The grumpy thread

[Timewaster]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

Intelligent chargers are a load of crap. 

Amen!! 

 

The worst thing I ever bought was a £120 Sip "intelligent" charger. 

I had a battery that was totally flat, so it ignored it. 

I then dragged out my old charger to get it going a bit. 

Once it got to about 4 volts the sip would finally acknowledge that it was a battery and started to charge it. 

However it also decided that it must be a 6v battery and floated it at 7.2v for 2 days until I checked on it. 

Absolute crap. 

[goosey]

My mother in law WhatsApp video calling my wife 3 seconds after I arrive back from work every night of the week.

[Zelandeth]

Finally had a walk round and successfully found our abducted garden waste bin - tucked away on a driveway right at the opposite end of the street. 

It was retrieved and has now been plastered on reflective tape and had the house number and address marked on the lid plus the number on all sides.

Hopefully that will discourage the gits from trying that again.

Really sick of this sort of suburban nonsense.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

2 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Finally had a walk round and successfully found our abducted garden waste bin - tucked away on a driveway right at the opposite end of the street. 

It was retrieved and has now been plastered on reflective tape and had the house number and address marked on the lid plus the number on all sides.

Hopefully that will discourage the gits from trying that again.

Really sick of this sort of suburban nonsense.

Given that you've had exposed mains wiring near your plumbing recently, maybe you might want to connect the bin up to that as a security* measure....

[brownnova]

My commute is about 8 miles and takes 15 minutes ish under normal conditions.

About 8 weeks back a set of temporary traffic lights appeared on a section of the route which floods regularly as they put better drainage in. Ok fair enough it’s been a problem for years.  Then about 2 weeks ago a second set (a lovely three way control) appear where a normal set have been damaged by a van, and this week a third set have appeared in a village on the route! The last one is a 4 way control too... there’s another route through the back lanes... yep you guessed it temporary traffic lights there too!! 

Today a static caravan on a wagon got stuck at number one... 

So much for a quick commute! 

[New POD]

13 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Finally had a walk round and successfully found our abducted garden waste bin - tucked away on a driveway right at the opposite end of the street. 

It was retrieved and has now been plastered on reflective tape and had the house number and address marked on the lid plus the number on all sides.

Hopefully that will discourage the gits from trying that again.

Really sick of this sort of suburban nonsense.

Use of a soldering iron to put the address on, is quite effective. 

[sierraman]

Reading today about one of these nutcase Green campaign groups called the IEA are suggesting that we should be jettisoning the gas boiler and instead have a £10,000 heat pump instead. So instead of a £2000 bill you’ll have a £10,000 bill. Excellent. 

Where do we end with all this carbon neutral drive? What will they want to ban next? I’m hoping whoever thinks these things up doesn’t plan on travel abroad ever again, that’s incredibly polluting. Let’s ban that, let’s ban meat because the manure creates Co2 emissions, in fact let’s ban everything and we’ll all live to be a hundred or at least it’ll feel like it because the environmental impact of everything you do will be analysed.

[beko1987]

I'm sure my landlord would be mega happy to be forced to fit one of those in my house... Probably neccitating me not living here as he rips the existing fully working system out... Then jack's the rent up to get his 10k back

Another idea for those whom £10k is a drop in the ocean! 

[Saabnut]

After 11 years faithful service, my cheap Tesco kettle has started to leak from the sight panel. Of course, at the moment I am just ignoring it and mopping up after each brew, but as I see it I have 3 options.

1. Buy a new kettle

2. Use Tiger Seal to fix* the leak

3. Both of the above and have a new* workshop kettle.

 

Hmmmm........

[artdjones]

3 hours ago, sierraman said:

Reading today about one of these nutcase Green campaign groups called the IEA are suggesting that we should be jettisoning the gas boiler and instead have a £10,000 heat pump instead. So instead of a £2000 bill you’ll have a £10,000 bill. Excellent. 

