Men of Ideas

I have often found that doing a repetitive job is very relaxing. Physical work that doesn't require too much concentration or working out gives you plenty of time for contemplation. For example bricklayers appear to be a fairly lighthearted bunch. They have plenty of time to day dream when they are laying bricks to the line but waht do they dream about? You might suppose it is Page 3 models and you may well be right but I can tell you that many are also busy inventing things.

The reason I know this is because, over the years, I have met a regular stream of bricklayers who have brought me inventions to look at. They aren't always inventions for laying bricks (that seems to have remained the same for more than 3,000 years) but brick layers tend to spend time looking at other people's jobs and thinking of ways in which they could be done better.

That isn't always a recipe for success because until you have done the job you don't always know why it is done in a certain way. But it is in the nature of inventions that people keep them secret until they have secured patents, so they aren't always that well researched. Several thousand pounds later they reveal their idea and go looking for a manufacturer. Sometimes it makes a fortune but often they find that their invention isn't quite as ground-breaking as they imagined.

For every successful invention there are probably ten thousand that consume a vast fortune in patents, marketing and manufacturing before they disappear without trace. Some even come back every few years like the beast that wouldn't die.
I have also seen inventors clinging to their idea like the wreckage of a sinking ship while everyone around them is in the lifeboat begging them to swim to safety.
I have met inventors who have lost their house and their wife because they just wouldn't leave their idea alone and go back to their day job.

The ones that have been successful have either given the idea to someone else to develop and just taken a royalty or had the drive and good judgement to tackle all aspects of the route to market without being mugged on the way.

I must confess that I have had a few ideas myself, that may or may not see the light of day. Every time I think I might do something with them I remember that lonely bricklayer in his suit, trudging the halls of Interbuild with his prototype and a briefcase looking for anyone who will give him five minutes.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Prizes for all

I spent last night (and the early hours of this morning) celebrating at a marketing awards ceremony in London. To anyone who isn't familiar with these industry awards I can say that these awards are like any other competition, highly regarded by the winner and derided by those who don't win. Our winning entry was for Switch On MK which is a podcast that goes out to electricians. It was dreamt up and produced by London based Facta PR and MK Electrics marketing supremo Joanne Reynolds as a way of reaching electricians with important technical information. The Podcast has now picked up three awards and is attracting interest from other companies in the industry. In many ways the podcast is an ideal medium. Like radio it has better pictures. In fact I don't even like the idea of publishing photographs of those taking part because I think when you hear someone on the radio you have a picture in your head and it is always a disappointment when you see the person behind the voice. When I worked for LBC on the Fixit Phone In I well remember the look of disappointment on people's face when I met them at a road show or similar event.
That isn't false modesty on my part it is simply that our imagination is so much more powerful than we give it credit for. It is the reason why a film hardly ever does justice to a book. How could it? The reason that those who read books love them so much is because they are collaborating in a creative process rather than passively sitting on the receiving end.

Much of the audience we reach with the podcast will never listen to speech based and those that do probably listen to Talk Sport. Statistically there is little chance that they would have had the pleasure of listening to a radio play on BBC Radio 4. This is probably a good thing because when you get into a good radio play the work rate gets slower and slower and you find yourself transfixed. On several occasions I have parked around the corner from my destination because there is still ten minutes left on the afternoon play. If Radio 4 plays ever grab a mass audience the productivity of the nation will fall during those 45 minutes or whatever.

So if you have a site where the guys like to play the radio the best bet is to keep it tuned to something upbeat and inane. On one site recently the ceramic tilers had a ghetto blaster playing CDs of trance music. It sounded like Ibiza. Oddly enough I could see exactly why and how it helped them to lay tiles and it echoed brilliantly against the hard walls and floors. It got me thinking that different trades could be suited to different music because it fits the activity.

