Led Lolly Yellow Lolly

2 hours ago, samtam said:

Could they specify "control measures"?

If you can imagine a scenario where things got so bad, and so out of control, and the daily Covid death rates got so high as as to compete with the daily death toll on the roads, control measures will just stop, life will return to normal and everyone will pretend there's no plomplem.

FWIW I have quite a high failure rate with Schneider RCBOs. I'm not sure why but I think it's probably down to lightning transients. I've not lost any ABB or Siemens DIN RCDs or RCBOs, so I switched away from Schneider and plugin systems altogether on new installs.

I'm not going to say anything is OK without seeing it or installing it myself. One of the problems is you're dealing with a wet room, which should be an equipotentially bonded safe zone. Messing around with multiple ground rods or (multiple paths to ground) is just asking for trouble. 

Note that I am NOT a qualified electrician, so I make no warranty with anything I say here, nor should you trust anything you read on a forum. The reason I do everything myself in our hotel is because, as you are finding out, finding competent local electricians is pretty much impossible. We were also having problems with theft and corruption costing the company millions of Baht (I started checking invoices and cross referencing them with what we actually had, it was sure an eye opener).

We even had hundreds of our rooms fitted with fake/copy sockets, it took me a while to figure out why live and neutral were apparently reversed on all of them, even though they appeared to be wired correctly, turned out the wire holes on the back were mislabled, just fakes. We screwed the electrician over that debacle, he lost a lot of the money he stole from us. . .

So I've ended up swinging around on electricity pylons with my own set of hot sticks pulling out expulsion fuses on our own transformers, all the way down to wiring kettles and everything in between. As I said, I'm not qualified or certified, but I guarantee that anything I personally do is of an infinitely higher standard than ANYTHING I've seen in Thailand in 20 years.

Everything must go back to the CU, including earth/ground. Do you know or even understand if the system is TT or TN-CS-MEN, for example? I don't wish to sound high handed, but it's a gross violation of good practice to bypass the CU. Sorry but I have to say it straight.

2 hours ago, IDug said:

As the heaters are now attached to the outside walls, they do not use the rooms internal wiring. Instead, we have new 6mm wiring going straight to the incoming 16mm cable.
 

If I've understood this correctly this is an extremely hazardous situation and you need to stop what you're doing and get a qualified electrical engineer on site. The cables should NEVER bypass the Consumer Unit, EVER. I don't care if some local spark told you it's fine.

On 12/15/2020 at 1:07 PM, IDug said:

With one shower going, there is plenty of hot water but with both going the voltage drop causes both heaters to struggle. The 240V supply drops to 210V with one heater on and 180V with both on.

 

The cable from the meter is about a 550m circuit and is 16mm aluminium. This cable not only serves these two rooms but also two more with the old 3.5KW heaters.

Sorry if I've missed this in another post somewhere, but what size are the cables between the individual consumers units to the shower units themselves? At 6 kW you'll get away with 4 sqm if the run is very short but if it's more than a hop and a skip from the CU to the shower this will be a significant contributor to voltage drop at full power and this will need 6 sqm to help mitigate that. Where are you measuring the voltage drop? I feel there is more going on than just the size of the cable outside. There are all manner of mechanisms that will cause voltage drops, including badly clamped supply side cables, with mixed metals and the galvanic corrosion involved with that, to name just a couple.

On 12/18/2020 at 12:33 AM, sometimewoodworker said:

It’s extremely unlikely that they are using 10mm aluminium. I’m virtually sure it will be double insulated copper.

Certainly if the PEA did the install their side it would be NYY copper, but it would be of absolutely no surprise whatsoever if someone NOT from the PEA have done their own 'upgrades'.

You said it yourself, it's a recommendation. In reality, even at optimal quality settings, frame rate and with HDR, you using much less than that. Trust me, you are. (FYI Netflix caps out at around 16 Mbps, but anyone that thinks they can tell the difference between 16 Mbps and 10 Mbps when watching on a phone is delusional. I can't even tell the difference on my 55 inch Bravia).

BBC iPlayer for example, absolute maximum stream rate is 5 Mbps for HD content. If you watch it in a browser, you're using DASH codec, which will adapt, but if you watch it with KODI (for example), default codec is HLS and you can hardcode the stream rate at 5 Mbps. I spent 13 years since the iPlayer was launched figuring out ways to make it work well for me in Thailand. No one in Thailand knows more about the iPlayer than me, I guarantee it ????

I presently manage around 25 CentOS virtual machines from my phone. This uses a mere few hundred kilibits per seconds. Even if you have a 4K screen on your phone, you'll struggle to saturate a 10 Megabit connection even on Netflix. If you think you need 5G on a phone it all in your imagination.

A phone IS a small computer.

2 hours ago, 2530Ubon said:

 

 

 

Agreed. 4G is more than sufficient for streaming videos in HD, listening to music and going about your daily business.

I wouldn't even say you need 4G for that. 3G is more than sufficient for 99% (made up figure) of people. 3G gives you 21.6 Mbit/s for HSPA+, faster than that on some networks, who needs it on a phone? No one.

4 hours ago, jomtienisgood said:

 

Sorry if stupid question..

