Telegraph Collection Gas Energy Saver : Do Not Buy!

As an inventor, I was thinking about our gas stove, and how to increase the efficiency of heat transfer from flame to saucepan. I was doodling about with a design, and in researching it, found this item here. On the Telegraph marketing site.

Great. One less thing for me to do. So last May I bought a pair (£21 inc p+p) online.
They sit on the flame, go red hot, and as it says on the site,
"Most gas hobs burn gas inefficiently, resulting in expensive bills for your family. The Gas Energy Saver solves this problem by using a special catalytic alloy disc to convert all the unburnt gas to heat and energy instantly.

It fits all gas hobs, neatly sitting on your job, heating to over 1000^oC, dramatically reducing your cooking time. The special stainless steel alloy is dishwasher safe. Measures 14x1cm (51/2x1/4in)".

Get that? "Dramatically reducing your cooking time".

Seven months later, I decided to quantify the amount of gas I was saving, with the following

EXPERIMENT

Method

Turn on gas, and leave it on at the same rate.
Take one saucepan, fill with one full egg-cup of water from the cold tap, place on flame, first with the Gas Energy Saver grid in place. Hit start button of stopwatch. Observe when boiling starts, which is taken as substantial bubbling occurring at the edge of the water. Record time. Remove grid, discard water (into a thermos flask, if you must know, so as to conserve the heated water), remove grid, refill saucepan with the same amount of water, and repeat.

I tried to keep the timings of the actions I took as regular as possible.

In all I took 16 readings, 8 with the Energy Saver Grid (ESG) in place, and 8 in the normal way, with the pan just sitting on the gas hob.

Results

Number of seconds to end point with ESG in place:
106, 44, 137, 156*, 62, 145, 80*, 149
* = end point taken as evidence of boiling dry, with dry pan appearing before boiling was observed.

Average time to boil using the ESG : 110 seconds

Number of seconds to end point without ESG in place:

73, 28, 32, 60, 51, 51, 53, 43
Average time to boil without using the ESG : 49 seconds

Discussion
There was a wide variation in the readings of the "Energy Saver" compared with the readings for the ordinary flame. This could have been due to variations on how the ESG sits on the hob, as it has a toothed structure, which if they are not bedded down on the hob, may hold the pot further from the flame, or not, depending how it is situated. It may be supposed that the device fails because it holds the pot further from the flame.

Conclusion
The Gas Energy Saver has been wasting a significant amount of energy. It is surprising that no trials were carried out on the invention before it was put on the market.

The appliance is not recommended by this blog.

Declaration: No money changed hands in connection with this experiment.

I will now have to fashion and trial my own design to increase the efficiency of heat transfer from flame to saucepan. Bother.

[update 25.1.10: Still no reply from the Telegraph Collection to my letter. 3 weeks now. It was just a polite letter of information. Perhaps they would reply if I mention the Trades Descriptions Act.]
[update 1.2.2010: Just got this email:

Your message

To:      Customer Services
Cc:     
Subject: Gas Energy Saver Trial
Sent:    Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:38:10 -0000

was deleted without being read on Tue, 2 Feb 2010 16:16:00 -0000

Great. I'll send it again.

Update: a lab test contradicts my findings. 

The reason for this is that I was using my apparatus upside down. Which might appear to be stupid, but I was following the picture of the item. 

So now, when I get a round tuit, I will find the items, and repeat the experiment with them the right way up.

How Carter-Ruck and Trafigura challenged freedom of speech

Image: How Trafigura and Carter-Ruck would prefer things to be. Creative Commons License.

The Guardian has been blocked from reporting the following Parliamentary question:

N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

This scandal is an upwardly mobile trend on Twitter. Here is a sample of the Twitters going out:

Superb work from adam.tudor@carter-ruck.com & isabel.hudson@carter-ruck.com in keeping their client's name quiet. #trafigura #carter-ruck

I have emailed these addresses in the following terms, and I hope you will too.

