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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:That's Dinorwig, right? Yup, that's the one. Nitrox posted:Why does water need to boil in order to make tea? It doesn't. For non-green teas, it's generally best brewed at 195f-205f. It's just easier to wait until the water hits 212f and starts boiling than it is to watch for when it hits 205f. Zhentar fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 00:43
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Nitrox posted:Why does water need to boil in order to make tea? It doesn’t, but recommended brewing temperature for black tea is only handful of degrees below boiling. It’s far simpler to just heat it to boiling and let that be your indication that it’s hot enough.
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Feb 8, 2016 00:47
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Gotcha. I boil my hot tea, but in the summer, a couple of tea bags in a container of cold water overnight, make for a decent ice tea.
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Feb 8, 2016 00:51
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Nitrox posted:Why does water need to boil in order to make tea? Because you boil it, then pour it over your coffee grounds 
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Feb 8, 2016 00:53
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Zhentar posted:If you didn't watch the youtube posted earlier, the UK power grid uniquely experiences huge spikes in demand that they call "TV pickups", caused by hundreds of thousands of people switching on their tea kettles at the end of TV shows. On a daily basis, over the course of of five minutes, grid demands will spike up by hundreds of megawatts. Special events will cause spikes on the order of gigawatts. To deal with it, they had to develop the fastest responding power generation in the world, a pumped storage system that can go from zero to 1.3GW in 12 seconds (compared to typical "fast response" power plants that take 5+ minutes to start up)n I've watched/read similar articles about UKs electric kettle surges. I had never put it together in my head. Over here the largest common outlet is 1800W (15A@120V) and even then saying "1.8kW" is absurd. (I feel most kitchens even if run on a 20A breaker/wire still use 15A receptacles.)
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Feb 8, 2016 04:52
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So it's the equivalent of sewage systems failing during superbowl breaks?
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Feb 8, 2016 05:11
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I want to see the parallel universe British version of Back To The Future. "Marty, start the car when the EastEnders credits roll, and you'll hit the power line right in time for the initial surge."
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Feb 8, 2016 07:18
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My Lovely Horse posted:I want to see the parallel universe British version of Back To The Future. "Marty, start the car when the EastEnders credits roll, and you'll hit the power line right in time for the initial surge." "You built a time machine out of a Tasmin?" "When this tot gets up to 140.8 km per hour, you're going to see some serious Shite!" "John! John, it's Vladimir! Your cousin, Vladimir Lennon. You know that new sound you're looking for? Well, listen to this!" "Doc, you don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium! Did you rip that off?" "Of course. From a group of IRA terrorists. They wanted me to build them a car bomb, so I took their plutonium and, in turn, gave them a shoddy bomb casing full of used fruit machine parts."
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Feb 8, 2016 08:32
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kizudarake posted:"Doc, you don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium! Did you rip that off?"
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Feb 8, 2016 08:50
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Electric kettles, pfft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBw618geqyI
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Feb 8, 2016 10:00
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Nitrox posted:Could you elaborate as to why they're a bad idea? Thanks Our home-wiring may be crap, but you can't deny that our plugs are pretty darn clever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
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Feb 8, 2016 11:21
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Is kids poking things into electrical sockets a thing that happens? I've never heard of it happening but it's one of those things adults feel the need to repeatedly tell children. I think Australian plugs are better than UK in that respect because while ours don't have shutters, the shape (wide and flat) seriously restricts the number of objects you can fit in the hole. And Australian plugs don't double as caltrops. An advantage that Australian and UK sockets share is they apparently baffle the gently caress out of Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr0m0d4tYTg
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Feb 8, 2016 12:22
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baram. posted:couple pictures of a building that came down in Taiwan after the earthquake the other day. So, structural/earthquake engineer here on the kinds of failures you're seeing there. This is very indicative of older concrete construction but basically joint failures or column failures close to stuff elements (in this case wall panels) is very common for structures where there isn't robust steel ties to confine concrete. The more shear reinforcement you have confines the concrete in the center of a connection or element, increasing effective concrete strength. I've seen some bounding tests where you can double or triple concrete strength and the amount of deformation allowed if it is completely encased in steel like a composite system or retrofit.
