Crossy

One positive of a Trump win, after 4 years he won't be able to run again (assuming we're not all glowing piles of dust by then) Either way, win or lose we will still have to put up with him:- Win - he will gloat until the cows come home 😞 Lose - he will whinge about another misappropriated election 😞 As a Brit, I have no horse in this race (other than not wanting to be a pile of glowing dust), I just want the circus to be over.

The "ant powder" is very good at discouraging the creepy-crawlies and it lasts pretty much forever. I doubt you'll stop the really tiny ants (they seem to adore electric fields) from getting in even with foam in the conduit and outlet stoppers.

This post is meaningless without photos!!

Thanks. Any indication of what the units of "Load" are, is it peak, average, something else? Where did you obtain the detail of what that line means??

Could you post an image of your bill please? Redact and personal identifying data of course.

Famous last words

There's really no limit to how far you can go, you just need to size the cable appropriately. From a volt-drop perspective for 400m on a 15/45 meter you're looking at 120mm2 in aluminium cable (copper would be astronomically expensive and would tend to wander off in the night). Definitely talk to the local PEA office, they may have a limit as to how far from the meter (which would be on their pole) they will let your home be.

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I've seen some US energy bills, the smallest amount being for the energy used! You don't need to worry about balance, unless you have massive loads relative to the size of your village transformer (most unlikely). That said, spread your single-phase loads across all three phases anyway, then if you lose a phase you still keep 66% of your lights and outlets. The meter bills you for the total energy used over all three phases. Unless you are a factory you don't need to worry about peak-load or power factor. Here you get a standing charge (based upon your service) and a usage charge based upon your usage (a sliding scale, the more you use, the more per unit you pay). Then there is the fuel tariff (ft) which is actually a convenient way to vary the per-unit rate without an act or parliament, and VAT on the total. EDIT By the way, just to confuse, the supply voltage in the MEA service area is 230V vs 220V in the PEA service area.

Not really much going on, the river level has been scarily stable!! Puyai Baan has been on the speakers, any homes that actually have water (photos needed) can get flood aid (food and $$) and sandbags if they need them. Big tides over the weekend, hopefully they won't coincide with greater releases from the dams.

Please be careful!!! You should really be doing this with your continuity tester (battery and bulb, or your meter) with the juice off!

Yup. The "help" are very good at "finding something faulty" (ok, breaking it) and just putting it away for me to find when I need it. Please, just tell me it's busted and I'll sort it!!!

Yes, I know this is the DIY forum 🙂 We started out with an occasional drip from the valve on the wall under our bathroom sink. It developed into more of a dribble so it was going to need sorting. This is absolutely something I would fix myself but the space is tight and I'm not as young (or slim) as I was, so we got in a recommended "plumber". The guys (three) rolled up on Saturday. The Boss noted that our sink tap was actually a hot-n-cold mixer but hot was isolated (the tube had failed long ago), he asked if I would like the tap to be replaced and hot water restored to the sink. I like warm water to shave so I said yes (mistake number 1). Off they went to get the parts. A couple of hours (and nearly 10k Baht including parts) later the job was done. Excellent! Then! Later in the evening Madam said that the floor was full of water!! We had a definite gush and it was from up near the actual tap. 05ce9887-5026-450b-bdf9-fed69bd96ca1.mp4 Turned off the water at the wall and it stopped, phew! I was less than happy (ok totally pi55ed off). Madam called the plumber and sent them the video. Sorry cannot come until Tuesday! We had warm water at the sink so no real problem although cleaning your teeth with warm water is pretty yuk. Tuesday arrived, as did the guys. I'd assumed that they simply hadn't fully tightened the tubes against the O-rings and it would be a 5-minute job. After an hour they determined that the new tap from Thaiwatsadu was faulty. So, they went and got a replacement. It seems Thaiwatsadu wouldn't replace it as faulty, it's not clear why. The reason is never going to get clarified although I suspect that failure to RTFM is in the mix somewhere ("I wonder what these black rubber things are, oh well we don't need them"). So, they've just left, no leaks at present!! We shall see ...

Not really. Thailand is 3-phase 4-wire (3 phases plus neutral) so a single-phase supply is simply taken from one phase and the neutral. The 380V is phase to phase, the 220V is phase to neutral.

Time for a beer!!!

I'd start with a beer!!!

One note to add to the SS continuance. If you want to pay by direct-debit the account must be in your Thai name (at least according to our local SS office). This was rather less easy than expected, both BKK Bank and SCB said "cannot" (translate as "too hard, go away"), but I finally got an account sorted at Krungthai who actually seemed to know what was needed.

I did have separate TIN, SS number and Pink ID as they were all issued at different times and the systems are not interconnected. When I applied to continue my SS myself when my employment ended the SS department adjusted my SS to match my pink card. I've made no attempt to match TIN and pink. It can stay that way until someone asks.

Think as a mathematician not an engineer. Square root of -1 is i not j i over 8

Sodium, sodium, sodium, sodium, sodium, sodium, sodium, sodium. Batman!!

An after dinner joke:-

I work with many! 😞