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An easy fix in the Old Post Office

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 Against all odds, I actually had a straightforward household maintenance job on the Old Post Office building!   Our garden tap had started to drip excessively. It was an old style brass tap, and I correctly guessed it was made from Imperial size components rather than metric. I assumed it would be a 1/2 inch flat rubber washer, so I took a walk down to Tomes. Unusually they were out of stock, so I had to go further to Tool Station down in Goods Yard Road. To be safe I purchased a set of different sizes of tap washers. After pre-checking the spanners sizes I found a 13/16ths inch spanner was ideal. A trip down into our cellar to turn off the water at the mains and back to the job. It was all over and done within less than 10 minutes and no unwelcome gushes of water.  So now I've plenty of spare washers and a properly working cold tap in the garden.  Changing the garden tap washer in the Old Post Office Belper The original tap washer made from black rubber had perished and split. Th
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From our "shop" window

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 One of the features of the Old Post Office is the road traffic outside on the A6 Road. This road starts in Luton and heads north to finish in Carlisle (Cumbria) and calls in to Belper. When this time lapse video was recorded (11am on a wet April day) the traffic was relatively light for the time of day.  If you watch carefully you'll see one of our German Shepherds poke her nose into the scene.
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Easter Monday - Nailers Game

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I was practising with my drone flying and took it up to about 50 metres above our garden, dodging all those pesky trees. I couldn't resist taking a snap of the football game in  the stadium at the bottom of our garden. All done within CAA rules for a sub-250gm photo drone. Click on the image to see an enlarged version. 
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Drone views above the Old Post Office

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 Here's a couple of views from above the Old Post Office, taken at 35 metres. To the North To the South East towards Belper centre.
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4G Mobile Data vs Wired Broadband

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 Our cottage in Wirksworth and a friend's house suffered an Internet Broadband outage last week, and it continues. The cause was a lorry flattening a BT street Cabinet. The friend works from home and has a Sky Business broadband service which is wired (phone line), but with a 4G Wireless dongle as a back-up. She is able to continue working at her PC. What I found interesting is the difference in service quality between the Wired and the 4G wireless. The first chart shows the 4G, with the single PC a couple of metres from the WiFi Access Point.: The second chart is the wired Internet at the Old Post Office, which has the same network equipment and similar "bandwidth" of Internet speed. It is measured over the same timeframe. One probably cause is that many of the local houses will also jumped onto the local mobile phone network to access the Internet while their phone lines are down.
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Fixing the data cabling in the Old Post Office

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 The Old Post Office on Bridge St in Belper was built around 1805. So far as we can tell it was two adjacent buildings merged together, Some of the walls are stone and some are Georgian brickwork. The interior of the 6 bedroom end-of-terrace house is a long "L-shape", though this is not obvious from the street. Some of the interior walls are thick brick/stone work. The structure/shape is not conducive to easy WiFi network distribution for modern day Internet.  The Grade II Heritage Listing effectively limits any changes to the fabric of the building. Part of my work involves international video conferences, so one of the back bedrooms away from the noise of the busy A6 Main road is used as an office, with green-screen and acoustic insulation. We also have two separate (diverse) Internet links with a combined capacity of 400/100 mbps (download/upload) servicing our internet usage. The network normally load-shares between the two broadband services, if one fails for any reason
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Air Quality testing - Near Old Post Office

 We have just received the air pollution monitor (Flow 2 from Plume Labs) and ran a couple of testing events. On Bridge Street and the corner of Long Row: 11th May at 6:30 pm (Wind speed N.E. 6 mph  18.5C) Recorded NO2 level average over 10 minutes: 144 ppb (276 ugm-3)  Conversion using this tool: http://www.apis.ac.uk/unit-conversion pm2.5 average 3.6 ugm-3 pm10 average 14 ugm-3 Note : WHO NO2 limit 10 ug/m-3 annually EPA NO2 one hourly limit  100ppb for NO2 On Bridge Street and the corner of Long Row: 12th May Noon N02 level (Wind speed 4 mph SW) 64 ppb  (122 ugm-3) pm2.5 average 4.5 ugm-3 pm10 average 40 ugm-3
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