On Fri, 22 Feb 2019 20:28:08 +1100, cantankerous trolling senile geezer Rot
Speed blabbered, again:

I do wonder whether it is better to burn gas in people's houses to heat
them directly, as opposed to burning it centrally in a power station and
then using the electricity to heat the houses.

They don¢t in fact burn much gas in power stations to heat houses given
that gas powered generators are mostly running in peak demand times.

It isnt even clear that much gas is burnt in power
stations instead of being used for cooking directly
either given that few have gas ovens anymore.

All energy conversion tends to produce heat as a waste by-product.

But that mostly goes to waste in power stations.

Given that fact, it is better that this heat is produced where it is
needed, rather than in a power station where it has to be got rid of with
cooling towers or other heat exchangers.

Yes, but that¢s mostly relevant to base power generation,
not so much with peak power generation that is where
gas is mostly used in power generation now.

Geezuz Christ! Is there no end to your pathological smartassing, senile Mr
Know-it-all?

--
Archibald Tarquin Blenkinsopp addressing Rot Speed:
"You really are a clueless pillock."
MID:

"RJH" wrote in message
...
When you do teh sums ist pretty celar waht is genuine energu savings
(insulation, heat pumps, running the house a bit cooler) and what is
utter ******** virtue signalling designed to sell product (kettles and
hoovers, diesel cars etc etc).


How can you expect anybody to take you seriously with that type of
reasoning? Any energy saving is a saving. Wasting energy is wasting
energy. Not difficult.

Yes, but you concentrate most effort on appliances that use most energy.
Better insulation etc is going to save more energy per household than
heating less water in the kettle or using energy-saving bulbs in a house. In
an office where there are lots of lights which are left on all the working
day, the savings of using fluorescent (or LED) over tungsten are more
significant, but in a house where lights are usually only on for a few hours
in the evening and early morning, it's less signifiant.

But I agree, every little helps - a little!

I bought my diesel car as much for the extra torque and therefore less need
to change down as far for every little gradient or junction, as for the
saving on fuel consumption. Ironically, my wife's diesel Honda is much more
like a petrol: I forever forget that it needs one or maybe two gears lower
than my Pug when going round a junction or as a downhill road starts to rise
again. Heavier vehicle, engine probably depends more on its turbo - it's
only a 1.6 but a much bigger car than mine. I reckon the turbo sometimes
runs out of puff as you slow down for a junction and then can't get enough
air in the cylinders as you start to call for power.

My present 1.6 HDi Peugeot 308 has averaged about 54 mpg since I got it at
18,000 miles (it's now done 180,000) and the last petrol car that I had was
a 1993 1.8 Golf which averaged 37 mpg. OK, so that was old technology:
better to compare the Golf with the 1.9 HDi Peugeot 306 that I bought
immediately after the Golf (in 1997) which averaged 47 mpg.

So a significant saving: 37 compared with 47. However you have to take into
account that diesel is now *more* expensive than petrol, so cost per mile is
a better indicator. I can remember in the mid 70s, when the only diesel cars
were taxis with tractor-like engines, diesel was about half the cost of
petrol, partly because it was taxed at a lower rate. Then the tax rate
became the same, and diesel rose to about 90% of petrol price, and now the
cost of the raw diesel is actually more than for petrol, despite the much
greater demand nowadays than in the 70s when only lorries and taxis used it.

On Fri, 22 Feb 2019 21:04:54 +1100, cantankerous trolling senile geezer Rot
Speed blabbered, again:


Yeah, almost universal now, gas ovens don¢t work very well at all.

Absolute BULL****, as everything coming from you!

FLUSH the rest of your usual troll****

--
Richard addressing Rot Speed:
"**** you're thick/pathetic excuse for a troll."
MID:

On 22/02/2019 10:07, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/02/2019 08:59, Andy Burns wrote:
harry wrote:

NY wrote:

The kettle thing is particularly short-sighted because it takes a fixed
amount of energy to heat a fixed amount of water:

Well ****-fer-brains, the reason is smaller power stations is needed
to deliver that power.
Ti's about peak loads.

But more people will be using their underpowered kettles at any given
instant, so the same power stations required.

Christ! harry is thick.





He's a brexiteer what do you expect!?

On 22/02/2019 10:47, Robin wrote:
On 22/02/2019 09:21, 2987fr wrote:


Not with a kettle they dont except with the amount of water you heat
and few kettles do a minimum amount of water very well at all.

that is where concealed element kettles win

No, it's where 2987fr is as usual talking total ********


--
Renewable energy: Expensive solutions that don't work to a problem that
doesn't exist instituted by self legalising protection rackets that
don't protect, masquerading as public servants who don't serve the public.

On 22/02/2019 11:02, Robin wrote:
On 22/02/2019 10:24, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/02/2019 08:41, RJH wrote:

The kettle is well within the top 5 consumers of household electricity

Total Utter ********.

Its amongst the bottom 5.


and is the one appliance that virtually every household has and uses.
Many little gains that are cheap and easy to adopt add up.


Oh FFS a **** who cannot do sums.

Electric lights are by far and away the greatest users of electricity
unless you use heaters.

Then always on appliances like fridges and routers .... I probly spend
ten times more on computing kit than I do on kettles.


Then electric cookers or anything else heating serious volumes of
air/water/food.

Unles you make a cupp at three times an hour in which case the kettle
may in fact have stayed warm anyway, its pathetically small amounts
involved

A 1KW kettle for a minute, is the same electricity as a 50W something
or other for 20 minutes. .

And all of this tends to pale into inisgnifance behind heating bills
anyway.



I note you don't actually cite any figures.Â* Those who do[1] suggest
kettles are on average about 4 per cent of average UK electricity
consumption.Â* I'd call that small but far from insignificant.


Hardly in te top 5 then


[1] eg

"The annual energy consumption of domestic electric kettles has been
measured by the UK Energy Saving Trust, based on kettles in 412
households. Average kettle annual electricity consumption was 167 kWh.
This is correct for the UK, but consumption in other EU States will be
different, higher or lower, depending on user behavior. Two other
studies86 have published domestic kettle usage data:

ï‚· The UK government Market Transformation Programme (MTP) assumes a
gross volume of 1542 litre per year and per household for the electric
kettle, which €“taking into account one-third over-filling€”comes down to
a net consumption of 1000 litres/household/year.

ï‚· Netherlands TNO Voeding calculate a net consumption of 1000 litres of
boiling water, with 650 litres for hot drinks and 350 litres for cooking
(vegetables, pasta, etc.)

The €œQuooker Energy Analysis showed that typical electric kettles
consumes 564 kWh of primary energy (2030MJ) based on boiling 1000 litres
per year.


Stop right there. Do you REALLY boild 3 litres a DAY for EVERY kettle
you own?

