Heat at the Flick(er) of a Switch

 Our difficult-to-heat main room in the tower has been warmed up, visually at least, by the use of modern, highly realistic, LED flicker-flame light bulbs.

I have mentioned these on here before but, so effective were the first couple of bulbs, located in wall sconces, that we decided to try illuminating the whole room with them - seven bulbs in all.  The effect is that of a warm flickering orange glow all round.  Not only do they instantly warm up the room visually, they also give the entire tower a cosy appearance when viewed from outside.

The picture does not do justice to the effect as the flicker cannot be seen.   Also the 'red light' effect is exaggerated in the image.  In the picture below you can see the 'daylight white' glow from the window to the kitchen shining through in contrast.  If it is not to your liking you can just switch them off and turn on the normal white lights - or have a mixture of both.

Each flicker bulb has 99 LEDs and is rated at 6 Watts so just 42 Watts of power is lighting the whole vast space.  An old fashioned 40 Watt tungsten light bulb would have had negligible impact.

I got mine on EBay - £3.59 each for four or more, post free.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234461373953

Having a Happy Christmas

 Just the two of us this year.  The tower is lovely and warm, helped by a sudden 20 degree C rise in temperature of recent days.  Here's a cosy corner of the main room, complete with catalytic flue gas fire.  On full blast it quickly warms that entire vast space.  It is also a comforting stand-by in the event of an electric power cut which would take-out all other heat sources:

Daughter Lorna did a most welcome parental welfare visit before Christmas.  It's a heck of a drive from Gerrards Cross and back.  Here she is with her mum(my) tucking in at The Talbot, of course.

Meanwhile grandsons James and Ben are spending Christmas in Pittsburgh PA where, like most of the USA is under the Arctic 'weather bomb'.   An experience about which they can tell the tale.  Here's Pittsburgh PA:

One of Alan's 'furnaces' has chosen the coldest winter weather in recent history to fail just to add to the festive fun.

The boys fly back (unaccompanied) on Thursday by which time the US should have warmed up and Pittsburgh airport should be back in full swing.  Hopefully BA 171 to Heathrow will be warm.

Addit.  The boys have returned home from Pittsburgh, safe and warm.   Darcey the dog is pleased to see them - just look at that tail:

Not Just a Place to Catch Trains

A sign of the times.

Spiders' Lamp

 Bitterly cold weather today.  Not much snow here but the frost has done its magic on the old gas lamp at the north end of the water tower:

Lift Woes

 Our lift has been well used of recent times, especially since my broken neck / stairs reluctance.   We have kept it regularly serviced but it has never been 100% right since new.  Specifically it was temperamental when it came to re-setting it after maintenance.  A niggle but something was clearly wrong.  After a recent service the man from Foulds Lifts simply could not make the panel accept the codes to re-set it.  He rang the original suppliers Evo Lifts.  He even rang Aritco, the Swedish manufacturers all to no avail.  He was doing the right things but the lift just would not play ball.  Eventually, and for no reason, it accepted the codes at the umpteenth attempt.  The lift then worked perfectly.

But an intermittent fault could be dangerous so we decided to get it properly tested, diagnosed and sorted.

Foulds' engineer traced that problem to circuitry right at the top of the lift shaft - the blandly named U5 box which is the lift's main brain box.  Good to know what needed replacing.  Bad news was the cost!  U5 box £1,200 plus VAT. Happily we qualify for zero VAT for lift and such because of our decrepitude.  This is what the old U5 box looks like:

Tiny thing and light as a feather.  Solid gold would be cheaper.  Evo kindly got it for us at trade rates but we had to pay £140 import duty (thanks a bunch Boris).  There will be another £1,000 or two for diagnosis and fitting.  A £3,000 -ish repair!  Anyway the replacement is fitted and we have our lift back in action.

