Author Topic: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications  (Read 289513 times)

EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #630 on: August 01, 2018, 06:12:20 PM »
Hey Glort....

The only way they get me into hospital is unconscious, in a straight jacket.... The best method of sedation would probably be a tranqu gun! The jacket would be required from creating merry hell as I escape...

Realistically though, the only time I generally see a doc is to stitch something up that I cant reach on my own.... Where crazy glue wont stop the insides from becoming involuntary outsides....

I have been very ??lucky?? so far in my life, no chronic meds etc, and a fairly high pain threshold.... Kinda baffled my doc when I went to him with a mild stomach discomfort.... The bastard hit me with a strong pain killer type thing and then asked me to meet him at the local hospital after work to just check me over.... he was doing an afternoon shift there.... Bugger grabbed me, stuffed me on a gurney and wheeled me into theater.....   Appendicitis quite badly i was told...When I came to later that eve he asked me, while I was still high on anesthetic, what I thought of my new me, now that he had done the sex change..... I jumped bolt upright, carefully feeling for my manly bits and proceeded to try and vacate the premises.... RAPIDLY... Was all a good laugh... and the fasterest I have sobered up ever!!!!!

A couple of weeks after that he gave me a call to come and get the stitches taken out.... Too late I announced to him, I had removed them myself a few days prior....

All good fun, I like wearing my clothes out from the inside! (Which will probably be the death of me one day, but then again, I am to dumb too die from normal means I reckon.... With a life goal of being shot to death by a jealous husband while I am at the age of 95 or more....what would any normal body expect.....)

Cheers
Ed
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EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #631 on: August 04, 2018, 09:41:58 AM »
Hey Glort....

I have a very strange financial life goal.... I loathe and detest money, unfortunately its a necessary evil as we all know, it is needed for critical things, generally when you can least afford it...

My financial life goal is to have no money or need thereof..... Weird one, isn't it....

Every time in the past I have accumulated funds, life has become a misery... No sooner did I take another step towards the moneyless goal by purchasing materials, than someone, sometime, steps out of the woodpile to try and relieve you of the funds you have left that you have worked so hard to accumulate...

Now, in general, I try and use as much throwaway by others material as possible to further a project... There are exceptions, of course. Certain things are just not available and have to be bought new, those items take a fair amount of consideration before they are purchased...

Point in case... I have nearly completed my solar power setup, self made to the highest specification my skills and savings would allow... The nett goal is not to go completely off grid, but to minimise electricity costs as far as possible... savings were estimated and calculated to determine viability and advantage... The nominal break even will be around 2 to 5 years, assuming I can manage it correctly... Well, those plans are now out the window... The bastards at our local municipality have decided, due to their absolutely blatant mismanagement, thieving and pure ignorance, property rates of smallholdings and farmsteads have been increased to residential rates (an increase of about 300%)....  ie, subsistence farming is no longer an option, we are being taxed on property areas that, while unsuitable for housing due to lack of services and security, are nevertheless going to cost way more than previous... Couple that with a government that has passed laws legalising property appropriation without compensation, a president that has publicly chanted his willful desire to kill the white population...... Not a great place to be I reckon.....

I certainly hope nobody else elsewhere ends up on the endangered species list...

Enough ranting....

Cheers
Ed
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dieselspanner

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #632 on: August 04, 2018, 11:04:28 AM »
Don't panic, Ed, outspan the oxen, there's room for one more up here........

Gesig noord, kop vorentoe, as my shipmate 'Corbus used to say.

Cheers Stef
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EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #633 on: August 04, 2018, 11:15:47 AM »
K noord V voort....
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EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #634 on: August 08, 2018, 12:05:04 PM »
Hey Guys...

While NOT on the subject of Listers....

Pretty much finished the solar installation yesterday, gale force winds forecast for the next couple of days.... Let's see if them thar panels are still up on Monday.....

Also got the mast extension and lifting tackle mounted for the blow gennie, extended guy cables should be here in the next couple of hours or so.... Went a bit OCD on the guys.... 6mm stainless cable, crimped eyes etc... Should last long enough to be my kids problem one day....

Below is a "1000 words" of the pretty much completed install so far....

I am going to move the Blow gennie ultimately, it casts a mast shadow over the panels, just want to see if it performs any better at 10m than its previous and will be worthwhile in this general area before I go around and cast foundation blocks for it....

Comments?

Keep it shining....

Cheers
Ed
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EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #635 on: August 08, 2018, 11:06:03 PM »
Hey Glort...

Thanx for the compliment!

I was also a bit skeptical of tec screws into the ali chassis of the panel, your latest blow confirmed my worries... I have used 8x 6mm stainless bolts to hold each panel, they are through the mounting hole of the ali frame of the panel, then with either a square tab or a body washer, they clamp down on the angle section frames... my only concern is that the ali deflects one way and the frame the other, things might get interesting, I hope not...

Test shading with about an A4 size shadow on a test array, I saw a remarkable drop off on array output... Unfortunately I cannot determine whether the result was spurious or general, as my current power usage during peak daytime is about 1,5kw, so a little over 1 and a bit's worth of rack's of panels... I will only be able to really see a real difference if I push the load up...

