Irish Engineering

Friday, June 27th at 5pm

What to do on a Friday night? Well since I have to be up early tomorrow for my train, I’ll probably go sit in the pub (the heat is better there and they actually have a tv!) and continue reading The World is Flat by Friedman. Fantastic book – I recommend it to everyone and anyone.




But for now, as I eat my mushy peas (anyone who has eaten my food knows I put peas in EVERYTHING. This is like pea nirvana in a can.) I thought I’d bring you a bit about Irish housing. My house is much like all the other houses in this area, they were probably all put up by the same developer in the 60’s or 70’s. First, we’ll look at the electrical.

The electrical plugs are much bigger – approximately 2 inches each way. The outlet covers have little switches – red means the outlet is hot. For safety and efficiency, many appliances are simply switched off when not in use – big savings folks and much easier than unplugging and replugging in the toaster every morning. The refrigerator outlet is always hot and the fridge is a bit smaller. It looks almost like two college fridges stacked on top of each other.

The whole house is heated by what appears to be a hot-water heater (which looking at it, seems a lot like the heat pump we made in design 3!). Now, let’s say I was out of petrol or the pump from the backyard tank to the house was broken (as it this past weekend), I could throw some coal in the furnace and use that to heat the house. I was a bit surprised that coal was still a viable home energy source. The hot-water heater is located in a closet in the dining room and the furnace is on the floor in the dining room.




The plumbing is also interesting. The water faucets and toilets are heated by the hot-water heater/furnace combo and connected to a septic tank, not a plumbing system. On the other hand, the shower has a separate water heating system that is electrically based and located in the wall. See on the right a string which turns on the heating system. While connected to the rest of the water system, the water for the shower is separately heated. I pull the string (an indicator turns red) before my shower to heat the water and then pull it again after to turn the system off.

And just for fun, I’ve always heard the term, “black sheep of the family.” Well on my walk home tonight, I actually saw a black sheep in with the rest of the flock across the street from my house!