Of course he is. However you're presumably thinking along the lines of 'what if she read this', well first off I would imagine the last thing on her mind would be to worry about what total strangers are saying on a random discussion board, let alone reading it herself and secondly I should imagine there are a fair few members of the boy's family and friends who are also thinking and saying the same thing. This is real life with real people with opinions that some people will like and others won't.

Calling the boy a fool, an idiot, stating that it's Darwinism at work doesn't stop people having sympathy for the parents. Don't judge people by a few words on a discussion board.

Exactly

Yes

Good job I resisted the urge to plank on the chimney top yesterday when I was fitting a new flue.

How much of the flue/cowel needs to extend above top of brick on a chimney.I want to build it up to hide flue.

I'm not sure. I used "new" too liberally. I put back the one I took out a while back (18 months ago).

(We had plans for a double ended fireplace but we hit too many road blocks so I'm putting in a new wood burner - the old one was buggered - and making the other side ornamental.)

The cowl is set into a concrete cap and the openings sit about 100mm above the concrete. The flue attaches to the cowl just below the concrete. I guess I should do some checking.

I have been wondering about putting in one of those cowls that looks like a sitting cormorant. I might check with the supplier when I get around to that.

Oh that's ok,I thought you might be some sort of cowel expert who could have told me off the top of your head.I'll troll through my old building code book.Cheers.

Tell us if you find something. I won't be able to fit the heater for a week or so but I thought I'd get the flue back in while there was a break in the rain

What do you want to know apart from don't plank while you're up there?

That's my feelings exactly. I feel more sorry for the poor cops that a] had to witness his mangled body then b] Inform his parents their planker of a son was dead.
Let me put an end to your frustration, I wouldn't write anything here that I wouldn't be prepared to say to anyone concerned, Mrs Beale included.
Indeed, for example, a couple of years ago a bloke that frequented the club where I worked decided to commit suicide by throwing himself in front of a prime mover. I was later asked to both represent the committee at his funeral, then, work the bar for his wake. His partner came to a meeting to ask permission to hold the wake, I refused to do both & put forward a motion to hold a benefit night to raise money for the truck driver.
Like you, other people thought it was a callous heartless descision. My view was that my sympathies lay firmly with the poor bloke who will never forget the night he went to work & ended up with with a corpse impaled on the front of his rig. He will live with that image for the rest of his life. To date he hasn't returned to work.
As I said before I choose to sympathise with those who genuinely deserve it. Families like the Larcombe, Dale & Moerland families who's 20 year old sons recently laid down their lives in service of their country instead of lying down on a verandah rail & simply falling off.

If there are any rules about the cowl.

Why couldn't it have been Sam Newman?

He's filled with so much plastic and silicon, he'd probably bounce.

Of coarse there are.
What have you got and what do you want to know?
Gas,wood,what?

Wood. I was wondering if there was any minimum distance between to the top of the chimney and the openings on the cowl. Also it has made me wonder why the connections in my flue seem to be that a lower section fits inside the upper section. I would have thought it would be the other way around.

Why did the media give him the coverage he wanted? It would have been so much more satisfying to ignore the tool completely.