anatta

Here is the installation guide for domestic electrical systems that I was given by my local electricity company. It’s (naturally) in Thai, but the tables and graphics are fairly self-explanatory. I found it helpful to ‘look at together’ with our electrician, who would otherwise have continued to doubt the need for things like heavier cabling to the kitchen outlets and proper ‘crown’ cable joins.

The contents are broadly as follows:

pages

1-5 Connecting to the supply; overview of system; consumer unit; ground rod

6 -12 Cable types and diameters

13- 20 Laying and connecting cables

21-30 The grounding system

31- 38 Circuit breakers and switches

39-43 Welding and splicing techniques

Thai installation guide front matter.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 1-3.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 4-7.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 8-12.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 13-16.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 17-20.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 21-23.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 24-26.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 27-30.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 31-33.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 34-36.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 37-39.pdf

Thai installation guide pages 40-43.pdf

Thanks electau and lopburi3. We've now remedied some of the doubtful things. When the electrician showed visible disbelief I looked with him through relevant sections of a 43-page booklet I had got from the local electricity company entitled คู่มือการฅิดฅั้งระบบไฟฟ้าภายในที่อยู่อาศัย (roughly,'Guide to Installing Domestic Electrics').

I'm checking the electrics of our new house and have managed to carry out some of the tests prescribed on Crossy's excellent site, but with only very limited technical knowledge I need advice on two matters.

1. The two main supply wires are spliced (bound with bulging tape) inside the consumer unit some 15 cm before reaching the main CB/ELCB. I haven't yet had a chance to ask the electrician if this is because he originally cut them too short, but that is my best guess. Question: Is this dangerous and therefore unacceptable?

2. The house has 12 (double) socket outlets, but I notice only four earth wires (apart from the ground spike wire) joining the earth bar in the CU. I've tried to measure the resistance from the earth bar to each of the socket outlet earth contacts, and get readings of 6 or 7 ohms for all of them - but my multimeter doesn't seem very reliable (and I may be misguided even to think it can be used for such a test!). Question: Is a ratio of one earth wire to three (/six) socket outlets acceptable? (And if the 6-7 ohms is accurate, is it within acceptable limits?)

Thanks.

wow. still no announcement of when to apply this year?

No, but I asked at Chiang Mai Immigration today and was told applications for PR *will* be accepted in the last two weeks of December.

Has anyone experience of COGO (the building block kit that looks virtually identical to LEGO? It seems rather less expensive. Is the quality as good?

Annata, Also consider that if you run your ground line in the air for some distance, you make it more vulnerable to getting damaged and cut. Better to keep it short and contained. Have you considered using a better quality rod and longer length in its present location? As Crossy says, the ground is most likely to be be fine where a longer rod ends up.

Thank you. I'll definitely explore all alternatives before deciding to go 'aerial'.

The existing rod is in the (recently land-filled) earth under the ground floor. The crawling space is really too low for hammering in or pulling out a rod of 1.5 or 2 metres' length. I'm fairly sure that what the electrician put in was a copper-painted (!) rod one metre long.

It's quite possible that your existing ground is more than adequate but to verify it you need specialised test gear (and someone who knows how to use it).

Thank you for this.

I know that "rough and ready" isn't a good mindset for approaching electrical safety, but I seem to remember reading somewhere about a method of testing the quality of a domestic electrical earth by connecting a light bulb across live and earth (to blow it)? Am I mistaken? (If not, would I be foolhardy to try this?)

I want to replace the ground rod that the builder has located under the house in dry sandy soil (and may well be short and of poorly conductive metal). I'm thinking of running the earth wire (10 sq. mm?) from the CU out of the house through the air to a nearby concrete pole, then down to a decent 2-metre copper sheathed rod in soil that never fully dries out. The total length of the earth wire would then be about 20 metres: Would that be OK?

Please advise.

Thanks to all for the info and advice.

The house is now built and I daresay will stay standing for a few years. In the end I couldn't persuade the builder to go slowly enough to keep the pillars wrapped while the concrete was curing, but at least he sprayed them with water several times a day for the best part of a week.

I'm now trying to connect with his (rather different) ideas about how septic tanks are supposed to work ...

Greetings -

Anatta

if i get over a certain temperature i get it, use quadriderm, absolutly brillaint, immediate relief .i kid you not,.

