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Muhendis

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Everything posted by Muhendis

  1. Don't forget the feminine factor. As soon as your wife finds out how much you are saving she will release the budget brake and reduce the profit somewhat. You still need to put a few buckets full of money aside for repairs/upgrades/renewals of your installation.
  2. I have a single tank fed from either one of two sources which are a bore hole and a surface water well. I was unaware of any ready built control system so I built my own. I used float switches for the tank and the surface well to ensure the tank would be filled and also to stop the house water pump in the event of a dry tank. The control box is full of non programmable relays, a 24v power supply and some push buttons for manual operation. It's been trouble free for over seven years DIY is easier for me than trying to find ready made kit but then, that is something I did much of during my remunerated working life.
  3. Calling diarrhoea and heatstroke diseases is not improving my confidence in the DDC.
  4. Yes I should have looked more carefully. That lump on the top of the bus is where the gas is stored. batteries go underneath like in this video.
  5. Electricity production has always been challenging for many reasons. Weather too hot. Weather too cold. Natural disasters. Unnatural disasters. Equipment failure. Management failure. The list can go on for a few pages I expect. The one thing we can say for sure is that requirements for more of the stuff will increase especially as we are now in the era of the battery electric car. If you want to get from A to B in your battery car the batteries need to have enough charge in them to last the entire journey. Yes I know that's a bit obvious but it means that battery car owners are heavily reliant on power being available when they want to charge their car batteries otherwise they have to sit at home 'til power is available. No way is there ever going to be enough grid power when there are millions of cars that all need to be charged. Smart chargers are not a good idea for the simple reason that they can and will be switched off or have their output limited at the most inconvenient time for the frustrated driver. I think it has always been recognised that the battery car is only an interim solution to fossil fuel free transport. I think the future will be the hydrogen fuel cell car. Hydrogen production is not really good enough at the moment but capillary assisted electrolysis is a promising improvement. Efficiency of this technique is said to be a factor better than existing methods. As for the Texas problems, I have to say there needs to be a huge shift away from big company generators. I firmly believe governments should make it more attractive for individual households to produce their own electricity. Maybe allow mini solar/wind grids to exist for small communities. To me, that makes far more sense than trailing wires all over the country.
  6. If I remember rightly (correct me if I'm wrong) this guy is an expat and if he returned to the UK he would have to pay for his NHS treatment at 150% of cost. Better to get the repair done here especially if the attacker has to foot the bill.
  7. https://www.removals.co.uk/ These are the people I used but many years ago. Put my house contents into a 20 ft container for me including packing into cardboard boxes. It took five weeks to get here and cost £5,000. And the delivery guys unpacked and put my bits'n pieces into the assigned rooms for me. Nothing has rotted from the Thai humidity. Grumpy about Thai customs bill of £600 though. Reason for that was because my wife didn't stay out of Thailand for the obligatory 1 year. Here's a few limitations:- CUSTOMS REGULATIONS Please note that the customer must be in the country when the shipment arrives to clear the shipment through customs. All shipments are subject to inspection Anyone with a one year Work Permit (or one year Visa) and returning Thai residents who have lived more than one year abroad (frequent traveling back and forth can cause problems) will be considered for duty-free exemption. Retirees with a one year permission to stay non-O-A ar4e still required to pay customs duty. A person is allowed duty-free import of one air and one sea shipment from the country of last residence Shipment must not arrive before the customer Goods must arrive no later than six months after the date on the Work Permit Goods must originate from the same country as the customer DUTIABLE RESTRICTED ITEMS New items (over six months old) require invoices Alcoholic beverages Tobacco products Works of art and antiquities Please note that only one type each of electrical appliance is allowed, additional duplicate appliances will be charged the full customs duty. Especially high duties apply to stereo and video equipment, all appliances, luxury items, carpets, foodstuff, and office equipment. Computers, faxes and phones my not be considered as household or personal effects but as dutiable office equipment. PROHIBITED ITEMS Narcotics and drugs Medical equipment Gold and silver Plants (Health Certificate required) Several plant and fruits are prohibited (inquire before importing) Firearms, weapons, ammunition and dangerous objects (subject to taxes and licensing, which take very long; goods of this type MUST NOT BE INCLUDED in household goods shipment) Radio equipment and transmitters of any kind Pornographic material All this is ten years old so may have changed in part
  8. Sorry, fetching my coat!! Why? You popping out for a leak?
  9. Looking at the picture I would strongly advise putting a line of posts in from one government marker to the next all around 'your' land. As you may have noticed, land is the most important possession for Thais and for Thai farmers in particular. This year things may look ok but come the harvesting time things could be different. Harvesters will not worry too much about encroaching a bit here and there as they chew up land with their tracks.
  10. Someone forgot to fit a protective grill at the input and output pipes.
  11. Oh yeah? If the sockets do get left in the isolator box, put an MCB in there with them. That will give a bit of safety for all the gardening things etc. that will surely get to use that handily located power point. Plus an RCD would be even better.
