Posted on 07/20/2008 9:15:56 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The acre, one of Britain's historic imperial measurements, is to be banned from use under a new European directive.
The measurement, which will officially be replaced by the hectare, will no longer be allowed when land is being registered.
After being agreed last week, the new ruling will come into force in January 2010.
The Tories are angry that unlike some other EU countries, who sent Cabinet-level ministers to the meeting on 15 July, the Government only sent Jonathan Shaw, a junior minister at the Department for Environment Farming and Rural Affairs, to represent Britain's interests.
Mark Francois, the Shadow Europe Minister said: "It is this kind of pointless interference into the nooks and crannies of our national life that frustrates people about the EU. Whether we use hectares or acres should be a matter for Britain to decide, not the EU.
"Once again this weak Labour Government has meekly given up yet another of Britain's rights to Brussels. They need to think again and insist that we must keep our right to use our ancient traditional measure of land if we wish."
A hectare is the equivalent of 2.471 acres; the acre, one of Britain's most ancient units, measures 4,840 square yards.
The first law setting out the exact statutory size for the acre was passed in the early 14th century under Edward I. It is derived from an even older English word, related to the Latin "ager", from which words such as agriculture are derived.
Britain had, until now, an opt-out from the European Union's use of metric measurements which allowed the use of acres to continue.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Engineered wood is great stuff, as long as you are absolutely, positively sure it will never be in a wet location. Once it is in a wet location, all bets are off.
So if you are doing interior work and you have a fair amount of confidence that the roof won’t have a chronic leak and you will not have any long-term plumbing problems, it is great stuff. Solid and stable and better than lumber, IMHO. But I had a 12x24 glue-lam beam that wound up under a small leak where I work, and the entire thing delaminated over time. By the time we detected the leak because of the deformation, it was too late, and the entire beam had to be replaced, which was a tricky process, to say the least.
I always assume that EVERYTHING leaks! That way I'm never disappointed, only pleasantly surprised.
One of the big plusses of designing our own place (we did it once before) is that we can put our heads together with the architect and do sensible planning for HVAC and plumbing. E.g., our old house had one wet wall, the kitchen and the bath were back-to-back, and we left the sheetrock off that wall in the laundry room down in the basement.
This was very handy when the contractor left the water on during a hard freeze before we moved in . . . . very easy to fix!
I always assume that I am building for 100 years, and for at least 20 of those years, the building will be owned by a complete moron who never fixes anything. I think this pretty much sums up the situation of every old building I have ever had the "pleasure" of working with.
If you are building for 20 years, engineered wood is a safe bet. If you are building for 100 years, less so.
We are moving back to a small house because the last kid is about to leave the nest. So we'll build it small but build it right.
And have a pole barn to keep all our junk . . . . :-D
The metric system has a more rational basis, rather than a guesstimate of the length of some ruler’s thumb several centuries ago or the packaging habits of mediaeval farmers.
Multiplying and dividing by powers of two and three made sense when almost all measuring was done by eyeball, but it’s not well-suited for precise measurements or large numbers. We have a decimal numbering system, so a decimal system of measurement is a no-brainer.
It also makes all sorts of calculations easier. For example: How many gallons in a cubic foot of water? Time to bust out the calculator (for the record, 7.4805195). How many liters in a cubic meter? 1 million cc = 1000 liters. Top-of-the-head math. It’s not just a coincidence that physics, medicine and chemistry settled on SI units a long time ago.
I believe that the metric system is superior, and that there’s not much debate about it. That leaves two other questions: 1) Whether it should be imposed on commerce by the government, and 2) whether it should be imposed by treaty on one country by an international body.
The answer to 1 is yes, to at least some degree. The government has to maintain standard weights and measures if it is going to even attempt to prohibit unfair trade. You can’t have each seller defining “ounce” his own way.
The answer to 2 is a little bit trickier. International trade requires standard measures, just as domestic trade does. But since acreage is neither imported nor exported, is its measurement really a matter of the EU’s concern?
4,840 square yards
IOW 10 square chains
Carpentry has its own set of measures, at least for lumber dimensions. It would seem logical that if you stack two 2x4s you'd have a 4x4. No.
Of course, my carpentry experience is from working on old (for these purposes, 40 years and up) houses, where nothing is square, nothing is plumb, nothing is level, and all figures to the right-hand side of the decimal are not to be trusted.
So, which makes more sense to you, the length of some ruler’s thumb (which is probably pretty close to the length of the thumb located at the end of your arm), or 1/10,000,000 the distance from the pole to the equator, as it passes through Paris, France? Having never walked from the pole to the equator, I have no idea how far that is, much less 1/10,000,000th of that distance. But as the possessor of two M1/A1 Mod0 thumbs, I know pretty much how big they are.
For some things, SI is better, and it already predominates in these areas. Ask a chemist to do something in ounces or cups, and you will be greeted with a blank stare. But for the majority of things for the majority of people every day, it has no great advantage.
I take a modified libertarian view. Measures must be standardized, but people should be allowed to use whatever standardized measure they want. In the US, this will mean that English measures will continue to be used for a long time to come for most things, while certain technical trades will go their own way.
Yeah, what's the cost of wood per board centimeter?
yitbos
That has to tell you something.
I use the metric system at work. I like both systems of measurement. I have to say, though, I am pretty happy with acres and miles the way they are.
In the fall of 2004 I bought a supply of top-quality composition shingles for a house renovation project. I planned a 360 square foot wing to be added later, so ordered what I hoped would be enough shingles to do that as well as the existing building, with the entire roof matching. Two years later, I finished that wing and called the roofers. They looked at my stack of extra shingles and told me that I didn’t have enough for the whole job, and the ones I had would not work with new ones because the shingle industry had converted to the metric system. So now I have left to do a good sized doghouse, if I ever get any non-metric dogs.
Those are the dimensions of the wood when it is cut but before it it is planed and sanded down. That's why two 2X4's don't equal one 4X4.
Those are the dimensions of the wood when it is cut but before it it is planed and sanded down. That's why two 2X4's don't equal one 4X4.
So it's not good for homes located in areas with a high probability of category 3 and above hurricanes. Even a good roof might get some leaks in storm like that.
What is REALLY fun is when you start renovating an old house that pre-existed the nominal dimensions.
Try matching new 2x4s into a wall that really IS 2x4! (furring strips are your friends!)
It is absolutely unworkable for carpentry.
But people will choose the system that works best for their application, without any interference from government whatsoever.
So the EU should not be forcing folks to use a system they don't want. To heck with them.
Surveying chains that are 22 yards long.
80 chains to the mile, the mile meaning thousand and being 1000 (M) Roman paces and that is classical metric.
My carpentry experience is limited to relatively small DIY projects, but one thing leads me to doubt that metric is "absolutely unworkable:" Don't people build with wood outside the US?
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