RE: On and off topic... recovering a pine table and when Home seer failed...

["Mark Hetherington" <mark.egroups@xxxxxxx>]

> You can get things like HV to do very intelligent things with sockets.
If
> you splash out a little more and get the RF receiver with plug socket
it
> supports status request.

If you mean the TM12, I have found that to be the least reliable bit of kit
I have. At the moment I only use the TM12 plug socket with an insect zapper
thing since whether the TM12 is on or off seems to have little bearing on
whether the insect zapper actually powers up. There seems to be a constant
leak of power to the zapper whilst the TM12 is off and when on, it does not
necessarily fully power it.

> > 3) Mini timers suck as alarm clocks
>
> Not very good as X10 controllers either due to 'very' limited range.
In my
> case it is feet not tens of feet.

Not had that specific problem myself but then I have them all configured to
control quite local devices e.g. Bedside controls lighting and appliances
in
the room plus landing lighting. All units off and all lights on works fine
throughout the house though.

> > recover/restore the damage, please let me know.
>
> The only thing I can think of is skimming the top but it depends
> on a lot of
> things e.g. table thickness and depth of damage below what you can
see.

Having made a daylight examination, the top surface of the table is around
1.5-2 inches thick. There are no signs of damage on the underside at all.
The top surface as well as having the actual iron burn marking, has minor
damage in the surrounding area (wax and varnish coating blistered and minor
discolouration of the wood).

There is also a split in the top where the heat appears to have contracted
the wood sufficiently to cause a crack of around 5 inches in length but not
through the whole surface. Scratching the wood around this crack does get
down to less black wood but I am not sure how deep beyond that the damage
will keep going.

> > house insurance will pay out
> They should and did for me in similar circumstances
> > should it affect premiums?
> It shouldn't but read the small print or phone them up (get it in
writing)

Good to hear. I will call them on Monday and see what they say. If I know
they should pay out then at least it is worth trying and in the event they
refuse it is definitely time to take my business elsewhere.

> DO AS I DO AND WORK HARDER AND PAY SOMEONE ELSE TO DO THE IRONING
(IN-LAWS
> IN MY CASE AND NOT OFTEN ENOUGH)

I had someone lined up for that exact task along with general cleaning but
for various reasons it fell through. It is something I need to look into
again. The hardest thing is that ideally I would like such a person to be
able to come to the house when I am at work so finding someone that can be
trusted sufficiently to have their own key and alarm code as well as to
actually work without supervision is the problem. Unfortunately there are
are no relatives willing to do the task.

Mark.