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Feb 8, 2016 14:42
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Blindeye posted:So, structural/earthquake engineer here on the kinds of failures you're seeing there. This is very indicative of older concrete construction but basically joint failures or column failures close to stuff elements (in this case wall panels) is very common for structures where there isn't robust steel ties to confine concrete. The more shear reinforcement you have confines the concrete in the center of a connection or element, increasing effective concrete strength. I've seen some bounding tests where you can double or triple concrete strength and the amount of deformation allowed if it is completely encased in steel like a composite system or retrofit. The way they used empty oil cans instead of concrete might have contributed.
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Feb 8, 2016 17:45
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GotLag posted:Is kids poking things into electrical sockets a thing that happens? I've never heard of it happening but it's one of those things adults feel the need to repeatedly tell children. Yeah, kids get zapped all the time sticking things in outlets. I have two nephews that each did it.
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Feb 8, 2016 18:08
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Zhentar posted:From the look of the plugs & outlets, you'd think so, but they only allow individual devices up to 13 amps. That's why they stopped at 3kW tea kettles, instead of 4.5kW or 7kW. I seem to recall that recently there was a bit of an arms race between makers of vacuums in the UK where everyone kept cranking up their wattage because people kept buying the highest rated ones as more watts = more clean.
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Feb 8, 2016 18:14
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Shifty Pony posted:I seem to recall that recently there was a bit of an arms race between makers of vacuums in the UK where everyone kept cranking up their wattage because people kept buying the highest rated ones as more watts = more clean. That's a hilarious thing that's been happening here in the US for years and years now as well. people assume that higher amperage rating on the motor = more better cleaning suction power, but that couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, there's lots of factors that contribute to one vacuum cleaning better than another. Higher amp rating just means the motor draws more current. What factors into the suction is airflow. How clogged the filters/bags are, how clean the airways are within the vacuum itself, how much friction the motor is experiencing, and some other quirks of design as well. Dyson often touts their amazing suction power in their commercials, but even they'll lose suction and therefore cleaning power if the filters aren't cleaned properly, the dirt emptied out regularly, and the airways kept open. This is also why bagless vacuums are generally considered better than bagged vacuums. The bags act as the air filter and clog quickly as they fill up, whereas the bagless ones tend to last longer before needing to be emptied and cleaned.
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Feb 8, 2016 19:13
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neogeo0823 posted:This is also why bagless vacuums are generally considered better than bagged vacuums. The bags act as the air filter and clog quickly as they fill up, whereas the bagless ones tend to last longer before needing to be emptied and cleaned. You are correct about everything except for this. Bagless vacuums across the board have less suction than the average bagged vacuum. What you have to keep in mind is filter area. Bagless vacuums work by exploiting airflow over perforations or specially-shaped pathways so that dirt falls out of the airstream while air itself can be drawn up into the final filter. Unfortunately this action takes a lot of space, and the actual airflow area with bagless is much less than a bagged vacuum. Bagless vacuums (even though I own two) are universally worse, with any rise in "quality" of one brand over another being the equivalent of manufacturers fighting for lower concentrations of poo poo in their pisswater. A good bagged vacuum, in comparison, is a glass of fresh, clean water. I know it's "reddit," but read here if you want. The guy has some really good info. I'll quote some key bits here if you don't want to sully your browser history with that site, though. quote:Here's some basics to get you started: quote:Types of vacs: And I'm not just talking out of my rear end because I read something on reddit (never go on reddit) a few years ago. I'm speaking from experience. There's a reason that notoriously-cheap industries like budget hotels still use bagged vacuums (and buy new ones, even!) when they have a continuous (if small, bags are cheap) running cost: in comparison to bagless, they work. Bagless vacuums are okay for someone on a budget with hardwood floors only that needs to clean up things like sawdust, but are absolute poo poo on anything carpeted. The last decade has had manufacturers push bagless vacuums down our throats, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anything other than a bagless at something like Walmart (where, hate to say it, the majority of the nation's cityfolk shop). But the truth is: they are all complete and utter poo poo in suction and cleaning power compared to even a low-medium-end ($200 or less) bagged vac. The dude on Reddit pushes the Miele brand hard, but you don't have to spend $700 on a vacuum. Spend $150 on a good bagged vac and the remaining $50 on a year's worth of bags and be happy, clean, and dust-free.