Bricklayers. Pink Floyd Another brick in the wall. (too obvious) but you could lay bricks to it.
Plasterers. Dire Straits (money for nothing)
Plumbers. Tricky this but probably Handel's Water Music.
Roofers. The Beatles. Fixing a hole where the rain comes in.
Carpenters. If I were a Carpenter. A bit of an insult to carpenters really because it is saying if I were just a lowly carpenter. It is a great tune though but the Tim Hardin original gets a lot less air plays than the Four Tops which is a shame.
Electricians. Anything by AC/DC.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Room to Breathe

It has been raining all weekend which tends to make me feel a little trapped. You can tell by my wrinkles that I am the outdoor type so I went out for a bike ride yesterday and a walk today. It is, after all, only rain and to tell the truth I enjoy braving the elements and tramping around like a nutter in my Gortex jacket and over trousers. I take a childish delight in the fact that I am warm and dry. A bit like a kid stamping through puddles in wellies. It is almost as if I am defying the jacket to leak but I don't suppose it ever will.

I have heard of Gortex leaking. I was in a branch of Cotswolds Outdoor shop in London and a bloke came in with a Gortex jacket which he said was porous along the arms. The man behind the counter said it was probably a fault and all he could do is send it back. I hesitated to say anything for a while but in the end I couldn't resist it. "Have you tried giving it a wash and a light tumble dry?"

"Oh no we couldn't condone putting it in a tumble dryer". said the shop assistant huffily.

"Well you might not but that is what it suggests in the care instructions". I replied.

The man who brought the jacket in was equally surprised so he looked on the label of a new garment which he picked off the rack. He read it out loud.

"Tumble-dry warm. The heat from the dryer will help to reactivate the durable water repellent (DWR) treatment on your garment's outer fabric. I'll give it a try. Thanks for your help".


Clearly it was the first time he had read this information. Despite having paid two hundred quid for the jacket he hadn't so much as given the instructions a glance. It is a common problem. "As a last resort read the instructions" is a national motto of many and even the bloke in the shop was more willing to pack and post the garment than read the instructions. Mind you he didn't look very pleased with me either. Nobody likes a smart arse and the definition of a smart arse is someone who knows something that you don't.

So here goes.
Gortex is made up of millions of tiny holes that keep water droplets out but let vapour through. These micro-porous holes get clogged with dirt and they need cleaning out. The repellent then needs to work its magic over the holes on the outer layer to stop the fabric becoming saturated. Also moisture that wicks through from within will condense on the outside and roll down the surface like water off a duck's back. Preventing water absorption also keeps the fabric feeling light. When it was first invented, by accident I believe, it was revolutionary but now we take breathable fabrics for granted. Gortex is even used in heart surgery though how you tumble dry it I am not sure.

The technology has since migrated. Now we have breathable fabrics in buildings as well as clothing. Breathable membranes are used under roof tiles to allow moisture to escape whilst keeping out any leaks in the roof. The membrane will keep out rain and wind but let moisture escape from the house. A miracle for sure because you don't have to ventilate the roof space and that cuts down on draughts which keeps the house warmer. But once again you need to read the instructions. Roofers have come to rely upon breathable membranes to take care of all moisture problems in the roof space and you now see fewer and fewer tile and soffit vents, so they must believe it works. Well yes and no, sometimes they ask the membrane to do too much.


A breather membrane, like a water proof jacket, is capable of dealing with a given amount of moisture per hour depending upon temperature and pressure. In the case of the house you need to stop it sweating too much. If the passage of water vapour from within is not restricted by a vapour barrier and a sealed loft hatch etc. then too much vapour will enter the cold roof space and saturate the air.
To reduce the amount of vapour in the roof space it needs to be cleared from the house by extractor fans. These are now a requirement of the Building Regulations in kitchens and bathrooms so the problem will be taken care of automatically within a new building but if a breathable membrane is being used on an older house as part of a re-roof then these points need to be looked at specifically and with no building inspector involved, who is going to carry out the survey?