Tomorrow sees me painting the mast and reinstalling the blow gennie if the weather holds back on the wind for a while, weird, isn't it.... I have to wait for the wind to die so I can drop the mast, then wait for it to die so I can up it again... while its up, the damn thing sits there looking at me with not a breath of wind.... Until I want to drop it or change a guy wire... then its hurricane time.... At least the sun shine fairly regularly...

Interestingly, the quickest way to get it to rain here is to take out an electric lead and drill... downpour initiates before job completion....

Enough rambling....

Cheers
Ed
12/1 750RPM/9HP Roid 5kVA- WMO Disposal/Electricity & Hot Water Gen
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EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #636 on: August 10, 2018, 12:28:09 PM »
Hey Guys....

The previous comments about electric extension leads, drilling machines and the inevitable downpour resulting from the readying thereof have proven themselves true, yet again!

Winds of 40-50km/h and thunderstorms have hit us this midday.... A welcome respite from the dry post-winter weather we are having, so with somewhat mixed feelings of appreciation and being somewhat irked at not being able to get the blow gennie up to its new position, I dolefully, but gleefully watch the rains fall....

Yesterday was a day of cardio workout for me, 10 steps up and 10 steps down the average ladder climb, with about 5 to 10 trips for each of 4 guy wires, amounts to a fair workout!! Add to that lugging drills et al, tugging on cables, no wonder I am knackered today..... The guy wires are now fully secured (6mm Braided Stainless cable with Galv'd chains and fittings at ground tie points), the winch is fully mounted, the lift pulleys and supporting brackets, as well as the top section of the mast have been painted, just the genhead to fit! (and paint the spool of the winch a dashing silver, as the previous spool got a dose of salt water during a loan and rusted away by the time it was returned...)

So far, touch wood, the lovely lightning conductor that is sitting at 10m hasn't attracted any attention from Thor.... I hope it stays that way! The closest strike was about 2km away so far....

Enough Rambling... Here is another crappy pic I took yesterday of the mast and guys.... The grey dismal weather can be clearly seen in the background....

Keep on pouring....

Cheers
Ed
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BruceM

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #637 on: August 10, 2018, 04:01:45 PM »
I was asked to do a post-mortem on an off grid system. They'd had a lightning storm and both generator and top end inverter/charger system died. 

The grounding of the wind generator mast to a single rod in dry soil was itty bitty- 10 AWG.  I found the lightning visibly scorched over from that connection to the power cable leading to the inverter generator.  Blew the lightning suppression unit, the inverter/charger and from there headed to the autostart generator controller.  A clean sweep, I think she said over $25K in repairs (paid by insurance).  This was all top of the line gear.   

The size of the grounding conductor and the earth connection impedance DOES matter when you put a metal spike way up with the wind genny calling "hit me".  I lived in a home built in 1828 with the original standing seam metal roof and lightning rod system.  Massive copper cables on glass isolated metal stand offs running accross the ridge, and down both gable ends (equivalent of 3 modern stories tall).  The earth end was buried copper plates, 1/8" thick, about 8x8', about 4 foot deep.  The house was directly hit about 4 times a year since it was at the highest point for miles around.  The only damage was the much later addition of a phone line interface box in the basement- it was blown off the basement wall a couple times in the 4 years I lived there.

For modern lightning grounding, 00 or 000 bare copper cable laid in ground enhancement material (GEM) in a trench is now well proven and commonly used in the power industry.  The GEM or 98% carbon/cement mix acts to provide a huge increase in surface area to the soil.  A very thin layer with a thickening around the copper is used to conserve the GEM.  It's done dry, and the soil above watered after it is shaded carefully with dirt.

If you don't give it a good low resistance path to earth, it will find other ways you may not like.









EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #638 on: August 10, 2018, 05:01:40 PM »
Hey guys...

@Glort: Up until about 10years ago, my back was quite good... Nowadays, things are getting to EOL I reckon, time to start putting bits back in, but that I am putting off until the very last.... Bending down, working at low levels does worry me a wee bit, but its the getting back up on my back feet that screws me over!

@Bruce: We have taken some notable strikes here in the past 25years, memorable ones indeed... The worst ones that come to mind are an instance when the Northern peak of the roof took a direct hit... that blew out every damn piece of kit in the place, including 2 fridges, tv's, microwave, entire network, pabx plus much, much more... Coupled with that, the ?air pressure? caved in a short section of roof on an adjoiner to that pitch as well.... That day I was on the upper floor and the hit was about 2m from where I was standing, fortunately no physical damage, except that I now here aliens singing when I don't wear my tinfoil hat...

The second one I remember clearly, was a ground strike about 75m from the house... At that stage we didn't have our own transformer on the pole outside, the neutral was bonded about 500m away, the earth neutral bonding at the pole had rotted away just below ground level apparently... Well, needless to say, about 20 zillion volts made its way up through my pristine db board and all of a sudden N/E differed by more than the household kit could handle.... Auto start gennie, network, pabx, microwave, you name it up in smoke....

