Its already happening in the UK.

I think the latest lump was 3 tons of paper mashie which as you know is a relatively small lump. Domestic properties are also having localised blockages.

Are you suggesting that people who are stockpiling/hoarding toilet paper also use more? Why?

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

How long before these wipes cause problems? That's a negative time, it's been happening for the last few weeks, people using wipes because others have bought up all the tp, then the lines plug.

GregLocock, no, it's more of problem of those that didn't hoard resorting to non-flushable expedients, like paper towels, baby wiped or old socks.

My glass has a v/c ratio of 0.5

Maybe the tyranny of Murphy is the penalty for hubris. - http://xkcd.com/319/

If they are using non-disposable wipes and flushing them, they kinda deserve what comes back. They have been making a mess of water treatment plants since they appeared. The things need to be banned; well, the people that flush them for sure.

What happened to the old out house habit of an old Wards catalog. Might be back, but Wards is gone.

Quote (oldestguy)

an old Wards catalog

Print off pages from Amazon's website?

Where there's a will, there's a way.

People have been dumping the labeled supposedly "flushable" wipes for years, and the fatbergs typically contain a number of such wipes.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
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Lots of stuff is "flushable". Not so much of that stuff degrades well. ...*...
Ya. Ward, Will and the corn farmer can solve that problem.

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

Oh, don't you know?

After all the "economic stimuli" is finished, toilet paper will be the new currency.

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

Quote (ax1e)

After all the "economic stimuli" is finished, toilet paper will be the new currency.

Why not. Some currencies have turned into toilet paper

There was a big court case in Australia over these wipes. Companies were taken to court for advertising them as "flushable". The judge sided with the companies, and decided they are indeed flushable! After all, they clear the trap, don't they?

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/court-di...

Comcokid, ... Eh? I wasn't saying it would not, nor was it a question.

Lots of currencies have turned into toilet paper. Happens more and more ever since the "Gold Standard" was abandoned by Nixon and then by every other country on Earth.
It's much easier to pay back your debts with toilet paper.

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

You can't blame the public for flushing a product that says "flushable" right on the label. If it's causing the utilities major problems they need to lobby the legislature to ban the stuff. Good luck with that.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

Currencies were turning into toilet paper way before Nixon; Germany pre-WWII; China, pre-Communist takeover. My grandfather supposedly received his salary in a small suitcase on payday, and by the time he got the suitcase to the money exchange, it would lose 10% in value

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
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I was mostly limiting my discussion to the USD, which held it's value rather well when it was backed by gold initially, and later by silver. However you are right, pleanty of currencies have turned to dust over the years. The Continental Dollar, the first in America was one as well. The Confederate Dollar collapsed before the end of the Civil War. In 1209 the British Pound was worth roughly 2000 X of what it is today. The Lebanese Pound. It's a long list. Back to the $, I paid more dollars for my car in 2017 than I paid for my first house just after Nixon left office, $24,000 for a 3 bdrm, detached garage, in Spring Valley, only 10 miles W of the center of Houston in 1978. AS for stocks, it is apparent that the computer trading algorithms do not much care one way or another about C-19. They're just buying on dips. But we diverge too far. I brought this up initially only because I thought it paralleled the recent apparent artificial value of toilet paper.

Getting back to 3DDave's thread's topic ...

How is being essetially under house arrest affecting everyone? Any surprise reactions? Too much quality family time, etc.? I hear beer sales are up 80%, except for Corona's I presume.

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

Speaking of currency which could be used as toilet paper, I was in the Ukraine on business to visit some perspective customers and to hold some seminars back in 1994. This was a short time after the disolution of the Soviet Union and the Ukrainians were trying to go back to their pre-Soviet currency, the Koupon. When I was there the exchange rate was 40,000 Koupons to the Dollar, but the largest bill in circulation was only 50,000 Koupons. We were only there for three nights and never had to use any currency as our hotel (which was Russian owned and operated) took credit cards and breakfast was included. And our licensed distributor provided us with transportation (a car and a driver) and he also covered our lunches and dinners (he was a great host). On our last night there, we went to a very nice restaurant, which was walking distance from the distributor's office, with live music (a string quartet with a soloist) where the caviar and vodka flowed, however, they did not take credit cards. Therefore our host had to pay in cash. He literally had a plastic bag full of Koupons which had been bundled into one million Koupon 'bricks'. These had been done at a bank and were shrink-wrapped and certified by the bank as being legitimate. After dinner, he literally had to stack a bunch of these 'bricks' on the table to cover the check. After we had walked back to the office, I asked our host if I could buy some currency from him as I always try and bring some home from ever I visit as a souvenir. He insisted on simply giving me some. He opened his desk drawing and after rummaging for awhile, came up with handful of notes, including a couple of 50,000 Koupons. And then he looked down and grabbed a tiny (the size of their currently varied based on the denomination) note, a little smaller than a business card. As he handed it to me he said, "Here, take this. It's FIVE Koupons. It's literally NOT worth the paper it's printed on."

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Try paying your rent in cash with 2002 Turkish Lira; 1.5 million +/- per USD. Fortuately(?) they had 1,000,000 Lira notes and it only took 2000 of them to get the 2 billion lira monthly rent squared away. BTW anybody want to buy Venezuelan Bolivars? Got a couple trillion of those on hand.

The cops hauled a guy away today that went stir crazy. Took 4 of them to taze, zip-tie and plastic wrap him up small enough to fit him in the paddy wagon.

