Posts Tagged ‘electricity’
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
Fish House Thermometer Online and Live!
Had a few issues with calibration, and then one of the probes needed resoldering, a few mechanical issues, trying to mount the outside probe, had to make a few holes in the insulation!
It’s online and live!
Check Right!
I’m now ready to record temperature versus electricity consumed and see if my additional spacial heater is saving me money heating the fish house, taking the load of the internal heater thermostats in each fish tank.
I’m also hoping to code a visual indication of how much electricity is being consumed on the blog, in the right hand panel as well.
Tags: blog, electricity, fish, fish house, house
Posted in All, fish house | Comments Off on Fish House Thermometer Online and Live!
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
20.7kW (realtime reading of electricity being consumed at 1.30am 27/10/07)
Maybe I need to change the subject title, doesn’t seem very nice, and what’s this go to do with the FishHouse Blog. You’ll probably hear this term more and more, as we all strive for a greener planet and reduce our carbon foot prints! Has the penny dropped yet! But we all need electricity to run our fish houses, every year I see more and more people leave the hobby, and close fish houses, and it’s not surprising with rising energy costs. But don’t all hobbies cost money!!!?
To celebrate my big birthday coming up in November, I’ve purchased myself a present from Better Generation, it’s a Smart Electricity Meter called a Wattson by DIY Kyoto. I’ve already got a few power meters, that I purchased in October 2005, see my review here these record the power being used by an individual appliance, or if you use a four/six-way adaptor, you can measure combined power, I’ve been using these in my fish house for years. But want I wanted was a device that could measure total power consumed after the electricity meter before the consumer unit (fusebox), transmit it remotely to a display in the house, and finally output and record the information to a PC, so I can compare electricity consumption versus temperature in the fish house and outside during the winter and summer months. Also looking at the electricity used by our Economy 7 Storage and Immersion Heaters.
I pre-ordered this unit, at the beginning of October ’07, and it arrived yesterday it’s FANTASTIC!. I’m not going to write a review, because there our lots of fab reviews out there about the product, check Better Generation for one.
It’s a designer gadget with mood lighting that measures electicity consumed and outputs it to a PC.
The Wattson smart electricity meter showing 21,000 Watts (21kW) being used at 1.30am last night, when the storage heaters came on! Average consumption is about 3kW in the house. This is mainly the fish house and computers in the house, most other electrical appliances are negligible by comparison, but if high wattage appliance is turned-on, e.g. kettle, Wattson spots it! and flashes changes from purple flashing to red!
Tags: andysworld, aquablog, bblog, blog, computer, DIY, diy kyoto, electricity, energy, fish, fish house, FishHouse, house, watts, wattson
Posted in All, fish house | Comments Off on Polar Bear Killer!
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
20.7kW (realtime reading of electricity being consumed at 1.30am 27/10/07)
Maybe I need to change the subject title, doesn’t seem very nice, and what’s this go to do with the House Blog. You’ll probably hear this term more and more, as we all strive for a greener planet and reduce our carbon foot prints! Has the penny dropped yet!
To celebrate my big birthday coming up in November, I’ve purchased myself a present from Better Generation, it’s a Smart Electricity Meter called a Wattson by DIY Kyoto. I’ve already got a few power meters, that I purchased in October 2005, see my review here these record the power being used by an individual appliance, or if you use a four/six-way adaptor, you can measure combined power, I’ve been using these in my fish house for years. But want I wanted was a device that could measure total power consumed after the electricity meter before the consumer unit (fusebox), transmit it remotely to a display in the house, and finally output and record the information to a PC, so I can compare electricity consumption versus temperature in the fish house and outside during the winter and summer months. Also looking at the electricity used by our Economy 7 Storage and Immersion Heaters.
I pre-ordered this unit, at the beginning of October ’07, and it arrived yesterday it’s FANTASTIC!. I’m not going to write a review, because there our lots of fab reviews out there about the product, check Better Generation for one.
It’s a designer gadget with mood lighting that measures electicity consumed and outputs it to a PC.
The Wattson smart electricity meter showing 21,000 Watts (21kW) being used at 1.30am last night, when the storage heaters came on! Average consumption is about 3kW in the house.
Tags: andysworld, aquablog, bblog, blog, DIY, diy kyoto, electricity, fish, fish house, house, watts, wattson
Posted in All, electricity, house, wattson | Comments Off on Polar Bear Killer!
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
It’s been a few months since, this was last on:-
Last Update 19:22 (GMT) on 23 Dec 2006, as the weather is getting colder, and I’m experiment with electricity, kWh, heating and my new Smart Power Meter, soon to be delivered, it was about time, I blew the dust off the Fish House Thermometer PC, and put back in the fish house, now where have I got space for a PC, I’ve filled all the spaces with fish tanks!
This is currently on test in my Office!
Tags: electricity, fish, fish house, house, kWh
Posted in All, fish house | Comments Off on Fish House Thermometer back!
Thursday, May 10th, 2007
What do you think? Does it pass for a Fine Art Installation? I was going to call it “Fishtanks”.
“Fishtanks 1”
“Fishtanks 2”
As I’ve been at home today, babysitting the fish-house due to the power outage, well looking after the petrol generator. I had some spare time on my hands to wash and clean the fish tanks I collected some weeks ago, these six 30x15x12 are due to go into the fish house, when the shelving arrives.
The fish-house was on generated electricity from 8.00am – 3.00pm today, and consumed 5 kWh (units) of electricity.