  12. Incoming neutral should be grounded at every fourth or fifth post so neutral is your ground. at the switchboard a new ground can be added by driving a ground rod into the soil. it needs to be at least 2.4M and adjacent to the switchboard post. This is your earth and can be connected to the neutral output of the isolator switch. The neutral is now also your ground and can be connected to any metallic bits of the pump etc. I prefer to run a separate earth conductor to pumps etc. and terminate at the earth bus-bar in the CU.
  13. Burning is certainly not necessary and is, in my opinion, counter productive. It kills off useful microbes in the topsoil and the amount of carbon left after burning is insignificant. Disc ploughing does not damage the plough but it is difficult with rice straw on the field because the discs can't cut through the straw to plough the soil below. Better to do what I do and hire a bailer to come and clear the straw. The bails can be sold easily enough and the field is cleared for ploughing. The truth is that farmers have been doing this burning for years and they see no reason to change that. It is cheap, easy and..........well, fun.
  14. Almost right. Rotting underwater vegetation is the major contributor to the release of methane. Laser levelling helps by reducing the amount of water required for the crop.
  15. This is something I have noticed before but not bothered to look at in detail. Today, being a bit boring with the rain dribbling down, I thought I might as well read it: I don't see a huge future in this but you never know. Credits to Sky News. Scientists power miniature computer with algae for six months The device is far cheaper to make than batteries that rely on unsustainable materials like rare earth elements, and is more environmentally friendly than the hazardous materials used in solar-power photovoltaic material. Alexander Martin Technology reporter @AlexMartin Monday 16 May 2022 10:47, UK Image:The computer system is the size of an AA battery. Pic: University of Cambridge Scientists have powered a miniature computer for six months using only the electrical current generated by algae. The computer doesn't pack the power of a traditional processing unit but the researchers believe it could function as a reliable and renewable way to run small devices. It is the size of an AA battery and uses a species of blue-green algae that generates a tiny electrical current while photosynthesising sunlight into energy. The researchers from the University of Cambridge managed to capture some of this energy using an aluminium electrode to power an Arm Cortex M0+ microprocessor. The entire system is made from "common, inexpensive and largely recyclable materials," according to the researchers, and they suggest that hundreds of thousands of the chips could used to power small computers in off-grid or remote situations. The little device is definitely experimental for now and the researchers don't propose any industrial uses. However they note that it is far cheaper to make than batteries that rely on unsustainable materials like rare earth elements, and is more environmentally friendly than the hazardous materials used in solar-power photovoltaic material. But even more remarkable than how recyclable the device is was how long it lasted. "We were impressed by how consistently the system worked over a long period of time," said Dr Paolo Bombelli of the University of Cambridge. "We thought it might stop after a few weeks but it just kept going," added Bombelli, whose team of biochemists published a paper detailing their creation in the journal Energy & Environmental Science. Fellow senior author Professor Christopher Howe said: "Our photosynthetic device doesn't run down the way a battery does because it's continually using light as the energy source." Because the algae creates its own food using photosynthesis it doesn't need to be fed. The scientists discovered it also continued working at night time without light, which they suspect is because the algae had managed to store up some energy to process its food.
  16. Ooops correction. maximum should read minim
  17. My thoughts are that, since the inverter is to be used as a UPS, the maximum circuit power would need to be limited to the maximum available source which in this case is the inverter. The problem of the utility supply taking up the slack so to speak is that, if there is no utility supply available at the time of overload then the only protection for the inverter is within the inverter itself. The right size MCB is a bit less expensive than a failed inverter so I would fit suitable circuit protection rather than rely solely on the inverter's internal protection.
  18. Please note that under normal operating conditions the inverter output maximum current is about 18 Amps. I would suggest reflecting this limitation in the selection of circuit protection downstream from the inverter.
  19. Don't know where you get your "average" from but I would certainly like to be a bit nearer that. ☹️
  20. This legal requirement is the "get out" clause we should be looking at. Finding out how some countries make this reciprocal arrangement and getting your country of residence to join would be a way forward. In the case of Thailand it could be in Thailands interest to join such an arrangement thus increasing purchasing power of UK retirees. In addition to that, what about the countries where there is no reciprocal arrangement yet retirees have their pensions UK index linked? I think Spain is one of them but I'm sure there are others too. The UK DWP is being hypocritical in saying "where there is a legal requirement to do so" because it is they who make the law and it is they who could change it if they want in much the same way that it was changed for pensioners in the EU When the UK left.
  21. Run simultaneously with F1. Should be fun and definitely different.
  22. I saw those panels in Global House too. Reason to pay more could be they are 24v and half cell sizes which is more efficient but I wouldn't care to install them without help. They look heavy.

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