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Feb 8, 2016 19:34
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I just use a shop vac for my house. But I guess since I don't have carpets I don't know any better there.
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Feb 8, 2016 19:43
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I love my Dyson. I also read the manual and clean the filter regularly. If for no other reason I find emptying the canister to be so much easier than a bag and it seems to filter the air just fine. For many years of my life I lived in a home where my dad installed a central vac, which makes all other vacuum posturing moot. So what if it doesn't filter the air perfectly, it's exhausting outside, and the interior noise is nearly nothing. That said you better wear ear protection if you go near the motor.
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Feb 8, 2016 19:51
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Yeah my parents have central vac in their place, it's awesome.
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Feb 8, 2016 20:38
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Arrath posted:Yeah my parents have central vac in their place, it's awesome. The house we bought has the wackiest central vac ever. The realtor, home inspector and a 3rd party contractor all looked at it and said "wow. It's safe, and you can continue to use it, but wow." It's basically a regular central vac system (though only two connections upstairs, both centrally located on each floor and a loooooooong hose) but the final vac is... a shop vac. Mind you, a nice shop vac, which was wired into the central vac system, but it's still a shop vac. Keep the filter clean though and it cleans the hell out of the floors and is super quiet upstairs.
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Feb 8, 2016 21:31
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Vacuum derail- I totally agree that cleaning ability is not a function of suction, it's all about airflow, which means not clogging the filter. To that end, the best vacuum I know of is a Rainbow since it doesn't have* a filter, and is is the only vacuum on the market that is also a certified air purifier. It has a HEPA filed only, not user servicable, and required for the air purifier certification. The Rainbow works by having a tank of water which traps all* of the dirt, the water can get muddy as poo poo and keep going. drywall dust bounces off water and will clog the HEPA filer My friend used to sell Kirby bagged vaccums, they go in with a dozen filter patches then clean a pillow, it clogs the filter, and they leave a patch behind. . . after leaving two dozen 2" round patches with crap on them scattered around the room the customer panicks and opens their wallet for a new Kirby. Rainbow just starts with clean water and gets dirtier and dirtier but doesn't stop since its filtering mechanism is water which won't clog until the mud hardens. To this day, the Rainbow is the most impressive vacuum I've seen but I sure as he'll don't own because they cost two-loving-thousand dollars. My opinion might be biased since I attempted to be a Rainbow salesman for a couple months but watching people's jaw drop at the price tag was the show stopper every time. My response was supposed to be "we profit cuz vacuum no break  "For real, the science behind the Rainbow and using water to filter dirt seems to make the most sense to me unless someone knows more and can tell me why it's wrong, and not just for drywall.
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Feb 8, 2016 21:35
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Crotch Fruit posted:Vacuum derail- I totally agree that cleaning ability is not a function of suction, it's all about airflow, which means not clogging the filter. I was gonna post a big long thing, but it basically boiled down to this. I also sold Rainbows for a while, and sold vacuums and other appliances as a couple big box stores for a number of years. I did lots of research. The water model is generally gonna be better than any dry media ever, and it's a shame that the Rainbows cost $2300+ each or else that'd pretty much all anyone ever bought. To their credit, the Rainbows are made of really tough poo poo. The office I worked for that sold Rainbows had an original 1938orwhatever model year Rainbow that still worked and was used every day from the year it was manufactured till like 2010. It never broke during that time, and only needed to have the motor's brushes redone during that time. We took it to shows for demonstrations and the like. Bagless vacuums, on the whole, are going through that "build it cheaper, build it faster" phase, where everyone and their mother are trying to get a slice of the market share. That's why they tend to perform worse than established bagged vacuums that have had decades of development and refinement to maximize their design. To say that bagless vacuums perform universally worse than a good bagged vacuum is like saying that all motorized bicycles in general perform universally worse than a good Harley Davidson, which is to say it's a bit disingenuous.