Where do we end with all this carbon neutral drive? What will they want to ban next? I’m hoping whoever thinks these things up doesn’t plan on travel abroad ever again, that’s incredibly polluting. Let’s ban that, let’s ban meat because the manure creates Co2 emissions, in fact let’s ban everything and we’ll all live to be a hundred or at least it’ll feel like it because the environmental impact of everything you do will be analysed.

Most green ideas  are regressive, they bear most heavily on the poor. For example scrappage schemes for green cars. A nice bonus for a middle class person who was going to buy a new car anyway, but useless for the poorer person who will never afford a new car, but has also had part of the source of reasonable second hand cars cut off because of so many being scrapped with years of life left in them.

[Low Horatio gearbox]

Enquiring in a for sale thread on fsceache, agenuine enquiry for a shedly but decent car (some underside pics and is it running), just to have the seller delete the whole sales post. 🤷‍♂️

[Talbot]

3 hours ago, sierraman said:

£10,000 heat pump instead

How on earth can a heat pump cost £10k.  They're essentially an air conditioner in reverse, and there's no way an air conditioner costs that much.

Strikes me that's a price for "early adopters", as in "we'll fleece the living shit out of you for as long as possible"

[cort1977]

4 hours ago, sierraman said:

Reading today about one of these nutcase Green campaign groups called the IEA are suggesting that we should be jettisoning the gas boiler and instead have a £10,000 heat pump instead. So instead of a £2000 bill you’ll have a £10,000 bill. Excellent. 

Where do we end with all this carbon neutral drive? What will they want to ban next? I’m hoping whoever thinks these things up doesn’t plan on travel abroad ever again, that’s incredibly polluting. Let’s ban that, let’s ban meat because the manure creates Co2 emissions, in fact let’s ban everything and we’ll all live to be a hundred or at least it’ll feel like it because the environmental impact of everything you do will be analysed.

The IEA are the International Energy Agency, set up after the 1973 oil crisis to manage the oil supply, hardly a green campaign group.

Where we end up on this carbon neutral drive is ideally keeping the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees.  Failing to do that will have significant consequences for our children and grandchildren such as droughts, fires and floods creating millions of climate refugees.  Arguably, that's already happening in Africa.

 

[andy18s]

1 hour ago, Low Horatio gearbox said:

Enquiring in a for sale thread on fsceache, agenuine enquiry for a shedly but decent car (some underside pics and is it running), just to have the seller delete the whole sales post. 🤷‍♂️

Probably already sold some time ago,and you just reminded him to take down the add

[cort1977]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

How on earth can a heat pump cost £10k.  They're essentially an air conditioner in reverse, and there's no way an air conditioner costs that much.

That's true but does that £10k include the larger radiators required for the heat pump?  Either way economis of scale will hopefully bring that down.

[Low Horatio gearbox]

11 minutes ago, andy18s said:

Probably already sold some time ago,and you just reminded him to take down the add

Listed 45 minutes before I asked 🤷‍♂️.

 

My other possible purchase  has 2 people  offering over the asking price but neither commenting to viewing the car. 🤔🤦🏻‍♂️

[Talbot]

27 minutes ago, cort1977 said:

That's true but does that £10k include the larger radiators required for the heat pump?  Either way economis of scale will hopefully bring that down.

Good point.  I often forget the infrastructure required to cope with the lower temperatures generated by a heat pump system.

ideal for underfloor though.

[Chas4545]

Just sold my longest ever owned car. 

I feel a bit like the family pet has died.

[omegod]

23 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Finally had a walk round and successfully found our abducted garden waste bin - tucked away on a driveway right at the opposite end of the street. 

It was retrieved and has now been plastered on reflective tape and had the house number and address marked on the lid plus the number on all sides.

Hopefully that will discourage the gits from trying that again.

Really sick of this sort of suburban nonsense.

