Alcazar
-
Posts
980 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Never
Posts posted by Alcazar
-
-
My telerupteur now operates TWO lights from TWO switches. Hurrah!
I sometimes go to one of the switches just to see it work................[:$]
Alcazar
-
It's happened to us TWICE now, the first time the freezer contents were lost during a stay in another region of France........wife put freezer back on, refroze everything, chucked the frozen lot out, then I cleaned any residue off the shelves, ............outside!
The second go took out the boiler control programmer, which, being off for a couple of weeks, lost all it's settings. What a PITA THAT was to reprogramme............ No freezer probs, we leave nowt in it over extended absences, now[;-)]
My main worry now is what will happen if we have a THIRD incident while away during the winter, while the boiler is on it's "frost" setting? Will my house insurance cover THAT ??[blink]
Alcazar
-
[quote user="nicktrollope"][quote user="Alcazar"]
Whilst over this time, wife complained that the dishwasher gave her a shock when she touched the inside. I put a multimeter across it and came up with 70V across earth and neutral, and the same at the socket. The cable was connecteed correctly at the nearest junction box, although the earth was NOT connected there, just cut short.
Removing the cable connecting the socket to the nearest junction box, I tried all methods of continuity between live, neutral and earth wires, but got zero for all three, ie: no break in insulation, and all three are continuous along their length, no breaks.
Replacing said wire with a fresh piece, removed the fault, but WHAT ON EARTH (sorry), CAUSED IT?
Alcazar
[/quote]
UnIess I have misunderstood, the dishwasher. Most electrical appliances produce some residual voltage to the casing & hence earth. If your earth was disconnected ("just cut short") then 'er indoors provided the earth.
Our tumble drier is the same - I really must rewire the utility room....
[/quote]
OK, but if that's right, then...
a) how did the 70V get into the neutral wire when the dishwasher was "off", although plugged in, and
b) why didn't it trip the RCD protecting that mcb?, and
c) why doesn't my multimeter STILL show 70V potential across neutral and earth, even now I'VE provided a decent earth path?
Alcazar[8-)]
-
[quote user="Dick Smith"]Had you moved the dishwasher recently? We once got shocks from ours, and it turned out that in moving it we had trapped the power cable and cut it.
[/quote]Yes, it had been moved, but the power cable was intact, and the fault has now gone, wife no longer complains, (I couldn't feel the "buzz" anyway), and the multimeter registers zero Volts across neutral and earth.[8-)]
Alcazar
-
Whilst over this time, wife complained that the dishwasher gave her a shock when she touched the inside. I put a multimeter across it and came up with 70V across earth and neutral, and the same at the socket. The cable was connecteed correctly at the nearest junction box, although the earth was NOT connected there, just cut short.
Removing the cable connecting the socket to the nearest junction box, I tried all methods of continuity between live, neutral and earth wires, but got zero for all three, ie: no break in insulation, and all three are continuous along their length, no breaks.
Replacing said wire with a fresh piece, removed the fault, but WHAT ON EARTH (sorry), CAUSED IT?
Alcazar
-
I STILL try to get my wife to buy those wines from Eastenders, to seve to the staff at her school, at ends of tems etc. You know, the ones named after a certain part of a male dog's anatomy[:D]
Can't remotely understand why she ignores me...........
Alcy-zar
-
I have a TEAC mini-system down there with a DAB tuner. It doesn't get ANYTHING on DAB[:(], so gets used on FM all the time. Even that is SOOOOOOOOOlimited compared to the UK, with about 5 stations to pick from, mostly talking all the time.
Don't French radio presenters just LOVE the sounds of their own voices?
Alcazar
-
Why should the earth bonding be in a larger csa if not in a gaine?
I'm not disputing, just interested. I've just done mine in 2.5 sq mm, but it's only very short as all pipes pass the new box, so can be redone if necessary. Just like to know WHY I'm doing it?
Oh, and should we bond GAS pipes?
Alcazar
-
Puts me in mind of one day when I was about 14, and travelling down France towards Spain with my parents. We'd overnighted with the caravan on the large square at Wizernes, south of St Omer, and my mum sent me to a local shop to buy her some of the "rough red wine" she reckoned to crave.
I came back with a bottle of wine labelled as "Docks du Nord", costing around 90 centimes, or under a Franc! It tasted as if it were made with water from Calais dock!
I DON'T remember if she finished it, honestly[:D]
Alcazar
-
[quote user="Cassis"]There's something to look forward to, then.[6]
[/quote]What? Getting yours smacked, or smacking Katie's?[:D] Now I KNOW I won't sleep properly tonite[;-)]
Alcazar
-
I've had to stick large garden canes into the ground near my currents and raspberries, and even paint the tops of the canes bright red, to stop the wife mowing them to the ground when the grass gets long in the spring[:@] Some of them have been in the ground for 3 years and are still only a few inches high![:@]
Alcazar
-
http://www.poolsupplies.com/Product_PAGES/Chemicals/NewPages/PoolPerfect.html
Contact them to find out how much to post to you.
Alcazar
-
KKK: I don't think you'd stick him for more than a couple of days, sorry. He's now 20 going on 8!
Cassis: we just wore long sleeves and decent gardening gloves. Yes, we got a few scratches, but actually less than you's get from a good blackberrying session, so not too bad at all.
Alcazar
-
Virtually anything I haven't had to think of and/or cook, when I'm hungry.
My dad, who is still going strong at 92, used to say to us as kids, "Hunger is the best sauce.".