An interesting visit yesterday from Settle man Mike Howarth who dropped off a copy of Model Railways from 1967 which featured our water tower, below top picture:

We have very few old pictures of the tower but this one shows the top of the hairy scary ladder and the railings which surrounded the bridge across the tank.  It also shows the water level indictor to the left of the ladder.  Just visible is the white diamond shape at the bottom of its travel, indicating a full tank.  Elsewhere in the magazine is a feature about the Garsdale water tower, identical to ours and demolished in 1971.  The author had done drawings of Garsdale but he had to rely on the Settle tower for what the entrance doors had looked like:

Another visitor yesterday was Carl Johnson, boss man of builder Johnson Ltd who did the original building work back in 2010/11.  Carl had not been back since but was fascinated to see how the place was faring.  He was mightily impressed with the new rear extension and its energy efficiency.  He was though concerned about rainwater ingress between the cast iron tank and the tops of the main supporting walls in places.  We agreed that remedial work would be a summer job and he was confident that the problem could be dealt with.  Not only that his firm now has an enormous JCB hoist that can  reach the top of the tower to make for easy access to do the job properly and in safety.

Cats Aren't Daft

Purrcy, our now ageing cat, is expert at finding the warmest place in the house.  In our case it is the two doorways between the old kitchen and the main lounge on the first floor.  Why?  Because four underfloor heating pipes run below them in a four curves of differing radius.  Or is it radii?

Of the four pipes, two are presently cold (our contribution to the energy situation).  One is hot-hot-hot.  It is the pipe which takes the hot flow to the main lounge underfloor heating.  It is the only heating loop presently energised so it suffices to heat the whole tower.  The fourth is the return pipe going back to the gas boiler.  It is merely warm.

Purrcy's body fits neatly on the hot-hot-hot pipe:

Meanwhile in London darling daughter Lorna took this picture yesterday as she left the office heading for home.  Looks familiar.

Flaming Sconces

 Back in April we re-acquired a pair of blacksmith-made thingumies from the Folly

https://settlestationwatertower.blogspot.com/2022/04/what-are-these.html

The Folly could not use them so they offered them to us.  They nearest anybody got to a credible intended purpose was wall mounted lighting sconces.   

sconce¹

/skɒns/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. a candle holder that is attached to a wall with an ornamental bracket.

   "a wall sconce"

   • a flaming torch or candle secured in a sconce.

     "the sconces burning in the passage provided some light"

They have adorned the main lounge since.  Easy on the eye but so far useless.  LED technology moves ahead at astonishing speed and among recent developments have been very realistic flame-effect bulbs with 'flames' that flicker most realistically.  So now our sconces have been lit.  The still pictures do not capture the flicker but you get the idea:

Each is just 6 Watts and besides the impressive flicker they cast a comfortingly warm glow.  This winter the heating needs all the help it can get.

A Lovely Torch Touch

Daughter Lorna was chosen to carry the Commonwealth Games torch through relay segment 15 back in the summer.

Here she is in full swing complete with heavy police escort.

That picture wasn't the end of it though because this lovely personalised replica arrived in the post this week:

Somewhere Under the Rainbows

 Richard Brighton, manager of DCC Concepts next door took this remarkable picture yesterday

The lower rainbow nicely stretches from the stationmasters house on  the left to the water tower on the right with DCC's splendid showroom in between, including its very detailed main entrance - an exact replica of Settle station's main doorway.

An Exceedingly Good Photograph

 Not sure if I have posted this picture on this blog before but it is still worth repeating.  Settle station's down platform perfectly framed by a double rainbow.  By Anthony Ward

Three Steps to Heaven

Well, not heaven exactly but the next best thing - the steps now give safe and steady access to the new viewing platform and seat.  They are made from left-over sections of insulated wall from which the new rear extension is built.

Screwed and glued together and with anti-slip edges to the treads they are solid as a rock.  Here's another evening view this week.  It is dark in Settle but the western sky is still bright.  Well worth the climb.

A Cautionary Tale of Bath Lifts

 A broken neck (nearly five years ago quite soon) concentrates the mind somewhat when it comes to falls.  I remember that prevention of falls was a high NHS priority when I was a non-executive director of a Health Trust.  Falls, especially among the elderly, accounted for a huge number of hospital admissions - indeed, fatalities.   Easy to identify the problem but almost impossible to prevent them to any meaningful extent.  We are a poor design, top heavy and walking on just two of our four limbs.

We built-in some features when we adapted the tower, most notably the lift of course.  Since my big fall we have installed more handrails around the place too.  Still, some hazards remain - most notably getting into (easy just yet) and out of the bath - hard, inelegant, dangerous and bordering on impossible.

