Mica Heaters

 It's a while since we did a post about an apparently very good buy and this one seems too good to be true, so here goes.

Our Terminal 3 - the insulated and double glazed shed-on-the-hill, cruelly dubbed our Wendy House by architect Stuart Green, has been almost useless in winter as it is unheated.  Conventional electric heaters take so long to heat up that it is just not worth the bother.  Yet it is a gorgeous man-cave.

Casting round for a solution I came across this little baby:

Not the prettiest thing on God's earth but in heating terms it seems like a break-through to me.

The make is Duronic but there are others out there.  It is a mica or mica-thermic heater.  It is light in weight so can be moved from room to room with ease.  Inside a metal cage are four flat mica panels through which pass electricity, 100% being released as heat, as with most electric heaters of course.

What is remarkable though is that the output of heat is almost instant - partly as convection and partly as radiation.  There is no fan so it is silent.  Ours is 2 KW and there are two very obvious controls.

The top one is on/off and power. The lower is a thermostat.  If it is knocked over it turns off.

Result - instant local heat and comfort for short time use - a quick read of the Sunday paper maybe - or for more general space heating longer term.

The Wendy House seems to have become a year-round option.

The current issue of Which? magazine has a feature on electric heaters.  Mica-thermic heaters do not get a mention.

Usual disclaimers of course.

Settle from the Air in the Fifties?

 This has cropped up online in the last day or two.  An amazingly detailed aerial picture of Settle which actually gives a view of the water tower from the east, before it became obscured by trees.

There it is near the top left:

click picture to enlarge

Note the near absence of almost  anything on the far side (above) the railway.  Exceptions are Settle gas works and a few houses along Bankwell Road, Giggleswick.

Date seems to be late 1950s or early 60s by the look of vehicles.

Here's a bit of a zoom-in on the water tower and immediate area. The tank is full of water and the footbridge across the top can be seen:

Life's Good

 We have just spent an hour on the sundeck in front of the Wendy House / Terminal 3.  Tipped off by our local weather app that the sun would be shining until sunset and with higher than average temperatures we have been able to:

-watch the vapour trails and look-up on  Planefinder where they are, what they are and where they are going (way out over the Irish sea and destinations ranging from Inverness to Miami)

- watch the commuter trains coming and going and thanking our lucky stars we are not on them

- putting the World to rights

Bliss.

The sundeck never fails to deliver something.  Here's some blue sky, sunset and impending doom!!

Toys and Trailer Tucked Away

 It's been raining. Lots. This has meant that the cavalcade of Toys and the big trailer had to get wet for a couple of days.  Yesterday though, I was able to get them all sorted.  Both big toys were running sweetly for the first time in ages and with the help of the tractor I have been able to tuck away the big trailer in the area that used to be occupied by the tin shed - now at the station.

For the benefit of the best-daughter-in-the-World. there's still work to do but the-best-dad(dy)-in-the-World is getting there and it keeps him out of mischief.

Big Boy's Toys Running Again

 My two Toys are a Yanmar 2 cylinder diesel tractor and a Geest three-wheeler truck. Neither has run for two or three years.  The tractor had a blown head gasket as it turned out.  The Geest truck just wouldn't start.  During the time we were doing the extension they were both sources of background worry at a time they could both have been useful, had they worked!

I actually had the diesel mini-tractor engine in bits for ages but admitted defeat.  Would I be able to find somebody to mend both machines, including an engine as a box of bits.  On a local Facebook page I found Graham Fawcett machinery and plant-hire at nearby Bentham.  They revel in challenges and came up trumps - firstly with the tractor and now with the truck, collected today and both vehicles are back home.

The tractor's engine is on top form now and runs like a dream.  A deep, low, slow, chug-chug-chug is almost soporific.  With tow balls front and back it enables me to manoeuvre the big trailer (another toy) with ease.

The truck now starts first-pull and runs beautifully.  Graham Fawcett had clearly fallen in love with it and was most impressed with its 'good as new' Villiers engine.  The truck had not been a total success on our extensive yards, covered as they are in stone chippings, quite deep in parts.  The single front driving wheel tended to rotate then dig in.  The truck would be stuck.  At Bentham we decoded that a factor was the front tyre - a smooth road-going type which could have much more grip with a tractor type of tyre so that is what it now has.

Here are the toys on arrival at the water tower this afternoon;

And here is the chunky front tyre on the Geest:

Tomorrow I shall DRIVE it off the trailer and we shall find out if it all works,  I might even seek to get it road registered.  Wouldn't that be real fun for trips to the tip?