Roger Bradley

We live in a converted barn - an ancient stone built structure with our timber-frame heavily insulated structure inside. We've pointed all the stone walls inside and out. Somehow mice still get in! We've had a plague of them this year but the trusty "Selfset" metal snap traps work very well. I put a cut-down cardboard box over them so they have to put their head on the block, so to speak. I've only had one that didn't get killed instantly and a couple have managed to get the bait without setting off the trap. Somehow! I use sultanas or raisins as bait, making sure the fruit is pressed well onto the bait spike. We've caught dozens this summer, the only drawback being it's one a night. We've never had the bait taken from around the dead mouse though, and never cleaned the trap between catches so I think the alluring smell of the raisins draws them in.
We have a kind of sauna (the Bath House) in the garden, by the river, and a few weeks ago my wife left the water in the bath, forgetting to empty it when we went away for a week. When we came back there were 10 dead mice drowned in there but they were still coming in the house. We also have two semi-feral cats who live outside as well as five cats next door but the mice kept coming. And Tawny Owls who have reared a couple of chicks this year. No mice in the trap for the last week so hopefully the population has been thinned out somewhat.
A few years ago we were staying in a friends caravan that had mice scurrying around at night. We visited the local hardware store and all they had were the sticky sheets. I had to get up the middle of the night to dispose of the poor critter stuck there. A horrible job. The live traps are OK but it is really important to empty them very promptly or the mice die a slow unpleasant death. The Selfset traps are very effective and, I've found, quite humane.
P.S. We have trained our cats to leave birds alone by using a powerful water pistol. Every time we saw them in hunting mode, watching the birds, we'd growl at them and give them a squirt of water, which they hate. It has been very successful. It also keeps next door's cats away too.

in ground heat pump
professional install $26k
DIY install (NOT for DIY)
annual energy cost $606
annual carbon footprint 8.4 tons

rocket mass heater
professional install $7k
DIY install $1.9k
annual energy cost   $15
annual carbon footprint 0.4 to..

Heat pumps last about ten years.  Rocket mass heaters generally last 40 to 100 years.

I feel there is significant bias with this comparison!
We have a wood burner for the coldest weather but burn very little wood. This is because we have lots of insulation- key for any home build project.
I installed our Ground Source system myself, never done anything like it before but have basic plumbing and practical skills, back in 2009. It never needs anything other than simple checks and I've once topped up the outside loop fluid pressure. So it's done 14 years already and I'm sure it's good for a lot more. All with virtually no maintenance and excellent comfort from the underfloor warmth. We also use "green" electricity so our carbon footprint is minimal.

Gerry Parent wrote:The other day, we had no water pressure in our house. We are on a well and use a submersible water pump coupled to a pressure tank to provide all the houses water needs.

We have a very similar system. Until recently we had no problems with the water, and then, one morning, no water. I did all the same checks with nothing visibly wrong. Turned the power back on to the system and away it went. Had this happen several times and it was a puzzle until I realised it coincided with the filter backwash, which happens every ten days. I've found that if we run the dishwasher or washing machine in the evening before the backwash is due then we'll have no water in the morning. If I turn the power off for a while it starts again happily. There seems to be a low water cut out which needs a power cut before resetting itself.
If be interested to hear if anyone else has similar happenings.

Kenneth Elwell wrote:Another component to be aware of is a “thermal cut out”, basically a fuse for heat. I replaced one in our round food dehydrator last year, it’s a $3.00 part, that bricks the whole machine.
In this machine it was crimped into eye terminals along with the leads to the heating element (which was riveted through these eyes to some heat shield boards). I managed to pry the crimping open and close it again with pliers, but that was skill and luck! Crimped connection is ideal since heat (from soldering) could ruin or shorten the life of the new TCO. Using heat sinks and a light touch would work, but that’s more soldering skill than I have right now!

Something I always ask myself when a fuse goes is "why". They don't fail for no reason - unless it's very badly designed - so you are seeing a symptom of a problem. Thermal cut-outs are a bit of an exception as they generally fail if the equipment is being used outside of its "normal" parameters.
I would recommend a decent crimping tool as a poorly crimped connection can, because of resistance, generate heat which can cause fire. Many house fires are caused by poorly fitted power plugs - a loose screw connection (Live or Neutral) can generate a lot of heat! Hence the moulded-on plugs.

