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.