Member postings for Samsaranda

I live in the Southern Water area and they were recently fined £90 million for illegally dumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea over many years, this practice was carried out because basically Southern Water instead of allocating funds to extend and improve their infrastructure over the years as the demand grew, they fed the cash to the shareholders. Complicit in this it appears was the Environment Agency because they should have been monitoring and prosecuting the offenders. If there are occasions when your system will be overwhelmed by abnormal rainfall etc. then it is common sense to provide storage so that the excess can be retained and processed when the event has passed this will be a not infrequent event as our climate changes, It would appear that other water companies are also guilty of inadequate provision of storage, Thames Water is one but has recently embarked on a programme that will go some way towards solving their problems. As for surface water being fed into the foul water system in the past the regulations allowed this so there are many older properties who are legally entitled to discharge rainwater into the foul system because of the legislation that existed at the time the properties were built. This practice is now illegal for new developments. I was born in Eastbourne and now live just outside of it, when I was a youngster, a long time ago now, you could stand on the seafront and somedays see that the colour of the sea close to the beach was a different colour, this was because in those days, the 50’s, the sewage was not treated but discharged through a very short outfall pipe direct into the sea. Nowadays the outfall pipe discharges some 3 kilometres out to sea and the discharge has been partially treated, they run it through screens to remove solids then blast it with uv light to minimise the bacteria content that is discharged. Recent housing developments in our area had no access to mains sewers, Southern Water were slow to invest in the necessary infrastructure, the houses were connected to communal septic tanks on the developments and these were serviced periodically. In the last two years Southern Water were forced to lay a new foul water sewer to service these new houses, the new drain is about 2 kilometres long and had to be laid trough the High Street of our village at a depth of about three metres, causing much disruption, and is adjacent to another foul water sewer that desperately needs to be replaced because of problems with frequent collapses, but there isn’t much prospect of that occurring due to Southern Waters abysmal investment policy. One can only surmise that the fact that the amendment in Parliament was defeated was due to pressure from the Water Industry, says it all really they are protecting their profits. Dave W

Rod, the gun at fort Rinella in Malta is very impressive, I saw it a few years ago when they opened the fort as an attraction, since then the re-enactment society concerned with preserving the gun now fire it on occasions using a black powder charge which I am told is well worth witnessing. Malta is full of historical venues and worth visiting but you need to remember the island is unique and has its own ethos, only understood by those who have been there, I first went to Malta in the 70’s when serving in the Air Force, been back many times on holiday and love the place, the people are great. Dave W

I blame the deposited film on the cars ventilation system drawing in road fumes which have microscopic particles of oil and rubber from the cars travelling in front which then adhere to the glass, and yes the bottom of the windscreen must be one of the most difficult areas to reach without dislocating something very painful. Dave W

Bazyle, pays to have batteries to store your solar energy when produced but of course that adds to the capital costs, we have 7.4 kWh storage capacity which works very well with our panels which on a sunny summers day can produce >25 kWh. Dave W

Old Mart, our small close of houses was built mid 60’s and when the telephone cables were laid they were put under the 6 inch reinforced concrete paths, no trunking or conduit used, when we get a fault on the lines they dig up the concrete to get to the cables. If a cable company ventures out to our village then they could cause mayhem in our close, however all the concrete paths throughout the close are privately owned by each property so without the house owners permission they cannot dig up the paths anywhere in the close, look forward to that happening. Dave W

Had a parcel delivered by Hermes last week, it was fish food for my Koi purchased from Amazon Prime, the food is contained in a stout plastic drum and the weight is 10 kilos. When it arrived it was the drum just wrapped in grey plastic, on opening the plastic wrapping I found that the drum had been crushed and the lid had burst open, must have take a fair force to achieve that amount of damage, and the fish food pellets were spilling out of the drum and through tears in the plastic wrapping. I emailed Amazon and asked them to tell their carriers to take more care of items that customers have paid good money for, their response was immediate and apologetic and they refunded the total cost of the fish food which amounted to £68.85, so full marks to Amazon on that score but I wish they wouldn’t use cowboy carrier firms. Dave W

Live in a village outside of Eastbourne, a cable company are installing cable throughout Eastbourne, I think the company is called Lightning, however there have been a constant stream of complaints about their work. The cable layers have dug up roads and pavements leaving behind an awful mess and the trenches are all topped of with lumpy tarmac, the trenches they have dug in the roads have left newly surfaced roads with uneven surfaces which will get worse with traffic and deteriorate further. It’s bad enough to get roads resurfaced these days with Councils so strapped for cash but to get a company come along and in my view vandalise the highway in such a way is totally unnecessary when BT have a network of cables already laid in ducting that could be shared. My personal view is that tv should remain on satellites and internet utilise the current infrastructure with upgrading where necessary. My view of Sky’s new tv project is like all Sky enterprises it is geared to massive profit for their shareholders and customer consideration is very low on their agenda, as always. Hopefully our village will be deemed too insignificant for them to vandalise with their cables. Dave W

Be extremely careful when making a concentrated mix of sodium hydroxide and water as it gives off choking fumes which can burn your airways, don’t ask how I know. Dave W

I was really shocked a few years ago when I worked out our average electricity consumption over a year and it came out to around 20 kWh per day, my first thought was that my machines in the workshop were power greedy. Analysis of our consumption illustrated that relatively large amount of consumption was down to my two large ponds with filtration pumps that were not very eco friendly, air pumps and uv lights burning away 24 hours a day. I had been trying to persuade the wife of the advantages of PV solar, the realisation that we could reduce the cost of our electricity substantially with generating our own convinced her. We now have panels that can generate 4kwh and batteries that can store 7.4kwh and on a good day in the summer we generate 25 + kWh. We have adjusted our living style so that if the sun is shining then we use the dishwasher or washing machine and tumble dryer and the impact is virtually nil on our electricity bill. I now do not feel guilty using my machines in the workshop during the day because in reality I am using “free” electricity, however I did change all the workshop lights for LEDs and they use considerably less power than the old fluorescents that were in there and the bonus for me is a much brighter more user friendly light, I didn’t realise that as we got older better lighting makes so much difference to our deteriorating eyesight. Dave W

