Crossy

How about us "slightly less than Thai" who are paying into the social security system? That said, I may have man-boobs but how prevalent is breast cancer in males??

@MJCM will this be a DIY or Contractor solar system? DIY will be a LOT cheaper and a zillion times more fun (if that's what floats your boat of course).

Chihuahuas, we have two. Backed up by geese and guinea fowl they are better than any doberman at raising the alarm. Oh and we have some cameras by VStarCam which work just fine for monitoring what the dogs are barking at (plastic bag, other dog, occasional snake etc. etc.) Any camera system can only act as a deterrent, if they want in they will get in and you can watch. I'm not sure what I'd prefer, watch my house being plundered whilst on the other side of the world, or find out when I got home after a relaxing vacation.

All good stuff ^^^. Your inverter is going to be your single biggest investment so size it correctly. Work out your maximum load and double it! Panels and storage are easy to expand, your inverter less so. Even if you get a unit that can run in parallel you might not be able to get a second compatible inverter in future when you need it. From the OP I'd be looking at a 10kW inverter. Go for an off-grid hybrid (see my pinned thread) so if you do have a bad run of solar you can run a looong extension lead from the house or hook up a portable generator. A 330W panel will produce, on average, about 1.1 kWh of energy per day, so tot up your daily usage and add 20% for your panels. Similarly for your storage, match storage to daily usage. EDIT And go and buy a propane water heater, your solar energy budget will love you for it!

My workshop only looks like that about every 18 months when it gets a "bit of a tidy", I'm definitely a somewhat messy worker.

There's no advantage to removing it provided you are on a domestic tariff (did you get the COVID discounts?). Of course having 3-phase means that if one phase goes out you still have two working. If you do remove it mosr 3-phase boards have a "single-phase kit" available you you don't need a new board or any re-wiring.

Once upon a time, in an alternative universe, Fantic Motor marketed a chopper. A 50cc moped chopper! Scary!! They did also do some amazing conventional mopeds. In the days when a "moped" meant 50cc and pedals.

Cue unseasonal storm clouds for duration of the meteor shower. Too much light pollution near us I'm afraid.

It stands a chance of being clear too.

It would depend upon the number of series LEDs and the resistor in the string. You could try measuring the voltage with the string set to steady we could then hazard a guess for a suitable series resistor.

I like the idea of extending the leads, but the "12V" on the LEDS could well be 12V between 208V and 220V rails. Just coz they have a low operating voltage doesn't mean you can safely touch them. That board will happily kill you!

"Some" of my sets remember the previous state. The trouble is that little chap with 6 legs has a lot more smarts than the number of connections suggests.

Some of my Contractors think he was MY understudy. I'm a nice calm guy, until I go into full-dragon mode.

My son in the UK has an Alexa which controls his lights etc. She quite happily turns off his lights when I tell her over a Line call. Must set his thermostat to 5C.

Someone (who shall be nameless) borrowed mine and told me it was useless "his spirit level was better". Turned out he was using it in "locked" mode

@sometimewoodworker is that where your good lady keeps her gold stash?

There was a chap on Ringwood market selling these, he also had square-tuits (to make people ask questions). One of his best sellers was his "left-handed mugs". Of course as a southpaw I had to ask what the difference to right-handed mugs was. It turned out that his original stock were manufacturing defects which had the image on the wrong side (it's supposed to face outwards when the mug is in use). In the end they sold so well that he actually had to order mugs that were made "wrong".

What's on the other side of the wall? Brute force technique. Drill through the wall behind the speakers and the amp then run the wires in someone else's space (or the cavity if it's a cavity wall).

How are you going to handle the speaker wires, I always find them a bind with bookshelf speakers? Our big floor speakers are no issue whatever of course, the wires are hidden by the dust they gather

Yeah, we tried various wireless doorbells. They all suffer from two issues:- Lack of range, the bell push is some 50m from the centre of the house and there are various obstructions in the way too. Lack of audibility (not loud enough). Item 1 is fixed by going wired. Item 2 is fixed by this - Yup, that's the "doorbell", no dainty Friedland "bing-bong" here. Even Madam can hear it in all corners of the garden. Note that this is a mains powered bell, it has a relay and 12V power supply to the bell push to avoid zapping our visitors before we know what they want. I may add a zapper in future for those visitors we don't want. The remote control for the gates suffers from the same range issue although the original DEA ones work from inside the house the cheap Chinese "work alike" units are on the limit of range particularly when the batteries are getting low, a physical wired connection is more reliable.

At the current rate something akin to slave-labour! I won't retire until I have to, I need to go to work for a rest

It's been a little while and I can't find my last thread. So here's a new one. I had my own list of things that needed doing this weekend, I've done none of them. So for Madam I have:- Fixed another water pump. This one was a victim of the flooding and of course it was needed "now". New bearings in-stock (I bought extra last time), cleaned out all the mud and stuff. Insulation test OK, so put it all back together and it functions. Madam happy. Re-cabled the door bell. Another victim of the flooding with water ingress into a junction box. It's a 12V circuit so no hazard but the wet had gotten into the cables, I cut it back about 1m and the cores were still black. So in goes a new cable (about 50m) all in one piece this time. Doorbell and indoor gate control switch (on the same cable) all working. Madam happier! Replaced 30m of underground irrigation pipe which we installed when we moved in, it sprang a leak due to tree roots etc. so rather than replace it I bypassed it with a run of 50mm black PE stuff run surface under the hedge out of sight. Madam very happy. Got a beer. Crossy happy. Back to work tomorrow for a rest!

What's the actual power demand for the kiosk? Cable routing (suspended overhead, underground, something else). For a typical coffee kiosk I'd be running 2.5mm2 on a 20A breaker protected at the supply end by an RCD (combine both functions in an RCBO). You can then have a "garage" consumer unit in the kiosk for lights and power. You would be best running 2-core and placing a ground rod at the kiosk (making it a TT island), saves a bit of $$ on cable too.

No issue when done like this with everything tied together with nice fat conductors, the whole lot goes up and down in potential together. The problems occur when you have separate rods that are not properly interconnected, basically two isolated earth systems which could get (briefly) many kV apart during a strike. Some time ago I was working in the PUTRA LRT Operations Control Centre in KL (it's a full-auto railway). We had literally just got everything up and running for testing to start. It was "raining" (a typical tropical downpour) so I was waiting under the porch for it to ease off before heading to the car. There was a f.....g great flash and instant bang when there was a ground strike only about 50m away. Almost before I'd blinked my phone rang "coms is down", back into the systems room and every light I see is red! That building had "state of the art" lightning protection, fancy air-terminals, huge grounding mat etc. etc. It took various contractors two days to get everything back up. The lighting protection contractor was also seen installing more and fatter copper and various holes were drilled in the structure (I suspect for structure bonds).