This is equivalent to 226kWh of electricity but with
production energy is excluded is 217kWh / 1000 litres,


It may be but its all based of stupid assumptions

The Household Electricity survey which studied 250 UK households between
2010 and 2011 founf that 168 kWh / kettle per year is consumed (very
similar to the MTP figure."

Including those in the cupboard at the back?



from draft final report from Ecodesign Working Plan 2015-2017




--
Renewable energy: Expensive solutions that don't work to a problem that
doesn't exist instituted by self legalising protection rackets that
don't protect, masquerading as public servants who don't serve the public.

On 22/02/2019 14:10, Andy Burns wrote:
Robin wrote:

Average kettle annual electricity consumption was 167 kWh

Over 9 minutes of kettle boiling per day (assuming 3kW) not true here.

certainly not true here.
kettel boils in about 30 secs about 4-5 times a day. 2 minutes give or take



--
"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
look exactly the same afterwards."

Billy Connolly

On 22/02/2019 11:06, Max Demian wrote:
On 22/02/2019 06:18, harry wrote:
On Thursday, 21 February 2019 22:03:33 UTC, George MilesÂ* wrote:
Ed Davey MP told our 2018 Green Libdem conference:
"In government we were experimenting with electrified heating, heat
pumps, experimenting with biomass, and district heating. But at
relatively low volumes. There's a reason for that. That is that
there's a real challenge if you use those technologies to replace
methane gas, it looks like it will be very expensive, take a long
time, and have a lot of political reaction. Most people are used to
their gas boilers and central heating systems, nice and simple with
north sea gas. To rip out all that? I call that politically brave. We
haven't quite worked out how to do that.

Instead there's a lot around Hydrogen (which really wasn't happening
when I was Secretary of State).

Whether or not hydrogen or some other form of hydrogen mix or a
biofuel could be used as a replacement for fossil fuel gas. We're a
long way off from knowing if that is going to happen, so don't rush
off say Ed says hydrogen's the way of the future. it may be, it may
not, we don't know.


Hydrogen is total bollix.
Expensive, inefficient and dangerous.
It will never happen.

Just shove it through the existing pipes.

It will leak out. Its would be massively unsafe. Its a very small
slippery moolecule.

Convert everyone like from
coal to natural gas. Coal gas contained a lot of hydrogen anyway.

And wasnt very safe either.


--
"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
look exactly the same afterwards."

Billy Connolly

On 22/02/2019 11:09, RJH wrote:
On 22/02/2019 10:24, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/02/2019 08:41, RJH wrote:

The kettle is well within the top 5 consumers of household electricity

Total Utter ********.

Its amongst the bottom 5.


and is the one appliance that virtually every household has and uses.
Many little gains that are cheap and easy to adopt add up.


Oh FFS a **** who cannot do sums.


From one who can?

Electric lights are by far and away the greatest users of electricity
unless you use heaters.

Then always on appliances like fridges and routers .... I probly spend
ten times more on computing kit than I do on kettles.


Yes, that's *you*. I understand of course that you think that the world
revolves around you and your sad ways, but I'd like to present a
possibility: it doesn't.

Besides which I presented the figures, and some peer reviewed research,
on this topic a year or so ago on this very NG. I even took the trouble
to write to the author about a couple of queries raised here.


And you still get it wrong.



--
€œThe ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to
fill the world with fools.€�

Herbert Spencer

On 22/02/2019 11:21, RJH wrote:
On 22/02/2019 10:18, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/02/2019 08:24, 2987fr wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 21/02/2019 21:42, charles wrote:
In article , NY
wrote:
"ARW" wrote in message
...
On 21/02/2019 14:28, NY wrote:

And you have to "sell" the idea that it will be more expensive to
install, and maybe to run, and (according to the article) will take
longer to heat up a room - presumably because it is lower power.
That's a hell of an advertising and PR campaign that you are
going to
need :-)

Something like..

"It's not lower powered, it's more efficient."

That's almost as bad as the low-powered vacuum cleaners which don't
produce enough suction so you have to keep going over the same bit of
carpet, or lower-powered kettles which take longer to heat the
water...
but the legislators can't see further than "it uses less power".

The kettle thing is particularly short-sighted because it takes a
fixed
amount of energy to heat a fixed amount of water: it is irrelevant
whether it's 3 kW for 2 minutes or 1.5 kW for 4 minutes - the
amount of
energy used is the same.

but you might get more radiation losses with the longer time?

you WILL get more radiation losses...

But not enough to matter. But its far from clear that half power
kettles are worth it.

Its clear that they are not.

I had a freind who got extremely upset if I filled his kettle more
than necessary to make a cuppa.


Good.

Let's look at the numbers.


OK :-)

A pint is what? 450ml? So maybe I added an extra half pint of cold at
let's say 10C.Â* 225ml of water to be raised by 90C.

20.25kcal A staggering 23 Wh.

Lets say I do this 4 times a day 365 times a year.

at 20p a unit its over £6!!!!


Times over 20 million households. Costs are not just monetary, or per user.

yeah right. And at least 50% of that is discountable against heating
anyway.


Well yes, in your case, where you need 365.24.7 heating. I accept that
you seem to say you do - most don't.

Average heating bills on a typical house are around 2-3kW CONTINUOUS
averaged out over the year.


That seems to be the total energy consumption - of which, yes, space and
water heating takes up the bulk.

When you do teh sums ist pretty celar waht is genuine energu savings
(insulation, heat pumps, running the house a bit cooler) and what is
utter ******** virtue signalling designed to sell product (kettles and
hoovers, diesel cars etc etc).


How can you expect anybody to take you seriously with that type of
reasoning? Any energy saving is a saving. Wasting energy is wasting
energy. Not difficult.

A lot of 'energy saving' does NOT save energy. It causes it to be spent
elewhere..

For eaxample if - say - we mandated that it was illegal to USE a 3KW
kettle, the energy to manufacture new ones would add to the extra energy
lost because of the longer period of heatloss from the kettle.
Therefrore its easy to see that 'energy saving' low power kettles would
actually increase energy consumption.

It is similar with solar panels... total EROEI is very small.

--
€œThe ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to
fill the world with fools.€�

Herbert Spencer

On 22/02/2019 13:19, NY wrote:
But I agree, every little helps - a little!

As the late David Mackay said 'a lot of littles make a little'

Viurtue signalling politics and crony capitalsm footles around with
virtue signalling littles because the averege half educated punter - as
is aply demonstrated by RJH - can't do sums. Only 'refer to authority'
and since authority is paid to support the government
incitiatives...well there you go.

90% of all green initiatives do nothing for the environment or carbon
emissions whatseover, except to increase them. Usually in China.....

They do however make lots of profits for 'green' conmpanies.



--
"Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and
higher education positively fortifies it."