It's not a stupid question. A lot of people scratching their heads and wondering why they need 5G and the reason is that you almost certainly don't.

Use something like this. . .

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/netlink-media-converter-101001000-mbps-netlink-media-converter-i351766005.html

Fibre runs pre-terminated with SC connectors (get the BLUE ones, not green) are readily available on Lazada, something like this

28 minutes ago, Saraburi121 said:

Had a black ant invasion last night. Woke up feeling something crawling on me, ah just an ant then another and another. Went to take a leak and the bathroom wall and floor and walls were black with ants.  There must have been thousands of them piled up in the bathroom.  Somehow they got in the grey water drain (supposed sealed) and made a two pronged attack on the deck above the bedroom roof deck (single house)  down into a small hole the caulking.  Spent the better part of the night with a can of bug spray and the windows open.   This morning found the biggest bug I have ever seen on the wall, shot with a bit of but spray but kept on going. Not sure where it went.  Mid afternoon I met a ninja spider.  Swat once, dodged, swat twice and up the wall. Up the wall to the ceiling than jumped down on me. Wife who never kills anything finally found it and put it in the spider grave yard.   Wife did let me know she can kill the ninja spider.   

 

 

I forgot about the ants. Our kitchen regularly gets raided by vast colonies on the move during the rains. Leave the kitchen spotless, go back a few hours later and the floor, walls, and every item in the kitchen completely carpeted with ants. Remarkable creatures in that regard.

If the cables meet the spec to be considered CAT5e or CAT6, they meet the spec, quality or not, and they will work, no matter what. What I would advise if you're running them through a roof is to armour them against rodents, and believe me, this is what will give you problems, not the quality of the cables. You should also consider buying shielded cables because running unshielded LAN cable past luminaires and electricity cables will cause you all manner of problems. . .

Better, still (and this the best way forward), run some fibre and put some cheap media converters at each end. You can get pre-terminated 50 metre fibre cables for a few hundred Baht on Lazada. Overall, this will cost you the same as, maybe even less, than deploying copper. Let me know if you need some guidance on that, because people tend to be fearful of moving to fibre, and the fears are without foundation.

1 hour ago, villageidiotY2K said:

 

How about for foreigners?

I am on the scheme and to the best of my knowledge, there is no difference for foreigners.

My advice would be to be sure to use a photo machine that has no human interaction from the owner operator of that machine, as the UK PO will not accepted heavily doctored images. Thai photo shops love to edit your picture so much that you end up looking like Mr Data from Star Trek. Sometimes they'll throw in some scrambled eggs on your shoulders for free.

On 11/28/2020 at 7:29 AM, Crossy said:

The batteries finally failed after about 18 months.

 

 

 

 

 

This is why I've resisted pressure to invest in solar lighting at our properties. Everyone around me thinks it a great idea, but I'm not bowled over, primarily because I know the batteries sit in the blazing sun and heat all day. The cost of constantly replacing those must surely negate any savings, not to mention the annoyance of that. If I were to take the solar route, I'd build them myself, and use Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries (or maybe even supercapacitors), and only use them where mains power was impossible or extremely inconvenient to cable in.

Note that I do use a lot of solar. We have some remote camera sites where there is no mains power. The feed is transmitted over a microwave link back to base. I use Lead Calcium batteries for those remote sites, and the cabinets are forced air cooled, mainly for the longevity of the batteries, usually replace every 3 ~ 5 years. High temperatures are DEATH to most batteries chemistries.

3 hours ago, Benmart said:

A man has died. The cause of the vehicle crashing is unknown. Meanwhile, the mental sickness of some TVF posters shows the ugly side of their dark world. Sure glad I don't know them and never read any replies.

Pfffft, one less on the roads, thankfully extricated himself from this life without hurting anyone else's loved ones.

2 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

People are confusing a hotel that doesn't actually check you in, just collects your money and gives you the keys.

They are letting you stay, not legally checking you in and reporting to immigration etc, they would probably just as readily let you stay showing a gym membership card, or no ID at all

 

 

 

Hotels that allow you to stay without passport are unlicensed. As we are a licensed hotel, I'll list some of the things we have to comply with to obtain, and maintain our license. . . Security cameras must be install in all public areas, fire extinguishing equipment installed and checked every 3 months, registering and reporting of all guests according to law, display our rack rates at the reception counter, the list goes on and on.

22 hours ago, digger70 said:

Just be a Normal person and use your Passport .

Quite. I honestly don't understand why some people just want to make life hard for themselves, like the jerks we still occasionally get that want to check into our hotel with their driver's license. Just use your damn passport, you're supposed to carry it by law anyway.

Sure you're right. I have a couple of friends though that are wealthy enough to keep non-resident accounts in Singapore, their 'privileges' being meted out from there. Not many people I know hold their wealth in Thailand without good reason.

Realistically though, in spite of the odd exceptions reported, the chances of anyone here getting an unsecured credit card without a work permit are close to nil.

Note also, a secured credit card IS a real credit card, with reporting made to the national credit reference agency. A pre-paid credit card is NOT a real credit card, which is what I think some are referring to, which is a different thing. For the purposes of this discussion, a credit card based on WP and income, or a credit card based on money on deposit, are essentially the same thing in the backend.