Capt Sisko Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 On 04/02/2023 at 18:44, MikeHorton said: It's Saturday so I've picked a couple of nice bottles of beer from one of my favourite breweries. Wife has opted for a mango cider! I don't drink much so I'll enjoy these I remember helping a friend at a Steam Engine Rally in the field behind the Three Tuns brewery back in the early nineties. Good company, good weather, good beer, and too many of them and too young. I threw up in the hedge and fell asleep under the traction engine trailer. Not my finest hour, but hell we were all young once. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeHorton Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 7 minutes ago, Capt Sisko said: That's a great story we all have such moments and remember them too well . I'm hoping to do a brewery tour there at some point this summer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rennie Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 Good Evening Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rennie Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 Good Morning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fozzie Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 Good morning! Had an interesting and pretty dramatic evening, I was in the garage. And I've mentioned before I have a generator/battery bank setup with the exhaust piped outside, and a control board that interchanges between mains supply coming from generator or battery/inverter. I flick a switch and the battery powers it from an inverter, I put the generator on, it knocks the battery inverter out of the circuit, and powers everything as well as putting a battery charger on. Simple. I topped up the generator with petrol last night, and the can got a bit of an airlock and then splurted a bit. Only a small 50ml puddle on the floor, no big deal, I'll get a better can. Only at this particular moment, what I later found was the rectifier circuit on the relay bank in the control board failed. Suddenly the lights are flickering and go dead, and the relay board is spitting sparks. The perspex cover I put over it is holding up, but I'm now fully aware I'm in a garage that's quite tight to get around, it's pitch black aside from intermittent sparks and the lights flickering on a split second, I've just spilt petrol and fumes are in the air, and I've now got an electrical panel spitting sparks! I put the battery box on the diagonal opposite of the garage as I'd expected that to be the source of any sparks. This board is 6 feet away. Que a frantic scramble to the battery box to knock the inverter off, which was going into fault but restarting. Probably as the battery voltage was momentarily dropping low enough from the fault that its primary side de-energised and it cleared the fault. I then get the garage door open, and let it air out, and keep a tight hold of my little extinguisher. And with a battery spot light, bypass the board so I can run the lights on battery manually. But the generator now just powers a bank of sockets, and the charger for the battery. Get it running again, and begin taking apart the relay board to find out how a sealed unit could do that. The rectifier circuit was surface mounted, I'm guessing a bit of moisture built up and kicked things off. So now it's a hard save up, and projects are on hold a little longer while I get a proper lithium power station from Anker. But near miss! 1 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S-Westerly Posted February 16, 2023 Author Share Posted February 16, 2023 I wouldn't like to do the Near Miss report for that particular incident. Bad enough the ones I do have to do which are nowhere near as exciting. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fozzie Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 44 minutes ago, S-Westerly said: I wouldn't like to do the Near Miss report for that particular incident. Bad enough the ones I do have to do which are nowhere near as exciting. It was a proper cascade failure event. Leaking spout on the fuel can and a bad vent air locking it creating a small puddle, then starting the generator which triggers the relays made them go bang. Which knocked the generator off after a few seconds. What I don't currently know, is how the battery voltage kicked in and found its way to the relay trigger circuit, that should be generator circuit only and I'm only on theories at the minute, so some internal short must have occurred, and at least one of the relay contacts welded/jammed allowing battery voltage onto the now dead generator circuit, and into the relays trigger circuit which was faulting. And then the inverter in the battery box is meant to knock off in fault, but didn't as it must have been dragging the battery voltage too low causing it to reset (Which I tried to allow for by using an 110ah battery for added oomph). I'm only going to fuel the generator after use now, which deals with the majority of the issues. But as for the fault, I think it's time to get a "proper" off grid solution. So I'm going to get one of these as soon as I can: 19kg, so on the heavy side for carrying up and down 2 flights of stairs, but there's a smaller 13kg one that might do it. But I'll set it up so it powers the garage from now on, with the generator only for larger items, and charging the battery back up. Will not suffer any ingress issues as I'll store it in the flat. Just f**king expensive 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeHorton Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 4 hours ago, Fozzie said: It was a proper cascade failure event. Leaking spout on the fuel can and a bad vent air locking it creating a small puddle, then starting the generator which triggers the relays made them go bang. Which knocked the generator off after a few seconds. What I don't currently know, is how the battery voltage kicked in and found its way to the relay trigger circuit, that should be generator circuit only and I'm only on theories at the minute, so some internal short must have occurred, and at least one of the relay contacts welded/jammed allowing battery voltage onto the now dead generator circuit, and into the relays trigger circuit which was faulting. And then the inverter in the battery box is meant to knock off in fault, but didn't as it must have been dragging the battery voltage too low causing it to reset (Which I tried