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Feb 8, 2016 22:07
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Rainbows are clumsy, difficult-to-maintain, and have poorly-designed accessories. Also, a lot of parts are not user serviceable, and the parts that are require a lot of service. Also dealing with that water is a nightmare. But they are reliable, and the water is a good filter media. You want a lot of suction, but you also want a LARGE filter area. Bags get a bad rap because you throw them away, and people hate throwing things away. But the average bag for an upright holds 2-4x as much as a big canister load (because canisters have to be emptied well before they're visually "full," because they need airflow room to circulate), and a bag for even the super-expensive Miele is $3. Dysons are notoriously unreliable in the vacuum repair business, and cost probably 3x what they should because of the name. I haven't found a bagless that performs better than a bagged upright. Queen_Combat fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 22:08
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How is it a nightmare to deal with the water? Dump it in the toilet, or outside in the bushes. Rinse the bowl and let it dry. I will say it's kind of a pain in the rear end to let the Rainbow dry out after use, but other than that, I never had a problem with it. I'm not trying to harp on you or anything, by the way. I'm just struggling to see your view on the matter. I don't like bagless because the filters are a continuous, if small, cost of ownership that adds up over time. While I agree that there's a ton of crap in the bagless market, you don't really see any anymore that don't have washable filters and relatively easy to clean passageways. As for the hotel industry still using bagged vacuums, my wife worked as a house keeper in a hotel for a while, and I'll say with certainty that the reason they use bagged vacuums are because you can find "industrial" bagged vacuums that are made of metal and don't break. House keepers treat their vacuums like poo poo and if they were given cheaper plastic models, bagged or not, then they'd smash them to bits every other day. I have yet to see an "industrial" bagless model that's made of metal. And yeah, dysons are loving expensive as hell and should be like 1/4th what their current price is. But that's what you get when you attach a name like that to something.
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Feb 8, 2016 22:48
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As much as I hate canister vacuums, my Miele sucks in all the right ways. And the turbo powered brush attachment does a good job of cleaning/de-hairing carpets like an upright would. [ontopic] What's the UK regs on bathroom shaver sockets? Somebody had wired the shaver socket in our bathroom to the switched side of the light switch. We couldn't work out why our toothbrushes weren't charging and three electricians refused to acknowledge there was a problem. Eventually somebody with a brain worked it out and put the socket on the hot side of the light switch. Which seemed a little fishy, All the houses I've lived in had isolation switches outside. Which ours has, but only the towel heater is connected to it.
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Feb 8, 2016 23:00
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Horse Clocks posted:As much as I hate canister vacuums, my Miele sucks in all the right ways. And the turbo powered brush attachment does a good job of cleaning/de-hairing carpets like an upright would. The regs say "All socket outlets in such rooms [bathrooms] must be protected by an RCD with a rating no higher than 30mA." and it should not be on the lighting circuit, any problems that trip the breaker could potentially leave you naked, wet, injured in the dark. I believe it should at the very least be in a rcd from a spur off the ring main, or better yet ran directly from the consumer unit with a small RCD as it's own circuit.
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Feb 9, 2016 00:12
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On the note of vacuums, my parents are still using the bigass brushed stainless steel Kirby they got as a housewarming gift in 1987. They have the attachments to shampoo the carpet, too. All it ever needs is bags and a new belt every year or two maybe? The drat thing won't die.
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Feb 9, 2016 00:25
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Zhentar posted:If you didn't watch the youtube posted earlier, the UK power grid uniquely experiences huge spikes in demand that they call "TV pickups", caused by hundreds of thousands of people switching on their tea kettles at the end of TV shows. On a daily basis, over the course of of five minutes, grid demands will spike up by hundreds of megawatts. Special events will cause spikes on the order of gigawatts. To deal with it, they had to develop the fastest responding power generation in the world, a pumped storage system that can go from zero to 1.3GW in 12 seconds (compared to typical "fast response" power plants that take 5+ minutes to start up)n Reminds me of the legendary "flush" in NYC after the MASH TV series finale and how it stressed their sewage system.
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Feb 9, 2016 00:25
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my wife got suckered in to a kirby home showing and the girl basically refused to leave until i got home and told her that my parents would disown me if i bought a kirby since the one my parents bought no poo poo shocked my dad idk how it happened but bringing up kirby in my folks house was on the same level as denying the holocaust to them she then started to pack up her stuff and explain that this was a in-between job and that she had an interview with a medical billing company that week.
