I’ts starting to get draughty!

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

This storm Darragh is starting to show itself, were already getting winds of around 50kts (57mph) and it’s still southerly ish, its supposed to get rather naughty when it backs round to the north west.

We’ve got a red warning for wind later and I’ve just had one of those fancy emergency text warnings! It actually worked! (I didn’t get the test one they did when they launched the service)

Not looking forward to the early hours and feel for those that have only recently been flooded.

Sty safe all those affected 👍

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

It’s a bit breezy in north Cheshire as well, dog was most reluctant to go out for his morning walk

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Front fence is down!

Dave

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Here in Weston Super Mare it has been windy, but nothing like as bad as I feared. The text warnings was because of what happened recently in Spain and Wales. I would give the sea front a wide berth though. As I write this, there have been no reports of fatalities, so the government will be giving themselves a pat on the back.

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

We’ve had a bit of damage down here in sunny Pembrokeshire (not personally), wind was gusting a very regular 80mph+ by 2am but I got a bot of sleep through the worst of it although it was still 80+ when I had a look at 9 this morning. No idea what it was at it’s worst.

The misses had a very very long drive home from work (hospital) this morning as most roads were blocked by downed trees and debris etc.

All in all, not too bad. Not as bad as I was expecting! It’s still blowing its ar*e out though, gusting 60 odd mph 😬

[Graham MeekParticipant @grahammeek88282]

Here in the Forest of Dean with the Brecon Beacons on view in the distance we have suffered a few crests off this morning. The Wind last night was blowing from the South, this Morning it was from the Brecon’s, that always does the damage, and now it is blowing from the North.

Regards

Gray,

[PlasmaParticipant @plasma]

We have a 4 metre wide picture window which moves back and forth in a decent wind.

I complained about the movement to the company who had fitted it only a couple of years ago. All within tolerance I was told confidently.

But moving nearly an inch in either direction (when the wind blew it pushed in and when it fell the window seemed to suck out) made for some interesting nights in watching telly and listening the window creaking.

I asked a new window firm to give advice and they came up with a plan. Take the window out, brick most of it up and put a smaller window in!

The house was built in 1961 and would have had a single glazed wooden framed window back then, so why all these years later a modern double glazed unit would not cut the mustard I do not know.

So outcome the amateur engineer in me. I stripped out the interior wooden window sill, made brackets to fix inside the cavity of the dwarf wall, made similar brackets to fit to the wooden top support and fitted two 40mm thick walled box section struts down the vertical frames to support the window. Sprayed with a RAL matching colour for golden oak they blend in with the plastic frames.

The guy who had suggested reducing the window size was amazed when I showed him the difference my bodge had made. He even offered me work to do the same for him if needed. I declined, amateur glazier isn’t something I want to add to my CV.

It can still flex a little but nothing like the movement it used to. Evenings are a lot more relaxed now we don’t worry that the window might blow in.

 

 

 

[Grizzly bearParticipant @grizzlybear]

Well done Plasma.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

A mind-focussing 24 hours for me, in North Wales … The Electrickery went off mid-day yesterday, and was restored this afternoon.

… and rather grateful I am too !
I don’t envy the blokes that have to fix this stuff

House was down to 11.5°C

 

No communications of any sort available to me at the house

SP Energy kindly sent two SMS messages, but neither of these were received until I went out shopping.

.

Now pondering how best to install a back-up system that will power the Router and some 5v device charging.

MichaelG.

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

What power does the router use? If it’s a “wall-wart” with DC output it should be fairly straightforward to make a back up supply using a higher voltage recharagable battery and a step-down regulator. The battery is floated across a mains powered DC supply. No switching required. if the battery is ~12V DC then car charger adaptors give an easy route to USB charging.  A 3SxP lithium ion battery pack will work if the router needs less than 12V.

Robert.

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Thanks for your thoughts, Robert

As you will probably recall, I recently purchased a ‘true sine-wave’ inverter, so several options are available.

MichaelG.

[Don CoxParticipant @doncox80133]

We, like Plasma, have a picture window of slightly less vast proportions (3M wide and consisting of a pair of sliding patio doors) which faces out into Cardigan bay and is one storey up.  In the nearly 4 years we’ve lived here we’ve experienced our fair share of blows and when there is a significant Easterly element to the wind I estimate an inward deflection of about 3/4″ has occurred in the worst cases.  Given the prospect of a visit from Darragh wearing a red cloak, and with little time or resources to react, I came up with a partial temporary solution.This was to drag our two seater settee, which is one of those motorised reclining affairs and appears to weigh a ton, and place it firmly against the centre frame at the joint of the two panels and, via a couple of seat cushions borrowed from the three piece suite, against the glass.  This greatly damped out the previously experienced inward bulges, a lot of which were provoked by some very vigorous gusts, and I was able to sit on the settee to experience the “shoulder charge” forces involved.  I reckon it reduced by half the glass deflection that would have occurred otherwise.  I’m now investigating storm shutters, so far with not much success.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

1. Michael, search for “mini ups” on Amazon.

[John Haine]

On John Haine Said:

Michael, search for “mini ups” on Amazon.