- Stephen Vizinczey

On 22/02/2019 11:23, mechanic wrote:
On Thu, 21 Feb 2019 18:52:52 -0000, NY wrote:

I get the distinct impression that the government are banning existing CH
systems (as with ways of generating electricity) before they have got a
replacement that is at least as good. Replacing with something worse is
worthy of the strongest possible contempt.

I suppose modern houses can at least be insulated better than existing
houses are.

Maybe the idea is to encourage developers/builders to fit better
insulation.

They are and they have to the point where the most heatloss from a house
is through the mandatory ventilation.

Heat recovery ventilation is the next step...



--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

On 22/02/2019 13:14, John Rumm wrote:
On 22/02/2019 11:23, mechanic wrote:
On Thu, 21 Feb 2019 18:52:52 -0000, NY wrote:

I get the distinct impression that the government are banning
existing CH
systems (as with ways of generating electricity) before they have got a
replacement that is at least as good. Replacing with something worse is
worthy of the strongest possible contempt.

I suppose modern houses can at least be insulated better than existing
houses are.

Maybe the idea is to encourage developers/builders to fit better
insulation.

That's easy enough - just update the building regs with a higher minimum
level for new builds / substantial alterations.


its reached the limit of usefulness already. Unless you add heat
recovery ventilation you cant really add much to a modern house thermal
wise.

Or quad glaze the windows.


--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

On 22/02/2019 12:46, NY wrote:
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

No one has used oil here now for a hell of a long time;
Much more expensive than electricity or gas.

As far as I know, most (*) houses in the UK use gas if it is available,
or oil if there's no gas supply;

Not any longer.

Oil outlawed in new builds. Heat pumps.

either way heating water for
circulating through radiators.

Not any longer. With single stage heat pumps the rads need to be very
very large so floors are used instead.




--
"In our post-modern world, climate science is not powerful because it is
true: it is true because it is powerful."

Lucas Bergkamp

On 22/02/2019 15:09, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/02/2019 11:02, Robin wrote:
On 22/02/2019 10:24, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/02/2019 08:41, RJH wrote:

The kettle is well within the top 5 consumers of household electricity

Total Utter ********.

Its amongst the bottom 5.


and is the one appliance that virtually every household has and
uses. Many little gains that are cheap and easy to adopt add up.


Oh FFS a **** who cannot do sums.

Electric lights are by far and away the greatest users of electricity
unless you use heaters.

Then always on appliances like fridges and routers .... I probly
spend ten times more on computing kit than I do on kettles.


Then electric cookers or anything else heating serious volumes of
air/water/food.

Unles you make a cupp at three times an hour in which case the kettle
may in fact have stayed warm anyway, its pathetically small amounts
involved

A 1KW kettle for a minute, is the same electricity as a 50W something
or other for 20 minutes. .

And all of this tends to pale into inisgnifance behind heating bills
anyway.



I note you don't actually cite any figures.Â* Those who do[1] suggest
kettles are on average about 4 per cent of average UK electricity
consumption.Â* I'd call that small but far from insignificant.


Hardly in te top 5 then


[1] eg

"The annual energy consumption of domestic electric kettles has been
measured by the UK Energy Saving Trust, based on kettles in 412
households. Average kettle annual electricity consumption was 167 kWh.
This is correct for the UK, but consumption in other EU States will be
different, higher or lower, depending on user behavior. Two other
studies86 have published domestic kettle usage data:

ï‚· The UK government Market Transformation Programme (MTP) assumes a
gross volume of 1542 litre per year and per household for the electric
kettle, which €“taking into account one-third over-filling€”comes down
to a net consumption of 1000 litres/household/year.

ï‚· Netherlands TNO Voeding calculate a net consumption of 1000 litres
of boiling water, with 650 litres for hot drinks and 350 litres for
cooking (vegetables, pasta, etc.)

The €œQuooker Energy Analysis showed that typical electric kettles
consumes 564 kWh of primary energy (2030MJ) based on boiling 1000
litres per year.


Stop right there. Do you REALLY boild 3 litres a DAY for EVERY kettle
you own?

3 litres a day is a bit high for use. I'd say we (2 adults, retired)
average between 2 and 2.5 - each drinking several coffees in the
morning; some coffee/tea/infusions later; and also heating water for
cooking, rinsing etc.

But then we use a kettle with a concealed element and are pretty good at
heating only what we need. A lot of people don't and so would heat more.

This is equivalent to 226kWh of electricity but with production energy
is excluded is 217kWh / 1000 litres,


It may be but its all based of stupid assumptions

The Household Electricity survey which studied 250 UK households
between 2010 and 2011 founf that 168 kWh / kettle per year is consumed
(very similar to the MTP figure."

Including those in the cupboard at the back?

Do you really think the survey counted kettles not in use?


from draft final report from Ecodesign Working Plan 2015-2017






--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

On 22/02/2019 15:26, Robin wrote:
On 22/02/2019 15:09, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Including those in the cupboard at the back?

Do you really think the survey counted kettles not in use?


I would say they almost certainly did.

In te way they tend to count cars by numbers rehgietred, noit number on
the road at any time


"draft final report from Ecodesign Working Plan 2015-2017"

So its it draft or is it final?

And let me see an 'Ecodseisgn' committee couldn't possibly be biased
could it?



--
To ban Christmas, simply give turkeys the vote.

On 22/02/2019 15:15, The Natural Philosopher wrote:


For eaxample if - say - we mandated that it was illegal to USE a 3KW
kettle, the energy to manufacture new ones would add to the extra energy
lost because of the longer period of heatloss from the kettle.
Therefrore its easy to see that 'energy saving' low power kettles would
actually increase energy consumption.



Who has suggested limiting the maximum power of kettles? It strikes me
as a straw man.

The suggestions I've seen from the EU work may or may not prove to be
cost-effective but they are at least literate - eg

More concealed elements and more accurate scales to heat less water

Reduce switch off time after reach boiling

Reduce thermal mass of kettle

Reduce outer surface heat loss





--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

On 22/02/2019 15:35, Robin wrote:
On 22/02/2019 15:15, The Natural Philosopher wrote:


For eaxample if - say - we mandated that it was illegal to USE a 3KW
kettle, the energy to manufacture new ones would add to the extra
energy lost because of the longer period of heatloss from the kettle.
Therefrore its easy to see that 'energy saving' low power kettles
would actually increase energy consumption.



Who has suggested limiting the maximum power of kettles?Â* It strikes me
as a straw man.

The suggestions I've seen from the EU work may or may not prove to be
cost-effective but they are at least literate - eg

More concealed elements and more accurate scales to heat less water

totally pointless. Existing kettle can heat less than a cup of wtaer.


Reduce switch off time after reach boiling

Oh purlease! 2 extra kilowatt seconds? At ehat extr complexity and cost
and energy to manufactire?


Reduce thermal mass of kettle

Already minimal compared with water.