Tom, would love to see pictures of your A7 as you restore it, love old British bikes but unfortunately cannot ride anymore due to health reasons, anyway welcome to the forum, whereabouts are you in Oz ? Dave W

I know it’s not always possible but when purchasing from a distant merchant I try to ascertain which carrier they are contracted with, if it’s Hermes or Yodel then I don’t purchase, having had problems with both. Recently purchased a wheelbarrow from Amazon, it arrived in a flimsy cardboard box which was torn open and all the pieces of the wheelbarrow were rattling around inside and damaged, carrier was Yodel and their performance was about par for the course in our area, again didn’t realise that Amazon used them, my experience is that they are as useless as Hermes. Dave W

My sympathies, I have in the past had problems with Hermes, the worrying thing is that in our area Amazon use Hermes for some of their deliveries. Dave W

+ 1 for painting with emulsion, your fluorescents seem to be arranged centrally down the centre of the workshop which will mean that at times you have the light unit behind you, I would take the plunge and arrange the light units to the side of the workshop, staggered with half on each side, I would take the plunge and go for LED, my workshop is so much brighter since I changed to LED. I supplement my lighting by using a rechargeable LED head torch, it’s surprising how much easier it is to see fine details at the tool when it’s illuminated adequately. Dave W

All the tales of heat treatment reminded me of a story once told to me about the heat treatment area in an engineering concern making reasonably small items. A new manager had been appointed and he toured his new domain to inspect what and how was being produced. When he came to the heat treat area he found it was the domain of a long-standing employee and he was not impressed by the cleanliness or lack of in this area, he was particularly unimpressed by the state of the quenching tank which contained water that had not been changed or refreshed for a considerable time, he ordered that it be drained and refilled with fresh water. Subsequent to this water change the product was not achieving the hardness levels that had been the norm prior to the water change, when questioned as to why this was so the long-standing resident of this work area imparted the information that every morning before starting work he would relieve himself in the quenching tank, one can only assume that the build up of salts from his daily urination had a significant effect on the way in which the quenching medium affected the achieved hardness. Dave W

Not directly related to model engineering but last night we had some ferocious winds, we are only a couple of miles from the coast so the winds just rattle in. I had made sure everything outside was secure but had forgotten about my two beehives in the garden, I decided that they would be safer if I fitted straps to them so there I was in the howling winds fitting the straps, had to grovel on the floor to pass the straps under neath the hives, in the process of doing this I put my hand on a dead bee, which I hadn’t seen. The stinger of the bee made contact with the top joint of my index finger and I had to extract the stinger not before sufficient venom had penetrated my finger. The bee may well have been dead but her venom was still pretty potent. Woke up this morning with a finger so swollen that I couldn’t bend it which makes it very awkward doing intricate work in the workshop. I seem to have problems now with bee stings, each time I have the misfortune to get stung the effects are increasingly more problematic, wife, she who knows best, has decided that things are moving towards real problems with bee stings, possibly escalating to anaphylaxis, she has a problem with iodine used in x-ray enhancing dyes and has experienced a severe anaphylactic episode so I understand her concerns. I have therefore ordered an epi pen to keep available when I am working with the bees, not cheap though at about £50, could be a lifesaver though. Dave W

My hearing is very bad and when I get someone from the Indian subcontinent on the phone I really struggle to understand what they are saying, this makes it very difficult to have fun and string them along , which I would very much like to indulge in. 😇 Dave W

Nigel B

Went on an organised visit to a local Sussex Brewery a few years ago, it has been on the same site since the late 1700’s, in the brewing room were rows of tanks bubbling away fermenting, there was no way in which the CO2 produced could be collected as the tanks were all open at the top, beautiful aroma in there. I presume some brewery’s do collect the CO2 produced but by no means all do, so it seems we are at the mercy of the industrial giants that can blackmail the government. Dave W

Nick we had a similar experience in a local garden centre last weekend, we saw some chrysanthemum plants that we wanted, there was a rack with larger plants at one price and a rack with smaller plants at a correspondingly lower price. We chose two plants from the lower priced rack, not because we are tight but they were the size we wanted, get to the checkout and the price came up for the larger plants, well the wife picked up on it straight away and pointed out that they were the smaller plants and the wrong price, the assistant was quite flummoxed, she was obviously only a Saturday girl, anyway after some discussion she deleted them from the till display and used a barcode from a master ledger that is kept behind the till and charged the appropriate price that was displayed at the rack we got the plants from. I must say that a young Saturday girl didn’t stand a chance in a confrontation with my wife, she can be quite outspoken and forceful where money is concerned, I might add that I played no part in the discussion, I just stood aside and left the wife to the negotiating. Dave W

It seems the current problem of energy supply companies affected by the rise in gas prices going bust is because the proliferation of energy companies happened because energy was cheap on the wholesale market so it was like a casino with some companies making large profits, but because they didn’t invest their profits to cover the day when energy costs would rise, they have now become insolvent with no capital to carry them through. I agree with Ady1 this scenario would be much different if the energy industry was under state control. As it is with private companies running industries such as energy, as consumers we not only pay the cost for the energy but we also have to pay shareholders dividends, and it looks in the present case that as taxpayers we will also be paying via the Treasury to sort out the consequences of the bankrupt companies. Dave W

Is the wife’s washing line 75 feet up in the air then? 🤔 Dave W