Great fun article - thumbs up for having a go. Safely!
I have always loved "fixing" things - the list is endless and some were successes, others failures. In my 30s I did a retraining course as a Prototype Wireman. It covered basic things like properly soldering a joint and moved on to cover electrics and electronics. I loved it and had a lot of fun, working in many fields of electronics and computers. I bought a ZX81 computer kit and taught myself machine code programming on it. Later in life I was fortunate to work for a company that gave me day release to get an electronics HNC. Now I'm retired and I help a group who do repairs on almost anything transportable, to save it going into landfill if possible! It's great fun and very satisfying when a "dead" item can be fixed. I've also been given all sorts of machinery that needed fixing - petrol strimmers, lawnmowers, drills - the list is endless, and I have a good range of tools for little money.
The security screws are helpful to stop the over-inquisitive from perhaps harming themselves. If you are serious about repairing things then the right tools are available for little money and take a lot of the struggle out of gaining access to a poorly gadget. A reasonable multi-meter is a very useful multi-purpose tool. I have one with a non-contact voltage indicator - plug the item in and hold the meter on the power cable where it disappears into the gadget and you can see immediately if the fuse has gone.
Have fun and fix things - but do it safely. The instructor on the Wireman course had some good tips: keep one hand behind your back when working with live equipment (a current of a few milliamps across the heart can kill!): and, it's the volts that jolts - the mills (milliamps) that kills.

[quote/] So an expert here doesn't necessarily make an expert elsewhere. That assuming that a leader is an expert. I suppose it could just be someone charismatic, but that appeals to me even less.

No idea who originated this quote, that I love, so I can't attribute properly. But: "The definition of an expert is someone who has made more mistakes than anybody else."
I must have expertise in quite a few subjects! ;-)

joe fish wrote:Longtime lurker,
You can see it looks windy in the outside picture,  Its always like this,  not terribly windy, but a gentle flow,  that often changes directions.  Is this it???

I'm no expert, but have installed a few woodburners, most with unusual configurations! But - To the nitty-gritty:
My logic says that if you have smoke leaking from joints then you have: A) a good updraft, and B) back pressure stopping the smoke emerging from the top of the flue. The flue is clear so the only remaining explanation is that you have a downdraft stopping the heat/smoke exiting properly. You have plenty of updraft or there wouldn't be the pressure to push smoke through the joints. In our barn conversion I had to ensure our flue finished above the ridge to satisfy Building Control. I've not regretted it. In my past researches I have come across numerous mentions of flue finishing above ridge height. BUT - your flue looks to be by the outside wall so extending will clearly require support wires. An alternative would be to reroute the flue so that it exits the roof much closer to the ridge. I can only guess that the prevailing wind causes back-pressure. The photo of the outside appears to show smoke being pushed down and to one side although that isn't clear. The bends are unlikely to be a problem - I have a very similar setup - and the length of flue appears to be giving you a good updraft (smoke leakage at joints = pressure). These conclusions also point to the stove itself being fine.