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Feb 9, 2016 00:49
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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:The way they used empty oil cans instead of concrete might have contributed. See, that's the funny part, the oil cans aren't in the areas of maximum damage, it's the connections at the ends, even shoddy construction like that wasn't enough, shoddy design had to also play a part  .
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Feb 9, 2016 00:55
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kid sinister posted:Reminds me of the legendary "flush" in NYC after the MASH TV series finale and how it stressed their sewage system. Probably apocryphal, but I remember stories a university campus where if all the students flushed their toilets in their accommodation block simultaneously, the toilets on the ground floor would erupt.
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Feb 9, 2016 01:44
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The Orange Mage posted:On the note of vacuums, my parents are still using the bigass brushed stainless steel Kirby they got as a housewarming gift in 1987. They have the attachments to shampoo the carpet, too. All it ever needs is bags and a new belt every year or two maybe? The drat thing won't die. My parents inherited my great-grandmother's Hoover. We were using a thirty- or forty-year old vacuum. When the wires in the cord finally frayed, my dad went to the garage and pulled out his great-aunt's Hoover. The woman died in 1981, having apparently left her 60s-era vacuum to my dad, who had stored it for ten years "just in case." Waste not, want not indeed.
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Feb 9, 2016 04:09
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The Orange Mage posted:On the note of vacuums, my parents are still using the bigass brushed stainless steel Kirby they got as a housewarming gift in 1987. They have the attachments to shampoo the carpet, too. All it ever needs is bags and a new belt every year or two maybe? The drat thing won't die.   My parents gave me theirs when I bought my house, since they have a central vacuum setup. I'm assuming this thing is probably at least forty years old.  This heavy bastard handily outclasses both of the upright dyson vacuums at work, and is by far and away the suckiest vacuum I've ever owned. It's so top shelf, even the plastic on the back of the handle has a wood grain pattern imprinted in it.
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Feb 9, 2016 04:14
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from "horrible mechanical failures" in AI: it's beautiful
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Feb 9, 2016 04:17
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OSU_Matthew posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxtBqRIiEjU Yeah, it's Jaws. I want that vacuum.
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Feb 9, 2016 04:28
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baram. posted:couple pictures of a building that came down in Taiwan after the earthquake the other day. "While searching through the damage for survivors, rescue crews found empty blue and white tin cans that had apparently been used as construction filler inside some of the building’s concrete beams. The discovery prompted the Taiwanese government and local officials to launch separate investigations into whether shortcuts were taken in the construction of the complex. According to one engineer who spoke to the Central News Agency, it wasn’t uncommon—or illegal—back in the 1980s and ‘90s for developers to use empty cooking oil cans as construction filler. Local residents have been quick to place the blame on the shoddy construction." http://www.citylab.com/weather/2016/02/highrise-taiwan-earthquake-collapse/460482/
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Feb 9, 2016 04:29
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Investigating an electrical fire. Let's see the electrical room. ...Which doubles as the giant sump-pump room, since the building was apparently built in the middle of a swamp. Knowing this, the builder piped all of the electrical feed underground into the same room. Groundwater likes underground pipes:  Hmm. That's the light-duty distribution panel. This, though, is where the 600V line comes in - behind this here galvanized box:  Lotta rust for galv. And hey! Convenient drain lines to the 1200A service disconnect!  Gee. That must've made a noise.
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Feb 9, 2016 05:44
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HERAK posted:The regs say "All socket outlets in such rooms [bathrooms] must be protected by an RCD with a rating no higher than 30mA." and it should not be on the lighting circuit, any problems that trip the breaker could potentially leave you naked, wet, injured in the dark. I believe it should at the very least be in a rcd from a spur off the ring main, or better yet ran directly from the consumer unit with a small RCD as it's own circuit. Hm. Looks like it's RCD-B -> Breaker [Upstairs Bathroom / Balcony Lights] -> 110/220v Shaver socket. Does the shaver having a GCFI count as being protected with a RCD?
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Feb 9, 2016 09:54
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