The Stand- By demon

Err - no.

Unless your TV runs on AVgas, you've got to multiply by the average efficiency of an oil power station - say 60MJ of oil used.

And the issue isn't really the TVs using 60MJ, it's the few year old TVs using 10W.

Most newer stuff uses less power than most older stuff. If only for the reason that in many cases, it's gotten cheaper (in large volumes) to avoid needing an extra part (a heatsink) than to design it to use under a watt or so on standby.

Some of this debate misses one point. You spend 20-50 quid per year on electricity running stuff in standby. Where does this go?

Well - half probably goes to the generating company, and thence to workers in the UK, to feed the UK economy. All well and good.

But, the other half - or more - goes overseas. Never mind that some of it goes to distastefull governments, this means that for every pound that goes out of the UK, we have to sell something overseas, or buy a pound less of stuff from abroad.

Buying in fuel from overseas hurts our economy.

Strangely, this isn't really the case for nuclear.

As all of the construction and employment happens for people in the UK, and fuel isn't a cost.

Won't foreign companies be allowed to bid for building nuclear power stations? And isn't the major recent expertise with building and operating them French?

And I know of no indegenous source of Uranium.

searching for. The figures are from memory so don't quote me. 23% of co2 in the UK comes from homes of which about 60% is heating and 20% is hot water. About 10% was domestic electrical appliances. In essence the amount used by appliances on standby is bugger all compared to heating costs. Another factor I find amazing is that if global warming is due to air travel and car use why is air travel only responsible for 2% of global co2 and car use responsible for 3.5% globally. Seems somebody is telling porky pies here.

Kevin

Don't forget that all this standby and non-standby power used by appliances ultimately gets turned into heat. So for at least part of the year your standby/appliance power displaces heating, to some extent. Obviously if you have air-con during the summer, the standby power effectively produces _more_ waste, but I'm assuming normal people in domestic situations (offices can do their own calculations).

If you really want to save energy, put on a sweater and don't wash.

Pete

Yes, foreign companies may be allowed to bid.

The people building them will presumably be living in the UK, and not commuting to france daily. As will the people operating them.

The fuel cost is fairly small. You get about 150Mwh of electricity for

Though compared to gas heating, you're going to spend maybe 3 times the price.

Yes fair point... although the perhaps fiddle factor ought to take into account the proportion of non (directly) contributing nuclear electric generated in the UK.

Don't think I have ever seen one using that much. Even my 12 year old

That was a shortish flight, assuming the whole aircraft was one class giving a higher passenger density. Go for a longer trip, on an aircraft with club and first class, and there would also be a jump in oil burnt per passenger that could be quite significant. There are also plenty of old less efficient aircraft in use.

swings and roundabouts!

Although there is a trend toward "bigger and better" in AV gear which offsets some of the efficiency gains.

In message , at 00:23:28 on Wed, 25 Oct

About 6,000 miles each way, so 12,00 miles

About 10,000 miles a year.

Yep, simply shows that per passenger mile a modern plane is about the same as a car (and also the same as a high speed train).

searching for. The figures are from memory so don't quote me. 23% of co2 in the UK comes from homes of which about 60% is heating and 20% is hot water. About 10% was domestic electrical appliances. In essence the amount used by appliances on standby is bugger all compared to heating costs. Another factor I find amazing is that if global warming is due to air travel and car use why is air travel only responsible for 2% of global co2 and car use responsible for 3.5% globally. Seems somebody is telling porky pies here.

I don't know where you obtained your figures but ALL energy use adds to the global warning effect.

Just because something only contributes a small amount doesn't mean it's not important.

Mary

Why not wash? You can wash in cold or aired water.

Mary

That doesn't mean that it should be used irresponsibly.

Surely we're more knowledgeable and responsible than our forebears in this matter?

Mary

I know you'll probably say you use a local stream or well (!) but most water is pumped. That uses energy.

It does but it's not using the added energy needed to heat it.

Sadly there are no local streams hereabouts. We intend to use harvested water for washing and flushing but we have to get over Spouse's major surgery first.

That used a lot of power in the lighting over seven hours if nothing else. But he's still alive and has a good life in front of him, we hope.

Mary

Goldilocks wasn't a bear. ;-)

I had one in 1967. The vehicle had a mixture of Lockheed (Hydraulic) and Girling (rods and cables) brakes.

The front brakes were hydraulic (drums, 2 leading shoes).

The rear brakes were operated by a single hydraulic cylinder behind the drivers seat connected by a single cable to a bellcrank on the rear axle casing which operated the two rear drums (1 leading shoe per drum), via rods. The whole sorry lot rusted up quite frequently.

The handbrake lever was connected by a rod to the piston of the single hydraulic cyinder for the rear brakes. The handbrake lever itself was mounted under the floor in a die cast aluminium pillar block on the driver's right hand side by the door. This crumbled away. Exposure to salt/dissimilar metals, whatever I couldn't get a replacement to last more than 15 months despite painting it, undersealing it, & greasing it. The original had lasted 7 years !

I can't think of any condition of single component failure that could result in sudden catastrophic loss of all braking, but I'm pretty sure that the rear brakes could be seized solid with rust without the driver noticing other than a poor handbrake, which never had been very good. Then If the bore in the master cylinder developed a rusty patch this could damage the rubber seal resulting in the hydraulic system quickly becoming U/S.

The rods, BTW, were a swine to adjust especially since my vehicle had had a chassis repair which (thinking in retrospect) must have moved the rear axle forward by 1 - 2 cms. since all the adjustment was taken up and even after replacing a supposedly stretched cable still more adjustment was required. :-(

There's one on ebay, 575 quid if anyone wants one. ;-)

DG

I was thinking of a failure of one of the rods as it entered the cylinder, which would then absorb any travel there might be and also cause loss of hydraulic fluid.

I needn't have worried - what you say is quite enough! :-)

The rear brakes were connected to the single rear hydraulic cyinder by a "Stirrup" arrangement which surrounded it in the vertical plane. If a rod/cable came loose there was not enough available free movement to pop the piston out of the master cylinder.

By the same token if your car didn't have the same dimensions it had when it was new because some gash mechanic had drilled new mounting holes and moved the back axle you could have taken up all the allowed movement and still get no footbrake on the rear wheels. :-(

It was all hairy enough.

In reality it needed a chassis/brake lube about once per month.

IIRC in the user manual an oil & filter change was mandated every

DG