What Is "Electrical Noise Suppressor" In Thai?

[JetsetBkk]

Like the title says: What is Thai for "Electrical noise suppressor"?

You wouldn't believe the trouble I've been having trying to explain to a Thai "electrician" - quotes intentional - that the reason my Internet stops and my PC speaker starts hissing is because my shower heater is creating noise on the mains supply.

I'm sure a simple suppressor fitted across the mains supply in the heater would stop the problem, but I can't find the Thai word for it. The nearest I found was: "เครื่องระงับ", but he didn't appear to know what it was, so it may well have been the wrong kind of suppressor.

The last straw with this guy was after I'd shown him that the problem occurred with the shower on, and the problem goes away with the shower off, he asked me for ToT's number so he could report the Internet problem.

It's enough to make you weep.

[SoftWater]

I can't vouch for it myself, but a couple of dictionaries I have both offer:

เครื่องป้องกันการรบกวน

(kreung[2] bpong[2] gan garn rob-guan)

Electrical suppressor

There's enough syllables in there for me, at least, to make a hash of trying to speak it; might worth writing down 'less you're pretty confident!

Good luck

[SoftWater]

*tone correction, the last part should be

*rob[3]-guan

Edited August 9, 2010 by SoftWater

[anchan42]

*tone correction, the last part should be

*rob[3]-guan

Hmmm I don't think average electrician in Thailand would know what it is.

You might need a lot of explanation. Another way of doing it is to buy the thing yourself and ask an electrician to install it for you.

You could try ตัวกรองสัญญาณรบกวน ie noise filter.

[DocJD]

อุปารณ์และวงจรป้องกันคลื่นสัญญาณรบกวน

Feel free to print out this document and give it to your electrician: http://elec.ltc.ac.t.../Protection.pdf

[SoftWater]

Hmmm I don't think average electrician in Thailand would know what it is.

You might need a lot of explanation. Another way of doing it is to buy the thing yourself and ask an electrician to install it for you.

You could try ตัวกรองสัญญาณรบกวน ie noise filter.

I'm sure Anchan is right, though personally I wouldn't want anyone installing anything electrical if they didn't actually know what it was or what it was called. I know there are many (most?) electricians who learn on the job and don't have formal college training...and I know there's plenty of deaths, burns and fires every year due to faulty electrics...not saying they're connected of course, but (ouch! just a got a shock of my monitor..)... ... something to avoid whenever possible.

[JetsetBkk]

I can't vouch for it myself, but a couple of dictionaries I have both offer:

เครื่องป้องกันการรบกวน

(kreung[2] bpong[2] gan garn rob-guan)

Electrical suppressor

There's enough syllables in there for me, at least, to make a hash of trying to speak it; might worth writing down 'less you're pretty confident!

Good luck

Thanks SoftWater. What I usually do is copy the Thai word into Windows' "Notepad", make the font so big that the word fills the screen and then take a picture of it with my digital camera. Then I can show it to anyone to help them understand what I need.

That method also works for pictures of things - e.g. adaptors or connectors. My hardware store man was most impressed when I showed him a picture of a 2-pin to 3-pin electrical adaptor I wanted.

[JetsetBkk]

*tone correction, the last part should be

*rob[3]-guan

Hmmm I don't think average electrician in Thailand would know what it is.

You might need a lot of explanation. Another way of doing it is to buy the thing yourself and ask an electrician to install it for you.

You could try ตัวกรองสัญญาณรบกวน ie noise filter.

Hi Anchan42 - yes, I already went to an electrical shop, had a look at all the capacitors and things they had, but I couldn't tell if any was what I needed - it was all in Thai. The girl on the checkout - and another man she spoke to - didn't understand what I wanted.

But I'll add your words - noise filter - to the picture I will show them. But as it doesn't contain "electricity" they may show me to the ear-plug section.

[JetsetBkk]

อุปารณ์และวงจรป้องกันคลื่นสัญญาณรบกวน

Feel free to print out this document and give it to your electrician: http://elec.ltc.ac.t.../Protection.pdf

Thank you very much DocJD. I could do with a copy of that in English to brush up my knowledge of common mode and normal mode noise.

[One thing I noticed when I tried to translate the Thai you posted - there is a spelling mistake at the beginning: the 3rd character should be gor gai (ก), not sara aah (า).]

The good news is, the electrician came back yesterday with a 4 foot long copper rod which he banged into the ground next to the electricity pole. He then connected a terminal on my telephone connection box to it and the problem has been greatly reduced.

So now with one shower heater on, the ADSL mbps is reduced by about 25% and with two on it goes down by about 50%.

