Brickies in London

[charles]

I heard last week that one of the major housebuilders has bought up all the available bricks, reckoning on getting planning permission to build wherever they want.

[F Murtz]

Binoculars show one round circle not two joined together, burglars can not just cut a round circle in glass and just remove it, the film makers know it as they have to get glass people to cut the hole and they must see how they do it) Lock picking is not as they show it.

[Nightjar]

That is what I've been told with regards some thicker than usual high density blocks that I need to fill a hole in a wall between two factory units. The apparently simple job is months behind schedule as a result of the shortage.

[Ian Jackson]

The instruction manual PDF seems to be for a megger - so I suspect their claim that it works on multicore cable is questionable. If the go-and-return currents are equal and opposite, it can't (can it?).

[whisky-dave]

Wasn't there a TV comedy series about that, with the famous phrase "give us a job" in a northern accent. Where they went to germany to get well paid work. Auf Wiedersehen Pet.

[Adrian]

Boys from the Black Stuff

Different series, but - yep - that popped into my mind, too. And, of course, the Irish coming over here to labour on the early railways, canals etc etc.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

On one of those, they had an actor who really could plaster. Most unusual

- most talent doesn't know one end of a screwdriver from the other.

[Tim Streater]

The only thing the talent has going for it is some amount of cajones, and the gift of the gab. These two allow them to think that they are experts in politics, economics, ...

[Andrew]

If you use the thin-joint technique of laying celcon thermal blocks, you don't need a brickie.

If the UK construction industry wasn't so stuck to the past, like limpets, we might have moved on further than just timber framed houses with a brick skin.

There have been plenty of tv progs on BBC and C4 recently showing houses built on a shoe string budget and they were clad in all manner of things other than bricks.

If there really is a brick shortage, expect large numbers of 'chalet' houses with top floor inside the roof structure.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Ricky Tomlinson (Brookside, Royle Family, etc) was a plasterer. Don't know if that's who you are thinking of.

[Andy Burns]

Does look temptingly easy, doesn't it? I'm sure I've seen systems other than the PoroTherm which include 'T' and 'L' blocks too. Seems very easy to chase for cables and pipeworks.

The insulation values of the 200-300mm deep blocks seem to exceed that of a brick+airgap+rockwool+block+plasterboard wall.

Of course you have got to render or clad it outside.

[harryagain]

The purpose of the thin joint lightweight block system is to reduce energy loss. The cement is a much better conductor than the blocks. Apparently makes a significant difference.

[harryagain]

All bollix. It won't happen. Just pre-election bullshit.

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Rod Speed writes

It's certainly not clear to me. I have difficulty imagining a non-fault situation where the go and return currents would not be the same.

[newshound]

A really outstanding and interesting speaker, IMHO

[Johny B Good]

I posted a few comments on such cold war spying technology being used to take measurements of the current in an electrical appliance flex without the need to seperate out the live or neutral wires a few years back in, afaicr, the alt.energy.homepower news group.

The presumption was that some company had figured out a way to commercialise a cold war spy technology for monitoring communications cables without leaving any trace of tampering by using a multi sensor array and sophisticated (at least at the time of its development) DSP to monitor the near fields of the various twisted pair circuits.

In this case, they'd solved the less complex task of determining the current flowing in each of the two wires involved by using a multi sensor array to examine and analyse the near field leakage surrounding the whole cable flex, allowing them to offer a clamp sensor that could provide the required accuracy by clamping around both wires of the mains lead appliance flex.

It's not an obvious way to measure current but with modern sophisticated DSP and two or more sensors in the 'meter clamp' it's entirely doable to a reasonable level of accuracy.

[newshound]

I guess it could (in theory) detect a fault to earth because then there would be current which is not passing through the "clamp". But at the basic level I can't see how it would measure anything at all if it is clamped around a two core cable without a fault. Can anyone enlighten me?

[newshound]

) Lock picking is not as they show it.

Fortunately

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Johny B Good writes

Ummmmmmmmmm........ . . .

[Tim Watts]

It can and it did - I used one quite extensively for computer room power surveys.

The way it worked, I believe, is to look at the localised magnetic fields. 2 longitudinal conductors with equal and opposite currents actually only cancel at infinity. Any closer and there will be field imbalances.