Search results

I remember those, the little glass bulb would move as the bimetal coil changed temperature, and then the ball of mercury would roll to the other end and make/break the contact. They lasted forever, I had never seen one go wrong. Haven't heard the word "furnace" in relation to home heating in...

Although I grew up in Canada, I was born in London, but moved away when I was a kid, so I guess I have come home. One thing I have learned is that prices for building materials are wildly variable here. You cannot buy anything here in any quantity without negotiating a price. In Canada you can...

I framed it last fall and threw tarps over it, and I am now tiling the roof. I was worried about mold, since the tarps are not perfect, so I bought a desiccant dehumidifier. I am wondering if that might partially work to heat it in the winter, it is around 600w or so. It just creates heat right...

Haha, I grew up in Regina, I chose wood frame walls because it is easier for insulation, wiring, and to fasten stuff, and they are a bit cheaper. I bought a small mixer to pour the footing and grade beam. For waterpoofing I used what they call here "tanking slurry". It is a kind of water proof...

I was going to stucco (render?) the exterior.

I guess I forgot to mention that cost is a factor, I think PIR and laminated panels are bit out of my price range.

I am building a workshop (4m x 7.5m internal size) on top of this: It is framed in 150mm which I plan to insulate with fiberglass or rockwool. I don't plan to heat it continuously, only when I am doing work that requires it. What to put on the walls? My first thought would be drywall, but in...

In Canada in the 1980s they developed the R-2000 standard to build houses that were super sealed with thick walls in reaction to the energy crisis of the 70s. I was at a small party at one when it was -30C outside (in Manitoba) and they had to open the windows because it was getting too hot from...

Just finished a temporary greenhouse, made almost entirely out of leftover materials, some fence panels and some leftover wood from concrete forms used to pour my workshop foundation.

Not the last but perhaps the first. That was before I had a thickness planer, and I had to use a hand plane to join and flatten the shelves. Never did manage to find catches that I liked for the doors.

Plastic is terrible stuff, made from fossil fuel, does not biodegrade, and in most cases there are a much more environmentally friendly alternatives. When those ground source heat pump fields have passed their useful life, is someone going to dig all that plastic pipe up and dispose of it...

The only practical way to get to net zero would be to switch to nuclear power big time. Cluttering up the countryside with windmills and solar panels is an environmental disaster. The tons of plastic required for ground source heat pumps is not much better, and made from fossil fuel by the way...

I ride a bike to work, and hope not to die early. In the UK drivers are much more impatient than other places, even towards pedestrians. I can't wait until they are all off the road and we have driverless cars, then we won't even need bike lanes (because the driverless cars will be polite). I...

The shutdown itself is not the problem, it is the cooling of the still hot fuel afterwards. If memory serves, they had already shut Fukushima down when the wave hit. The CANDUs can shutdown without power, and they can cool the fuel bundles by gravity circulation. The large thermal mass means...

Thermal mass, they would have had much more time to get the power back on. Funnily enough, the only reason the CANDU is like this is that they lacked the technology to build a small pressure vessel when they designed it, it has a much larger calandria.

Spent fuel from previous generation reactors is now be reprocessed for fuel, as are other sources, such as material from decomissioned weapons. The problem is that if you try to learn anything about the subject, all you will find is stupid articles in the media claiming: "Why nuclear power is...

Or worse yet they would sell it to Europe and drive up the price here. That happened in Canada in Manitoba. They had a huge glut of hyro power in Manitoba and convinced everyone to switch to electric central heating (it gets -40C in the winter). Then they started selling it to other provinces...

If the media hadn't scared the public off nuclear, the original claim would have come true, maybe not too cheap to meter (is anything too cheap?) but it would much, much cheaper. It is economics of scale, reactors are expensive because there are very few of them. Canada designed mini-reactors...

If the panic **** media hadn't scared the public off nuclear power in the 70s, the UK would already be zero carbon on electricity, there wouldn't be windmills and solar panels soiling the countryside, and energy would be cheap. There is (mostly) no such thing as nuclear "waste". Nowadays "waste"...

I had a full stainless restaurant style kitchen in a previous house. Most of it was purchased used and there were lots of nicks and scratches everywhere. I am going to assume you put stainless there because that area will take some abuse, so it won't be long before you have many more nicks and...