to allow for by using an 110ah battery for added oomph). I'm only going to fuel the generator after use now, which deals with the majority of the issues. But as for the fault, I think it's time to get a "proper" off grid solution. So I'm going to get one of these as soon as I can: 19kg, so on the heavy side for carrying up and down 2 flights of stairs, but there's a smaller 13kg one that might do it. But I'll set it up so it powers the garage from now on, with the generator only for larger items, and charging the battery back up. Will not suffer any ingress issues as I'll store it in the flat. Just f**king expensive Anker products are great quality I think you get a 5yr guarantee with these 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fozzie Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 2 hours ago, MikeHorton said: Anker products are great quality I think you get a 5yr guarantee with these You do, and they are my favourite battery chemistry, LiFePO4. Heavier than normal lithium batteries, a bit less power density, but extremely good lifespans. 3000 cycles to 80%, but keep it above 20% and it will likely be more. Should tide me over until I buy a house in a couple of years. Then it will see out life as a backup for the house in case of blackouts. Which, with the way Britain is going… 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rennie Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 Good Morning I still like Fridays!! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 Glad to see the back of this week. Our house extension drags on into the eighth month. Timber framers meant to be in this week but weren't and been giving us the runaround. Ended up me and my other half losing it with them and asking for our deposit back. They claimed they had started making it so I pitched up at the workshop unannounced to call their bluff. A couple of long and angry calls to their director and we have a new date for install and they have an assurance from me, if there's even a hint it will be missed all hell will break loose. Unnecessarily stressful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Frog Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 30 minutes ago, goat said: Glad to see the back of this week. Our house extension drags on into the eighth month. Timber framers meant to be in this week but weren't and been giving us the runaround. Ended up me and my other half losing it with them and asking for our deposit back. They claimed they had started making it so I pitched up at the workshop unannounced to call their bluff. A couple of long and angry calls to their director and we have a new date for install and they have an assurance from me, if there's even a hint it will be missed all hell will break loose. Unnecessarily stressful. Name and shame if there is any more grief ! Ironically I have dealt with timber frame companies a lot over the last 30 or so years and I feel they only come in 2 varieties Absolute brilliant or absolute cr*p with no in between. Cheers Ian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 51 minutes ago, Ian Frog said: Name and shame if there is any more grief ! Ironically I have dealt with timber frame companies a lot over the last 30 or so years and I feel they only come in 2 varieties Absolute brilliant or absolute cr*p with no in between. Cheers Ian The quality of their work is great but there ability to organise and communicate is zero. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Takanta Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 Afternoon. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onesea Posted February 18, 2023 Share Posted February 18, 2023 Good morning all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 18, 2023 Share Posted February 18, 2023 Anyone recommend a good roofer in norfolk/ Suffolk. Need someone in 3 weeks time to construct a roof. Generally my experience is good trades aren't available at short notice but just when i thought i was getting somewhere with the timber framers i reckon it's becoming impossible to work with our builder anymore. Aaaaĥhhhhhhhhhh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bonio Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 No. No luck on roofers at all. Sounds a bit of a nightmare up your way Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dynax Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 Good morning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rennie Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 On 18/02/2023 at 18:18, goat said: Anyone recommend a good roofer in norfolk/ Suffolk. Need someone in 3 weeks time to construct a roof. Generally my experience is good trades aren't available at short notice but just when i thought i was getting somewhere with the timber framers i reckon it's becoming impossible to work with our builder anymore. Aaaaĥhhhhhhhhhh. I'll ask Pete my brother in law he'll probably know someone Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rennie Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 Good evening by the way! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rennie Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 Good Morning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bender Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 6 hours ago, rennie said: Good Morning Ditto 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rennie Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 Good Morning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fozzie Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 Morning! Keep seeing cheap little bikes around my area, 125's and 250's seem to be selling in high numbers, and at low cost. I wonder if the people who decided to take up biking over covid are now deciding it wasn't for them, or maybe they are going up a size? If I didn't already have 3 projects, I think I'd snap one up. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Frog Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 You are not alone, the same appears to be happening down here. Hence my recent purchase of a 2005 CG125 to do up and see if the other half will take to being on the front end the way she took to the rear lol. My rationale was that as it`s a Honda I will be unlikely to lose on it. Cheers Ian 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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