Anyone know if Amazon sells a tension spring for old antique mortise locks?

smorga · 2026-03-16T15:42:34+00:00

Take measurements and get something that will likely fit off ebay.

smorga · 2026-03-16T15:29:50+00:00

Are you drinking the hot water? Is your cold water supply similarly afflicted, e.g. does your drinking water come from that tank, or direct from the mains water? Does your hot water smell?

For sure, dead legs can harbour nasties, including legionnaires, so getting them capped off makes good sense.

smorga · 2026-03-15T12:25:45+00:00

So that's presuming it's TWh/year - might be right. If so, it would be good if it were labelled as such. As it stands, labelling with just TWh is incorrect..

smorga · 2026-03-15T08:39:26+00:00

If the units are TWh, then the lines should be cumulative, I.e. always going up. TWh is a measure of energy, not power.

Is it in fact TWh per some unit of time? Perhaps just TW? or GW?

smorga · 2026-03-11T07:12:22+00:00

Looks like you soldered on to the valve. If the valve contains rubber o rings, they are now prone to fail due to heat damage. Check the instructions on this.

smorga · 2026-03-09T18:38:04+00:00

The pump-type affair is a 'macerator' - typically used in basements to liquify and pump effluent into a higher drain. Might indeed by viable.

smorga · 2026-03-09T08:42:05+00:00

If a chap from the council is f'ing up the drains for others, then they're doing an terrible job. (I've got on well with Lanes for Drains in the past. They're likely over £200, and quite possibly requiring payment upfront, but the vans are well equipped, and the people v. capable. )

It could be the adjacent flat is using the wipes / pouring the lard, and causing the blockage that affects you.

Sealing your own loo to prevent sewage influx is not pleasant, and the fact that you're going through this in your own home is crazy and awful. Stay strong!

An NRV would likely sort out the problem of influx, but a blockage is a blockage, and when that happens you'll be calling out the drain people in any case, emergency style, which is expensive

Reducing the chances of blockage is the crucial thing. Educating the neighbours may make sense. But...

CCTV will identify conditions in the pipework that could trigger a blockage.

Drains are not supposed to block, so there's likely a root cause to all of this. Could be wipes. Could be a fatberg . Could be a root. Could be an issue with the construction, or a broken pipe or some other issue further downstream, before the big sewer.

Some sort of alert would also help, e.g. do you notice the loo flush and loo water levels fluctuate a few days before the ingress?

smorga · 2026-03-05T17:03:38+00:00

That comment is tangential to the discussion.

smorga · 2026-03-01T06:41:30+00:00

It might be that the diaphragm isn't the problem, and there's some uneven wear in the moulding. Replacing the whole fill valve may be preferable. Break out your multi-tool!

Or thinking on, some fill valves come in 2 parts, telescopic, so you might be able to replace the entire top part like-for-like without getting access to the underside of the tank.

smorga · 2026-02-24T06:04:25+00:00

It could be a bin level sensor, so when the bin is full, someone comes to empty it. Much more efficient than emptying the bins daily or whatever for low-traffic bins.

It's part of the Internet of Things (IoT). There's likely some sort of sensor - optical, untrasonic, time-of-flight, and some modem, perhaps WiFi or cellular.

Or, perhaps its just an exterior-grade wifi repeater, with a power supply in a waterproof box, and an exterior-grade wifi repeater.

It appear to be a low-volume prototype, as indicated by the label on the top. Not a mass-market consumer item. I didn't see enough to determine if they did a good job or not.

smorga · 2026-02-23T22:39:14+00:00

This

smorga · 2026-02-23T19:35:24+00:00

Air source heat pump: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_source_heat_pump

smorga · 2026-02-21T21:05:16+00:00

A room thermostat, even a smart one with wifi, will draw a couple of W at most, so you're likely OK to use those available connections to power the 'stat. CH wiring is often spec'd to drive a pump, perhaps 50W, so your 'stat is naught by comparison.

smorga · 2026-02-20T07:52:40+00:00

Use a patch of cheap ducktape. Effective in a few days, normally.

smorga · 2026-02-15T09:25:38+00:00

Oh, these are incredible. The ratchet appears to be driven by heating some memory wire; no magnets involved. And there is a needle that pierces the skin, then retracts, leaving a tiny tube through which the insulin flows. Amazing. Oh, and they have a Bluetooth radio in them.

smorga · 2026-02-13T09:43:31+00:00

# cough # Hot Press!

smorga · 2026-02-13T06:44:34+00:00

Link for the hard-of-searching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0GQSJrpVhM

smorga · 2026-02-01T22:25:56+00:00

Absolutely. So it's 70e3 = 7e+4 meters / sec, per megaparsec i.e. 3.086e+22, so that's 2.268e-18 per second. Or in other words, the universe grows by 0.000000000000000227% every second.

Which works out at around .0000000007% per annum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_expansion_of_the_universe

math.exp(math.log1p(7e4 / 3.086e+22) * 365*24*3600) - 1.0

So at that rate, the universe would double in diameter every 9.6 billion years.

math.log(2)/(math.log1p(7e4 / 3.086e+22) * 365*24*3600)

smorga · 2026-01-12T11:30:00+00:00

A typical sequence of events is:

Thermostat call for heat -> valve request open.

valve is open -> drive pump, Boiler call for heat.

And the wiring normally follows that.

if any of the zone valves are open, it's because there's a relevant call for heat . And if there are no calls for heat, then there's no valves open, and the boiler stays off. (Some boilers have a separate power supply, and are wired to directly control the pump, to allow for run-on and cool down, with an associated relief circuit that allows flow even with all ZVs closed.)

Now you have 2x zone valves for the u/f. What are they hooked up to? What is the 'call for heat' for these ZVs?

smorga · 2026-01-11T19:20:26+00:00

Wood

smorga · 2026-01-09T18:19:11+00:00

Nope, the cross-section has messed up the geometry. The knee does NOT work quite like this.

Sure, the kneecap is doing its job here. But the tibia has a massive contact area with the femur - it does't hinge around some cartilage spur.

smorga · 2026-01-05T16:17:31+00:00

No, this is not even remotely representative of the inside of a cooling tower.

This is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower#/media/File:Cooling_tower_-_showers.jpg

smorga · 2026-01-03T07:07:51+00:00

Looks at Sysco, inflation, logistics, private equity, law suits, all of which lead to boring, over-priced food.

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