3rd March 2018: Two weeks ago at home, our Worcester Bosch 24i gas boiler that powers the underfloor heating was at last fixed - and running well; after 5 visits from the engineer and several days without heat. And it only cost us £1,100 - just half the cost of a brand new boiler. But, phew, just in time before the coldest days in decades. Excellent timing on our part. Smug and snug.
The freezing cold was sent from Siberia by President Putin, to coincide with the first day of Spring - the 1st of March - accompanied by Putin's re-election pronouncement that his new nuclear bomb rocket flies at 5 times the speed of sound, can blast any city to smithereens, and can evade all counter tactics. "Resistance it useless". Have a nice day Mr Putin. But the immediate emergency overwhelmed his threatening news - the UK temperature dropped to an unprecedented -10C, when windchill was factored in.
All UK traffic and transport stopped. Gently bathed by the warm Gulf Stream Current, the UK is not used to or prepared for cold weather and snow.
We remained snug and smug. Then our newly serviced at vast expense Worcester-Bosch boiler, shut down. Our ten-years-old house is on a concrete platform raised on 31 mini-piles. The Siberian wind whistles under it and rapidly freezes the concrete. We live on the topside of this frozen waste. Usually the underfloor heating brings comfort and security. But not this month. The floor turned to ice; we begged, borrowed and stole electric heaters - we burned tons of logs - we fired up the oven and left the door open. Living was almost tolerable. Until the water supply stopped.
Water into the house is driven by the mains water pressure. This is a modern strategy to obviate the need for an upstairs tank of cold water providing pressure. With the mains connection frozen we had no cold and no hot water. In the modern world, this is most inconvenient. How, for example, does one flush the lavatory? Or fill a kettle? Or wash? I spent several hours a day lying in the 2.5 foot crawl space under the house, with a blow heater, aimed at the awkward concrete corner where the mains are left exposed before entering the house. It was bloody cold and incredibly uncomfortable. A very dumb or malevolent builder was to blame for this fault, leaving the mains exposed. No water - and no heat.
It transpired that Worcester Bosch say they are not to blame for our no-heat days. Their design includes a narrow exhaust pipe that conducts the noxious mixture of gas and water from the burner (burning gas with oxygen) to the outside wall; down the outside wall and into a foul drain. As it drips down the narrow pipe - at any temperatures below freezing, the conduit freezes, the dangerous fluid cannot escape and the boiler shuts down. Not very bright. Not top-notch anticipation. No prizes for engineering design. The effect is that Worcester-Bosch boilers, for safety reasons, shut down in cold weather. Doh!
At five o'clock this morning, I went to the lavatory. I had prepared a bucket of water, filled from a stream, for flushing. By habit, I pressed the flush-button. It worked - we had piped water! Hallelulja !
But what, you will ask, has this domestic tale to do with the embedded pictures. Well, first, I constantly warn the world about global-warming. The snowman is an ironic dig at my preaching that we must be ready - we must engineer the necessary new infrastructure. Secondly, I have invented a new form of freight transport, The Transport Internet & Foodtubes, that saves 80% of fuel and dangerous exhausts - which functions whatever the weather, or floods. We must engineer such solutions that slow-down global warming; which is already over the tipping point. Traditional planners and engineers don't get it. Politicians don't get it. Like our purblind builder and blinkered boiler designers - they do not act until the worst happens and the world stops working. You - gentle and intelligent readers can take your own precautions in advance of a crisis. One simple act is to Move to Higher Ground. Where to? That vexed debate needs a long book, not a short blog.
BREXIT - On the subject of intelligent forward planning, the UK public in total ignorance, without a shred of planning, voted in June 2016, after 43 years as a main-member, to quit the EU, our largest export market. This is known as Doing A Ratner insulting all your customers - it will bankrupt Britain. Yesterday, the Prime Minister in a desperate attempt to heal the furious parts of her split Party gave a long, long "complex" speech; which in essence said we will lose huge amounts of trade, the BBC and our media industry will lose 40% of its customers - and The City of London, our mainstay exporter, will lose its "Passporting Rights" to Europe, which will screw us. The City will follow the money and migrate to Europe.
The non-planning and gross stupidity is often focused as an example on Northern Ireland that has a land border with Ireland, in the EU. Will it require Customs posts and razor wire - again. N. Ireland voted Remain - to stay in the EU. Scotland voted Remain. Greater London voted Remain. Scotland and N. Ireland will leave the United Kingdom. London might have to stay in the UK, but it's lucrative business will go to Paris, Stuttgart, Madrid, Berlin, Rome etc - into the richest, 500 million person, most sophisticated market ever created. The UK is well and truly f*****. We should have done some intelligent planning before The Referendum. We should not have had a Referendum on such a technical subject involving 70,000 trade items where the rules have been agreed for decades. Our next Referendum will ask the unemployed east coast shipbuilders, and the rough sleepers in Birmingham, "Should we invest in nuclear fusion rather than nuclear fission YES or NO." And The People will decide.
BREXIT will lose 7 million UK jobs and wreck The United Kingdom. Why commit economic suicide? Because a few thousand politicians and VIPs, many in the media, demand to continue cheating the public through tax-evasion, via tax-havens. They can fix UK tax courts but fear the European Courts. The EU is closing down tax-havens. The EU doesn't know that "Only Little People Pay Tax". UK VIPs have $3 trillion of tax-evaded assets stashed in tax-havens, which buys a lot of influence in low-places.
BREXIT - On the subject of intelligent forward planning, the UK public in total ignorance, without a shred of planning, voted in June 2016, after 43 years as a main-member, to quit the EU, our largest export market. This is known as Doing A Ratner insulting all your customers - it will bankrupt Britain. Yesterday, the Prime Minister in a desperate attempt to heal the furious parts of her split Party gave a long, long "complex" speech; which in essence said we will lose huge amounts of trade, the BBC and our media industry will lose 40% of its customers - and The City of London, our mainstay exporter, will lose its "Passporting Rights" to Europe, which will screw us. The City will follow the money and migrate to Europe.
The non-planning and gross stupidity is often focused as an example on Northern Ireland that has a land border with Ireland, in the EU. Will it require Customs posts and razor wire - again. N. Ireland voted Remain - to stay in the EU. Scotland voted Remain. Greater London voted Remain. Scotland and N. Ireland will leave the United Kingdom. London might have to stay in the UK, but it's lucrative business will go to Paris, Stuttgart, Madrid, Berlin, Rome etc - into the richest, 500 million person, most sophisticated market ever created. The UK is well and truly f*****. We should have done some intelligent planning before The Referendum. We should not have had a Referendum on such a technical subject involving 70,000 trade items where the rules have been agreed for decades. Our next Referendum will ask the unemployed east coast shipbuilders, and the rough sleepers in Birmingham, "Should we invest in nuclear fusion rather than nuclear fission YES or NO." And The People will decide.
BREXIT will lose 7 million UK jobs and wreck The United Kingdom. Why commit economic suicide? Because a few thousand politicians and VIPs, many in the media, demand to continue cheating the public through tax-evasion, via tax-havens. They can fix UK tax courts but fear the European Courts. The EU is closing down tax-havens. The EU doesn't know that "Only Little People Pay Tax". UK VIPs have $3 trillion of tax-evaded assets stashed in tax-havens, which buys a lot of influence in low-places.
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