieves nothing! At least eating is productive!

[TheSignalEngineer]

13 hours ago, polybear said:

Why all the interest in an FG?  Well the person standing next to the lorry was Grandpa Bear, who was a Baker by profession

Now Mr Bear, I'll see your KnicKnacks and raise you a Kunzle's Showboat, or would if Lyons hadn't wrecked them after the takeover. For those who weren't there in body (and mind) in the 1960s I will explain later. 

I've also got a question about a van from a photo I found in my Dad's collection.

 

The man on the left was my Great Uncle. Either side of war service he was a delivery driver for a the Birmingham company C. Kunzle who owned restaurants and made cakes.

I'm trying to work out what the type of van was and the event for which it was decorated. Possibly the 1937 Coronation although it may have been later.

Edited October 19, 2021 by TheSignalEngineer

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Spent the day just lazing around, have done absolutely nothing.

4 minutes ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

Now Mr Bear, I'll see your KnicKnacks and raise you a Kunzle's Showboat, or would if Lyons hadn't wrecked them after the takeover. For those who weren't there in body (and mind) in the 1960s I will explain later. 

I've also got a question about a van from a photo I found in my Dad's collection.

 

 

The man on the left was my Great Uncle. Either side of war service he was a delivery driver for a the Birmingham company C. Kunzle who owned restaurants and made cakes.

The van in the picture is a Morris-Commercial, an ancestor of the FG type.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Just now, PhilJ W said:

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Spent the day just lazing around, have done absolutely nothing.

The van in the picture is a Morris-Commercial, an ancestor of the FG type.

Thanks, I thought it might be, now to find more info about them.

[PeterBB]

3 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Do any ER'ers happen to have, or know of anyone with one of these heat pump thingummybobs that are all over the news at present?  Are they any good?  In any event, this Bear is rather happy with his Baxi Bermuda back boiler thanks very much - and long may it last.  Though I could be tempted to a new boiler to be installed on Dec 31st 2034....

Do not know but have found out that ground source costs a lot more than HMGov will give and doesn't save much pa e.g. £20-30 gas a wee bit more on oil while the air source requires an air conditioning unit outside and much bigger radiators and in a small space that is just not on.  Hope I've remembered it correctly.

Had considered it before looking into it and know that I would need to be well in the hundreds before it paid for itself. Conversely in our previous home the payback of 25 years was completed in 8 for solar panels.

 

Condolences to Winslow Boy - these things may be 'expected' but are still a great shock.  Hope there is not too much hassle sorting out.

Edited October 19, 2021 by PeterBB
Remembered

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

Many, many thanks Gwiwer - there's much info there that I was unaware of.

As for location, that's an easy one for this Bear - it's Cuckfield Crescent .....

Are (or were) you a local by any chance?

A resident of some years many moons and house moves ago.  Though the oldies lived there for nigh on 40 years until their recent passing and sister still does with BiL and her two younger (32 and 34 years old  ) lads.  Never on that side of town though.  Always more central and Broadwater.  Those houses and that area were definitely among those in mind when I suggested a location.  I know Rogate Road well enough but not Cuckfield Crescent which leads off it.  

 

2 hours ago, polybear said:

an area known as "The Selden" and the John Selden Pub

Not to be confused with the Selden Arms pub, favoured by BiL, and which was once confused by father who trekked up to the "John Selden" having arranged to meet someone "In the Selden" for a business chat.  It was the other Selden he should have been in ..... 

 

3 hours ago, polybear said:

the bakery was actually on Broadwater St. East (just off "West"); there's no sign of the Miller's Arms in that street now

Correct.  Broadwater Street East.  My apologies.  Amazing to think that double-decker buses used to squeeze through there.  The pub is now "Ye Olde House At Home".  The bakery stood next door in the space now shown as "Broadwater Mini Market"  which gives an indication that it was quite a substantial building.

 

I'll be down for a family visit around C*******s sometime.  

[laurenceb]

Condolences WB

[trevora]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Is geothermal heating/cooling common in the UK? (I would not have thought so.)

Cornwall's Eden Project set to begin £17m hot rocks drilling programme

Huge drill arrives ready to bore three miles into the Earth and pump down water so it can be superheated underground

[polybear]

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

But the crunch, apparently, is you have to have a very, very efficiently insulated house to make it all work - pal one, may suffer with this in a 70's house.

 

So Bear's 1920's ex-council house may be at some disadvantage then? 

 

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

I had a look at the various Harrod's Cafès. Their afternoon tea IS rather expensive - as the menu below shows:

 

Not even a bacon n' egg sarnie on there, and I'll bet that the "In-house Tea Tailor" hasn't selected a certain Tea that the Monkeys on the Telly drink....

As for LDC, forget it.

Harrods can keep that, thanks all the same. 

 

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

 

I'm perfectly happy to pay a goodly sum for an utterly superb meal (a few years ago my GP friend, Mrs GP Friend, Mrs iD and Me ate at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal - an utterly superb evening - and with two Michelin stars, well it should. Definitely an evening to remember. Amazing food

 

Nine quid for a side of chips?  Twenty quid for ice cream?

Bear just fainted.

 

In other news:

It seems that the Brother of the Manchester Arena Bomber has scarpered abroad just before he was required to attend court.  What a surprise. So why didn't the Bozo's cancel his Passport?  If he's a UK citizen I hope they cancel it now so he can't get back in again - and seize all his UK assets, property etc.

[Ian Abel]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Am presuming this to be a typo - or perhaps a pun on something that flows downhill. Perhaps it's much the same.

 

A typo indeed, that's what comes from typing whilst thinking about something else - to whit, the cache on the computer for an application that I needed to delete

[Ozexpatriate]

3 minutes ago, trevora said:

... three miles into the Earth and pump down water so it can be superheated underground

That's pretty aggressive geothermal and a different application. 

 

Online I see that most of the vertical loop, heat pump geothermal are about 200' to 500' deep.

[PhilJ W]

1 minute ago, trevora said:

Cornwall's Eden Project set to begin £17m hot rocks drilling programme

Huge drill arrives ready to bore three miles into the Earth and pump down water so it can be superheated underground

Believe it or not but the south west of England is quite active geologically. Earth tremors are quite frequent under the Bristol Channel https://www.burnham-on-sea.com/history/1607-flood/ and of course Bath has its hot springs. Usually they are not noticeable but sometimes tremors are felt.

[tigerburnie]

G'night all

[TheSignalEngineer]

47 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Spent the day just lazing around, have done absolutely nothing.

The van in the picture is a Morris-Commercial, an ancestor of the FG type.

I've looked a bit deeper and I think it was a C type built 1933-37, so I would guess it's the 1937 Coronation.