After that I got a bit pissed off, naturally, and tied E to N in my board, in each board in fact (there is one main db board and 4 separate sub boards on the premises) .... I have also tied E/N on each of the 3 permanently connected gensets too..

I know this is not the best thing to do, but so far, a few ground strikes later, nothing major blown.... Oh yes, I neglected to mention that way before these strikes I had installed db board surge suppressors, at insistence of the insurance company, fat lot of good they did.. Having said that, its time to put on the tinfoil hat again....

Keep it sparking....

Cheers
Ed
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BruceM

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #639 on: August 10, 2018, 05:26:10 PM »
Multiple hard grounding of neutral to earth may help but usually causes greatly elevated magnetic fields that's not so good for your health and can cause some serious "ground loop" problems for connected electronics.  When AC current has alternate paths instead of on it's mated neutral, even tiny amounts of current can "light up" the whole house. A single 60W bulb can make 8 milligaus over an entire portion of the house that way, easily. Naturally, I learned that the hard way.

The best solution for electronics it to put them all on an isolation transformer; then you can provide a new isolated earth connection for that gear and besides the better protection, will have no stray neutral current.  Avoiding long wired data cables (from building to building) by using fiber instead  is also very helpful; lightning causes hundreds of volts change  in DC earth potential between two locations.  I violated this rule for my remote engine shed, running cat5 cable in the metal conduit.  Bit me once- opto isolator on the end and resistors feeding it fried after a lightning storm.  For short runs I use plastic fiber (under 200 feet or so), multimode glass fiber with ST connectors for the long ones.  Glass fiber interfaces are more expansive and putting on the connectors and polishing the ends and checking via microscope is tedious.

Lightning does seem to have preferred locations.  I had one neighbor on the top of a hill who had the same power pole and transformer hit and destroyed 3x in 3 years.  The power co. put  an extended lightning rod on the pole and a big fat down-lead and grounding system for that pole.  That did the trick.


 

EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #640 on: August 10, 2018, 08:28:15 PM »
Hey Bruce...

I'm kinda stuck with multi NE at the moment... if and when I ever move, I will certainly plan the new domicile a bit better than this one is... This house, conduiting and associated electrical is circa 1940... there have been various owners over the years, and barring the original builder, I have been the longest single owner, and, scarily, that's for the last  25 years only.... It has been a bit of a nightmare trying, and still trying to in some places, sort out the various handyman/tenant/owner repairs of the last multiple decades.... Invariably a small job ends up to be a major exercise with several layers of quick and crappy fixes to be removed before I can do a reasonably robust repair or bit of maintenance...

Enough biaatching though, I should be almost finished just before I die..  :)

Unfortunately fiber wasn't available when I wired this place to UTP specs.... No way I'm going to change that... probably ever! (Somewhere around 50 network ports on the switches occupied, a dedicated room, tiny that it may be, for my linux web/mail/samba servers, not counting 3x household AP's and a few outside ones too).... I am kinda tied into the whole mess... Damn, I forgot the hardwired pabx, 24 extensions, alarm system, 70 something hardwired zones, and then a couple of hard wired dvr systems with 20 something cameras hardwired...

No wonder I need a tinfoil hat and my coffee keeps boiling over if I set it on the kitchen table in a tin mug.... This is not a very healthy environment for your style ailments.... In fact I'm surprised I don't pick up any symptoms myself.... Must be my misspent youth spent in hi current ac/dc welding environments and burning lots of nitro and the holy black that's killed off all the sensory bits that matter....

Keep it smiling...

Cheers
Ed
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BruceM

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #641 on: August 10, 2018, 09:18:54 PM »
Nothing like many layers and decades of successive homeowner/handyman electrical work to keep you guessing! 

EdDee

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #642 on: August 11, 2018, 10:55:01 PM »
Hey Glort,

Don't worry.... I did think of that.... I am taking a different approach, thin wires! They slow the electricity down and it shows they are working properly because they are staying nice and warm. I get hot when I work hard, so the wires should too...... I have also put the batteries in a big deep freeze, they take much longer to charge at -40C, so therefore they must be holding more electricity now... also, because it is a top loading freezer, when you open the lid slowly and carefully in damp weather, you can see a sort of white smoke in there... I am sure thats the magic smoke that lives inside all the darksuckers that I have... Everybody else calls them light bulbs, but they are wrong. They are DARKSUCKERS. When they get full of dark, you have to throw them away and get new ones... Take a close look and you will notice when they are full that they go black inside and stop sucking up more dark...

We know the speed of light, but dark is so fast that nobody has measured it...

Keep it smiling...

Cheers
Ed
12/1 750RPM/9HP Roid 5kVA- WMO Disposal/Electricity & Hot Water Gen
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dieselspanner

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #643 on: August 12, 2018, 08:57:30 AM »
I'm sure you two will find further helpful information in the library of the Unseen University, a bunch of bananas will go a long way with the bloke what runs ...............

Cheers Stef
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mikenash

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Re: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« Reply #644 on: August 12, 2018, 08:03:02 PM »
"   Oook  "