Reduce outer surface heat loss


Totally pointless. Kettle is only hot for a few seconds.




And how much energy will it take to manufacture a kettle with all that?



--
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

Adolf Hitler

Max Demian wrote
Rod Speed wrote
NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote

It isnt even clear that much gas is burnt in power
stations instead of being used for cooking directly
either given that few have gas ovens anymore.

Yes, I was surprised when I bought a new house in 2000, with cooker
already fitted by the builder, to find that the hob was gas but the oven
was electric. Electric

Yeah, almost universal now, gas ovens dont work very well at all.

Fine for hobs, but not ovens.

ovens do have the big advantage that they can be easily controlled by a
timer to come on later in the day,

And work much better than gas ovens even
when you dont need a delayed start.

Gas ovens heat up much more quickly.

But very little of what you cook in an oven is cooked
in such a short time that that matters much. The only
thing I can think of that does is pizzas.

I used to bake bread in a gas oven;

But the bread takes a long time to bake the loaf,
so the heat up time saved is minimal given that
it takes quite a while to heat up the lump of
dough, let alone the time to bake it.

I raised it in the oven set very low and just increased the setting for
baking. No need for pre-heat.

I dont bother to preheat electric ovens except
when cooking pizzas, the oven heats up quickly
enough so that it makes no difference in practice.

It does with pizzas because they are best done in
a stinking hot oven and it does take a while to get
an electric oven that hot, and the pizza itself heats
up quite quickly and cooks very quickly too, but there
isnt much else that is cooked in an oven like that.

Do they still use gas marks rather than degrees Celsius in gas ovens? I
haven't seen an explanation why gas ovens use these arbitrary numbers
rather than degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius),

Basically because thats how they work, what you set
is the valve position, there is no thermostat like there
is with an electric oven. And there isnt that much that
need the oven temp set very accurately to cook it
properly either, its really just a few basic temps,
stinking hot, very hot, quite hot, quite cool, barely
warm for bread raising etc.

though I have some ideas why it might have happened.

Its pretty obvious really given how gas ovens work.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Not any longer. With single stage heat pumps the rads need to be very very
large so floors are used instead.

I've always wondered how much the carpets on a floor insulate the
"radiators" and prevent the heat being given out quickly so the heating can
respond to changes in room temperature and therefore keep it constant.

I suppose that's less of an issue now that so many people are having bare
tiles, lino or wooden floors, especially downstairs - which means that
footsteps echo throughout the whole house and chairs scrape noisily across
the floors. And anything even slightly brittle shatters if it falls on the
floor, whereas a carpet will often prevent breakage.

Anything is better than the hot-air ducted heating that was all the rage in
the early 70s when one of my parents' houses was built. That was appalling -
it didn't heat the house and it spread dust everywhere, and there was a cold
draught from the floor vents if you were sitting "downwind" of them.

How maintainable is underfloor heating if there's a leak? That's the thing
that has always put me off both electric and hot water underfloor heating -
the need to dig up floors to replace an open- or short-circuited element or
to fix a leak.

"Robin" wrote in message
...
More concealed elements and more accurate scales to heat less water

Reduce switch off time after reach boiling

Reduce thermal mass of kettle

Reduce outer surface heat loss

And encourage people to pour any excess hot water into the bowl when doing
the washing up - at least then the energy used in heating the excess doesn't
go to waste. Mind you, I suppose in theory any heat that is wasted in
appliances or in running the oven/kettle for longer than necessary reduces
(slightly) the amount of energy that the central heating needs to use ;-)
Except on a hot day when you have the windows open to keep the house cool.

I'm amazed at the number of people who say that they don't need their
heating on in summer. There seems to be a school of thought which says that
between this day in spring and that day in autumn, the CH will be turned
off. You can get cold days even during summer, and cloudless summer skies
means it gets cold in the evening and overnight.

I have always had the CH on the same timer throughout the year, and let the
thermostat do the job of determining whether the CH needs to come on due to
unseasonably cold weather.

I've never understood why it is thought to be beneficial to heat the bedroom
to a lower temperature than other rooms. When I'm lying still in bed, and
I've not eaten for a while (so I'm not metabolising food) I get cold -
especially the parts that aren't under the bedclothes. And wearing a hat in
bed is not the answer: the itchiness and the bulk of a hat make it
impossible to sleep, and it still doesn't keep nose/cheeks warm.

There seems to be very little correlation between room temperature and (my)
perception of cold/warmth: I've often found that I feel comfortably warm
when the room temp is getting below 20 and the CH kicks in, and yet
sometimes I feel cold when it's 25. A lot depends on whether I'm sitting
still or moving around, and when I last ate.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
More concealed elements and more accurate scales to heat less water

totally pointless. Existing kettle can heat less than a cup of wtaer.

Depends on the area of the base of the kettle and the height of the top of
the element above the base. If the kettle is a small diameter and has an
element that rises only a few mm above the base, less depth of water is
needed to cover the element and the depth amounts to less volume, compared
with an ancient kettle with a very wide base and an element that stands a
long way off the bottom.

Comparison between a modern jug kettle and my parents' first (early 1960s)
kettle with the handle on the top rather than the side, a very wide, squat
design and an element where the *bottom* of it was about 1 cm above the base
of the kettle and the top was a good 2 cm above that because the element was
curved at the ends/sides and not flat.

On Sat, 23 Feb 2019 02:58:48 +1100, cantankerous trolling senile geezer Rot
Speed blabbered, again:

FLUSH the pathological senile idiot's latest troll****

....and much better air in here.

--
FredXX to Rot Speed:
"You are still an idiot and an embarrassment to your country. No wonder
we shippe the likes of you out of the British Isles. Perhaps stupidity
and criminality is inherited after all?"
Message-ID:

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
I dont bother to preheat electric ovens except
when cooking pizzas, the oven heats up quickly
enough so that it makes no difference in practice.

Our electric fan oven takes about 10 minutes until the element switches off
when it gets to 180-200 deg C. When cooking something with a total cooking
time (assuming hot oven) of 30 minutes, that's a significant allowance you
have to make to cooking time if you cook from cold rather than from
pre-heated. My wife always cooks from cold and adds some indefinable extra
time whereas I like to get the oven at the required temp and cook for the
required time.


It does with pizzas because they are best done in
a stinking hot oven and it does take a while to get
an electric oven that hot, and the pizza itself heats
up quite quickly and cooks very quickly too, but there
isnt much else that is cooked in an oven like that.

Do they still use gas marks rather than degrees Celsius in gas ovens? I
haven't seen an explanation why gas ovens use these arbitrary numbers
rather than degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius),

Basically because thats how they work, what you set
is the valve position, there is no thermostat like there
is with an electric oven. And there isnt that much that
need the oven temp set very accurately to cook it
properly either, its really just a few basic temps,
stinking hot, very hot, quite hot, quite cool, barely
warm for bread raising etc.

though I have some ideas why it might have happened.