As much as I love roofers they aren't given to reading instructions. So they certainly won't go around the house and check details such as sealed loft hatches and extractor fans? Like the man taking the Gortex jacket back roofers will naturally blame the product for any short fall and if the man in the merchants has also neglected to read the bit of paper he will be shrugging his shoulders and laying the problem at the door of the manufacturer. Technical reps must spend half their life looking at the same set of problems over and over. Many web sites have a category FAQ's 'Frequently asked questions' but it is FUQs 'Frequently Unasked Questions' that cause all the problems.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Silence Is Dangerous

I have been out today to the old Brooklands race track in Surrey, which is now home to Mercedes Benz World. I am no petrol head but I wanted to go and look at the latest innovations by Mercedes and Mitsubishi. You often hear the theory that motor manufacturers are secretly sitting on the successor to the internal combustion engine but won't release it for fear of destabilising the global economy. In other words they are waiting until the oil runs out and at one minute to midnight they will pull the dust sheets off an invention that they have been sitting on for twenty years. This is yet another ridiculous conspiracy theory that doesn't stand scrutiny.

From what I saw today these motor companies are pouring money into research and development of new fuel technologies like there was no tomorrow, which may well be the case. In fact they are putting in one million Euros per day, which doesn't sound much like the are waiting until the oil runs out. What they have achieved so far is just the start but it is impressive. I got to drive some of their latest offerings which include The Smart electric car, a hybrid lorry and a natural gas powered van plus a couple of vehicles that have stop start technology, which prevents fuel wasted when idling. That idling fuel amounts for one sixth of everything we use. I particularly liked the hybrid lorry because it decides whether to run on battery or diesel according to the load on the engine. You can hear it change over as you drive along

The one reservation that I have about this technology is that it is far too quiet. During the transition period when we are running electric and internal combustion vehicles I predict a sharp rise in the number of pedestrians run over simply because they didn't hear these new vehicles coming. Despite the fact that we all know that you must look right and left before crossing the road many of us step off the kerb depending solely upon our hearing to tell us whether traffic is coming. Every cyclist knows this to be true.

Old habits die hard but the young iPod generation may already be better equipped for the new electric vehicle age, because they have already given up using their ears to cross the road or do anything much other than receive the relentless beat of
music. For them looking is the natural option, as is lip reading, so they stand a far better chance of surviving.

It isn't often that you see natural selection or Darwinism in action before your very eyes, or ears come to that.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Crisis? What Crisis?

A friend of mine runs a fairly large plumbing firm and he tells me that he's inundated with boiler replacements at the moment. It seems that the soaring cost of fuel has finally driven people to look for new efficiencies. The Government has also announced that massive funds will be made available for insulation and draught-proofing. Inevitably there are those who pour scorn upon this initiative and would prefer the money to come directly to those who need it most. The fact that the money is being clawed back from excessive profits made by energy suppliers doesn't mean that it should simply be given straight back to them. Sooner or later we have to face the facts that fossil fuels are finite and that we should be doing everything in our power to avoid squandering them.

All efforts to appeal to people's social conscience have achieved insignificant progress compared to the 20% hike in prices we have seen recently and yet there's still a huge amount of waste. We are dancing on the Titanic, with people driving their obese kid's distances of less than a mile to school and sitting in stationery cars with engines running, often for quarter of an hour or more outside the school gates just to keep the single occupant warm. People do this in the certain knowledge that there is still plenty left underground. Even if there is, even if we are barely half way through the world's oil and gas reserves at just 7% growth in consumption (remember China and India here) we will double our consumption in ten years and that will be the end of that.

I know there are people reading this who don't believe the figures, by all means feel free to dispute them but do the math first. Most people have heard the story about the bloke who tricked a king into giving him a fortune by saying "Give me one grain of rice on the first square of the chess board and two on the next and so on". By the time you get to the 64th square you are into something very big. How big? A warehouse full? enough to cover the country? Don't try working it out on your calculator, it isn't powerful enough. The amount of rice is more than all the rice produced in the world. Stupid king, all he had to do was get a bloody great abacus and spend a lifetime counting.

So if we have an increase in fuel consumption of just 7% per year that will double our consumption every ten years. The amount of oil and gas we'll then consume in the following ten years will be more than we have consumed since we dragged the first barrel out of the ground. Most of us are like that king; we have no way of processing these figures even in our imagination. It is just too much to contemplate and we shut down. In fact even people who are paid to know these things are often unable to grasp what is really happening.

