Period Nanny State Reminders

[LadyArowana]

When you put your clock back, check your smoke alarm batteries! ( says the girl who doesn't have one at all ).

 

[Gareth Hughes]

and don't forget to fix anything that's loose down today, and take special care tomorrow morning...

 

[middi]

When you put your clock back, check your smoke alarm batteries! ( says the girl who doesn't have one at all ).

That's a good idea !!!
( I didn't r realize that in caseof a fire the alarm would go off an hour later )

Middi

 

[Flyfisher]

A worthy reminder, but it's only my old-fashioned mechanical watch that requires setting to the new time, everything else in the house seems to adjust automatically - mobile phones, PCs, even the radio-controlled clocks in the study - and the smoke alarms we do have are mains-operated.

Anyway, the house is apparently going to be blown away to Oz tonight.

 

[Feltwell]

We seem to have so many clocks to reset - I always forget one..... Depressingly few are self-correcting!

In advance of the storm, I've just spent the last couple of hours clearing gutters, drains etc out and realising that one drain, that takes rainwater off a fair section of the roof, was blocked. Drain in question is, typically, in the middle of a very large hedge that separates me and next door, which is why it's prone to blocking.....

Anyhow, much scrabbling around on hands and knees, getting attacked by the hedge and scooping muck out of the trap later, water flows through it but not at the speed I'd expect. Manage to squeeze a plastic ruler through the trap and poke around and it meets very springy resistance, I'm pretty sure the drain is full of roots, no way to clear it except dig it all up....

 

[Penners]

Anyway, the house is apparently going to be blown away to Oz tonight.

I recommend setting down in Port Fairy, a few hours west of Melbourne. A delightful village.

 

[Flyfisher]

I'll bear that in mind if we make it to the end of the yellow brick road and actually get to meet the wizard.

 

[Owain]

I'm pretty sure the drain is full of roots, no way to clear it except dig it all up....

Can you or a drain clearance operative not put down a drain jet with a root cutter attachment?

http://www.rioned.co.uk/DrainCleaningTools.php

 

[Matt Green]

Death followed by plague?

Well, at least it's not a Man Flu warning...

 

[Feltwell]

Hope everyone's OK this morning, with no damage to your houses.

Nothing happened here in the end - at midnight, when it was supposed to be gale force winds and torrential rain, it was completely dry and there was no wind at all, I've never seen it so quiet! The forecasters did say the exact track of the storm was very hard to call, and I see from the news today that it seems to have gone further South than they first thought.

 

[LadyArowana]

Rain started about 9ish in London, and was a little bit blowy overnight. I haven't been out onto Hampstead Heath yet, but looks nothing like '87. Yes, some rail lines affected by fallen stuff, but honestly I think most of the disruption is because they went into panic mode and stopped everything because of what might happen. Seems rather pathetic to me. In places where they get proper weather this wouldn't even rate much of a mention.

Interestingly I have been watching our barometer ( an old one ) and it never went below "rain". When we bought it we talked to the chap at the dealer, who had been around in '87 ( his father ran the shop then ) and he said that before that storm the readings dropped lower than they had ever seen. They wondered what on earth was coming, but of course pre-internet there was only the regular old weather forecast. I did wonder if it would go down as far as "stormy" but no, so 200 years and still reliable I would say.

 

[Flyfisher]

Nothing of any note happened here; some wind and some some rain but nothing extraordinary for autumn and the Bramleys are still on the tree.

 

[Penners]

Power out for most of the day, but no plague of frogs, boils or locusts.

 

[Zebra]

Lots of trees down round here, had to drag some branches out of the road on my way to work this morning. But no boiled frogs.

 

[Feltwell]

I'm pretty sure the drain is full of roots, no way to clear it except dig it all up....

Can you or a drain clearance operative not put down a drain jet with a root cutter attachment?

http://www.rioned.co.uk/DrainCleaningTools.php

I think you'd struggle to get a jet to it. Going through the drain itself is not possible due to the trap, going from the access chamber at the other end is difficult because it's very deep - about 6' - so the angle to access is very tight. The pipe into the chamber serves two different drains so has a fork in it somewhere under the front garden, plus there is an angle somewhere close to the trap.

I think I'll try an exploratory dig near the trap, it's the most likely spot for trouble as the hedge is directly over it. If I can pull roots out from a joint then great, but if I can't find anything I'll get a drain man in with a camera. I'm not digging the whole garden up and I've no idea at what point it slopes down to enter the access chamber at 6' underground!

 

[Ebenezer]

Loads of fallen trees here too plus an entire roof ripped off an industrial building not far away.

We lost a fence panel... Now I'm worried the zombies will get in...

 

[timinder]

I reckon nearly 20% of the leaves which fell overnight on our back lawn were due to the "Storm". The rest would have come down anyway.

 

[Flyfisher]

We lost a fence panel... Now I'm worried the zombies will get in...

That's another reason for having a chainsaw.

 

[LadyArowana]

We lost a fence panel... Now I'm worried the zombies will get in...

That's another reason for having a chainsaw.

Happy Halloween to all lovely our PPUK members.

 

[Penners]

If you think that's going to get you a Kit-Kat from me, Yer Ladyship, you're much mistaken. So go ahead and shove a potato up my exhaust pipe.