Unimportant but relevant extras:
In our barn conversion I originally thought to put our woodburner in the corner of the lounge. We had it there initially as we worked through the build - we had one room that was very much like a student bedsit with everything squeezed into it - and the flue was a custom made steel pipe with around 8' of flexy pipe, including some 4' of almost horizontal, to allow the smoke to exit through a narrow (4") ventilation slit in the stone wall. The problem was that it was on the windward side of the barn and there was no other sensible temporary option. So, when the wind blew we would have a lot of problem getting the fire lit without turning ourselves into kippers! Once the flue was warm though, even with the weird flue, it worked fine except for occasional gusts that would push a bit of smoke back. I eventually moved the stove away from the corner and ran the insulated flue through the bedroom and out the roof around 3' from the ridge. This configuration has two 45 degree bends to accommodate a wall and to get the flue a bit closer to the ridge. (I didn't want to build a chimney or try to support a long length of flue sticking out of the roof). It works superbly and we've not had problems with back-draughts even though I have a simple cap on the flue to stop rain ingress. I looked long and hard at all sorts of different cowls but reviews generally pointed to eventual problems with anything that turned. Our barn is in a dip by a river with a big tree-covered hill behind. This causes the wind to eddy in all sorts of directions, some almost in the opposite direction! I feel the problem you are having is the same thing, with wind eddying around the building and roof to give a down-draught exactly where you don't want it.
Down by the river is our "bath-house" - an insulated "shed" with a woodburner in it that gave us a bath/sauna arrangement while we were building. It's so lovely that we still use it every couple of weeks, even though we've got "proper" indoor bath/shower rooms The woodburner here has 2x3' uninsulated flue sections and works brilliantly. It heats a tank of water in an hour or so and we can enjoy a hot "bathroom" to raise a gentle sweat, even with snow on the ground outside. It is a relatively "Heath-Robinson" affair using an old bath rescued from a skip, water from a tank catching land-drain run-off high on the hill behind, and a second-hand insulated hot water cylinder. (Safety note - the cylinder doesn't feed a tap as that could cause explosive pressure - the outlet is a simple pipe into the bath. I have a gate-valve in place of the hot tap and that allows cold water into the bottom of the tank and that, in turn, pushes the hot out the top and down into the bath! All great fun, and very simple. This is the second iteration of bath-house after the first had a fire - mice must have nested too close to the uninsulated flue going through the roof and then we had no hot water cylinder - the woodburner back boiler just heated a bath full of water. That took three hours so gave the nesting material time to ignite. Cautionary warning - use insulated flue, or make sure that nothing unwanted can come in contact with the flue.

We bought a barn in mid-Wales which we've since converted into our now-lovely home. An early requirement was a bath so we built a "bath house" down by the river. This was quite basic - a metal bath rescued from a skip, along with a second hand Woodburner with a back boiler. The output from the back boiler went into the bath overflow and the cold return came from the waste pipe. I extended the waste with a pipe long enough to be clipped above bath-top height, along with a section of flexible pipe. This enabled us to empty the bath when finished. The bath was filled, almost to the brim, before the fire was lit so that the back boiler was full.
I've modified it a bit since then, adding a copper hot-water cylinder and other mods to improve it. All very basic really.
It's certainly not a fancy rocket stove but it has served us well over the years - in fact we still use it regularly as it is so enjoyable to have a kind of sauna along with masses of hot water to soak in.

We live in now-converted barn (it took us 10 years, mostly by ourselves) and have had a bore-hole drilled and electric pump installed. To cope with occasional power outages or equipment failure I fitted up a hand pump that I had been given. This pump is a modern-ish version of the traditional farmyard type with a side handle. Working the handle up and down lifts the water and we have once had to use it, filling buckets for drinking water. I have found that the first thing to ascertain is how far down the water surface is. This is critical if a hand pump is to be used as most won't raise water more than 7 of 8 meters / yards. The well bucket mentioned in one post will raise water from whatever depth - BUT - it won't fit inside an average borehole with the pipe, and thus the pump, in place.
I have a fairly simple concrete ring construction around the well-head with a heavy duty plastic cap that has the pipe and electricity cable coming through it. I simply drilled another 1" hole through it and dropped 6m of pipe through it which I can then attach the hand pump to. Our static waterlevel is about 4m. I found the hand pump wouldn't lift the water successfully like this so I added a non-return valve to the bottom of the pipe and it now works brilliantly.
I would suggest that you don't need to worry about:
1- getting an additional pipe down the bore-hole - modern alkathene (or whatever) pipe is flexible and simple to connect etc.
2- connecting the hand pump output to your existing plumbing. Having a separate system that can be put into use on the occasional times required is all that's necessary. Clean sterile buckets are all that's required to hold an amount of water.
I bought a second hand Excelsior type pump years ago with this scenario in mind but it was too worn and wouldn't lift water any distance at all. This type of pump, though, has an advantage over the pump I am using in that it has metal valves that don't dry out, unlike the leather plunger in mine! (Soaking it a while gets it going happily enough though.)
It's always great to have a go at these sort of jobs, especially when you succeed. Remember - the definition of an expert is someone who's made more mistakes than anyone else. Good luck, make notes, take pictures.

This post got me thinking! My first thought was that ALL steel contains carbon - that's what makes it different from iron. So what is this "carbon steel" stuff?
I found this interesting article that clarifies quite lucidly what makes "carbon steel", in comparison to others, and its pros & cons:
https://monroeengineering.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-carbon-steel-what-you-should-know/