Crossy

You ALWAYS have to go overboard on the PVC with the local fittings ???? On a +ve note it does provide an insulating layer and reduce any differential metal corrosion ????

11 years on and no leaks, of course it may be impossible to remove! The tank connector is "bronze" or possibly gun-metal rather than actual copper.

Like I said, are you volunteering to mod it? It has been tried before and there's just soooo much inconsitency between offices and indeed between officers that it became unmanageable ????

Not leaked since the Big Flood when it was installed. You should be able to minimise the water loss with careful management and your existing stops.

Indeed, are you volunteering??

You mean you didn't put stop-valves on every tank??? (I know, hindsight is 20-20) You could install them whilst the tanks are empty ????

Asean-now, the web home of Bodgit, Buggrit and Scarper - Engineering Ltd.

Yeah, two years ago I used the bike-tube + ziptie trick on an irrigation pipe as a temporary fix. It's not leaked since If you can get the joint pretty dry you could run some cyano (superglue) into the gap, capililary action is your friend.

Moved to the Isaan Forum for local knowledge.

Yeah, they either stick or they don't. Ours has been on for years, I peel the top down and slide out the old "disc" before slipping in the new one and re-attaching the top bit.

I've used KeyVisa in the past with no issues ????

In reality probably the Sofar again, getting a BMS that can talk to the beast isn't that much more expensive than getting a "smart" BMS that can't, I just didn't know about the inverter "bug" at the time. It's still a nice solid piece of kit and is one of the few hybrids on the PEA approval list. My requirements were pretty strict, it has to be IP65 and fanless due to the location our inverters live in (being silent isn't actually an issue but it's nice to have). If I was doing it all over again with a decent budget rather than going bitsa-expansion I might go for a big off-grid hybrid system, say 20kW (4 x 5kW inverters in parallel) and run as a whole-house UPS as well as solar. No export of course, but being DIY that's not officially available anyway.

One of the "covid" announcements used to say not to use your phone, but none are specifically about loud conversations. Could be a suggestion to the media people, after all they have a video about not burning other passengers with your bag of hot soup!

Never had a problem with hair on the train, now giant backpacks are another matter entirely!

Yeah, the built-in passive balancer is pretty carp, hence I have a 5A "flying capacitor" active balancer to help it along and that definitely helps in maximising the available capacity. My other pack which still has the original Daly BMS stays in balance pretty well without help. Anyway, as I said, many systems work just fine with no comms, evidently yours is one of them ???? Sadly the Sofar inverter really needs to talk to the BMS (I think it gets lonely), maybe, if I'd known about the issue earlier I wouldn't have bought the Sofar. The jury is still out, but the increased charge cut-off voltage and the more "sympathetic" interaction whilst balancing does appear to have squeezed a little more (about 10%) total capacity out of the pack with the BMS.

I watched a mate trying to remove the left front wheel of his long wheelbase Ford Transit (the type with twin wheels at the back). He had been wrestling with it for a goodly while and was getting close to breaking out the gas-axe. Another mate, who happened to be a trucker wandered past, and quietly, under his breath, whispered, "left hand thread"! Yes, on big commercial vehicles, the left hand wheels have reverse threads so they don't come off by accident. This is something I didn't know and as the owner of a (different) long wheelbase Transit I was glad to find out before embarrassing myself "Lefty-loosy, righty-tighty, does not apply".

I like to think of it as "communication" rather than "control". The more information about other system elements each component has, the better it can regulate its own performance. For example, I've noticed that when our weak cell triggers the "over voltage warning" for that cell (pack voltage is still within range) the inverter tempers its charge current to allow the balance system to catch up with the over volt cell whilst still adding some charge to the other cells. Now just how much difference this information exchange makes overall is debatable. There are many systems in operation which do just fine with each component operating independantly. But your solar setup is a "system" made up of component parts, it's (usually) better if it behaves as a system rather than a bunch of parts.

The inverter is certainly terminating the charge at a higher voltage than before which was the original intention, so it's having at least some of the desired effect ???? Just how much "extra" capacity having BMS-Inverter comms actually gives us we shall have to wait and see. There's certainly debate in the solar circles about whether it's actually worth bothering with. I probably wouldn't have done it if the Sofar inverter actually behaved as the manual says when set to "default" battery type rather than seemingly just being fixed as lead-acid.

Not much to report as it's only been running a few hours, let's give it a chance to do its thing. It is definitely confirming that we have a weak cell at Number 6, but I knew that from the Daly BMS. The inverter is certainly behaving rather differently to when it had no BMS comms so "something" is going on.

Well, my shiny new Seplos BMS is installed and working. See this thread https://aseannow.com/topic/1262232-it-is-always-worth-talking-to-the-manufacturer-to-get-a-better-price/ To my mild amazement it just worked talking to the Sofar hybrid inverter using the cable that came with the inverter and "General Lithium" as the Battery Type. Even the PC software just worked ???? It's currently "learning" the battery pack so the active balancer (top left) isn't connected as yet. Whether the new BMS will actually get any better performance from the used cell pack remains to be seen. Next task is to make a cover for the delicate bits.

Yeah, I think you are right on this. I've had a number of "Ships from Overseas" items (notably tool batteries) arrive with a Bangkok dispatch address on the delivery label.

Ask for "Thailand special line", it's a system whereby many smaller shipments are cleared together under the Thai-Chinese FTA. It does seem to work, I've had dutyable items arrive with no duty or VAT to pay ???? Of course YMMV

Why not start a separate thread? Tell us what you want to do, offset your power bill or go totally off grid (maybe with grid backup). Do a rough power budget, what you want to power, also your rough energy consumption, you can get the latter off your power bill. It's not really rocket science if you are a competent DIYer or you could go with a contractor (add $$$).