ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Freakin' cold!

Paul,
Ahh I see what you mean Paul.
Sorry I just seem to be mis-reading things like never before at the moment.
I'll get better though.
A stand-pipe is a stand-pipe, maybe I've been watching too many American movies from the 1980's where they opened hydrants up on a hot day, to let everyone play under the water.
Not sure who does this, but I think DougW has something to do with it.
He'd have the spanner!.

I don't know how it's done in other municipalities, but...

In New York City, you have to go to a neighborhood firehouse and get a "sprinkler cap" (essentially a nozzle cover with holes bored into it) attached to the hydrant you want to use.

Some hydrants (especially in residential neighborhoods) have special locks on the valve stem so that only the fire dept can un-do them. Others, you can un-do with a simple spanner.

The purpose of the sprinkler cap is to keep the pressure in the acqueducts from going down (and to avoid having small kids getting knocked on their kiesters by the high-pressure jets of water).

Funny that a thread about cold has a flaming folder!

Here in So Cal it has been quite cool especially at night, but we're going back into the Santa Ana winds pattern (winds coming from inland deserts) and a bit of a warm-up. Hope we don't get more wildfires though....

[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 10-10-2005).]

Thats why we brought up the fire hydrants

"Winter draw(er)s on!", as Ma used to say with a little chuckle at her 'joke', usually followed by this little verse from Grandma Hing's childhood in the 1870's, which sums up winter for me:

"By heck, it's cold!
Cold as a frog in an ice-bound pool.
Cold as the blade on an Eskimo's tool.
Cold as charity, (and that's ruddy chilly).
But not as cold as our poor Willie,
He's dead, poor bugger!"

Alan

Ireland's metric change-over is almost as flawed as the UK's.

We adopted metric measurements around the same time in the early 1970s. However, schools continued to teach imperial measurements for a few years after that and then both... It was quite a while before they went to fully metric.

Even though metric measurements became the standard for selling goods, people didn't really adapt. While it's compulsary to display price per kg or per liter or whatever. It's optional to display price per LB or per Pint etc and very few people will ask for, say, meat in KGs. This applies to younger people as much as it does older people. It's quite strange.

Also, a lot of UK and Irish food companies didn't actually convert their container sizes. They continued to sell in imperial measures and just converted the labeling to metric. This made the system look ridicuously confusing as there were some very odd awkward direct converted figures printed on containers.

Body measurements are almost exclusively in feet and inches and weight is in stone. The only people who use metric are the medical profession.
European shoe sizes (not metric, but harmonised) are starting to creep in though as they're just easier due to the smaller size graduations and the fact that the UK sizes printed on shoes are often inaccurate anyway.

We changed all of our distance signs to KMs quite some years ago. However, it was a badly carryed out change over and we ended up with a mixture of some signs in miles and others in KMs for years. This wasn't the metric system's fault, more a question of incompetant local councils here.

Then, finally last year we converted the speed limits to KM/H. As of 2005 all cars are sold with KM/H speedometers or at least with the KM/H dial in the more prominant position with miles in the inside.

In recent years, we're seeing a more logical approach to metric measurements and people are starting to feel more comfortable with them. It's not something that's easy to change a very well engrained centuries old system.

As for Irish water... it's 100% free of charge. No metering at all, paid for out of income tax! Any suggestion of even thinking about privatising water supplies or charging for them would probabally put a government out of office. So, it's very unlikely to ever happen.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 10-10-2005).]

It's 7 years since I was over there, and I remember seeing a real mixture of signs at the time (I was around Sligo, Mayo, Leitrim, Cavan area mostly). Driving toward a place could result in signs saying 10 miles, 14 km, 6 miles, 5 miles, 7 km, 5 km, 2 miles etc. Very, er, interesting.....

That's nothing... in Italy you can drive towards a place and see 8km, 6km, 10km, 4km, 2km... all the time driving straight towards your destination!

Today was the first day they fired up the heating at School... almost a miracle!
The school's been on Energy Contracting for some tim now, and since it doesn't really pay off the contractor's solution to making the guaranteed savings is simply not heating most of the time...

After a few days here of 85+ degrees F temps, we are expected to drop more than 20 degrees over the next few days with some rain and thunderstorms moving in! Then we are expected to heat back up into the 90's by the end of the week.....

So Calif. weather can be very strange sometimes!!

As a former Midwest boy (Ohio) I must say I do miss the defined four seasons....

We get the same in England sometimes, except it's miles of course.

Autumn is definitely here now with some days being gray and wet, but it's not that cold yet and we're still getting nice sunny days as well, up into the low/mid 60s.