Tags: andysworld, aquablog, bblog, blog, electricity, fish, fish house, house, kWh
Posted in All, fish house | Comments Off on Fine Art Installation
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006
Oh, I nearly forgot in all the excitement, the fish are fine…Not traumatized by todays events, and using petrol generated electricity!
Tags: electricity, fish
Posted in All, fish house | Comments Off on Fish……
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006
The electricity was cut-off to the village this morning at 8.45am, I started the petrol generator with ease, and then it took me a few minutes in the dark in the fish house (it’s got darker since I’ve insulated and blocked the windows!) to unplug the main four circuits and connect them one by one to the generator feed. At first the current draw from the generator was 12.5Amps, as all the heaters came on, but this gradually fell to a steady 7 – 8Amps. The petrol generator had a full 16l tank of petrol, and I had a 20l petrol can full on standby.
The electricity supply was restored at approx 2.30pm, but I left the Fish House on generator, for 30 minutes before migrating back to mains supply.
An excellent test, I only had to turn-off one 500 watt heater used to heat top-up water, and deemed this wasn’t necessary.
I used approx 10l of petrol, in approx 6hours to generate 9kWh (as measured by my Power Meters! Search the blog for details), so that’s approx 1 UK-GBP per kWh, so an expensive way of generating electricity, so I’m not going to make a saving by switching!
Petrol Generator in use
The small green box, far right under the bag of salt, is the earth box for the generator.
Tags: andysworld, aquablog, bblog, blog, electricity, fish, fish house, house, kWh, windows
Posted in All, fish house | Comments Off on Power Outage
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
I’ve just received notice from YEDL, that they are turning-off the electricity supply in the area from 08.30 to 16.00 on Tuesday 7th November 2006.
Looks like I’ll be testing the generator, earlier than expected.
Need to purchase:-
- Large 20 litre petrol can
- 20 litre of petrol.
- Earth stake.
- Earth wire.
Need to check power cable reaches into fish house. Why YEDL cannot do this in the Summer, they have to wait for the cold spell!
Tags: electricity, fish, fish house, house
Posted in All, fish house | Comments Off on Power-Cut 7th Nov 2006!
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
The consumer unit cupboard in the kitchen hides the following items:-
- Incoming electric armoured cable.
- 100 Amp fuse. (protects the local substation or transformer from my household electrics!)
- Siemens Digital Electricity Meter.
- Horstmann Radio Teleswitch – this switches on “day” and “night” rates on Economy 7.
- Henley bakelite junction box.
- Henley bakelite Earth Leakage Current Breaker. (This actually works, but probably should be in a museum, it also has a patent number on it).
- Wylex six fuse consumer unit (fuse box). I’ve replaced all the wired fuses, with Wylex circuit breakers, handy when I’m completing DIY electrics in the house! No longer need to re-wire fuses with fuse wire.
- Mem four 15 Amp cartridge fuse consumer unit. (fuse box). This supplies four storage heaters on Economy 7.
- Mem single 15 Amp cartridge fuse consumer unit. (fuse box). This supplies one storage heater on Economy 7 – I don’t know which one yet!
- A few connectors, earth straps etc
You are probably asking yourself, why I’m detailing such a boring item, a sparky-friend has offered in the future to replace my consumer unit and wanted to know the details of what’s currently in the cupboard, there’s alot in the cupboard. I’m looking to replace all the consumer units and earth leakage current breaker with a modern Dual/Split bus, RCD/MCB MK unit, space permitting, because I cannot move any of the other items without gettting the supplier to move them! I’m also thinking of having a Generator Transfer panel installed, so I can connect my 3.5kW Petrol generator to the house supply, when the power dies, throw the switch, connect my 3.5kW Petrol generator and I’ve got power for the entire house. Just need to work out the Grounds!
Here are the pictures
Original larger image
Tags: andysworld, bblog, blog, DIY, electricity, house, images
Posted in All, DIY, electricity, house | Comments Off on Consumer Unit Cupboard
Monday, May 22nd, 2006
A few weeks ago whilst carrying out regular daily maintenance in the fish house, I heard a “crackling sound”, at first this sounded like running water, I then smelt burning and noticed thick smoke from the terminal (chocolate) block in the following photograph. I quickly shutdown all electricity in the fish house. To investigate the problem further.
This 15Amp terminal block was used to connect a 500Watt (approx 2-3Amp) heater to an external thermostat. As you can see from the photograph, it’s been completely destroyed, melted and fused.
On further investigation I found that the solder used to “tin” the wires had degraded, causing a gap between the electrical contacts in the terminal block and wire. This gap caused an electrical arc, hence the crackling sound, the heat caused by this electrical arc was responsible for melting the terminal block. This heater is thermotstatically controlled, so the heater is only on for very short periods.
I understand that the practice of “tinning wires” in electrical appliances is no longer performed for this very reason, solder breaks down with age, exposure to air (oxidation) and can cause fires. Wires in electrical appliances are now terminated using bootlace ferules.
Tinned copper wires and wires terminated with insulated bootlace ferrules.
I’ve now started to remove all tinned wires using solder and replace with insulated bootlace ferrules. in the fish house.
insulated bootlace ferrules. in use, when connecting heaters to an Algarde DigiTherm external thermostat.
Tags: andysworld, aquablog, bblog, blog, electricity, fish, fish house, house
Posted in All, fish house | Comments Off on A Fish House Could Seriously Damage your Health!
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