Baths are a bit old fashioned anyway, showers being quicker and, if brief, easier on water and heating.  Even so there's nothing more relaxing than a good soak in a bath.  For both of us getting out of the bath has become hazardous at best.  Yet the technology is out there to lower you into the bath and raise you out of it in safety.  We decided to go for it.  There are gadgets galore but the undoubted Rolls-Royce of them is the belt type electric bath lift.  All are expensive and the market (older people mainly) is vulnerable.

Most widely and very convincingly advertised is Aqua Lift.  Click here for a brochure the website said so we did.  Almost immediately the telephone rang, it was Aqua Lift.  Would we like a free home demonstration.  No obligation so why not?  Better still they could fit us in next day.  Good as their word their man, a smashing chap named John came and showed us the machine in a most expert and convincing 'dry demonstration'.  The machine was just the job.  It came to the price, inevitably.  I had done a bit of homework online and had been alarmed at the big range of prices for what appeared to be near identical products, differing only in the makers' name or so it seemed to me.  There is no VAT payable on the disability aid.  After a couple of phone call to head office the best price, with a substantial discount was an astonishing £2,316.25p.  That was today's price for an immediate order.  We wanted to do a bit more research, declined for now but promised to contact John if his price was competitive.  He said that he would have to return if was were to buy his Aqualift.  We shook hands and left it at that.

Aqualift head office telephoned next day to see how it had gone and reduced the price to £995, fitted. A lot less than half the price! We were tempted, naturally. However, not having been born yesterday, but being convinced by the excellence of the product, I took to Google. Amazon, not renowned for being the cheapest, had an identical looking gadget for £765, with the trade name Bentley. Probing further I found a Bentley online, brand new, for £745. Meanwhile on EBay there were second hand Aqualifts for next to nothing but caveat emptor of course.

We ended up getting a Bentley bath lift, postage free next day for £695 from a firm in Cornwall. I rang them first in an effort to see that they existed and had a very good chat about my adventures.

Well, it is fitted and today we both had baths. It works and is bordering on fun.

Down, Up, remote control, bath temperature and battery charge indication. Lithium battery is good for 20 or so downs and ups before recharging. I fitted it, being a fairly handy chap.

Bentley Bath Lift

Night View from the Viewing Platform

 We have quite taken to sitting on the indoor rooftop viewing platform.  As the evenings are drawing in this means an early view of sunsets and into the hours of darkness.  Here's an example.   When Settle stations lovely old 'gas lamps' come on in response to the darkness the view is even lit up for us.  

The lamps are actually modern exact replicas of the once familiar Victorian copper topped lamps on cast iron posts.  Every station along the line has them as a result of a huge grant from the Railway Heritage Trust.  They used to have those orange coloured sodium lamps, recently replaced with LED bulbs of gas-lamp colour.  Don't they look fine?  Far cheaper to run as well.

Square Wheels

 Our railway line has had a serious derailment just south of Carlisle.  A train that passes through Settle almost daily is the cement train from Clitheroe to Scotland.  On Wednesday I saw and heard the cement empties pass through Settle at 1106.  This routine happening was memorable because I heard a loud bang - bang - bang - bang noise as it sped past.  Not unusual.  Trains can and often do lock their wheels under braking.  This can cause a flat spot on the locked wheel which if allowed to remain can damage the track as well as making a noise.  Worse, it can cause a derailment.

This is what seems to have happened to our loaded cement train as it approached Carlisle where there is a set on points where the S&C and the Tyne Valley lines merge.  A really bad wheel flat can create a false flange.

This is the suspect Carlisle wheel showing the false flange, the flat, and very very obvious scorching.  Because of the line's speed limit heavy trains coming downhill from Ais Gill summit undergo long spells of braking.  A wheel with a serious flat like this will lock up, worsening the flat.

Above is today's scene.  All these wagons are derailed. Two are out of sight - in the river Petteril below.

Network Rail are speaking of weeks rather than days to recover the vehicles and repair the damage - including the river bridge which dates from the 1830s.

