thank you Neil I feel like a total plum

Rightly so.

Anyone got a wheelbarrow that they can get to dover?

The simplicity is certainly tempting, I wonder how many irons you'd need for an acceptable timescale.


I must say, the idea of using electricity generated by a petrol engine really doesn't sit well with me from both engineering and ecological points of view.

If I remember rightly petrol engines are only around 25% efficient, that is only 1/4 of the chemical energy in the fuel gets converted to motion at the crankshaft, the rest is lost, mostly as heat. So the idea of using what little motion is created to drive a generator/alternator to create electricity, only to convert that to heat as well, seems completely illogical. There'd be three times more heat being put into the atmosphere by the engines cooling system than being transferred to the wine.

It would be more efficient to used a liquid cooled engine and pump the mulled wine around the cylinder head!

All this on top of the fact that with any luck there'll be a bonfire just a few feet away, throwing out more heat than we'd ever need, makes generating more by a particularly slow and inefficient method look a little silly.

Much though I love the toilet, lobbing a pan on the fire looks like an altogether more intelligent solution.sorry.

Joolz,
it'll depend on how many party goers and how fast they're emptying their glasses, doesn't it?
The idea was to use the irons in the traditional way, dunking one into a glass or cup of wine for just enough time to raise the temperature the required amount.

Heating the irons and lobbing them into the pan wasn't part of the plan...

ken

Oh right. I have to admit I'm not overly familiar with such hi-tech devises

I can also see people rapidly settling for drinking it cold... or would that just be me?

what about drinking through heated copper straws?

Excellent Idea! Could you bring some with you?

We could just do a winter warming jäger punch instead.

Hawaiian party!!

Loud shirts, shorts, flower garlands, grass skirts, inflatable palm trees...!

...and a big old fire to stop us catching our death!