carlyai

From the garage the power goes out to the big ON/OFF switch, then branched to lights behind the garage and to a CU on a pole then to another CU in the greenhouse. Looks a bit of a mess but those ant tracks maybe a clue. Tomorrow I think I'll start just disconnecting the wires to the ON/OFF switch first. Thanks again. 🙂

Great thanks. I think I know where it could be coming from, my greenhouse. It's still a bit boggie there with 1 extension lead. That Megger you suggested is only B1000 something, so will buy that if no luck today. Probably the only person in Isaan with a megger. 🙂

Nice bike seat to let your 'luk mark' (prostrate) hang free in the breeze. 🙂

No. with all the breakers except the MCB double pole breaker removed from the garage CU and MCB on it trips. With the MCB off it doesn't trip.

The new 30mA RCBO trips. But I'll try the "rel" function. 🙂

No. I will do that today.

Looks like I need a Megger. Leakage current now.

My Thai friend does solar and I asked him for a price to initially install just one inverter so that I could get the fish tanks, green house and aquaponics setup going again (off at the moment as costs too much running air and water pumps 24/7). So he would install all the panels etc but 1 inverter instead of 3. Cost was around B90000 and his cost was B20000 labour, which I thought wss OK. No batteries.

Why have 3 phase? We had a rice mill in the compound and the 3 phase PEA box was already on a power pole. When the rice mill was decomissioned we just moved the box to a new pole. As Crossy said it's great to have for redundancy. Just had an earth fault in the garage on one phase, so power off for to the garage for a couple of days, but the house was still powered up. Also when a phase goes low, can swap the phases around. Power, lights, aircons etc are split between the 3 phases, so losing 1 phase doesn't cause a big problem. Probably didn't need 3 phase multopoint water heaters, but the elecyrician said they were the bees knees. Has a lot of help from Crossy, including connecting my single phase genset to 3 phase house. Manufacturers said it couldn't be done then Crossy weaved his magic.

Just started it and bought 3 months supply for B1000. Is that expensive?

. .Don't know how much you know about 3 phase but the most difficult part I found to start with was getting an electrician who actually knew about and had installed 3 phase. I studied a little on 3 phase first year engineering college, a million years ago, so didn't remember much. I ended up finding a guy who installed 3 phase in factories. If you're out in the sticks, hard to find a 3 phase electrician, but the guy who knows the most is Crossy. 🙂

@Yellowtail . I've got a 3 phase supply to my house. I am only using 3 phase multipoint instant water heaters. I treat the 3 phase supply as 3 single phases. Give us a yell if I can help.

Just ordering a 30mA RCBO and connectors. Thanks again. :)

Just ordered one. Thanks. I bought one in Bali years ago but had to disassemble it and put in different suitcases to take back to Aus as is illegal.

Would something like this be OK?

Time for a swim brrrrr.

As I said before the PEA power first comes to a CU on the wall then used to split with one phase to the garage. Because the power varies up to 235v and fish tanks in the garage, I installed 220v stabalisers in the house and also a genset and grabbed a house feed (which was to be used for an airconditioner in the lounge room) and replaced unregulated feed with the house regulated feed (that's the cct. breaker to the Al cable). The only things now on the unregulated power is my 60m aquifer pump and equipment. I want to also feed the pump etc with regulated supply from the house. To do this I need to rearrange the Al cable and house feed (yellow conduit) to the pump box. How do I add pigtails to the Al cable or how to get it to the pump box? I know they are dissimilar metals, but Cu pigtails. The pump controller is showing 230v but does get up to 235v.

Thank you all very much for your replies. After returning home I blew out the garage CU again and fiddled around and, like magic, the fault seems to have disappeared, waiting for the worst time to come back again. I remember when I worked on the remote island of Milingimbi red ants used to cause all sorts of strange electrical problems.

First year Telecom. TIT all us country guys stayed in a big boarding house near the Engineering College in Homebush, a suburb of Sydney. There was about 60 of us pimplly faced young bucks, soon to be introduced to beer, beer, beer, nurses and song. Someone had a hand cranked ring generator and we all held hands in a circle while someone cranked the handle. The circle would soon be broken. 🙂

No I checked that. Before I left to fix my car, I turned off all the garage breakers again with only the garage MCB on and the 8 A went away. When I get back home I will again check every cct. From the garage CU. What started all this was random tripping of the RCBO. I chased it down to the pool pump motor and changed the start capacitor, which fixed the problem for a few hours, then the intermittant tripping came back.

I changed the RCBO to a normal 15A breaker and breaker didn't trip but measured 8A with the clamp meter and no pumps etc except the garage MCB on. Will put this in the 'Too Hard Basket' and go and fix my car back discs while thinking (which is difficult when you're older.) 🙂

Just a question on Contact Break Spark Analysis: when the RCBO trips sometimes there is no contact spark visible and sometimes when the contact breakes there is a spark visible. What sort of current is needed for a contact spark?

If you go down to Na Glua, near the fish market on the RHS there's a real watchmaker hiding in the store back. He used to fix my Grandfather clock. Not sure if he's still there, may have retired.

Replaced the MCB and RCBBO tripped. Bugger. Tomorrow I'll replace the RCBO with a breaker.

Our garage is hot and probably 100% humidity alot. All metal tools etc go rusty from the humidity me thinks. Just off to Kuchinari to see if they have a MCB for the garage CU. If not, my stick it in the microway. 🙂