Inspector Gadjet

Recently I was asked to build some playground equipment for the Lorien Novalis Steiner school in Dural. I was given a rough sketch of what they had in mind  and as usual they were happy to give me free reign to design something close to the sketch. I started with a steel structure and added on bits and pieces as the project evolved in my mind. Not wanting to use any treated timber, I used steel for the main structure and later cladded the exposed steel with re purposed hardwood fence palings. Hardwood fence palings used to clad the steel Tree branch handrail I wanted to include natural timbers and used materials so I designed and built a handrail out of tree branches attached to a chain bridge I had incorporated. Other materials included marine ply offcuts, (and purchased full sheets), left over building materials from the high school building project from a few years before and some bluegum slabs I found under a classroom. I tried to make the play ...

Let's look at a typical suburban house in winter, let's call the house itself a large box. The outside temperature is too cold to be comfortable for humans so we need to somehow heat this box we live in. So, inside the large cold box (our house), we have another much smaller box and this is our heater and this small box is heating the air inside the large box. Now, we also want to keep food in our large box and this food needs to be kept cold otherwise it will quickly go off and we will not be able to consume it. So, how can we keep the food cold and separate from the air we have just heated in our large box? That's right! we need another box but this one needs to be about as cold as the outside air temperature. Can you see anything wrong with this picture? (apart from the fact that it was badly drawn). Would it make more sense to have the cold box outside? If the temperatures are around 5 degrees Celsius in winter, then having a fridge or chest freezer th...

There are three types of heat transfer, lets look at all of them and find the most energy efficient. * Radiation Our sun is a good example of radiant heat, other sources of radiant heat could be from air conditioning type heaters and portable heaters such as electric or gas. Radiant heat is the least effective type of heating. * Convection Convection occurs when a liquid or gas is heated, it is the transfer of heat by the physical movement of the heated medium itself. An electric/gas heater with a fan is a good example, Convection heats the air and is slightly more efficient than heat radiation. * Conduction Conduction is when there is physical contact between the heated medium and the object that we wish to heat, conductive heat is the most efficient of the three forms of heat transfer. rocket mass heater with the chimney incorporated as a cob bench for direct contact and thus conduction.  A Rocket mass heater is an excell...

He rested a while, sniffing at the cold wind. There would be a frost tonight, and his bones knew fear of the cold. He was getting old.  He was sixty five, and the years had starved him. The flesh of his youth had loosened and sagged, leaving his frame thinly draped and his eyes staring from his bony head like some curious troll. He was sixty five, and his hair, grey many years ago, now raised a white halo about his leather-coloured face. That he had survived so long was a wonder to him. for his earlier years had not prepared him for this present world. But somehow he had learned to fight and kill and run and all else that had been necessary in the long years since the city had died. His name was Parnell and he had gone on living. The sun was sinking fast, and he turned about to go back before the dark could overtake him. It was as he turned that he caught the dull shine of metal in the corner of his eye. He peered more closely, put out his hand and heaved a sledgehammer up...

The Oxford English Dictionary has this to say about junk mail: NOUN mass noun informal  Unwanted or unsolicited advertising or promotional material received through the post or sent as email. ‘she tossed the junk mail in the bin’ ‘my inbox is full of junk mail’ Does anybody want it? Did anybody even ask for it?? If you think about it: The trees are cut down and get taken to the pulp mill which turns them into pulp before sending the pulp to a paper factory which goes on to make paper with it, then the paper goes to the printers who have been given the typeset which has been worked out by graphic designers and the advertising is finally printed before being distributed to various companies who delegate distribution... THEN the final unwanted product is pushed upon the general public who, upon receipt, promptly throw it IN THE BIN. WHY? The Oxford Dictionary doesn't mention anything about having the stuff thrown on your front lawn. I am sick of the sensel...

Concrete cancer can be avoided during the preparation stages of concrete reinforcement work but a lot of the time corners are cut in favour of profit and the job is not done to standard. concrete cancer Let's look at the characteristics of reinforced concrete as a first step to understanding how and why the cancer happens. concrete cancer eating away at a balcony causing a structural issue The strength is concrete all depends on the steel reinforcement running through it and if the steel work is not done properly the concrete will eventually fail. typical slab pour with re-mesh The minimum depth of any steel work needs to be at least 40mm below the surface of the finished concrete to avoid moisture from penetrating and subsequently rusting the steel. diagram showing correct placement of steel reinforcing for concrete If the steel is less than 40mm (to outside) from the surface then spalling occurs. Spalling is when the steel inside the concrete r...

Rammed earth is encased in steel belted rubber to form the bricks of the building, this creates thermal mass which enables the building to heat and cool itself without electricity.

en·vi·ron·ment /inˈvīrənmənt/ noun 1. the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates. synonyms: habitat ,  territory ,  domain ,  surroundings ,  environs ,  ...  more 2. the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity. synonyms: the natural world ,  nature ,  the earth ,  the planet ,  the ecosystem ,  .              source: Oxford dictionary. Isaac Van Oosten. the fall of man in the garden of Eden Nature , in the broadest sense, is the natural, physical, or material world or  universe . "Nature" can refer to the  phenomena  of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. ...

verb   (used   with   object) ,  scavenged,   scavenging. 1. to   take   or   gather   (something   usable)   from   discarded   material. An answer to all our rubbish problems: Send it to the moon. Whether it's a pile of tyres, a pallet stack or a verge land chuck out, I am always vigilant in the search for re-usable materials. Once the consciousness of re-purposing  manifests into ordinary life, imagination is the only limit to the possibilities and combinations for the resources thrown away all around us every day. For instance: I recently built an entire wall out of re-claimed doors and made a floor out of six meter long pallets , all free and abundant and all discarded as useless! Tyres as far as the eye can see... What do you see, an environmental catastrophe... Or unlimited resource? Only about 13% of the estimated (2017 figures)  52   million tyres in landfill ev...