Its pretty obvious really given how gas ovens work.

I've never come across a gas cooker with an oven which doesn't have a
thermostat and which relies on a constant flow of gas no matter whether the
oven is cold or up to temp. Even my mum's old 1962 cooker gave a big flame
when you lit it, which reduced to a smaller flame when the oven was up to
temperature. I'm not sure whether the temperature sensor reduced the gas
flow to a constant intermediate value when the oven was at temp, or whether
it activated an all-or-nothing control as for an electric cooker, where the
element either runs at full power or not at all, with the duty cycle varying
according to the temperature needed. If the oven had had a glass door I
could have watched what the flame did over time, without opening the door
and changing the very thing I was trying to watch.

NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote

No one has used oil here now for a hell of a long time;
Much more expensive than electricity or gas.

As far as I know, most (*) houses in the UK use gas if it is available, or
oil if there's no gas supply;

We use LPG gas cylinders if there is no gas supply.
Normally two cylinders so you just switch cylinder
when one runs out and get the empty one replaced
or even bigger 200kg cylinders which are filled from
the truck, rather like oil is delivered.

either way heating water for circulating through radiators.

We dont have much in the way of wet systems like that,
the whole house heating is normally done with hot air.

Some people may opt for LPG, or for heat pumps or storage heaters or
bottled gas (**). Our last house had no gas, so we used oil - we had a big
enough tank that we could buy it at the best price, usually spring or
autumn, avoiding the peak demand of winter and summer (summer is peak
demand in hot countries for air-con, apparently ***). Our supplier had a
price break at 1000 litres, and our 1400 litre tank allowed us some
flexibility about timing while still letting us fit a minimum of 1000
litres per delivery - usually. It's a hell of an outlay all at once, but
then nothing for a long time after that.

We use LPG instead of oil in that situation, with a
fixed 200KG or bigger when there is no gas supply.

(*) A bold statement: I'm bound to be proved wrong by statistics that
someone will quote ;-)

(**) It probably made sense for my parents to use bottled gas for the
cottage, given that it was only really used in the summer, apart from
frost-free heating all year round. But my wife and I are living there full
time at the moment, having sold our house and not yet found another, and
the cost for regular heating is astronomical. I'm not sure whether it
costs more to use only gas, or to use coal in the stove in the lounge so
the central heating doesn't need to work so hard.

(***) I've never understood why greater use of air-con, which is powered
by electricity, should drive up diesel and heating oil prices, especially
in countries like the UK which don't have so much usage of air-con.

That isnt what happens. The diesel and heating oil prices are
determined by world oil prices, just like the price of petro. is.

"NY" wrote in message
news
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
NY wrote
2987fr wrote

Not with a kettle they dont except with the amount of water you heat
and few kettles do a minimum amount of water very well at all.

Our kettle, a cheap one from Lakeland or somewhere, is quite happy
heating up 500-750 ml of water - just enough for a *large* mug of
coffee.

Thats a bloody large mug of coffee.

It is: a Harry Potter "Marauder's Map" mug, filled about 1 1/2 times.

Thats not 'just enough'

Or a conventional mug filled twice.

And neither is that.

"mechanic" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 21 Feb 2019 18:52:52 -0000, NY wrote:

I get the distinct impression that the government are banning existing CH
systems (as with ways of generating electricity) before they have got a
replacement that is at least as good. Replacing with something worse is
worthy of the strongest possible contempt.

I suppose modern houses can at least be insulated better than existing
houses are.

Maybe the idea is to encourage developers/builders to fit better
insulation.

Makes more sense to mandate better insulation than to ban all new
houses from being connected to the gas supply.

NY wrote
Max Demian wrote

Do they still use gas marks rather than degrees Celsius in gas ovens? I
haven't seen an explanation why gas ovens use these arbitrary numbers
rather than degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius), though I have some ideas why
it might have happened.

Yes I've never understood why gas ovens historically used arbitrary "gas
marks".

Very simple really, its just a tap. No thermostat at all.

I'm not sure whether modern gas cookers still have the oven calibrated
that way.

All the manuals I look at have a proper thermostat now.

I've never had one myself (it was always all-electric or gas hob /
electric oven), but my parents have an all-gas cooker, though that's
probably about 20 years old now so not an indicator of modern practice. I
remember them having to buy it as a panic purchase when their old gas
cooker, which they bought when they were married, so 56 years ago, was
condemned by the gas engineer who came to fix a slow leak from one of the
hob burners. I remember my mum had made a stew which she was going to put
in the oven as soon as the gas engineer had finished, and it had to go in
the fridge until they had a new cooker to cook it. And they had to live on
things that could be microwaved - they couldn't even heat up a pan of
baked beans or grill some toast.

I remember that it originally had a gas taper: a little jet on the end of
a plastic hose which you lit from a burner and then used to light an
ignition point on the floor of the oven or beside the burner of the grill.
That gas taper was condemned many years ago because the hose was too easy
to trap in the oven door - that was probably done about the time that the
UK changed over from "town gas" (manufactured in a "gas works" by roasting
coal) to "natural gas" in the early 70s. After that we had to use wooden
spills to light the oven and grill. I remember the little blanking plate
that was fitted where the plastic hose had connected on the side of the
cooker. That cooker had a feature that you don't get on many modern
cookers - an eye-level grill rather than one under the hob, maybe shared
with a small oven: eye-level makes it much easier to check that the grill
has been lit successfully (or left on accidentally), and to see how your
bacon is cooking.

NY wrote

I bought my diesel car as much for the extra torque and therefore less
need to change down as far for every little gradient or junction,

I never need to do that with gradients in my Getz.

as for the saving on fuel consumption. Ironically, my wife's diesel Honda
is much more like a petrol: I forever forget that it needs one or maybe
two gears lower than my Pug when going round a junction or as a downhill
road starts to rise again.

Odd with the gradient. That's the CR-V ?

Heavier vehicle, engine probably depends more on its turbo - it's only a
1.6 but a much bigger car than mine.

Yeah, mine is a 1.6 but not turbo. Much lighter than a CR-V tho.

I reckon the turbo sometimes runs out of puff as you slow down for a
junction and then can't get enough air in the cylinders as you start to
call for power.

Yeah, very likely. I used to always change down
to 2nd for corners in the 5 speed manual Getz
but now stay in 3rd for most corners.

My present 1.6 HDi Peugeot 308 has averaged about 54 mpg since I got it at
18,000 miles (it's now done 180,000) and the last petrol car that I had
was a 1993 1.8 Golf which averaged 37 mpg. OK, so that was old technology:
better to compare the Golf with the 1.9 HDi Peugeot 306 that I bought
immediately after the Golf (in 1997) which averaged 47 mpg.