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

Speaking of Venezuela, until about four years ago, my sister was living in Caracas. When she was a senior in college, she met an engineering grad student from Venezuela and a year or so after she graduated, they got married and the following year, they moved to Caracas, where he was from. For years he worked for Bechtel Corp and would often get overseas assignments, including to the US (they once spent 18 months in Houston). They have one son, who's also a graduate engineer. Anyway, when things started to go all to hell down there, she decided to move back, along with her son and his family (he and his wife have two small girls). They're now living just outside of Detroit. Her husband also came, and in fact, he started the process to become a permanent resident (my wife and I are officially his 'sponsors') however, he kept going back and forth trying to sell their property there (they own a couple of apartments including the penthouse they were living in when they left).

Anyway, it appears that her husband as now decided to remain in Caracas but my sister and her son are staying here. Their son is of course an American citizen as are his two daughters. They've managed to get a Green Card for his wife and she's in the process of applying to be naturalized. He's got a really good job, being able to speak both fluent Spanish and English (in fact, he's considered to have TWO first languages) working for a tooling supplier who has customers both here and in several South American countries.

Now over the years, they had tried to move as much money out of Venezuela as possible, either directly or via third-party countries, like Panama. Unfortunately, they've lost most of what they had except for their real estate, whatever it's now worth. My sister's biggest problem is that she's nearly 70 but has not worked sufficient quarters to get Social Security or Medicare. Granted, she's invested what money she had left behind in the states, but that's only going to last so long. Her son bought a nice house and she's moved in with them last year.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Todays picture from Norway (Scandinavia, Europe): The problem with sewers here are not the toilet paper, despite some hoarding, but an excess and increasing flow of Q-tips, hand cleaning tissues and other waste, blocking pumps. Waste said to originate from quarantine demanded home offices.

No much excess paper money floating around, we mostly use cards. (Please do not get THAT picture in your mind!)

Caracas used to be a beautiful place, or so my parents told me; I was too young to remember anything from there.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
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Baker, been there, done that... in reverse. Venezuela does have some good aspects... I left for Turkey just before Chavez took office. Before that I wanted to stay in Venezuela forever. Thought about waiting it out, but it just didn't look like that would work out. I had an apartment on the beach in Puerto de la Cruz. Beautiful. 1000 X better than Caracas. I have heard that you cannot legally sell any property in Venzuela today. Least so I'm told. Or maybe they are really talking about just getting the money out of the country. That is after all what keeps Panama and Miami in business. At the price I imagine you would get today, I probably wouldn't want to sell a property there anyway.

IR, Amigo mio! I had you pegged from East Asia. Q' sorpresa mi han dado!

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

No se comprendo, que lastima!

Too young to even do THAT; although my parents claim that I spoke Spanish to the cab driver that picked us up at the airport, probably La Guardia, since we arrived before JFK even got elected. I tried two years of Spanish in high school, but those little Spanish gray cells apparently got tired of waiting to be reactivated and either left or changed jobs.

My supposed native language, Mandarin, is in better shape, although my Cantonese is very stilted and mostly only capable of ordering Dim Sum.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers Entire Forum list http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

OK, so I wasn't completely wrong. Venezuela is (was) surprisingly multicultural. There were very large Lebanese and Syrian communities around Puerto de la Cruz.

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

I still have a few Lebanese £1000 notes left - make good "First to Find" trophies for new geocaches in the UK.

A

So far as I noticed the great TP scare was mostly internet hype. Here in Detroit stores were cleaned out for about three days then life returned to normal. Our governor closed schools two Fridays ago as many did, we did our weekly shopping the following Monday evening and Costco had a mountain of the 36-packs of Charmin, which was good as we were down to our final couple rolls.

Interestingly enough, several old friends work retail in poor rural areas where the career choices outside of the building trades and agriculture are: retail, fast food, or Walmart. As several memes predicted, hoarders keep trying to return TP and other hoarded items for rent money. While part of me feels bad for folks struggling financially, another part of me feels good that smaller retailers aren't accepting returns now for the "safety" of employees.

Perhaps we should start a thread specifically to discuss the engineering side of the COVID-19 response. It is not in and of itself an engineering disaster, but the pandemic is obviously stressing the global and local supply chains, medical community, and just about everything else.

Fred

^ Yeah. Check out www.covidskunkworks.com . There's emergency engineering & design of PPE and medical devices going on.

Don't forget about Zimbabwe in the late-2000's... they printed up 100 Trillion $ notes, as in, each piece of paper was worth "100 trillion".

Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

This thread has gone a bit astray.....

Poland in pre USSR collapse days but during glasnost was quite fun. You were meant to officially exchange money at a bank at some sort of official rate, but for sporting event we were exempt. The money changers on the side of the street were offering 15000 zlotys to the UKP. The issue one set of people had when they got fined for speeding was that fines hadn't kept place and the maximum was 8000 Z. They still had grozneys ( subdivison of a zloty) coins!! Now they were worth more as scrap metal than the coins were for sure. It was wads of currency in exchange for one or two notes alright.

The deposit on the beer bottles was 3 times the cost of the beer (2p) and the deposit on the plastic crate was 10 times that. The beer wasn't bad either.

They had a re donomination in 1994 for 10,000 = 1 new zloty

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

My daughter works at a UF hospital in Gainesville. They figured out that they had surgical draping that was made from the same material used for masks. They came up with a pattern (ties, pleats, wire stiffeners) and my daughter and others have been sewing them. They will UV sterilize them and use them in the main hospital. And since they are actually a heavier gauge material than standard masks they will be able to re-sterilize unsoiled ones and reuse them.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy

Go Gators

Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

Excellent read: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/31/63

This event will be a fundamental change to handling of medical and political disasters.

The people working at Sam's in this area said the same people come every morning and buy the maximum 2 packs of toilet paper. That's 72 rolls. Obvious resellers. They should be tracked by law enforcement and their Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist shops shut down.