So I could thankfully tell the guy that it was a satisfactory solution (no face lost by him), while I go hunt down suppressors/noise filters and fit them myself.

[mickey1973]

Hi jetsetbkk do you know what kind of earthing arangement your electrical system has - do you provide your own earthing or is it provided by the distribution company?

I think that your problem maybe has something to do with that you might be asking an installation electrician questions that you should be maybe asking an electronics engineer as part of my electrical training only offered a brief insight into electronics, which is a totally different dynamic and is a specialist field.

Maybe try to consult with an approved electrician, the merits of installing a dedicated socket outlet, with a clean earthing arrangement (earth electrode) complete with 30 millamp protection for that circuit and surge protection. also are your IT cables run in parallel to your mains cables and are they sceened (screened cables protect against voltage induction, which in turn, can induce noise through low voltage systems)

Another problem could be harmonics, to do with your electrical supply source and using inductive loads within close proximity, but i would tend to opt for the former.

Hope this helps.

Edited August 14, 2010 by mickey1973

[kriswillems]

The temperature control of your heater is done by chopping the sine wave of the electric power into pieces. This causes noise on the electric power system. The magnitude of the noise depends on the quality of the electric wiring inside and/or outside your house and the dimension of the transformer used (by the electricity company). Electric wiring in Thailand is (extremely) bad.

The noise might cause problems in 2 ways:

- the power supply of your other devices in your house becomes noisy (as in probably happening in your case)

- the noise spreads via electromagnetic radiation to communication lines in your home.

The are many ways to solve of circumvent this problem.

- improve the electric wiring in your house by

1. putting sensitive equipment on it's own, separated circuit.

2. making sure telephone lines, audio lines are not near/close to power lines.

- make sure your modem has a high quality power supply that filters out the noise.

- use a UPS on your modem that has a noise filter

- use a noise filter on the power supply of your modem.

- use a noise filter on your heater (it might be hard to find noise filters that support high currents).

A noise filter is also called EMI filter, EMC filter, power line filter

The Thai word for filter is วงจรกรองไฟ

A built-in type can be found here:

http://www.dexicon.co.th/index.php?tpid=pro:AC%20Filter

External types can be found here:

http://www.nsoft.co.th/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Id=538702089

http://www.jpequipments.com/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Ntype=3&Id=465631

Edited August 14, 2010 by kriswillems

[farangnahrak]

I'm an electrical engineer, among other things. (not an electrician)

Is your router wireless or wired? If its wired, kriswillems' suggestions are the way to go. If its wireless, I got a few suggestions.

Oh and I'm glad the 'electrician' actually bothered to ground your water heater . . . potentially very dangerous without it properly grounded!

Does your electrician also wear flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt as protection gear?

[JetsetBkk]

Hi jetsetbkk do you know what kind of earthing arangement your electrical system has - do you provide your own earthing or is it provided by the distribution company?

I think that your problem maybe has something to do with that you might be asking an installation electrician questions that you should be maybe asking an electronics engineer as part of my electrical training only offered a brief insight into electronics, which is a totally different dynamic and is a specialist field.

Maybe try to consult with an approved electrician, the merits of installing a dedicated socket outlet, with a clean earthing arrangement (earth electrode) complete with 30 millamp protection for that circuit and surge protection. also are your IT cables run in parallel to your mains cables and are they sceened (screened cables protect against voltage induction, which in turn, can induce noise through low voltage systems)

Another problem could be harmonics, to do with your electrical supply source and using inductive loads within close proximity, but i would tend to opt for the former.

Hope this helps.

Hi Mickey. Sorry about the delay in replying - I only noticed the "reply notification email" today.

Regards earthing: I don't know where the earth wire (that is attached to the earth point in the shower heater) is grounded. Both shower heaters were installed after this town house was built, and not by the house builders or site electrician.

The wire is a thick, single core wire that goes up into the roof space together with the equally thick 2 core mains cable - Lord knows how it was wired up because there is no hatch on this floor to give access to that space. Maybe he removed the extractor fan so he could poke his head up into the small hole. I hope he didn't connect it to the lighting circuit! I must poke my head up that extractor fan hole and have a look.

The earthing for the telephone wire, however, appears quite simple. The copper rod they banged into the ground next to the concrete power pole (also serves as telephone pole) is wired to the earth terminal of a gas discharge tube (I'm 95% sure that's what it is) that is connected across the two telephone wires in the connection box. So I presume the telephone wires are "floating" and the GDT is grounded.

In the room, my telephones cables don't run along the mains cables, but are fairly close. I deliberately don't bundle them all together.