SETTLE INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL 3 - Complete with Aeroplane

 This morning on my way back from the front gate / letterbox with the Daily Telegraph I just had to take this picture.  The light was just right to show off the Wendy House a.k.a. Mark's Man Cave or Settle International Terminal 3 - earlier posts explain why.

The mid-October sunrise gave T3 a halo, the sky was blue and a northbound vapour trail was prominent against a clear blue sky.  London Heathrow to Glasgow most likely.  The window of Terminal 2 also shows up well.

Still With You Ukraine

 Apart from the period of mourning for the Queen, we have flown a Ukrainian flag over the tower since the start of the invasion.  It was small though. Over time its yellow component had faded to white and it had almost blown itself to shreds.

With mixed feelings yesterday I raised a brand new and bigger one.

I look forward to lowering it one day - the sooner the better.

Life's Full of Surprises

 You can be married to somebody for decades and still there are surprises.

Now THAT"S a View

 The horizontal railing intruded annoyingly into the otherwise glorious view from the viewing platform:

Depending on your eye line it was always on or near the horizon.  But no longer:

I've left the vertical post in the centre and also 60mm stubs projecting from that post and from those on each side.  The removed two sections of 25mm rail can be replaced at any time using 30mm outside diameter (26 mm inside diameter) tubular collars securing the joins firmly in place.

A raily good result, eh?

From the ground the absence of the two railings is invisible - they coincide with the roof overhang's shadow.  The still in situ vertical post completes the illusion:

Gerrard's Cross

 Just spent a delightful weekend with family in Gerrards Cross - the first time we have visited there since Covid so there have been a lot of changes.

Not least the boys James and Ben have both shot up and are way taller than their mother, Lorna.  Here's one of little olde me with James for comparison.

Sixth former James is learning to drive too!  Here's his VW Up parked outside with his mother's big Jag behind it.

And her's said mother in her lovely sheltered garden with Darcey the dog looking a bit wary of the camera.

New Top-of-the-Tower Indoor Viewing Platform

 Our roof room sits deliberately low down inside what was the water tank.  This is to stop it dominating the overall appearance of the tower and topmost structure.   Several things were incorporated into its design to minimise its outward appearance.

From inside though the lowered floor of the roof room is disappointing in that all that a seated person inside the room can see is the inside wall of the cast iron tank.  Impressive but frustrating.  The view to the east is further restricted by frosting to the lower parts of of the roof room's glazed east wall.  That was a planning requirement to prevent us overlook an adjoining garden.  It doesn't work at all well as visitors always ask about it and on hearing the explanation they invariably stand on tiptoes and look over the frosting or go outside to satisfy their natural curiosity.

To the west though are much finer views stretching for miles into Lancashire, the Forest of Bowland and the hills above.

The roof room has had its problems - cold in winter, hot in summer and bedevilled by cluster flies in autumn - see recent posts.  The fly problem seems to have been solved or drastically reduced - time will tell for sure.  The room has been used as an occasional bedroom, dining room and TV lounge but it has lacked a main purpose.  Yet there it sits overlooking a view-to-die-for, rarely seen.  I have long wondered about building a viewing platform in that otherwise underused room.  Well, at last I've done it:

Simple really - a modern see-through sliding two-seater chair, securely mounted on a spare table that was just waiting for a permanent use.  Accessed by three steps, the seated occupant now looks straight out over that stunning view.  Incidentally, the picture shows well the clever design of the massive steel verticals which form the window frames and support the roof.  They are of T section with a very deep upstroke of the T and very small horizontal top strokes.  That design enables very slender frames when viewed from outside yet makes for a massively strong roof support.  Compare the verticals on each side of the viewing platform.

Sitting in comfort and in any sort of weather there it is in all its glory.  Thanks to recent tree felling we can even see the trains.  The only impediment is the horizontal black (purely ornamental) handrail.  That will be made removable and we shall see if things look right with that arrangement.  The inside of the tank will have a repaint while we are at it.  Work in progress but hopefully the result will be an enjoyable and really useful roof room.  The presently very obvious former dining table may yet be cunningly disguised.  Standing head-height on that viewing platform is right up to the ceiling.

No dining tables were harmed in the making of this structure.