I reckon number 18 are going to have you right off 

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, omegod said:

I reckon number 18 are going to have you right off 

Tricky as there are only 8 houses on the street!

[320touring]

5 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Tricky as there are only 8 houses on the street!

2 bits of tape needed...

 

"8-1"

 

That's my bin for #7!

[High Jetter]

1 strip of green tape (per and it belongs to no.3

[R1152]

6 hours ago, cort1977 said:

The IEA are the International Energy Agency, set up after the 1973 oil crisis to manage the oil supply, hardly a green campaign group.

Where we end up on this carbon neutral drive is ideally keeping the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees.  Failing to do that will have significant consequences for our children and grandchildren such as droughts, fires and floods creating millions of climate refugees.  Arguably, that's already happening in Africa.

 

I'd also add in the ever-worsening annual fires in Australia.

[Jerzy Woking]

On 5/16/2021 at 5:28 PM, tobyd said:

What I love more than anything is finding some loser has replaced something with the wrong part and in order to make it work* has also soldered on a connector for said wrong part.

Well done whoever you are.

Good work.

Please don't say it is the SV. If it is, it wasn't me!

[tobyd]

haha, no, thats still going ok I just need to sort the leaky carbs and balance them!

[artdjones]

13 hours ago, R1152 said:

I'd also add in the ever-worsening annual fires in Australia.

Are you sure they're getting worse. The biggest ever was in 1851 and burned out ¼ of what is now Victoria. There's more deaths and property destruction than before, but that could be owing to people deciding to live in vulnerable areas. Most of Australia isn't really suitable for human habitation, unless you are willing to adopt the same lifestyle as the Aborigines.

[Zelandeth]

Nice day.  Have errands to run.  Would like to take TPA out.

Not going to happen as I can barely get out of my drive because of the school parking situation, much less shuffle cars around to get anything out of the garage (which is behind two parking spaces worth of driveway).

Really wish we could bump "redevelopment of the front garden/driveway" up the priority list to solve that.  Oh, or indeed find someone willing to come and give us a quote for the work...rather than just sucking air through their teeth and saying "That's gonna be expensive mate!"

Yeah...no shit Sherlock... I'm asking you to basically bulldoze a 30 by 10 metre area and lay a complete new driveway, path, lawn etc, sorting the drainage while you're at it...Of bloody course it's going to be expensive.  If it was a simple one day job I'd do it myself. 

[R1152]

1 hour ago, artdjones said:

Are you sure they're getting worse. The biggest ever was in 1851 and burned out ¼ of what is now Victoria. There's more deaths and property destruction than before, but that could be owing to people deciding to live in vulnerable areas. Most of Australia isn't really suitable for human habitation, unless you are willing to adopt the same lifestyle as the Aborigines.

Perhaps I should have said "more frequent" but to me, they do seem to be getting worse. I'm not sure the residents of VIC who lost their homes last year will be terribly comforted to know it was bigger in 1851 but yes, I'm aware most of Aus isn't suitable for habitation - I spent several months working there in the early 00s.

It's not a place I'd choose to live; the popular image is somewhat at variance with the experience I had.

[artdjones]

2 minutes ago, R1152 said:

Perhaps I should have said "more frequent" but to me, they do seem to be getting worse. I'm not sure the residents of VIC who lost their homes last year will be terribly comforted to know it was bigger in 1851 but yes, I'm aware most of Aus isn't suitable for habitation - I spent several months working there in the early 00s.

It's not a place I'd choose to live; the popular image is somewhat at variance with the experience I had.

Yes, I had a friend whose dream it was to live there, who finally made it around 1990, a civil engineer. He hated it and went back to Wales after 6 months. 

[wuvvum]

4 hours ago, R1152 said:

It's not a place I'd choose to live; the popular image is somewhat at variance with the experience I had.

I found that.  It's nowhere near as laid back as I had been led to expect, and there are just as many arseholes there as there are everywhere else.