Goddamn Screwfix

[Lobster]

Well, it must be about time someone slagged them off again here innit?

Anyone remember some discussion hereabouts concerning some Really Useful new radiator tails which Screwfix had added to their repertoire: they incorporated in-line screw-head valves to enable a rad to be qickly isolated and removed, and later replaced, while still full of water: no mess, no draining down, no loss of inhibitor etc etc: seemed briliant.

I bought a pair about a year ago intending to use them but never did, and finally fitted them only today to a new radiator. Went on fine, looked neat, then I opened the valves to fill the rad and.... one of the bloody things leaked like crazy, around the screw-head which you turn to switch the flow on and off. So, absolutely nothing that can be done other than drain down, dismantle the whole thing again, and go out and buy some proper tails.

So I'm well chuffed.

Had a look on screwfix.com to see when I ordered them and what they cost me but I note that all trace of these gizmos has now vanished from Screwfix's catalogue and records, apparently. Funny, that...

David

[Andy Hall]

The radiator tails are Pegler Terrier and obtainable from your favourite merchant.

There is a drain point inbound of the valves.

Regarding Screwfix keeping of old orders.. I always export mine as a PDF on the MAC - a built in function.

[Lobster]

No, the ones I've got don't have a drain point; they're more like an in-line service valve where you can just shut off the flow in/out of the rad.

Mac? Mac? whassat then...?

David

[John Rumm]

Its short for MACINTOSH, which is an acronym for "Most Applications Crash, If Not The Operating System Hangs" ;-)

(or alternatively its a bog standard Intel PC, with a NetBSD/Unix based OS with a nice NExT derived user interface glued onto it, and a religious following)

[Andy Hall]

OK, but you can do that with valve itself (if it's a good one). Why the need for an extra service valve?

Something everyone should have.....

[Andy Hall]

I don't know if it used to, but colleagues and I find that it's very solid indeed and application crashes very rare (even Microsoft ones). Typically mine gets slept and woken (although boot time is very fast) regularly over several weeks and only gets rebooted for the very rare occasions that I need to run a native boot of Windows.

I suppose it is religious for some. I just like to have something that works and does so quickly and reliably. I could have had that with one of the more commercial implementations of Linux I suppose, but even then I think that the applications and UI are better on the Mac.

[Ian White]

Over the present few days, see:

's what this newsgroup needs, a good comic strip. We've already got a title - see Subject.

Nominations for cast of characters?

[dennis]

Sounds just like my XP notebook. What extras do you get for the extra cash?

[Lobster]

To disconnect and remove the rad without draining, eg for redecorating (and if you saw the colour my daughter has just got me to paint her bedroom walls you understand why that's important!) - unless we're talking at cross-purposes, that's not possible with a drainable tail?

David

[Dave Plowman (News)]

On at least some if you shut off both valves and slacken the connections to the rad, you can unhook it from the brackets and lay it flat on a support of some type with very little water spillage.

[Stuart]

So to understand this arrangement .The tails have valves which you turn "off" and you then turn off the TRV as well then you remove the radiator together with the closed tail has a valve thereby avoiding any spillage of water out of the rad which is not possible if you only have trv's/lockshield valves that you shut .?

Stuart

[F]

Turning off the lockshield end and handwheel/TRV end will stop water escaping from the pipes but *not* from the radiator. That will empty all over the floor if you remove it.

The idea is that you loosen the valve connections onto the radiator just sufficient so that when you lift the radiator off its brackets you can rotate it downwards to rest on a suitable support You then tighten the connections back up to prevent any more water loss - there will be a little once you have slackened the connections and as you rotate the radiator.

The above assumes that there is enough vertical movement on the piping to be able to lift the radiator off its bracket - I have some radiators which are fed by pipes which don't offer either any or sufficient vertical movement.

[Lobster]

Yup, exactly! As I said, seemed like a good idea at the time...

David

[Fash]

You can buy some more if you want. Google Isorad tails. Still about =A35 each and presumably still the same, but go on you know you want them.

[John Rumm]

Tis, ok I was not being serious... Yes current models are pretty stable

- as you would expect with their unix foundations[1]. Go back to the old

68K/OS-9 and prior systems and they were less so - but still better than Win98 and its predecessors. [1] Question came in from SIL the other day (magazine editor, so a long time mac user in the publishing industry): How can I tell if I have enough RAM?

I talked her through opening the mac "Terminal" program, which dumped her into a bog standard unix type shell, so I could get her to run "top" to see what the physical/virtual memory usage and paging stats were like. She was actually shocked to find that beneeth all the translucent gloss of the UI, lurked a "real computer" with a command line!

I expect that shortly you will be able to have the best of both worlds.

Don't know if you read Bob Cringley[2], but a while ago he was reminding people that due to a technology sharing agreement between MS and Apple, Apple still hold rights to use various parts of windows up to and including version XP (including source). Hence it should be possible for them to build in direct support for windows apps, not just using dual boot, but also running in OSX alongside the native apps. That would then open up the interesting concept that the most secure and reliable way of running windows apps would be had by buying a Mac!

[2]

[Andy Hall]

A system that works reliably, doesn't slow down or load extra crap that isn't needed and continues to work correctly month in month out even with assorted applications added and removed. XP doesn't do that.

[Andy Hall]

As it is now, one can run Windows as a virtual machine under Parallels (similar concept to VMWare). It actually works pretty well and has the advantage that one can keep a known good virtual machine image and clone it for when Windows inevitably gets into an irrecoverable mess (or one where it isn't worth spending the time, and where on a PC one would recover from a backup etc.)

[Andy Hall]

Yes of course. It's the whole point. Turn off both valves and drain the radiator (only and cleanly) via the inboard drain c*ck.

[Clive George]

FSinstallationsO XP. My XP PC works reliably, doesn't slow down or load extra crap that isn't needed, and continues to work correctly month in month out even with assorted applications added and removed.

OTOH I can think of various people I'd rather had a mac, since windows boxes don't work for them.

cheers, clive

[Andy Hall]

Then you're very fortunate. There are a whole variety of Windows applications and utilities that do load a lot of extra crap and the user has no choice in the matter.

I have both, and *can* maintain Windows machines given time and effort to do it. I would rather spend that time doing productive work rather than system administration of something that still isn't an operating system despite years of effort by Microsoft.