So a significant saving: 37 compared with 47. However you have to take
into account that diesel is now *more* expensive than petrol, so cost per
mile is a better indicator. I can remember in the mid 70s, when the only
diesel cars were taxis with tractor-like engines, diesel was about half
the cost of petrol, partly because it was taxed at a lower rate. Then the
tax rate became the same, and diesel rose to about 90% of petrol price,
and now the cost of the raw diesel is actually more than for petrol,
despite the much greater demand nowadays than in the 70s when only lorries
and taxis used it.

You never do reply to my question about how reliable the Honda has been.
Bit of a worry given this comment with the Jazz.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring...s-so-good.html

"NY" wrote in message
o.uk...
"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
...
Not if there still is a significant spike when the ads come on TV.

So the TV broadcasters need to be encouraged to stagger their ad break
times. A modern TV which can use a HDD to pause a program helps to ease
the network load peaks.

I'm probably an exception: I record everything that I want to watch, and
rarely watch anything as it is broadcast,

I quite literally never watch anything live now. I much prefer
to watch stuff when I choose to watch it and don't bother
with TV news anymore, I prefer a text feed for news like
https://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/

and I edit out the adverts so I can watch a drama uninterrupted by three
breaks per hour.

I don't bother, mainly because most of what I watch
is broadcast on our ABC which has no embedded ads,
just ads for their own programs between programs.

I do watch some other stuff with embedded ads,
but very little drama that way. I have my two main
players setup with a single button jump over the
bulk of the ads and with another button which
does a much smaller jump over the few extra
ads after the main big jump of 2 minutes.

Even if I watch "live" it's actually delayed a little while on the
recorder so I can edit out the breaks on-the-fly and still finish watching
at about the same time as it's going out live

I don't ever watch like that although I can do if I want
to. Mainly because they hardly ever broadcast what
I want to watch at the time I want to watch it.

I have a pathological hatred of being force-fed with adverts.

I'm not that gung ho and do sometimes see an ad
for something that interests me like an ad for this.
http://www.losttrades.info/

But I know I'm in the minority.

Yeah, we certainly are.

Apparently at one time (maybe still to this day) broadcasters used to
inform power-generation companies of the exact times of each day's ad
breaks in Coronation Street, Crossroads, Emmerdale etc, so the power
stations knew exactly when to start up the booster generation plants to
cope with the peaks - so they were prepared and were doing it in advance
rather than reacting to demand that had already begun. It is also said
that they used the size of the peak to gauge how many people were watching
that day: "ah, today's Corrie has only had a 2 MW advert peak - not as
many people watching as yesterday's which was 3 MW" ;-)

Yeah, I'd be surprised if they do now, tho I spose they
might during the olympics or the footy season etc.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 22/02/2019 15:26, Robin wrote:
On 22/02/2019 15:09, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Including those in the cupboard at the back?

Do you really think the survey counted kettles not in use?


I would say they almost certainly did.

In te way they tend to count cars by numbers rehgietred, noit number on
the road at any time

Its different with kettles because you can't use the easy
figure of registered kettles and are much more likely to
assume one per household or maybe 1.x per household.

"draft final report from Ecodesign Working Plan 2015-2017"

So its it draft or is it final?

And let me see an 'Ecodseisgn' committee couldn't possibly be biased could
it?

"NY" wrote in message
o.uk...
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Not any longer. With single stage heat pumps the rads need to be very
very large so floors are used instead.

I've always wondered how much the carpets on a floor insulate the
"radiators" and prevent the heat being given out quickly so the heating
can respond to changes in room temperature and therefore keep it constant.

I suppose that's less of an issue now that so many people are having bare
tiles, lino or wooden floors, especially downstairs - which means that
footsteps echo throughout the whole house and chairs scrape noisily across
the floors. And anything even slightly brittle shatters if it falls on the
floor, whereas a carpet will often prevent breakage.

Anything is better than the hot-air ducted heating that was all the rage
in the early 70s when one of my parents' houses was built. That was
appalling - it didn't heat the house

It works fine now, presumably those older ones just didnt provide
anywhere near enough joules given the very thermally leaky houses.

and it spread dust everywhere,

Not when you filter the hot air properly. Yes, that does
need a high level of filter changes, but it is very effective.

and there was a cold draught from the floor vents if you were sitting
"downwind" of them.

Again, you only get that result when its
not putting enough heat into the house.

How maintainable is underfloor heating if there's a leak?

Yeah, thats certainly the main downside with
it, but it isnt hard to ensure that that doesnt
happen with plastic pipe now.

That's the thing that has always put me off both electric and hot water
underfloor heating - the need to dig up floors to replace an open- or
short-circuited element or to fix a leak.

Sure.

On 22/02/2019 16:21, NY wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
More concealed elements and more accurate scales to heat less water

totally pointless. Existing kettle can heat less than a cup of wtaer.

Depends on the area of the base of the kettle and the height of the top
of the element above the base.

I havent seen a kettle with a non in base element in the last 20 years.

Are they still made?


--
Renewable energy: Expensive solutions that don't work to a problem that
doesn't exist instituted by self legalising protection rackets that
don't protect, masquerading as public servants who don't serve the public.

"NY" wrote in message
o.uk...
"Robin" wrote in message
...
More concealed elements and more accurate scales to heat less water

Reduce switch off time after reach boiling

Reduce thermal mass of kettle

Reduce outer surface heat loss

And encourage people to pour any excess hot water into the bowl when doing
the washing up - at least then the energy used in heating the excess
doesn't go to waste. Mind you, I suppose in theory any heat that is wasted
in appliances or in running the oven/kettle for longer than necessary
reduces (slightly) the amount of energy that the central heating needs to
use ;-) Except on a hot day when you have the windows open to keep the
house cool.

I'm amazed at the number of people who say that they don't need their
heating on in summer. There seems to be a school of thought which says
that between this day in spring and that day in autumn, the CH will be
turned off. You can get cold days even during summer, and cloudless summer
skies means it gets cold in the evening and overnight.

I have always had the CH on the same timer throughout the year, and let
the thermostat do the job of determining whether the CH needs to come on
due to unseasonably cold weather.

I've never understood why it is thought to be beneficial to heat the
bedroom to a lower temperature than other rooms. When I'm lying still in
bed, and I've not eaten for a while (so I'm not metabolising food) I get
cold - especially the parts that aren't under the bedclothes. And wearing
a hat in bed is not the answer: the itchiness and the bulk of a hat make
it impossible to sleep, and it still doesn't keep nose/cheeks warm.

I dont find that a problem. I do use an electric blanket and a decent
quilt in winter but dont heat the house at all overnight in winter.

There seems to be very little correlation between room temperature and
(my) perception of cold/warmth: I've often found that I feel comfortably
warm when the room temp is getting below 20 and the CH kicks in, and yet
sometimes I feel cold when it's 25. A lot depends on whether I'm sitting
still or moving around, and when I last ate.

