Precious copper roof cladding

Posted on May 13, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer

The price of metals continues to rise on world markets. In a previous article we discussed a road sculpture being stolen for its metallic content. Click here to see. But believe it or not, copper cladding and lead flashing have now become so valuable that thieves have taken to stealing them from the roofs of existing buildings.

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Slate. A fragile wall cladding

Posted on May 7, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer

Using slates as cladding for walls must have seemed like a great solution……at first. Slates are an inexpensive material, self cleaning, easy to source and the skills to install them are readily available i.e. roofers. But unfortunately they fail the robustness test. See the photographs below of a building in Dublin where they have been used to clad a wall.

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What does a Structural Engineer do?

Posted on May 1, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer

Steel frame buildingStructuring Engineers: what do they do? It can be hard to explain if the person is not familiar with the building process. Thankfully the Institution of Structural Engineers spends time thinking about these kinds of questions and part of their answer is:

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Drive slowly in Obama Country

Posted on April 22, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer

Moneygall turnoff M7President Obama’s Great Great Great Grandfather, (Mr. Falmouth Kearney), hailed from the village of Moneygall in County Offaly. See photographs below. But the adjacent junction on the M7 motorway needs to be treated with caution.

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Swiss bus crash: Lessons for the Dublin Port Tunnel?

Posted on April 17, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer

It seems that the future design of Swiss road tunnels may be changed based on last month’s tragic bus crash in which 28 people died, including 22 children. The initial cause of the crash at the Tunnel de Geronde, near Sierre, in Switzerland is still unknown. But the fact that the bus impacted the flat face of a lay-by wall at 90 degrees contributed to the severity of the crash.

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Bleeding a Firebird Popular 90 oil boiler

Posted on April 7, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer

I received a query from a reader today asking how to bleed air from a Firebird popular oil boiler. This stems from a previous article on servicing oil boilers, see here. I thought I might as well share the answer with you as it quite difficult to locate the correct nut to loosen if you are unfamiliar with the boiler.  It certainly took me a while to find the right location when I accidently ran out of oil a few years ago. See photograph below for a guide.

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Skid Row: A phrase from construction

Posted on April 2, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer
Skid Road

Skid Road

Many modern phrases we use today have lost there original meaning and are now used in a different context. One of these is the term ‘skid row’, which usually means a poor dilapidated urban area. This phrase was originally used in the 19th century, in North America, to describe a road constructed from timber and used to remove trees from a forest.

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The Hidden Railway: Irish Peat Bog Railways

Posted on March 28, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer
Irish bog railway

Irish bog railway

Irish Rail operate the main passenger and freight railway lines in Ireland. Their network extends to approximately 1900 km. However there is another rail network in Ireland whose network length probably exceeds this total length. This is the narrow gauge railway used to extract peat from Irish bogs. Prior to the recent discovery of oil and gas, peat was Ireland’s only domestic source of fuel. It is also used for horticulture.

The rail network was first developed in the 1950′s and is owned and operated by a semi-state company, Bord na Mona. It is estimated to be the largest private railway in Europe. It is a mixture of gauges of 610mm (2 feet) and 915mm (3 feet) and operates as a number of stand alone networks. These extract peat from numerous individual bogs and transport it to various power stations, factories or depots.

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Green energy options for Irish schools

Posted on March 20, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer
Solar power panels

Solar power panels

Many schools in Ireland put a great deal of effort into making their buildings as environmentally friendly as possible. This helps to reduce their energy bills but perhaps more importantly in the longer term, it provides a good example to the children. The Government has supported schools in recent years with funding being made available to replace old windows and to insulate walls and attics.

There are a number of different green energy solutions that schools use with some of the most popular being rain water harvesting, solar panels and wood pellet boilers.

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In China: 30 storey building built in 15 days

Posted on March 14, 2012 by The Helpful Engineer

There has been a lot of excitement on social media websites about the ‘time lapse’ video of the 30 storey building in China being erected in 15 days. See video below

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