You Never Know Who's Watching

 Mark Harvey is a clever chap and a brilliant photographer.   He has devoted years of his time to meticulously recording and documenting every structure along the 72 mile length of the Settle-Carlisle railway line.   The stunning results can be seen on his SCRCA* masterpiece online.

SCRCA

*SCRCA? I hear you cry.  Settle Carlisle Railway Conservation Area.  The longest Conservation Area in the land and perhaps the most spectacular.   The very survival of many of the S&C's structures is down to the existence, and enforcement of the SCRCA.   Maybe our water tower included.

Yesterday the weather was right for Mark Harvey to throw caution to the wind and climb to the top of Settle's Castlebergh Crag and see if he could get an almost aerial panorama of Settle station.  Here is one of the resulting images:

He would have got a fine view of the station were it not for the late summer trees in full foliage - and a certain enormous water tower.  Still, a fine view and  amazing detail of not just the station but also the houses and industrial buildings behind it.  A 'context view' in the jargon of the SCRCA, almost westwards.

Mark H is meticulous about not infringing anybody's privacy so he scans his images in detail before using them.  At first sight there are no such problems with that picture.  Is that a person on the footbridge though?  Any registration numbers readable?  Looks good.  But hang on, are we sure?  Maybe you can click on the pic and zoom-in to check.  That is what Mark H was able to do with his high resolution original image.  What he found was astonishing.

Not at all obvious at first but is that somebody's head between the roof room and the sloping roof of the tank-top but sunken wooden shed?  It was me, inside the tank, about to make my way southwards along the narrow and deep walkway inside the tank between the roof room and the eastern side of the tank.  Nothing to worry about in terms of Data Protection though.  That narrow sunken walkway was a planning requirement to protect the privacy of a neighbouring garden.  An unwelcome consequence meant that any later maintenance high up on that side of the roof room would involve climbing.  At height.

Zooming in on a slightly later image was this:

One foot on top of a near vertical ladder and the other on a narrow shelf inside the tank.  Hands free I am fixing sealant strip under the roof overhang as part of the campaign to keep flies from having access to the roof room (see previous post).  The operation is not as dangerous as it might appear, thanks to the slender but very strong horizontal continuous railing around the top of the tank.  The railing normally serves no purpose apart from creating a horizontal black line above the tank, one of the clever devices to conceal the roof room when viewed from the ground.   It was never intended as a safety fence but on this occasion (and others) it was - thanks to Settle blacksmith David Clements who did the vertical posts and to Jonathan Mounsey and his men who did the rails in between.  The posts were forged from tank bracing rods and the rails are of immensely strong tubular steel industrial electrical conduit.  Fortuitously.

I remember Restoration Man producer Melissa Mayne telling me that planning requirements and building control insistences could be a toxic mix.  How right she was.

Thanks also to Mark H for allowing me to use this set of pictures.  Bracing myself for thorough tellings-off from daughter Lorna and wife Pat.  Both far scarier than this carry-on.

Flies Frustrated?

Some of you already know that we have had immense problems with cluster flies getting into and being unable to get out of our wonderful roof room.

Throughout the summer I have been investigating how the little perishers are getting in in the first place. Clearly, flies can get into an enclosed room via the doors when open - but not in their millions.  I took apart the roof overhangs and found 101 ways in to the flat roof space.  It need to be ventilated after all.  Once in there they need to find a way though the ceiling and there are gaps aplenty - most obviously round those inset little ceiling lights.  There is, in cluster fly terms,  a massive gap between the LED bulb and the lamp housing.  I abandoned all of those and replaced them with 500mm x 500mm square flush-to-ceiling LED panels, suitably (I hope) sealed.  That alone may have done the trick but I shall never know.  The lights are brighter and better anyway.

On the outside I have sealed every gap between cladding panels with backer rod (Google it) and roofing sealant.  That just left the half dozen or so round vents in the undersides of the overhangs through which flies could fly with their eyes closed on a near constant current of air if the vents were doing their intended job.

Each of those vents has been inelegantly but firmly sealed with minute stainless steel fly mesh and silicone sealant (lower).

The fly season will soon be upon us and I shall report further. 

Here is a reminder of the scale of the problem - dead flies surrounding the space in a corner of the roof room where a cylinder vacuum cleaner had been standing.