Despite all the rhetoric from the Government and local authorities, about saving energy we still aren't really serious. Public buildings, and offices are often overheated simply to allow people to wear summer clothing all year round. I was visiting a relative in hospital recently and the place was stifling with radiators pumping out heat on every floor and windows flung wide open in an effort to cool the building down. In the summer you see the reverse. The people working in my local filling station wear body warmers to avoid the chill brought on by the excessively cold air conditioning.

Of course the most conspicuous waste of all is the traffic jam which brings a special brand of misery to hundreds of thousands of people every day. Millions of litres of motor fuel (possible one in ever six tank fulls) are wasted while we sit waiting to move, and in the UK the answer to that seems to be to bring even more people into what is now officially the most crowded country in Europe. 350 people for every square kilometre is the average, and if you live in the South East it can be twice that. Ah well if we carry on like this we will double the population and the close proximity of all those extra people means that we won't be half so cold when the Russians turn off the gas.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

'Not So Grand' Designs

The bloke down the road is having an extension built. The job is being done by Steve a friend of mine. The customer is, or was, a graphic designer. When work dried up in that field he turned his hand to decorating. He is meticulous, about anything he does and he took great pleasure and pride in designing the extension. He is proud of it but to most people the glaring omission in the plan is a window looking out into the garden. Instead he has a brick wall with cupboards on it. The daylight to the kitchen is provided by four Velux windows. I am a big fan of roof lights but looking up to the sky is no substitute for looking out on a lawn and trees. Most people these days are desperate to get as much light into their homes as possible and I fear that, should he want to sell the house, this will put off many prospective buyers.


Now I know that everyone is entitled to design their house the way they like it. So why am I annoyed by the way he has vandalised this once charming Victorian semi? Do I care how he dresses, what books he reads or where he goes on holiday? Not one bit, but somehow what people do to their houses affects me.

I don't think I'm alone in this. If I walk down the road and see an example of stone cladding or day glow fluorescent masonry paint over what was once perfectly adequate brickwork I feel some sense of outrage. If I see someone replace a slate roof with large concrete interlocking tiles I feel a sense of disappointment that they took the cheap option at the expense of good taste. Although most buildings are privately owned there is some sense in which we all have collective ownership of them. Architecture, even on a small scale, gives us a sense of well being and it is defines where we live. We take pleasure in seeing a well kept village, a lovely house or even a palace and we are excited by iconic structures such as The Gherkin.

Planning laws are in some sense our attempt to regularise individual expression for the greater good. Yet the evidence suggests that we built much more attractive buildings before planning permission. Why should a handful of councillors on a committee have any more idea about what should or should not be built than anyone else? If the bloke down the road wants to build a claustrophobic cell and shut out views of suburbia why shouldn't he. In fact he did, and they let him and though I support individual expression in theory, I can't help thinking that they shouldn't have.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Rising Damp

I got a call from a friend of a friend who had been suffering from persistent rising damp. He has spent a fortune on various remedies but still it came back. The flat was only twelve years old so it sounded to me as if the damp proof course had been breached in some way. The usual reason would be having a path or patio laid too close to the DPC height. When I arrived at the flat I was somewhat surprised to find that it was on the third floor. I have seen a lot of cases of rising damp in my time but never has it risen above 1 metre. I was ready to rule it out but when I got into the flat I could see all the familiar classic signs of rising damp. Large patches of bubbling plaster up to a height of around 900mm. Some patches were on internal dividing walls and some patches were on the outside walls or party walls to neighbouring flats. None of the other flats in the block had shown any signs of rising damp.

The patches seemed to coincide with radiators and my immediate thought was that the central heating system was leaking. "I've had it checked" he said. I subsequently found out that this problem had been going on for two years and a surveyor had originally diagnosed a central heating leak some time ago. The only problem with that diagnosis was that the system showed no pressure loss. This could of course have been because it was being slowly topped up by the filling loop so I disconnected the loop just to make sure and I told the householder to keep an eye on the pressure gauge. A week later there had been no sign of a pressure drop. "I think we can rule out the heating" I said. "Yes that it what the plumber told me" he replied. The householder then told me that he had a damp specialist company in around a year ago who had re-plastered the walls with a waterproof render. This is treating the symptom not the cause and judging by the bubbles and flaking plaster it hadn't even done that. All that work and disruption hadn't made the slightest difference.

