Electric cars are beginning to offer a real economic alternative. Mainstream and premium brand electric cars are becoming cheaper, and have increased range. Also the required surrounding infrastructure (recharging points) is finally being rolled out in our towns and cities. However there are still some obvious areas of improvement that require attention:
Walking along the River Liffey in Dublin City Centre recently, I was surprised at how low the protective quay walls were in some places. I measured the barrier heights as 700mm in two particularly areas I walked past. One was close to the Four Courts while the other was close to O’Connell Bridge. The low wall close to O’Connell Bridge seemed especially dangerous as it was at a busy location and is beside a taxi rank.
At last!
I recently spotted a proper family parking space rather than the single mother and child variety usually marked on tarmac. See left. Well done to the shop in question, Dunnes Stores, for including the father for a change.
Family car parking spaces. But there are other issues with family parking spaces. They are usually located close to shop entrances and usually beside disabled spaces. As a result people, without little ones, are tempted to use them when in a hurry. Recently at my local shop, not one of the cars parked in the family spaces had a child’s seat inside.
The oldest structure in the world is a 23,000 year old stone wall, at a cave entrance, in Greece. It is known as the Theopetra Cave. Ireland oldest structure, New Grange, although older than the Pyramids, is still comparably young at an estimated 5000 years old.
Oldest written laws: Surprisingly examples of building laws and regulations survive that are almost as old as New Grange. This is the 3800 year old Code of King Hammurabi, from the Babylonian Empire, the empire was centred around modern day Iraq. The Code was a set of 282 laws which cover a range of sensitive issues, including: contracts, construction, property, marriage, family, injury, treatment of slaves and labour rates. They survive today on stone carvings and clay tablets. In fact we only have an incomplete set of the laws, as those between 66 to 99 are missing from the fragments/ tablets available.
One of the advantages of travelling by train is that it gives you time out to read, chat, stare out the window or think. And it occurred to me on my daily train commute that the seating layout on Irish trains could be easily changed to boost seating capacity.
In contrast to planes and buses, where the seats all face towards the front, Irish Trains are different. Typically the seating arrangement is comprised of a set of four seats, where one pair of seats face the other with a table in between.
With the school holidays upon us many kids are probably wondering what to do with their free time. Well why not help them to build a simple steam engine. I had a go myself some time ago, I made a ‘putt-putt’ engine and was delighted when it worked after only a few hours work. All you need is an aluminium drinks can, plastic straws, epoxy glue, foam tray, some tin foil, a candle, elastic bands and of course water.
Did you ever wonder whether it was cheaper to heat your hot water tank with your immersion heater or your oil/gas boiler? Well we have done the sums so you don’t have to. Below is a comparison between various different ways of heating your hot water tank.
Background: Boilers heat water and pump it through the heating pipe network of the house. Part of this pipe circuit runs through the hot water tank and indirectly heats the water in the tank; there is no mixing of water between circuit and tank. By contrast an immersion heater uses electricity to heat the water in the tank only.
It is often said about Ireland’s wet and mild climate that ‘it would be a great Country if you put a roof over it’. People saying this often forget that it is the wet weather that makes the countryside look so alluring in the first place.
Ireland’s rainfall is spread relatively evenly throughout the year, with seasonal rainfall amounts being similar in most parts. Surprising the wettest month of the year in Dublin, which is the driest region of the Country, is August, while February is the driest. I think the reason that this seems strange is because a dark cold month like February feels damper, with any rain lying on the ground taking a long time to dry.
Road closed – snow
Following on from our last post about road signs, I came across this ‘road closed’ sign in the Wicklow Mountains today. The sign seems to indicate that the road ahead is closed due to snow and ice. But the tyre tracks in the snow seem to indicate that the road is not closed and that the majority of drivers were ignoring the sign and driving on regardless. I talked with one driver coming the other way and he said the road wasn’t closed further along. I of course, being the good careful citizen, turned around. But there are a number of points to make about this.
Despite much work by the Local County Councils many Irish road signs still leave a lot to be desired and they can cause great confusion. While driving around I have taken pictures of the worst examples and have shown some of these below, click on the pictures to enlarge. So for the local Councils then it seems its a case of much done, but more to do.
Irish Road signs. Two signs, different distances