Thanks, John … looks interesting

MichaelG.

[Plasma]

On Plasma Said:

… so why all these years later a modern double glazed unit would not cut the mustard I do not know….
 

The reason has been in the news!  It’s Climate Change.   Very simple:

• weather is powered entirely by heat from the Sun
• the average temperature of the planet’s atmosphere is rising due to pollution, notably Carbon Dioxide
• although the temperature increase is only about 1°C so far, that’s a huge amount of extra energy
• additional heat makes weather more extreme.

In 1961, engineers specified buildings strong enough to cover all but the most severe storm likely to occur once in a century.   Times have changed: now we are getting “once per century” severe weather events two or three times per decade, and it’s getting worse.   People are having to adapt.

Although glass bends alarmingly, it’s unusual for windows to blow in or – more likely – to blow out.  Before wind reaches that level, it will be uprooting trees, toppling chimneys, and ripping off roofs! Flying objects are a problem. too.  Fixing a bendy window may not help much – as the installer said, “within specification”.

My experience is that an 80mph storm blowing in from the west will lift a few tiles off, always the same ones, suggesting a vortex effect.   I guess anything over 100mph will do serious damage to my roof, and it coming away will damage the rest of the house on the way.

The biggest risk from windows is the difficulty of breaking double-glazing to escape in an emergency.  Folk inside burning buildings find the windows locked, and a chair, or even a hammer, swung hard by a big man simply bounces off.  One of those special pointy hardened hammers is needed to reliably shatter the glass.

Dave

 

[JuddyParticipant @juddy]

I don’t think climate change causes a window to be poorly installed. May be it was just bad workmanship?

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

@ Robert & John [and anyone else who might be interested]

It looks like I am well on the way to having a decent standby system:

This battery, which I bought [with its charger] cheaply a while back, is holding charge nicely … and the 33Ah capacity is perfect for use with the Victron 12|250 pure-sinewave Inverter

.

.

MichaelG.

 

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Looks good Michael.

[Juddy]

On Juddy Said:

I don’t think climate change causes a window to be poorly installed. May be it was just bad workmanship?

 

There is no evidence the window is poorly installed. On the contrary, Plasma said: I complained about the movement to the company who had fitted it only a couple of years ago. All within tolerance I was told confidently. 

That big windows bend quite a lot in high winds isn’t unusual, and their bending doesn’t mean they’ve been poorly installed.  Possible Plasma’s window was put in badly, or it doesn’t meet building regs, but the symptoms he describes are of scary wind, not an installation problem.

The evidence for climate change is now rock solid.  40 years of data confirm it, and in that period no evidence against has been found.  Zero.   The problems predicted by science have come to pass, and – entirely as expected – are getting more extreme.  Worryingly, the science is off, but not in a good way – things are worse than predicted, not better.

Sorry, but if anyone is hoping for reassurance that Climate Change isn’t a problem, it’s not “bad workmanship”.

Incidentally, windows are more likely to be pulled out than blown in, so solutions that support the window inside are unlikely to help.   Best answer is storm shutters, but as I said, a storm strong enough to rip windows out is also capable of damaging the roof…

Dave

[PlasmaParticipant @plasma]

Dave.

I don’t think the window was poorly installed,  probably poorly planned as the window we replaced had only three major elements with no transom windows at the top. This new one has five smaller elements with a break the whole length of the unit to allow transom windows.

It’s this extra segmenting if the unit as a whole that has caused it to be so flexible. It’s not the glass bending so much as the uPVC frame flexing.

When I did some research it was amazing to see how much large panes of glass could flex without breaking. Apparently people would not accept the extreme movement even though it was well within the properties of the material, so the specifications reflect that lack of confidence on the part of the end user.

I agree completely with your views on climate change. How on earth can we explain how a system that has managed itself for millennia suddenly goes haywire when man discovers fossil fuels and begins to exploit them at an alarming rate?

MOD Deleted. Keep within the rules.

The window will outlast me now, which is the criteria I apply to most purchases. In my twenties I wanted things to last a lifetime, now my life is at the funeral end I’m not so interested in thirty year warranties lol.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

A quick update on my recent electricity power-cut:

Received a message from SP Energy Networks this morning, requesting feedback

Duly completed the form, and they will be contacting me to discuss.

… meanwhile, they provided this useful link which may be of general interest

https://www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/being_prepared_for_a_power_cut.aspx

I’m impressed

MichaelG.

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Our power cuts weren’t too bad, we were off Saturday and then again Saturday night with an estimated reconnection time of noon Sunday but it was back on properly in the early hours of the morning. fair play to their engineers, they earned their crust that nightvh

It was just trees and debris down on lines I believe, all the trees round us are used to, and have all their roots for the prevailing SW winds (we regally get winds in excess of 70 – 80 mph) but as soon as it went round to the north ish there were trees falling everywhere, they aren’t rooted for that! A massive old one in the church yard came down, been there a hundred years or so.. shame.

[Author]

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