I've a feeling that the showers need connecting to their own supply at the breaker box. I need to find out which switch on the breaker box cuts the power to the heaters and take it from there.

[JetsetBkk]

Hi kriswillems. Again, apologies for the late reply.

I'll answer your points in-line:

The temperature control of your heater is done by chopping the sine wave of the electric power into pieces. This causes noise on the electric power system. The magnitude of the noise depends on the quality of the electric wiring inside and/or outside your house and the dimension of the transformer used (by the electricity company). Electric wiring in Thailand is (extremely) bad.

The noise might cause problems in 2 ways:

- the power supply of your other devices in your house becomes noisy (as in probably happening in your case)

I believe this is the likely cause too.

- the noise spreads via electromagnetic radiation to communication lines in your home.

The are many ways to solve of circumvent this problem.

- improve the electric wiring in your house by

1. putting sensitive equipment on it's own, separated circuit.

Yes, as I indicated in my previous post, I am thinking that the supply for the heaters was taken from the nearest source available to the 'electrician' - maybe even the lighting circuit - as the heaters were installed after the house was built. I need to determine which breaker box switch cuts their power and what else is on that circuit.

2. making sure telephone lines, audio lines are not near/close to power lines.

- make sure your modem has a high quality power supply that filters out the noise.

- use a UPS on your modem that has a noise filter

- use a noise filter on the power supply of your modem.

- use a noise filter on your heater (it might be hard to find noise filters that support high currents).

My modem is using the same 'filtered' output from my UPS as all my other equipment. The fact that I can also hear a high pitched buzzing from my speakers when the heater is on tells me that the filter isn't doing a good enough job (or that the noise created is massive).

A noise filter is also called EMI filter, EMC filter, power line filter

The Thai word for filter is วงจรกรองไฟ

A built-in type can be found here:

http://www.dexicon.co.th/index.php?tpid=pro:AC%20Filter

External types can be found here:

http://www.nsoft.co.th/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Id=538702089

http://www.jpequipments.com/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Ntype=3&Id=465631

Thank you very much for this information. I will post back as I get any results - good or bad - from implementing these devices.

[JetsetBkk]

I'm an electrical engineer, among other things. (not an electrician)

Is your router wireless or wired? If its wired, kriswillems' suggestions are the way to go. If its wireless, I got a few suggestions.

Oh and I'm glad the 'electrician' actually bothered to ground your water heater . . . potentially very dangerous without it properly grounded!

Does your electrician also wear flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt as protection gear?

Hi FN,

It is a wired modem/router: ZyXEL Prestige 660R-61C

re. the 'electrician':

Flip-flops: check

Shorts: nearly (jeans with massive holes ripped in the knees)

T-shirt: check

Long hair in a pony-tail: check

Test screwdriver with Neon lamp in the end: check

Step ladder: check

Rusty old pick-up: check

[IMA_FARANG]

Just on a guess, Thai electricians may be the wrong people to ask about this. I would think you would have better luck looking for someone (Thai) with experience in wiring up home computer systems. I would expect them to be using some kind of EMI (electrical noise) filter on the power input to a computer to filter out all the noise/hash (caused by other devices on the A.C. (mains) input to the computer power supply). Such things as thermostats and other switching devices generate harmonics on the A.C power line which cause high frequency noise pulses, and what you need is a filter to remove that high frequency noise to ground. But I have no idea what you would call it in Thai. I would expect a lot of Thai electricians wouldn't know either, unless they had experience in wiring up computer systems.

Edited August 19, 2010 by IMA_FARANG

[farangnahrak]

My modem is using the same 'filtered' output from my UPS as all my other equipment. The fact that I can also hear a high pitched buzzing from my speakers when the heater is on tells me that the filter isn't doing a good enough job (or that the noise created is massive).

Its actually possible that your water heater electrics is emitting RF, and your speaker wiring is picking up this RF. Unlikely, but I've seen a similar problem with my own speakers.

Try readjusting your speaker wires, changing the way its laid out, coil it up, etc.

Or if you really wanna go hardcore, get out some aluminum foil sheets to Faraday cage stuff . . .

[dobadoy]

อาจจะเป็นรับผิดชอบของมนุษย์่ต่างดาวหรือว่ารัฐบาล

(maybe its aliens or the government)

Well, we seem to have answered the OPs question as far as ภาษาไทย is concerned. I dunno about electricians, but the people round my way would probably go to the temple figuring it was down to bad spirits....

Anyway, I was wondering what you learned folks thought about the grammar of my sentence above; it's not quite right, is it? (I mean the Thai one, y'cheeky lot... ).