Dertec is the same composition as Quadriderm but much cheaper.

Quadriderm, get at any pharmacy, superb, give it a try and let me know, ill beat its a heat rash you have, and can be a bugger to shift, this stuff will,.

Dertec is exactly the same composition but nearly half the price.

Our builder is soon to start on the concrete pillars for the house. When I asked him about keeping the new concrete moist while it cures he said he will spray it with water every day (but I think he would be willing to accept other suggestions). I've seen pillars wrapped in polythene sheeting: is this a better way of keeping them moist? How long should they be kept moist at this time of year?

All advice gratefully received.

Thanks to Rimmer, Artisi, dickie58, offset and mike44.

I've now had two more quotations. A builder in the village quotes at 8,800 per sq.m. with (small) brick walls, and a builder from the city at 10,300 per sq. m. using Q-con blocks. I think we'll be going with one of these.

I plan to build (in a village near Chiang Mai) a two-room chalet of 13.5 square meters floor area, raised 1.2 meters above ground level, with 'standard' concrete frame, brick wall and CPAC roof construction. I have been quoted an all-in price of 173,000 baht. Does this seem reasonable? Any advice much appreciated.

I've been told that the hill peoples make some dishes that are not found in the (northern) Thai cuisine. Are there any restaurants in or around Chiang Mai that serve 'hilltribe' food?

So, with you saying that the Fortuner comes with Michelin or Bridgestones - that help explains the ride quality - if nothing else, I'll try to find a set of those for my MU7..

the tires having been produced for a drive-on-the-right country

I have never heard of that. If you drove in the right hand lane of a 4 lane hi-way, did the problem go away? There is such a thing as directional tires (can only be mounted to turn one way) but I can't imagine there are right hand / left hand drive tires. I would suspect that there was a manufacturing defect with those tires causing the pull.

From what I researched I learned that (some?) tires are made with a slight steering bias built into the ply pattern, in order to compensate in normal driving for the camber built into well-engineered roads - hence the term 'ply steer'. I tried driving on the 'wrong' side of a normally cambered road here and it did help to counteract the steering pull, though not entirely. The tires could, as you say, have simply had a manufaturing defect.

I am considering these 265/60-18 tyres for the MU7: Michelin LTX M/S 2 or Pirelli Scorpion STR. Does anyone have any ideas about the overall performance on a MU7?

I'm going to upgrade the wheels and tires on my Pajero Sport to 18" as well. The tire shops all want to sell me Falken tires. I have done some research and seems that they have a pretty decent reputation and the price is right. Anyone with any first hand experience with them?

I suffered for three years with 'steering pull' from Falken MT tires. From what I could find out the cause may have been 'ply steer' - the tires having been produced for a drive-on-the-right country but mistakenly exported (or dumped?) here. Recently changing the tires to a different make (Maxxis) was a huge relief.

Ram is a most excellent hospital; so is Sripat/Maharaj; perhaps also McCormick, etc. "So bad I'd never go there again" describes Sao Paulo in Hua Hin.

UG, you've set this up to fail. A great (wrongly maligned) hospital compared with a great dental clinic.

I can't agree with the overall evaluation "most excellent".

In the dental clinic the X-ray technician was unable to position the film correctly in my mouth in spite of three attempts. I finally did it for her. (Pity about all the unnecessary radiation ...)

When my wife and I were waiting in the obstetric clinic a dog wandered in, sniffed around and padded into one of the empty consulting rooms. I asked a group of five nurses/nurse aids whether the hospital allowed dogs in. All of them simply 'melted away', leaving me to wonder if I ought to try and shoo the animal out.

Without going into detail, I would add that our experience of perinatal care left a lot be desired. The pediatric cardiologist, however, is admirable.

This is a very clear explanation of Basho's famous haiku poem about a frog jumping into a pond (the pond still exists) by scholar and translator Donald Keene:

---

Haiku is a whole difficult poetic form. It must do so much in a very short space. You cannot waste a single syllable, and yet in this very very tight world of the haiku, Basho was able to express innumerable kinds of perceptions of the world through various trivial events that he gives a value to. It makes you feel that there is nothing in life that is really uninteresting. If one looks at it properly, one can draw some excitement — even enlightenment — from even a very very short poem.