Alcazar
-
Borrow my wife? Why? Do you NEED someone to supervise a job?[:D]
Me and the lads did it mostly, I was in charge of the fire and stamping on chicken wire, the lads dragged it out. My eldest was 16 at the time, and WILL NOT be beaten. To see veins standing out on his face and neck as he dragged huge swathes of it out of the ground, was a sight to be seen.
Alcazar
-
What sort of a wasp grows to that length? I've seen them both dead and alive, in Southern France, from the Gard to the Gorges du Tarn to the Dordogne.
They also have reddish (like red ants), antennae and legs.
Anyone know what they are?
I've looked at "Giant Wood Wasp" but it's the wrong shape and the wrong colour, and FAR too big to be a hornet.
Alcazar
-
-
[quote user="Gyn_Paul"]
Speaking of which, I've long held the view that - just like there is one huge factory in southern China which makes EVERY electric fan sold anywhere in the world - Elsanta strawberries are actually made of balsa wood, sprayed with red cochineal dye in a large factory in southern Spain. Can anyone confirm this ?
I defy anyone in a blindfold tasting to be able to identify them as strawberries !
paul
[/quote]Balsa? I thought they were a new, small, red type of turnip![:@]
Alcazar
-
The only stuff I've ever found that kills brambles is "Roundup", it's a brushwood killer, but unfortunately, kills everything else too, so a sprayed patch will be bare.
Our top-back "garden", and I use the term guardedly, is around 800+ sq m. It was about half covered with brambles which had grown into, through, and around, chicken wire, which was, in turn, buried up to a foot deep in the soil/roots of the barmbles.[:@]
One Easter, wife decides the whole lot's coming out.[8-)]
The family, (wife, me and two teenaged lads), spent best part of a week cutting, digging, yanking and dragging the whole lot out a bit at a time, and then burning the brambles off the chicken wire, before stamping the chicken wire into little bundles for the local dechetterie. The fire burned from one monday morning until the next saturday night!
We now get the OCCASIONAL shoot, but wife mows over it. Our back area is still pretty rough, but she uses a powered 6hp mower, and pushes, or drags it over the worst areas. She still hasn't killed off all the nettles though. Walk on the grass in bare feet if you dare!
(And before any of the usual crew ask why I dont mow: I didn't want a huge garden, I wanted a town-type house!)
If yours is REALLY untouchable with a mower, have you thought of one of those wheeled strimmers? They tend to have larger rear wheels, (up to a foot in diameter), and ONE swivelling front wheel for manoevrability? They aslo have up to a 24" cut! I've never seen one with grass collection though......
Alcazar
-
Ali@ards: Now that's NOT true. The morning forecasts on BBC between 0600 and 0900 almost always include specifics for Northern Ireland, the weather lass even gets out of the way of the picture so we can see where it is, if we don't already know[;-)]
The bit that gets my goat is that awful gasping Scottish weather lass, Carol Kirkwood, who refers to Northern Ireland as "Northern Orr-lind"
Nelson: [:P][:P][:P][:P]
Alcazar:D
-
I find French forecasts generally right, especially those from the local-type papers.
The worst are UK forecasts, from the metoffice: WRONG for us on Humberside nearly every day. They only seem to care about the south east, a bit like the BBC: if it's not happening to London, it's not happening.
Our local metoffice forecast is updated to match whatever's happening, quite regularly!
Alcazar
-
[quote user="Jon D"][quote user="Alcazar"]
Parity? I think not, Priorities? NOT A CHANCE! Revenue, Yep, bring it on!
Alcazar
[/quote]
This, surely, is absolute rot? If the exercise were simply about revenue then why bother dedeucting points until a point is reached were the licence is suspended? It would be far more sensible to allow persistent speeders to stay on the road, thereby providing a consistant revenue stream (not a bad wheeze - it paid the wages of several thousand Eastern European police officers for some years after the end of the Cold War). The more one were prepared to pay, the more one could "drive as conditions & ability dictate." Maybe discounts could be offered for advance payment or direct debit...
[/quote]Sigh, (rolls eyes), So how long do you reckon folk get banned for under the totting up procedure? Forever?
Alcazar
-
Anyone want to bet that tunnel and ferry prices rise as a result?[:@]
Alcazar
-
Does the tip about blackcurrants work for redcurrants and whitecurrants too?
I can't bear blackcurrants, their smell reminding me of tomcat wee.[:(]
Alcazar
Toads
in Gardening
Posted
[quote user="Cassis"]In spring they march across field and plain and road to the pond of their birth, risking all sorts of danger (like cars and tractors) have a month of mad sex then plod back to slug eating duties. The spawn develop into tadplols (as per frogs) then wander off to find munchies.
[/quote]
I never knew cars and tractors reproduced like that............[:D]
We have TWO toads, one large, bigger than a man's fist, and one likkle one, about the size of a walnut.
I look after both, providing shelter and moving them from danger, but always wear a gardening glove to pick them up............my old wife told me I'd get warts otherwise[:$]
The big one keeps trying to come INTO the house, .........wife is NOT amused[:D]
Alcazar
BTW: I had to buy mousetraps this visit. Sigh. I HATE killing things, but wife was having hysterics. Local Quincaillerie sold them to me, I asked for "Tap-souris". Stupid things are even more sensitive than in the UK, cue TWO going off as I put them down, fingers well away from the danger end.
Unfortunately, I then tried to train wife to set one, and she promptly let it off on my fingers. Ho ho, how we laughed[:'(]