Nothing In Particular

[jack]

Sad scientist's new tee shirt...

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[Mike H]

[jack]

Meanwhile, our neighbours just below us down the hill are doing a massive modern eco build.

Why does this involve us? We're in favour as it's a great project, however the three phase power to our property crosses their land (buried cable) - there's an easement for this and it's been that way for 60 years or so. They know about this and we and they have the maps of the cable run.

This new eco house is embedded in the hillside - not completely, so not a Hobbit-house, but enough that maybe 1000 tonnes of soil were moved.

About a week ago, the shell construction was completed and since then huge diggers have been backfilling and burying the building.

Last night at 21:08 our lights flickered and we lost power to the house. Bummer.

UKPN were excellent and by 23:00 we had engineers onsite and they confirmed that we'd lost a phase, most likely to cable damage. They "jumped" the house to another phase that was still working but that meant that the heat pump, which is three phase, had to be turned off, so no heating or hot water. Now we have L1 and L2, however L3 is dead. Good news is the freezers are running.

Today they're bring a special TDR to try to locate the underground fault and then fix it - no heating or hot water until then.

Two UKPN vans and a mini digger! Yay!

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[Ant]

Balls.
Just come to use my hitachi m12 router, and upon spinning it it was greeted by a very ominous whine from the top bearing.
Took the top cover off to have a look and sure enough the top bearing is on its way out. A load of play that shouldn't be there and the top housing the bearing sits in has wear marks and is galled up where it looks like the bearing has shifted. Don't hold much hope out for getting a new bearing to seat very well in it.
Balls. I havent the time on this job to put new bearings in so ive had to order a replacement, found a trend t7ek available for next day delivery for reasonable money.
Ive had the hitachi a long time so im not as miffed as i would be, but its an expense i can do without.

Ill pull it apart properly once the new one arrives to see if its worth fixing, maybe it could be sold to make a few quid back but the commutator looks pretty badly worn too from a quick look.
Piggin ell

[Paul Barker]

Locktight? Or if its too bad cant recall what its called a tube of metal sold at motor factirs. Fixed a leaking water pump in a four wheel drive Isusu somator other. Saved me a fortune, never failed after. Might be called LOY!

[Nick]

Locktight is normally a thread lock compound, but they also do a metal loaded two part epoxy.

https://uk.farnell.com/loctite/3450-24m ... dp/3048184

[pre65]

Loctite also do bearing fit compound.

[Ant]

Looks like the bushing part thats galled up is available as a spare for about 20 quid so its not too bad if i can get one, this part screws down onto the plastic main body so hopefully the body shell isn't distorted. It did come apart properly though and id expect it to be hard to get it to bits if it was
Im more bothered about the bottom bearing because that sits in the bottom casting which is a bigger problem if that end has rotated in the casting and damaged it

Ill have to have a good look at it

[jack]

Lot of flickering from the lights and now L1 & L2 have failed, so no power to the site at all.

UKPN only dug a hole yesterday, then buggered off at 3pm when the afternoon shift's van broke down so they didn't arrive. "Don't worry" they said, "we'll be back at 8am". At 11am I rang UKPN to see what was going on. Nothing, apparently... said they'd call back. Didn't.

At 1pm all power failed. So no hot water or heating since Monday night, and now nothing else either.

Fridge/freezers/computers/internet/lights etc. are all off.

I rang UKPN again. Spoke to a manager. Said he'd call back and did so, however had nothing to report. Said he'd call again by 3. I'm excited !

Hmmm. 5pm, got a call. No ETA for an engineer. Two days now with no heating or hot water etc and no solution in sight.

Interesting, whilst L3 is dead, L1 & L2 are "flickering" and some stuff is confused by that. Our fridge kept rebooting and some of our LED lights are glowing dimly. The washing machine and microwave clocks are running,

17:05 L2 is back on!!! Completely random.

17:11 no it's not

20:30 no ETA (not even +/-12 hours)

[Neal]

Bad luck there Nick

[IslandPink]

Sounds like a nightmare right now with the weather.
I'm sure Harry Hill would say that it's 'Far from ideal'.

[jack]

Sounds like a nightmare right now with the weather.
I'm sure Harry Hill would say that it's 'Far from ideal'.

He went to the local grammar school, Cranbrook, just down the road. Can't stand him.

We're lucky in that the house is incredibly well insulated.

I'm a bit more concerned about the sump pump in my office cellar if we get any rain. Lots of stuff in that cellar, including all the racking of my timber stocks...

[Mike H]

Bluddy hell Nick!

[jack]

After a huge amount of effort in the rain, on a hillside of greasy mud, the engineers found a break in the old cable (installed in 1948 or thereabouts) and spliced in a new bit...

Back up at the house (about 40mtrs up the hill) they measured ... 30 VAC... not good as it means other faults elsewhere in the cable. As far as UKPN are now concerned the cable is history, so new cable time. To be fair, we've only been complaining about the capacity and reliability of the old cable for, maybe, 5 years, so reasonably quick to come to a conclusion.

Having bought in the 100KVA 3-phase generator, that was then installed and it seems that we'll be running off it for the next few weeks until we get the new feed (which will make a hell of a mess). I like that generator !

The really crap thing is that when we first had a phase drop out on Monday night, I told UKPN all about the route of the cable and what was happening next door... Everything could have been sorted on Tuesday morning if only they'd used common sense and not blindly accepted the reading of their TDR and started digging hole in one of our naturalised wild flower areas.

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[jack]

Interesting device - circular OLED with integral ESP32. Could have all sorts of fun with a "soft meter"...