Troppo wrote in news:Xns9AA9ED6CBCFDtroppo19notsohotmail@210.8.230.25:
It's not usual, but I was curious and figured I ask ;)
REcycled stuff can be great. It always amazes me that people (in the US at least) just throw so much away. If it was collected whole ti souldnt' be so bad, but it all goes through the trash compacters.
Makes sense.
Buried, huh. I guess it's one way to get stuff out of sight when one no longer wahts it. Sort of like buried treasure for later inhabitants ;)
It makes sense in a way that people would take whatever trhey could use, onc somethign is abandoned. In a way, it's sad, becasue it's hard to piece together the history afterwards, but one can't say it isn't
*practical*.
THat's the thing that amazes be about Europe and Asia, the thousands of years of history that can turn up almost (sometimes?) literally in one's back yard.
The Americas were settled so mocu more recently, and worse, much of what there was of the first cultures was obliterated - a lot of the things they made and used, of course, were also ephemeral.
"EDS" wrote in news:oPqdnThS64Q_B6TVnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
Sounds great. I like stone a lot. WE ended up with ceramic tiles because they're so much less expensive, even cheaper as the grout-gaps are almost a half-inch :p , but if I could build a place that was built *to last*, I'd like to be able (budget permitting) to put doen stone, and some hardwood (recycled, pref.).
Although I'm not one for renovating, I'm always gald some people are, to preserve some of these gems. It's also neat IMO to see how people in the past did things. I liked the "bed of boiler ash" tidbit in Troppo's post, describing that 110+ yr old flooring. REsourceful, IMO ;)
"Don" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news5.newsguy.com:
ALso, isn't most resedential tile ceramic? Even if it's stone, how much does either stone ro ceramic tile expand/contract?
I'd also imagine that, if the stuff were to go through extremes, they'd use, not grout, but somehting like the mastic that was used between the coping on our pool (which is a type of travartine IIRC) and gets *quite* ho despite the light colors, and the decking, which is formuated to remain foot-comfrtable even on days with 100+ degree F temps and a full clodless day's worth of subtropical (29 deg N) sunlight...
Kris Krieger wrote in news:SZadnc_yase2ZafVnZ2dnUVZ_q snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
Gone a bit OT but never mind ...
[snip]
In a way - but in WW2 the local Home Guard were given a box of hand grenades which didn't get handed back at the end of the war.
Found the hard way by a farmer's plough. He survived but the plough was scattered everywhere ...
Another questionable practice - numerous drums of railway-issue bitumen squirelled away in the attics of the houses. Not too bad maybe - unless there was a fire. The fire-separating walls in the roofspaces had all been knocked through to install electric cable, hadn't been bricked up again, so if one house had gone up the rest would have been history.
I sort of miss it in way, but it was often a problem - every time a job involved digging a hole.there was always a chance of finding something, then everything being put on hold until the archeologists finished checking it out. Human remains anywhere.meant an inspection by the Coroner. I was on a job once where we found the skeletons of 5 dead miners in a drift mine shaft. We knew they'd been there a while as there were cages with canary bones in them. So whatever it was, gas or a tunnel collapse, had happened before the miner's safety lamp was invented, about
1832. Also found a Roman septic (wastewater) system. Pattern of stone arched tunnels a few feet down, near the site of a Roman fort. Still in good order and operational. When a farmhouse was built centuries later on the same site, they must have found the old ceramic pipes, and connected their ablution facilities into them.
Charnel pits would get exposed from time to time - places where the victims of Beubonic Plague were buried - hundreds of them at a time.
Similarly here in Australia. But here in Townsville we have General McArthur's bunker, complete with operations room and metre-thick concrete walls. Still in good shape - part of my department's offices are there, and the bunker is used by the Council for storing files.
There are places on the coast north of here where there are miniature under-sea mountains built entirely of jeeps, trucks, etc - pushed over the side of supply ships.
Mankind has always been resourceful, when allowed. My high school summer job was at the old Waste pump station on the Island. My first summer we were still using triple expansion steam engines, the next summer they had installed 2 diesels (each about the size of an 18 wheeler) running on methane collected from the main sewer lines (11' diameter). The system was deemed too expensive to maintain, so was switched to diesel fuel. Interestingly they are now installing wind generators to run the new plant. EDS
Troppo wrote in news:Xns9AAC116F3B24troppo19notsohotmail@210.8.230.25:
Holy cow... ;)
I saw some clips re: people (builders, excavators, etc.) still finding unexploded bombs in London. Scary stuff.
=:-o
It's one thing to use discarded stuff that's useable, but it's a bit crazy to keep soem stuff. OTOH, took a couple years to break my styrofoam meat tray thing (used to run 'em through the dishwasher and stack them in the garage...), so I can't make *too* much fon of "collectors"
A bit bizarre but also interesting to read about (tho' I wouldn't be very interested in finding human remains under my foundation...)
Not very pleasant. But historic (?historical?) I guess...
Doug's DUgout, eh? ;) Kind of interesting tho'.
One would think that'd have dire effects on the sea life. But don't a lot of sunken ships and so on, even metal warships, get turned into reefs by sea critters...? I guess it might be interesting to scuba dive around some of thiose, to see both what people discarded, and the abodes that sea critters turn it into.
(I often think I'd like to havea long visit in Australia - but I'm afraid I'd never want to leave once I got there ;) )
"EDS" wrote in news:4-6dnapyjZ20FqHVnZ2dnUVZ_v snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
Some waste treatment plants (the tertiary plants) are self-powering - they use the methane produced during the treatment process. WHen you see the pits where solids settle out and dry, you see a lot fo tomato plants. I suppose one doesn't see as many pot plants as used to be seen (they of course had to destroy those).
The methane from trash dumps can also be used as energy - thre is that one commercial for Johnson 'n' Johnson, where they tout the ne plant which is doing that, but in some developing areas, it's becoming fairly common, if I read correctly, becasue they have a lot of trash but little money for buying oil.
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