On 22/02/2019 17:00, Rod Speed wrote:
NY wrote
Max Demian wrote

Do they still use gas marks rather than degrees Celsius in gas ovens?
I haven't seen an explanation why gas ovens use these arbitrary
numbers rather than degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius), though I have
some ideas why it might have happened.

Yes I've never understood why gas ovens historically used arbitrary
"gas marks".

Very simple really, its just a tap. No thermostat at all.

They do have a thermostat, some of which are branded "Regulo" - hence
the expression "Regulo 3" or "Regulo Mark 3" in recipes.

The "gas marks" correspond to specific temperatures in 25 Fahrenheit
degree increments:

°F Gas Mark

225 ¼
250 ½
275 1
300 2
325 3
350 4
375 5
400 6
425 7
450 8
475 9

--
Max Demian

NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote

I dont bother to preheat electric ovens except
when cooking pizzas, the oven heats up quickly
enough so that it makes no difference in practice.

Our electric fan oven takes about 10 minutes until the element switches
off when it gets to 180-200 deg C. When cooking something with a total
cooking time (assuming hot oven) of 30 minutes, that's a significant
allowance you have to make to cooking time if you cook from cold rather
than from pre-heated.

Thats an illusion. You'll find that even with something as
small as a single frozen pie, the total time before the pie
is fine to eat is about the same time with the pie in the
oven with a preheated oven and when you put the pie in
the oven when you turn it on. So you save the preheat time.

Not true with a pizza, but thats the only common exception.

My wife always cooks from cold and adds some indefinable extra time

I dont add any extra time at all and it always works fine
with small stuff like pies.

whereas I like to get the oven at the required temp and cook for the
required time.

You'' find its the same time even with light stuff like a
single pie or some sausage rolls, enough for one person.

It does with pizzas because they are best done in
a stinking hot oven and it does take a while to get
an electric oven that hot, and the pizza itself heats
up quite quickly and cooks very quickly too, but there
isnt much else that is cooked in an oven like that.

Do they still use gas marks rather than degrees Celsius in gas ovens? I
haven't seen an explanation why gas ovens use these arbitrary numbers
rather than degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius),

Basically because thats how they work, what you set
is the valve position, there is no thermostat like there
is with an electric oven. And there isnt that much that
needs the oven temp set very accurately to cook it
properly either, its really just a few basic temps,
stinking hot, very hot, quite hot, quite cool, barely
warm for bread raising etc.

though I have some ideas why it might have happened.

Its pretty obvious really given how gas ovens work.

I've never come across a gas cooker with an oven which doesn't have a
thermostat and which relies on a constant flow of gas no matter whether
the oven is cold or up to temp. Even my mum's old 1962 cooker gave a big
flame when you lit it, which reduced to a smaller flame when the oven was
up to temperature.

Sure, but that wasnt done with a thermostat.

I'm not sure whether the temperature sensor reduced the gas flow to a
constant intermediate value when the oven was at temp,

Not in the thermostat sense, it basically reduces
the gas flow as the temperature increases.

or whether it activated an all-or-nothing control as for an electric
cooker, where the element either runs at full power or not at all, with
the duty cycle varying according to the temperature needed.

Thats not possible with the traditional gas
oven which has no electronics involved at all.

If the oven had had a glass door I could have watched what the flame did
over time, without opening the door and changing the very thing I was
trying to watch.

In message , John
Rumm writes
On 21/02/2019 19:13, Andy Bennet wrote:
On 21/02/2019 18:52, NY wrote:


(*) I presume it does, since you say that it replaces your wet system.
No, it was to replace our existing boiler and couple up to our
existing wet rad system. Problem is we would need a 16kW output
system at high temperature. To get high temperature (up to 80C) out
of a air source system you need a two stage system, one outside air
heat exchanger plus a further heat pump indoors to raise the
temperture further. The outside unit is quite a large two fan unit.
We were not convinced it would be quiet enough. Plus it needs a firm
concrete base to stand on. All things considered a very expensive install.
The most efficient system is a ground source heat pump but this is
just too cost prohibitive for a retrofit system. I guess it would be
more suitable for new builds.

Less useable in high density housing though... as with many "green"
projects they are good for virtue signalling if you have spare land and
money.

Bore hole rather than a buried slinky pipe perhaps. You need a water
body within reasonable reach. Developer is considering it for a 4 house
development here despite mains gas across the lane.

All things considered it was a toss up between a high cost install
and cheap running, or a low cost install but more expensive to run.
The electric boiler won hands down purely on replacement cost, low
maintenace, low noise and a unit smaller than a gas boiler.



--
Tim Lamb

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

You never do reply to my question about how reliable the Honda has been.

Sorry. I don't remember ever seeing you ask about reliability.

The car, a CR-V SE 1.6 4WD (6-speed manual), was new in July 2015 and has
done just over 78,000 miles (125,000 km). It's averaged 44 mpg (6.4 l/100
km) (total distance/total fuel used) which is a looong way short of the
manufacturer's quoted figures - so much so that I've asked the garage's
advice on a couple of occasions as to whether our figures are within the
normal range of what a *real-world* user should achieve. A colleague of my
wife has the same model and same engine, and almost the same age, and gets
dramatically better economy - I think over 50 mpg (by comparison, my
10-year-old Peugeot 3081.6 HDi which has done 180,000 miles (290,000 km),
has averaged 55 mpg).

In both cases (my wife's car and mine) the figures are for mainly 50-70 mph
driving, some on the flat and some in hilly country, with very little
stop-start or slow city driving. We accelerate moderately hard,
progressively up to the speed limit, but no wheel-spinning, tyre-shredding
stuff - apart from the very occasional time when it's the only way to pull
out onto a main road when no-one, not one single solitary person, slows
slightly to make a gap for us to pull into. We both tend to read the road
ahead fairly well so we slow down by lifting off the power rather than
driving flat out up to the hazard and braking hard. I probably get slightly
better economy than my wife, but then I tend to drive the Honda at weekends
when there's less traffic; my wife probably drives a bit more aggressively
(sorry, slip of the tongue, I meant "assertively") in heavier
morning/evening traffic to and from work.

We've had very little trouble with the Honda - the only things that have
been replaced are routine consumables like occasional new wiper blades and 4
new tyres at 35,000 and 60,000 miles; it was supplied with Michelin Latitude
Sport and we replaced them both times with Avon ZX7. At its first MOT (July
2018, 3 years after registration, 60,000 miles) it passed with no comments
or "advisories". We had the tyres replaced immediately beforehand in
anticipation that they might get commented on as needing replacement fairly
soon - better than finding that I'd misread the tread depth and one of them
had caused it to fail the MOT, which is embarrassing when it's something
that I should have put right beforehand.

