Mundane facts about your day...

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littleme

250,000th poster!
Poor spoon has lost another part...

IMG_20200514_200340.jpg


(I do have other, newer, cleaner spoons for cooking... this one is solely reserved for pan banging)
 

Lucy

Well-Known Forumite
Has anyone heard of the artist support pledge? On Instagram lots of artists are posting works at a special price. I treated myself to this oil painting of the walk to the campsite on St Martin's, Scilly. Cost me as much as a month of fuel normally would, so I haven't really spent anything.
IMG_20200516_094011_647.jpg
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Not done a great deal today. the main project has been replacing one of the garden taps. There are three taps, but this one gets 95% of the use and I've fixed it a few times over the 25 years that it's been there. I suspected that the drip was not just another duff washer this time, so I invested in a new tap. This involved a brief phone call, a half mile cycle ride and hanging around by the side door until my dealer slipped out with a new one. Readies were exchanged and I headed back with the goods.

I dismantled the new one and greased it all up for future ease before fitting it.

An inspection of the old one did, as I suspected, reveal a heavily eroded seat - indeed, it is a tribute to the washer that I put in last time that it was possible to get it down to a two-second drip.

A dismantling of the old tap and a few minutes' (hard) work with a reseating tool to cut the seat back to being shiny all the way round was reasonably successful, so I have a spare now, for future emergencies.
 

kyoto49

Well-Known Forumite
Has anyone heard of the artist support pledge? On Instagram lots of artists are posting works at a special price. I treated myself to this oil painting of the walk to the campsite on St Martin's, Scilly. Cost me as much as a month of fuel normally would, so I haven't really spent anything.View attachment 8473

Thanks for posting about the Artist Support Pledge, will treat myself!
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I have observed an interesting phenomenon.

@Carole's butt is fed from the roof of the house - about 70' x 30'. This is a hipped roof with concrete tiles. There is a continuous 'circular' gutter with four downpipes, near each corner The north-western one of these feeds this butt.

The Chalet roof is about 20' square and is plastic-coated steel cladding, with a very slight slope. This feeds a water butt which is connected to two others, carefully arranged to have their tops at the same height, so that the single overflow from the 'primary' butt, into lower-level butts, is sufficient. One of these butts is about 50' away from the other two, and this one gets the most use - I remove about the same amount of water daily from it as I do from Carole's.

I have noticed that the triple system is always full, whenever I use it, but Carole's is down to about half now.

I have an arrangement with the rain gods which keeps May 16th as a dry day every year, although some slight drizzle/heavy dew is allowable in the hours of darkness. This occurred last night and, having noted the two levels in the day, I checked this morning and found that @Carole's butt had not filled at all, but the butts fed by the shed were back to the top level.

There could be two reasons for this, I think, possibly both are responsible.

1, There may have only been enough rain to soak into the concrete tiles, but enough to provide a good run-off from the steel roof.

2, The gutter where the downpipe that feeds the 'house' butt could be slightly above the two downpipes either side of it, meaning that very slight rainfall proceeds down those in preference. I could put some small weirs in the gutter to persuade the water into the 'right' downpipe, if that it the case, I suppose. Two of the other downpipes may yet receive their own butts at some point, but the fourth would be in an awkward location.

I may need to make some investigations in light drizzle conditions.
 
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littleme

250,000th poster!
I have observed an interesting phenomenon.

@Carole's butt is fed from the roof of the house - about 70' x 30'. This is a hipped roof with concrete tiles. There is a continuous 'circular' gutter with four downpipes, near each corner The north-western one of these feeds this butt.

The Chalet roof is about 20' square and is plastic-coated steel cladding, with a very slight slope. This feeds a water butt which is connected to two others, carefully arranged to have their tops at the same height, so that the single overflow from the 'primary' butt, into lower-level butts, is sufficient. One of these butts is about 50' away from the other two, and this one gets the most use - I remove about the same amount of water daily from it as I do from Carole's.

I have noticed that the triple system is always full, whenever I use it, but Carole's is down to about half now.

I have an arrangement with the rain gods which keeps May 16th as a dry day every year, although some slight drizzle/heavy dew is allowable in the hours of darkness. This occurred last night and, having noted the two levels in the day, I checked this morning and found that @Carole's butt had not filled at all, but the butts fed by the shed were back to the top level.

There could be two reasons for this, I think, possibly both are responsible.

1, There may have only been enough rain to soak into the concrete tiles, but enough to provide a good run-off from the steel roof.

2, The gutter where the downpipe that feeds the 'house' butt could be slightly above the two downpipes either side of it, meaning that very slight rainfall proceeds down those in preference. I could put some small weirs in the gutter to persuade the water into the 'right' downpipe, if that it the case, I suppose. Two of the other downpipes may yet receive their own butts at some point, but the fourth would be in an awkward location.

I may need to make some investigations in light drizzle conditions.
Are you telling us that @Carole 's butt is leaking?
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Right, I have just had a close and detailed inspection of @Carole's butt.

Running water into the downpipe resulted in it flowing straight into the butt, no blockage, not even in the annular section of the diverter - this often happens, it was an annual job for me at one place, although blasting a hose up it from the downstream end will give a quick fix in much less time than a full dismantle.

There is some moss and algae in the gutter, but they were bone-dry and not offering any great obstruction to the flow.

It's spitting rain slightly at the moment and the steel roof has about a 50% covering of a film of water, but the tiled roof is still essentially 'dry'.

It's looking like it is just the initial 'wetting' of the tiled roof (and possibly the growth in the gutters) that absorbs enough water to preclude any flow into the downpipes from small showers, then letting that water re-evaporate afterwards.

There are some decent showers approaching from the southwest today, we may get a fill, but two have just gone past on either side of here.
 
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