SIPs building

By Andy Comment Closed
After quite a few months of planning (including a little planning wrangling), we finally started work on our SIPs garage - in October, clearly the best time of year for starting a building project in the Peak District! Once the groundworks were completed by a local builder/contractor (A M Smith Construction) and the scaffolding was up (Hope Valley Scaffolding) the SIPs firm, McVeigh Offsite arrived on site on 6th November and started work. The first day was spent getting the battens aligned and screwed down onto the blockwork upstand and after that the "big" construction started.  You can now see why we used SIPs with the Peak District weather!  6 working days and the structure was complete, including the roof (not shown on this video) and temporarily weatherproof (the entire building is wrapped in a breathable, waterproof membrane). Once the structure was up we got the roofing on pronto to get the building properly weatherproof and ready for the Edale winter!  Thanks to Mark,...
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The Aga Saga

By Andy Comment Closed
Well, Autumn is here in the Peak District and it's time to get the Aga relit (a real first world problem this).  Watch this space for details on setting your "High" and "Low" fire rates on your Aga with a couple of plastic tubs, a screwdriver and a Calpol syringe!...
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Nice work if you can get it….

By Andy Comment Closed
Somewhere in the distant past (well, not so distant) I used to be a school governor and was quite shocked about the waste of money in local authorities, in particular their attitude to poor performance in SLT (senior leadership team) staff i.e headteachers and deputy headteachers. In 2016-2017 Derbyshire LA spent £85,000 paying off just 4 SLT staff at Derbyshire schools under settlement agreements.  An average of £21,250 per staff member (maximum £28,000, minimum £13,000) was handed out and this doesn't include any salary whilst on long term sick or "gardening" leave let alone the associated legal costs.  Good old FOI act! https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/school_slt_head_teachers_and_dep Will try and write a more comprehensive post in the future on this subject; just been busy with the Aga Saga!...
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VW T5 alternator and a/c couplings

By Andy Comment Closed
If you own a VW T5 (or a Toureg) with the 2.5 litre, 5 cylinder, AXE/AXD/BLJ diesel engine then here's something you need to make sure either has been, or will be done on your van! According to the service manual the following need to be replaced every 150,000 km (93,000 miles ish): Alternator freewheel Air conditioning freewheel Alternator elastic coupling Air conditioning elastic coupling What on earth are these bits?  Basically, rather than the ancillaries being driven by a drive belt they are driven directly from the engine via gears and stuff.  Clever.  Yep, until something like your alternator or air conditioning pump seizes and you end up with a rather noisy, not to mention expensive, mess of an engine with lots of shredded gears and possibly broken camshafts.  Not good. To safeguard against this, VW have put elastic couplings (sometimes called gates couplings, flexible couplings or gates flexible couplings!) between the engine drive and your alternator and a/c compressor which take...
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