How often are Australian cars given a safety check like our MOT? Ours is
every year starting three years from new.

The car (Hetty the Honda!) is probably too young to start to need big things
replacing. When she gets to 180,000 miles, like my Pug, and needs new diesel
particulate filter and cat, and has various problems with the
"anti-pollution system" and the clutch actuator failing, then I'll be able
to comment more. Mind you, Pug is still on his original clutch, which is
incredible - bite point is fairly high but it shows no signs of slipping at
all. I wonder if the Honda's clutch will last that long.

The next service, due fairly soon, will be the "big one" because it's the
first we'll have to pay for (when we bought the car, we bought a service
deal which covered the first 5 services) and I remember at the last one I
was told the various things that need to be replaced routinely at the
nominal 75,000 service (which will be about 79,000 because we were a bit
late in booking it in for a couple of intermediate services). I forget the
details: I should have written it down ;-)

I'm not sure what the cost of big jobs is for the car - usually at
100-120,000 most cars need the cambelt changing which is always an expensive
job - 5 mins to change the belt, a few quid for the part, but several hours
to dismantle things to reach the belt. With my Pug I was advised to have the
water pump (driven off the same belt) replaced at the same time whether or
not it needed it, because there's no point in paying twice for the same
dismantle/reassemble labour which is a lot more than the cost of the pump.
Clutch is a big one. Cat or DPF on any car are frighteningly expensive - and
that *is* mainly parts rather than labour. All of that is yet to come -
hopefully along way off!

The only thing that hasn't performed as expected is the parking sensors.
Both my wife and I have hit bollards when reversing at very low speed. We're
used to all the false alarms from the front end when parallel parking and my
front left wing gets very close to the rear right wing of the car I'm
parking behind, or from tree branches nearby when parking - or even stray
flies that the sensor sees (maybe the last bit is a exaggeration!). But in
both cases, the sensor did *not* sound, and in both cases the point of
impact was right *on* the sensor - as if the sensor can see objects from a
few degrees either side of it but not objects that are about the hit the
sensor disk itself. I nudged a road sign when reversing off a grassy area
onto a road - it was not visible in the driver's side mirror and it was not
visible in the rear-view mirror - in the very blind spot between the two
that parking sensors are designed for. My wife gave me a real ear-bashing
for that, then a few months later she sheepishly confessed that she'd done
exactly the same thing with the passenger-side rear sensor in collision with
a big wooden telephone and mains electricity cable pole just where our drive
meets the village green. No real damage done, just a bit of cracked/flaked
paint on the bumper in both cases. But something to watch out for: the
parking sensors occasionally *don't* see things :-(

I managed to dislodge the front bumper when reversing very very slowly up a
steep drive where there was a sharp change gradient between level road and
steep uphill drive. Given the high ground clearance of the CR-V, that must
have been a very dramatic change of gradient! Luckily when I got home, a bit
of firm pressure on the bumper allowed it to distort enough for the lug on
the bumper to engage with the peg on the car body and it popped back into
place. It was when we were looking at a new house that we were considering
buying, and we realised that if the CR-V grounded on a steep drive, my Pug
was even more likely to do so because it seems to have very low bumpers
and/or long overhang from the wheels.

Little niggles...

The aerodynamics of the car are such that the back-end of the car gets
*very* dirty in winter when there's a lot of spray coming up from the road.
This is only a problem in that it quickly obscures the reversing camera
which is in the boot-release handle, and the camera is then no use to man
nor beast because of the muck on the lens. Honda should have put a little
washer jet, driven from the rear-window washer, to clean the lens. But then
we used to be able to manage perfectly well without reversing cameras,
though rear windows used to be wider and deeper so had better visibility...

I'd also have put the "outside temperature" display somewhere that the
passenger can see (on the central LCD display, alongside time, average mpg
etc) rather than in the centre of the speedo where it's only visible to the
driver. Silly little thing, but other cars (eg my Pug) get it right, so
Honda should copy them.

And like so many cars, the hazard-lights switch is in a criminally dangerous
place: in an emergency you have to take your eyes off the road and fumble
blindly towards the middle of the dashboard to hit it if you suddenly come
up behind a stationary car on a motorway, when in my mind the hazard switch
should be as accessible as the horn button - maybe on one of the spokes of
the steering wheel near your thumb or else on the end of the indicator stalk
if that's not used for the horn. I've only driven one car, I think a Fiat
Punto hire car, which had the hazard lights switch on the end of a stalk -
normally it's some random place on the dashboard - or even on top of the
steering column so you have to reach behind or through the wheel (Ford, I'm
talking about you!) In my old 5-gear Peugeot, I got used to finding the
switch by aiming my hand at the gear lever (when I was in fifth) and then
moving my finger up and right slightly, but the new Pug has six gears so the
knob is further from the dashboard in the default top gear and anyway the
switch is much higher up.

I always remember a motoring magazine years ago that had an article about
how good Scandinavian drivers were and how skilled they were at controlling
the car in snow and ice, and the interview subject was... a woman (as if to
say "wow, women can be even better than men" - all very sexist and very
1970s). And the article made a point of saying that the driver could
instinctively hit any switch, blindfold (they tested her). I think modern
placement of hazard lights switches fails that test ;-)

"Max Demian" wrote in message
...
The "gas marks" correspond to specific temperatures in 25 Fahrenheit
degree increments:

°F Gas Mark

225 ¼
250 ½
275 1
300 2
325 3
350 4
375 5
400 6
425 7
450 8
475 9

Ah, I've learned something. I never knew it was a linear scale - that the
difference between 1 and 2 was the same as between 8 and 9.

On 22/02/2019 13:01, NY wrote:
"Max Demian" wrote in message
o.uk...

Do they still use gas marks rather than degrees Celsius in gas ovens?
I haven't seen an explanation why gas ovens use these arbitrary
numbers rather than degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius), though I have
some ideas why it might have happened.

Yes I've never understood why gas ovens historically used arbitrary "gas
marks".

My *guess* is that gas ovens were the first to have thermostats, as it
is easy to regulate gas flow with a tap, whereas the thermostats in
electric ovens work by switching the power on and off - hard to do
without sparking the contacts with the switches at that time. (I'm
thinking of the 1930s here.) I imagine electric ovens would have had a
high/medium/low switch and a thermometer in the door like the later Baby
Belling table top cookers.

Perhaps the makers of the first thermostatic gas ovens lacked confidence
in their accuracy; or it was thought that degrees Fahrenheit would
confuse housewives and simple numbers would be easier for them. In any
case, they screwed up as presumably the original scale went from 1 (275
°F) to 9 (475 °F) and they realised that they needed an extra two marks
for lower temperatures: ½ (250 °F) and ¼ (225 °F).

This is all guesswork, however.

--
Max Demian