Dear Adam and Isabel I was surprised to read that a national newspaper has been prevented from reporting on a Parliamentary question, since this would seem to go against the 1688 Bill of Rights. Could you explain the thinking behind this situation please? Thank you
Dr Richard Lawson


Carter Ruck can be reached on
Tel: +44 (0)20 7353 5005, or for those who live in shacks,
Fax: +44 (0)20 7353 5553.

Trafigura's number in Lucerne Switzerland is 0041 41 41 419 4323.

The great thing about this is that it's not just us greenies and bleeding heart liberals who are hopping mad about it. The Rabid Anarcho-Libertarian Right is on the case too.


The BBC can be encouraged to mention this matter here. [update: they have now mentioned it, briefly. Twitter pressure?]

If you do not know that all this is about, here is the story of how Trafigura dumped toxic waste in Africa, with serious health problems for the local community. Internal emails showed that Trafigura knew of the harm that they were doing.

Flashmob on this Thursday 1 pm outside Carter Ruck's offices.

No 10 Petition here.

President Kagame of Rwanda has cited the Trafigura incident as a reason for African States to look to China as a trading partner. (Thanks to Frank Habineza of the Rwandan Green Party for this)

Update 1 pm BST: Victory! Carter Ruck caves in!!

Red Nose Day T-shirts, red ratings on eBay

Most of the official Red Nose Day T-shirts are sold out

but there are two pages of RND T-shirts on eBay

There is a markup of between 50-300% on the eBay RND Tshirts.

It seems that greedy entrepreneurs are cashing in on the Red Nose charity.

I questioned some of the eBay sellers, asking if the profits are going to RND. I have received no answers.

It is a pity that traders are cashing in this national charity event for private profit, when so many good people are putting themselves out to help others.

I suppose the spivs will say that they helped RND to sell our, but they are still parasites on a charity.

What we can do is go into eBay and give them a negative sellers rating...

Anglian Windows - are they any good?

We have had about five cold calls over the last 12 months from Anglian Windows, asking if we need any more services from them. Yes please. We bought our home with Anglian double glazed uPVC windows aready fitted. Not that we would have chosen uPVC windows ourselves, because of the toxicity of waste uPVC, certainly through ingestion of the phthalates leaching from PVC (not that we lick our window frames much) and arguably because of the dioxins given off when PVC is manufactured and burned.

So we've got uPVC windows, and we're not going to change them. However, they are not well sealed in to the walls. This was a problem that showed soon after installation, and it still causes mould problems. So when they phoned to ask if they could interest us in their products, we said yes, please, can you come and fix the leaks. After the fourth call, they said are they still in the guarantee period? Yes they were. And did we notify Anglian when we purchased the house that we had made the purchase? No? Then the guarantee is now invalid.

I fail to see why the guarantee should be specific to the houseowner. The item being guaranteed is the physical window, not the human owner.

But no. That is the rule of Anglia. Their guarantee falls when the house changes hands, unless the new owner notifies them within 3 months.

Well thanks, Anglia. I'm not going to go to the courts, though my survivors may do so if I fall off the ladder and die when I'm up there with the caulk gun sealing up the defects in the Anglian work. And I'm going to leave this up here on the Web, so that any potential Anglian customers who Google "Anglian windows - are they any good?" will be able to make a good, well informed choice.

B&Q Performance Pro Power tools : Do Not Buy!

I have just wasted about 45 minutes in a fruitless search for replacement battery pack for my battery power drill. The drill works fine, the batteries are beginning to get weak. Turns out P Pro is a B&Q supplier, but they do not supply batteries.

In "Island" the aboriginal Pacific islanders buy some outboard engines for their canoes. They were happy to go fast with no paddling, but when they ran out of petrol, the ignorant savages chucked the engine out, leaving them to rust under a coconut tree. Until an engineer got in touch and explained about refills.

As a culture, we are the ignorant savages, led by the nose by idiot manufacturers who sell us tools that we are forced to throw away when the batteries fail. All the embodied energy and materials in the item wasted.

We are living in a stacked deck.

Buy Makita power tools. They seem to be the one the tradesmen use.

Not happy.