forteh

Added a handbrake to the shifter, got a bit of a spiky pot output, I think because I'm not using the expected resistance (thrustmaster pot wired into a logitech motherboard). Got to trim the lever one I've figured out the best position for the grip

We have a ricoh aficio mpc3004 in the office and it's been very good, perhaps a little overkill for what you need though. Have you looked into the hp instant ink setup? We use it at home (homeschooling uses quite a lot of printing resources) and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying regular inkjet cartridges. Even if the printer itself dies after a year, that's only a 50 quid outlay to replace. For reference we were paying about 8 quid a month for 300 pages with a roll over allowance, have since cut it down to 3.50 a month.

Another no vaccine here as well, I'll rely on my immune system to do the work if need be, we've all been dosing massively on vitamin D; according to the wife there appears to be a trend of the worse sufferers to be vitamin D deficient. Obviously continue taking sensible precautions, masking up in public etc and we don't really socialise really so it's not a massive upset; infact this will be first year that the two older kids will be with us for christmas as they normally go off to their dads about 10am christmas morning. He's having them for new year now so our 'cancelled christmas' is actually more family than we normally have Out of curiosity, does anyone know how the new mutated strain react to the current vaccine?

The lockdown should have been at least a month earlier and brutal as you say, boris has always been on the back foot and has made a right f**k up of it all. Look at the likes of NZ and the isle of man, locked down early and properly, been back to normal since may time with no problems except for external contractors who have to quarantine for two weeks. Admittedly their population isn't as dense but they acted far faster with more decisive action. The wife called this last year (end of december) before it was labelled a pandemic, also predicted that we wouldn't be clear by christmas 20....

Warm the knife up or if spreading on toast leave the blob on the toast for about 20 seconds before starting to spread

After months and months of having the 3D printed and laser cut bits ready for the shifter, I finally got off my arse and started assembling it Still waiting on a couple of microswitches to fit into the 7+1 H pattern before I can finish off tidying up the wiring but I've tested it in sequential mode and it works very well. My initial plan to centre the sequential shifter with stainless leaf springs failed dramatically so I cobbled together a grooved nylon bobbin (using a pistol drill held in a vice with a hacksaw and files as a lathe) and used shock cord for the spring and it works very well and can be retensioned if need be. The shifter converts to H pattern by unscrewing the shift knob and the two knurled nuts, lifting the sequential unit off and refitting the shift knob - completely tool less and takes about a minute to do.

Having watched that video I think I'll definitely aero the cross bars on the roof rack and the leading edge of the solar panel

I had to as well! Seen his stuff before, the long lost, super creative, skating member of led zeppelin

That's 3mm flexible ply, it'll go down to about 60mm radius naturally if you're really careful with it. I reckon you could get it tighter if you score the back and or stream it a little. It's only three layers and it's very loose grain. Super easy to snap if you push it too far.

Finally got round to putting the infill panels into the van cupboard

An extra 1.5 mpg? Not worth the effort Also the wife might not appreciate lots of aero bits taped onto the van we're building! It's not like it's for grip/performance purposes as in your case

All this talk of aero, how much does it scale, if I were to aero the van with knobby tyres, would it make any difference to fuel economy? For reference the solar panel has a 40mm flat face at the top of the roof above the cab, the roof rack has a bit of a spoiler on the front but it's far from aerodynamic. I guess a spoiler nose on the front of the panel might help, should I be adding tails to the back of the roof rack cross members. Or is just going to be wasted effort given that it's a three tonne brick?

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that all rads have TRVs on so individual room control is dead easy. I hadn't heard of veissmann before the guy came round and did the quote and he said that he would never fit anything else because the quality compared to the other market leaders (worcester/vailant/gloworm etc.) was so much better, also the fact that they're very quiet in comparison. Essentially he came in, gave us a quote to do the work, talked nicely to my parents who lent me the cash (hooray for the bank of mum and dad!) and they were in and out in 7 hours - boiler fitted, 6 rads and a full set of pipework for about 4 grand I think it was.

I should point out that because we homeschool, there is always someone in the house so the hearing stays on. I've had ours serviced once about 4 years ago, same setup of a 10 year warranty if serviced by a viessmman registered installer. I never bothered as like you said it's mostly just cleaning out the main heat exchanger, that said I think it's something that should be done on older units as it may uncover corrosion in places it shouldn't be. In the viessmman all of the components in contact with corrosives are either plastic or stainless. edit: when working out the programming I would see how quickly the house loses heat, we're quite well insulated (for a 60 year old ex council house). It's much more fuel efficient to keep the temperature up and ticking over than trying to heat a house full of cold air.

I installed a complete central heating system (previously fully storage heated ) back in 2010ish, went with a veissmann vitodens 100 combi and it's been superb. Set up on remote thermostat programmed to ramp the temperatures up and down at set times, it's always turned on though. I think we currently use 18ºC from 7am, up to 21° from 3pm then drop back down to 16°C from 10pm, it can always be overridden at any time and happily gets the front room up to 28°C if needed. The only issue I've had in the last 10 years is the plate to plate hot water heat exhanger blocked up, cost about 100 quid for a replacement and 70 quid to get it changed; the old blocked one can be soaked to clean it out and be refitted so I'll never need to fork out for the part again. Since we fitted the range cooker (Esse Cat) the latent heat from it actually keeps the boiler from firing, it's not automatically kicked in yet this year since the spring

Been getting to grips with the router table that I bought for a tenner about 6 years ago and making kitchen cabinets for the van

Where to where? The father in law runs a small transport company from just outside of Hereford, 100% recommend but no idea how much it would cost. https://www.corricktransport.com/

Could the domestic situation be alleviated or modified to work with a move away, even if it's 50-60 miles? Perhaps extend the reach to Lancaster/Preston/Blackburn, could that grant more opportunities?

Now you've insulated it, get a diesel heater in there Looks awesome!

What insulation are you using? If you're planning on laying celotex slabs in between the joist then they will help support the ply floor to an extent (as long as it's supported from below). My gut instinct would be 1 and you can get away with thinner ply Don't trust me, I design shit cleaning equipment for a living, however I have recently insulated my van floor with joists and celotex with the original 10mm ply floor laid on top and it's completely solid.

edit: we're rocking a henry, it's 14 years old now, has had the abuse of 4 different children standing on it to get food from the fridge, overheated due to being used as router table dust extractor in the middle of summer and dealing with a neverending source of labrador glitter (ginger hairs everywhere!) yet still he keeps plodding on. Accept no substitute, buy a henry

I just accidentally 600 quid on knobbly tyres for the campervan It's three times the amount that is spend on budgets for the smax They'll probably outlast the life of the van so that's not a bad thing Edit: they arrived! Edit again: they fit!

You're properly weird, did you know that? I have to resist really hard when we're out and about on our travels, we could be driving through some random village in the arse end of nowhere and I'll just randomly spurt out "I replaced the grit plant at that sewage works about 14 years ago!". Mrs wife keeps threatening to disown me because of it

I like your random picture of the sewage works! It's not one of our distributors, it's a 4" tomkinson unit, probably installed in the late '80s I've been working in sewage treatment for too long obviously

THROW MONEY AT IT!!!!!