His most famous poem is about a frog jumping into the pond: furu ike ya (The ancient pond) kawazu tobikomu (A frog leaps in) mizu no oto (The sound of the water)

It's very very simple and many people think of it as a momentary observation. And someone who wasn't prepared to accept the haiku might say, "Who cares whether a frog jumps in or not?"

But to think about the poem carefully is to realize nothing is wasted.

Some may ask why Basho said "furu ike," (old pond). Well, he used that word to emphasize the eternity of the pond. It is there forever. It has been there ever since the world was created until that moment. And then he takes this pond and he inserts a frog jumping in, which is an event of an instant. It may never happen again, and it may never have happened before. It's one moment. The eternal nature of the pond is bisected by the vertical movement of the frog jumping into it. It's a combination of the infinite and the momentary.

"Mizu no oto," which is the sound of water, is a recognition of something having happened. From the sound of water we can understand that something important has happened.

Source.

Keene's analysis is good. But to 'explain' the poem is not to experience the Zen of it? Alan Watts in 'The Way of Zen' quotes Basho as saying "To write haiku, get a three-foot child". Watts goes on "Basho's poems have the same inspired objectivity as a child's expression of wonder and return us to that same feeling of the world as when it first met our astonished eyes".

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teeth and white shirts glow in the dark.

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So, apparently, do scorpions. From what I've read they are nocturnal, and without a UV light can be hard to track down in the dark.

I have the same pump. It did suffer from low voltage when we had a 'brown-out' recently, failing to pump at all. Without dismantling anything, or the necessary technical knowledge to diagnose properly, I had the impression that it switched on but wasn't getting enough juice to turn: it just got gradually hotter, emitting, as I remember, an ominous hum. When the voltage returned to 'normal' all worked fine again.

I've been using Maxxis "buckshot mudder" MT (30 X 9.5) for a couple of months and am so far very satisfied. They do well off-road and are comfortable on-road as well.

I'm told that although Maxxis is a Taiwan company the tyres for the Thai market are made in a factory near Ranong (hence the reasonable price?).

thinking about buying a jeep,

i live up a dirt road and my car hasn't eneough ground clearence,

have been looking at suzuki's but don't know wich is best,

the carabean has 1300cc which sounds like it would grumble at the mountains

but easier to find,

the others have 1600cc,which would be perfect but they are harder to find

and seem more expensive

but i don't know much more,

maybe someone has some comparisons or other solutions,

i don't need much power or even 4 wheel drive,ground clearance is the issue,

gaining ground clearance while keeping feul econmy,

most of my driving is on the main mountain roads and highway,

was also thinking of buying a nissan nv and puting higher shocks on it,

i don't think i can do it to my peugeot 205 because the back shocks are telescopic,

all advice welcome,

The Vitara's clearance is not so great, and mods to increase it substantially are rather expensive.

The Caribian's clearance is not bad, and can be easily (and relatively inexpensively) increased. The 1300 cc engine is a bit thirsty by modern standards - particularly on the earlier carburettor models. (I think the fuel-injected engine came in in about 2001.) But against the cost of fuel - and your likely mileage - consider that there are lots of Caribians around, and (therefore) lots of mechanics who can maintain and repair them without great expense.

Where we live 10km outside Chiang Mai city we can get no landline at present, and we've been using the CAT C-motech USB modem for several months now with fairly satisfactory results. The speed has slowed perceptibly since Christmas, and at times (like now) is hardly faster than we get using EDGE with AIS. But dropouts are rare. The C-motech modem cost about 10,000 baht. The monthly fee is 845 baht. I have just done the Thaivisa broadband test (6 o'clock on Saturday evening), and got these results: ping (latency) - 588 ms; download - 514 kbps; upload - 168 kbps. We previously used IP-STAR (satellite), but within a few seeks it deteriorated badly, with frequent total dropouts, till we gave up. The AIS EDGE service is fairly dependable, though not blindingly fast. I've heard some reports that DTAC do a slightly better version.

Can anyone give us a contact name/number/email for "The Playgroup" in Chiang Mai

(mentioned in http://www.chiangmainews.com/indepth/details.php?id=494?

We have a 27-month son in need of playmates who is not ready for the regimentation of 'pre-school'.

We've not yet managed to make contact with any families in a similar situation.

Any suggestions/info will be much appreciated.