Tag Archives: timer

Thursday 27th September 2012 – TODAY WAS A DAY …

… of finding things.

We started off, quite dramatically, by finding the missing mobile phone.

The good news is that the SIM card might actually still work.

The bad news is that the phone won’t, which is hardly surprising seeing as it’s been outside in the rain for the last 6 weeks and I found it in a puddle right where a load of water would regularly drop on it.

What’s surprising about this is that it was just outside the barn door, right where I walk at least twice every day without fail, and how I haven’t seen it before today is a total mystery.

Even more surprising is that if I heard it “bleep” 5 weeks ago up here in the attic – which I’m sure that I did – then there’s nothing wrong with my hearing, I’ll say.

Back in 2006 my dear departed friend Liz gave me an old Nokia ‘phone. It never worked properly and despite buying a couple of new batteries, the battery life worked out to be about 18 hours on stand-by.

For that reason I never really used it, and went to all kinds of lengths to replace it.

However I did lose count of the number of times it’s been pressed into service in an emergency and as I found it in Caliburn the other day when I was a-hunting the dictaphone, it’s now currently back in service.

At least until the new phone arrives.

I wanted an unblocked Samsung (so I just have one set of leads) tri-band (to use in North America) with bluetooth (for the hands-free kit in Caliburn), camera (so I don’t have to keep carrying the Nikon on odd little trips out) and memory slot (so I can use it as a walkman).

But I quickly abandoned that idea. The prices are unbelievable.

In the end I settled for another Nokia – a factory-refurbished 6230 for just £22 seeing as there are no chargers with it – and I have all of that anyway.

So in the mood for finding things, I then found the missing timer switch off the tabletop washing machine – just as I was fitting the machine with a plug with a built-in switch, of course.

The plug off there I fitted on the chop-saw that I bought ages ago and that works a treat too.

I also uncovered three battery chargers – two of them being the 7-Day Shop ones that I use for charging up AA and AAA batteries. And not just the chargers either – a further mega-search turned up some power cables for them.

So they are now fitted with North American 110-volt plugs – I use them for my 12-volt DC domestic circuit because they can handle high amperage and they are sufficiently different not to be confused with 230 volt stuff – and they are ready for action.

The third battery charger that I found is also for AA and AAA batteries, and why this is so interesting is that it has screw-holes on the back so that you can fix it to the wall.

This is quite an ancient machine too and I was pleased to see because I have a cunning plan for it. It was that I intended to screw it into the back of Caliburn and wire it into the ignition system so that there will always be some batteries on charge there.

No power cable, though.

But seeing as I was in the mood I turned out the barn and actually managed to find it, which astonished me.

While I had the ignition system dismantled, I took the opportunity of dismantling the power lead for the coolbox that I installed in Caliburn. I threw away the cigarette lighter plug (I hate those) and wired that directly into the ignition circuit.

And so we’ll have cold drinks wherever we go too.

I also unearthed a pile of connectors that I’d been looking for for ages, and a few other exciting bits and pieces as well. And I did a few other things, but I can’t rightly remember now what they were.

But I shan’t know myself at this rate, will I?

On the subject of finding things, by the way, I know that this might not be relevant but Heather came round this afternoon.

She has just come back from the UK and had brought me my order of porridge oats as well as some Rich Tea biscuits for Rosemary.

It’s the first time that Heather has been round, so she had to call at the doctor’s on the way for the Yellow Fever and Plague vaccinations before she arrived.

But at least I can now make some more muesli.

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Wednesday 14th July 2010 – Today will go down in history!

I’ve finally fitted the most important piece in the jigsaw of my electrical system here (the wind turbine notwithstanding) and that it the electric water-heating mechanism.

How my system works at the moment is that there are two banks each of three solar panels and each bank is connected to the batteries via a charge controller. The two controllers are set up differently so that one cuts of when the batteries reach 14.1 volts and the other one cuts out when the batteries reach 14.15 volts. They both cut back in when the battery level drops to 13.4 volts or so. This avoids any overcharging of the batteries.

You can tell when the batteries are fully charged by the difference in solar charge received by each of the banks. If there’s a substantial difference then that will be because the one set at a lower charge will have cut out, just leaving the second one running. And if I have the fridge working then sometimes the difference can be substantial. On the 8th July for example one bank recorded 37.7 amp-hours whereas the other recorded 157.3 amp-hours, almost 2 kilowatt-hours of charge.

You can see therefore from this that there can be times when an enormous amount of solar energy is totally wasted. So what you can do is to rig up a system whereby once the batteries are fully-charged then instead of the system shutting down, all of the unwanted power is diverted into some kind of “dump load”.

dump load 12 volt home made immersion heater les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve had plans for this for ages and a while ago I bought some 12-volt water heater elements. And today, even though it’s been a Bank Holiday and I don’t normally work, I’ve rigged up an old galvanised 50-litre ash can as a kind of ad-hoc immersion heater.

It’s going to have to be developed further of course. Electric elements floating around on wooden pontoons in open-topped galvanised ash cans full of water right close to the main access in the house is a recipe for some kind of disaster sooner or later and one of the reasons why I’ve been holding off from fitting this dump load is because I’ve been looking for some kind of more substantial and correct recipient but in the absence of anything more positive I can’t be waiting for ever. The piazzo buzzer on there by the way is to let me know when the circuit opens up

vauxhall cavalier car clock renault clio electric timer dump load les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe proof of the pudding is of course in the eating and now that this system is wired in I can put a 12-volt clock in line to tell me how long the circuit is open.

And so while the clock on the right (from a Renault Clio by the way) keeps the time, the one on the left (from a Vauxhall Cavalier) tells me how long I’ve been heating the water.

1h20 (it was about 1h35 by the time it finished) may not seem a lot to anybody and the water didn’t get all that hot but on day one with 50 litres of water in what is effectively a large open bucket – that has to be progress. Just imagine that in a 50-litre sealed tank with loads of insulation around it.

And I had a visitor this afternoon – a guy who I met the other day and wanted to discuss solar panels and wind turbines. He was here for about three hours and we had quite a lengthy chat.

And that’s not the only visitor I had today either. The windows up here are wide open and there’s this lovely gale blowing right through here, and it’s just blown this huge, enormous green thing that looks like a cricket right into the attic. We had quite a chase around the place and eventually I caught him in a plastic box and threw him back outside.

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