It occurred to me that if the pipes feeding the radiators started in the hall cupboard where the boiler was and spread out like tentacles through plastic duct work set in the floor screed it was just possible that the duct work was also shared by another pipe which was leaking into the duct. The obvious place to start was in the cupboard. Unfortunately there was no sign of any duct work in the airing cupboard but I found that the pipes went through the wall and down under the bath. The bath panel was tiled in with no visible means of removal and that could have been the reason why nobody had pursued this line of enquiry. It took some patience to remove it without damaging the surround.

When I eventually managed to remove the panel I could see immediately that the flexible overflow pipe to the bath had fallen off at the top end and was dangling in the plastic floor duct. This meant that a good percentage of the water from the bath or shower was leaking into the ducts on a daily basis and was then being channelled around the house by a system of what were effectively small canals. The canals came to an abrupt end at the walls which, not surprisingly, were soaking up the water like a sponge.

I put the hose back on the spigot and secured it there with a Jubilee clip. Had he known the problem I am sure that the householder could have done the job. The total cost was 26 pence.


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net

Time For A Change

I have been working with a very small team of volunteers on a project to modernise a bungalow which is used by spinal injury victims. Once they leave hospital in a wheelchair they move into a halfway house where they practice coping on their own but have the backup of a carer should they need it. Getting used to fending for yourself in this situation is no easy task and it obviously helps to have equipment that works. The charity that looks after these houses is called Aspire and we started working with them around twelve months ago with the intention of building up a network of tradesmen and women across the country. Each team could then look after its regional homes. It was a good idea but we failed to get the volunteers in any appreciable number. There just isn't the glamour.



Of course there is one sure fire way of getting volunteers and that is to get some television cameras in there. Even better, turn it into some sort of game or challenge. The bungalow we are working on was originally converted by another team of volunteers under the stewardship of Aneka Rice. This was probably the first of the genre of television makeover shows and the intentions of those who gave up their time were honourable, but judging by the results the whole team was put under impossible time pressure, and had to work through the night to turn the job around in time for the prancing Aneka to arrive fresh faced in her helicopter.



Considering the corners that had to be cut to meet the impossible deadlines, the building has stood up very well. The wet room less so, but wet rooms were in their infancy then and there just wasn’t the necessary kind of equipment around. That said the leaks around the tray were due to the fact that it was bedded-in on mastic and was never going to support the weight of a person and a powered wheelchair. The leaks made the joist rotten and the whole thing was a festering mass of decay. It didn’t help that the shower walls were lined with plasterboard stuck on top of wallpaper with tile adhesive. I can imagine the conversation that must have gone on as the guys discovered that, at four in the morning, they had run out of board adhesive. They then turned to the only adhesive they had and to be fair it lasted over twenty years.



Given that Challenge Aneka wasn’t a live show you have to wonder why it was so vital that the work was completed on time. The precedent they set in this impossible 48 hour makeover, or whatever it was, gave rise to Changing Rooms, DIY SOS and several other shows of this ilk. Most people watching them have some idea that they are watching a bodge job and that may even be part of the appeal but television executives believe that audiences will not put up with the pace of a job done in a realistic time schedule. They may well be right, but what few of them realise is that there is a knock on effect. Customer’s now expect their kitchen, bathroom or even loft conversion to be finished in a week.



This rush and tear culture is everywhere now and there is no going back. Every travel show now has a time beating element in it. A young lad cycles around the world and the only value is to do it faster than anyone else. He hasn't got time to lift his head and enjoy the view of stop and chat to the people he passes which would have made much better television than the sight of him pedalling furiously. And television is seeking out new subjects and ideas. We now have face lifts and even serious medical operations served up as infotainment. It is fascinating stuff but the pace is perhaps a little slow. Six hours for a triple heart by pass is surely too much. What they need is a girl with a clipboard and stopwatch cajoling them. Aneka where are you?


Roger Bisby
www.selfbuilder.net