We enjoyed our day out in Hereford immensely, didn't we, but there was more to it than met the eye on your laptop or stolen smart device! I was there for an open day at one of the UK's newest ~ if not the newest ~ universities, or at least something of the kind viz. NMITE or the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering.
I must admit I cried when UMIST was incorporated in the University of Manchester proper, because it pioneered computing in the way MIT took it onward and upward with the transistor. Plus everyone wanted to go there, as they do MIT just for the initials.
The great thing about NMITE is its hands-on approach that practically guarantees a job for its graduates, beside employing and entertaining them in the best possible way whilst they are there. In fact they said that it was so much like having started work already that the transition was seamless; although it was then that I recalled how I went to university to avoid work for so long as it was humanly possible.
A less great thing about NMITE is that looking at it you would think that it would be pronounced 'enmity', which is the last thing you'd want of a seat of learning. At the same time, the last new 'model' anything we had here was Cromwell's New Model Army in less happy times. I'd prefer MITEN, pronounced 'mitten', with its warm and comforting connotations albeit with an 'N' on the end that would have to stand for something like Nanoscience?
I offer this consultancy on branding wholly gratis, incidentally, in support of student welfare and along with a suggested logo that I stole from Google's Images:
Highlight of the day for me however, beside the buffet lunch, was not so much the talk on drone autonomy ~ although that was epic ~ as the out-of-town campus that is called the CATT or Centre for Advanced Timber Technology. Architects are doing amazing things with wood when it comes to building and in my dream world I, much like the Flintstones, would live in an all-wood house with a decking driveway for our wooden drone.
It was great to get down and dirty discussing various aspects of expanded foams of one sort or another. Amongst all of this was the model seen up top, advertising the best possible use of such materials for insulation. May I take you by your mitten to discuss elements of these? (Am minded in fact of that episode where Alan Partridge interviews a lady in a lesbian relationship who works as a dry-stone waller and thus he opens with 'Let's talk dry-stone walls...').
Well down there at the base you've doubtless a foamed concrete that is lighter and more eco-minded than ever and it's topped with a membrane and our old favourite polyurethane or PU, which I've been intimately associated with in the past, having used it for boat-building.
PU's open-celled version is not to be used for boats, principally because it soaks up water faster than the Titanic and so is used for flower arranging. I used a closed-cell version supplied by Trident Foams for a boat that I built in Southampton to feature at a defence awards ceremony in London, before being trailered to Glasgow where I flew for a travel company.
What physical dimension do foams work best in? Yes! Compression, and in this role they are even used as the basis for off-ramps on highways in the US.
Moving on, the next layer looks like more of the same, but what is that around the corner stuck to the wall? Nothing less than EPS, our old friend Extruded Polystyrene that we use to build the flat-cat, albeit with a scrim of cement over a Kevlar matrix!
Inside the cavity-wall though is what looks like a natural fibre or mineral wool type of insulation that I cannot be sure about without a touch and a lick, which is something nerds like me do with foam instead of women.
My favourite cavity-wall insulation ~ I know you've one too ~ has to be Rockwool, a brand so called because it's wool made of rock. This I know as I used to collect the product from a plant in North Wales, where they decant rocks into a furnace to be spun like candy-cotton: a process originated in North America but commercialised in Denmark by Finn Henriksen and the Kahler family, who for years were up there with the Osmonds.
If you wish to know more about cavity-wall insulation there is always my TED talk, available exclusively on vinyl with a complementary tee-shirt on our merch pages.
