Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?...

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 18/02/2023 21:57, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2023-02-18 01:29, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2023 13:33:36 -0000, Max Demian
max_demian@bigfoot.com>  wrote:
On 13/02/2023 03:59, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Mon, 13 Feb 2023 00:08:57 +0100, \"Carlos
E.R.\" <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2023-02-12 23:00, micky wrote:

Her record player doesn\'t have speakers, not even one, or any
controls except on/off.  For sound you have to turn on a
nearby AM radio and tune to the right frequency. I meant to
check if that means I can listen all over the house, which
would be really nice, but until just now, I\'d forgotten about

No, that\'s not how they worked.

Not like you to think you know more about my phonograph than I do.

Radios of that era had a setting named \"phone\". And a socket. You
connected the output of the \"electric gramophone\" pickup to the phone

Every mains valve radio had a \"Gram\" or \"PU\" socket with switching,
usually combined with the waveband switch.

Did valve radios use Cockcroft-Walton multipliers?

Mine has no output jacks or cords.  Just a small nice wooden cabinet
with no holes, no jacks, maybe one 12\" wire as a transmitting
antenna (I
have to go look again.  Not sure if there\'s a wire.)

Maybe 14 or 16\" square and 5\" high.

It might be from the 30\'s after my mother got married in 1929.

input of the radio, which was actually the audio amplifier section.

The radio could have a switch to disable the radio section or not, in
which case you would have to \"tune out\" the stations.

I have been lucky enough that there was no strong station at the
frequency.  I left a note inside so I or the next owner doesn\'t have to
hunt for it.

I don\'t think that would have been legal, certainly not in the UK.

I doubt it was illegal at that short a distance.   You can (or could
recently) buy a transmitter to convert something (mp3?) into FM to go
to your car stereo.  It wouldn\'t get far outside the car.


I remember reading an ancient book on building your own radio, and they
mentioned regenerative receivers with only a single valve. Some would
emit back on the receiving antena, so they said don\'t do this, it is
illegal and nasty on your neighbours. Better use two valves, isolating
the oscillator from the antena.

Yup. I built several of those on 27Mhz for model planes. Not with valves
though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_circuit

--
“Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of
other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance\"

- John K Galbraith

 

[Rod Speed]

On Wed, 15 Feb 2023 09:59:13 +1100, SteveW <steve@walker-family.me.uk>
wrote:

On 14/02/2023 19:10, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2023-02-14 19:54, Rod Speed wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2023 05:30:17 +1100, Carlos E. R.
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2023-02-14 19:18, Rod Speed wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2023 01:17:43 +1100, Ian Jackson
ianREMOVETHISjackson@g3ohx.co.uk> wrote:
In message <op.10bquhfubyq249@pvr2.lan>, Rod Speed
rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> writes
On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 08:00:14 +1100, NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:




Yes, I\'m not saying that Japanese grass and veg is blue, just
they (apparently) used the same word to describe both green and
blue.

Sounds unlikely given that they must have noticed that the sky and
grass arent the same color

Languages are strange things,
Specially the ones like english which have hijacked
useful words from any language of a country they
have fucked over or had anything to do with.

and some don\'t have words for the bleedin\' obvious.
Can\'t think of any examples of that.

For example, Latin and in Gaelic seem to have difficulty with the
simple concept of \'Yes\' and \'No\'.
Presumably because they prefer more subtle variations of those
words.
Same with languages which dont have a simple \'you\' and
have different words used for those you know well and
those you don\'t.

English uses \"you\" for both plural and singular.

Some use the word yous for the plural. I used to say \'you too\'
when asking the parents what they planned to do when together
and for some reason my stupid step mother didnt like that phrase.

\"Thou\" is not used.

I didn\'t mean that. I meant when two different words are
used in some languages like german for people who are
familiar to the speaker or not.

The verb \"to be\" in Spanish is two different verbs with obviously
different meanings (to us Spanish), but English speakers confuse them
all the time.

How did you find english ? It can be a bizarrely complicated language
for some like a mate of mine who while being turkish/kurdish, spent his
entire school time in australian schools. They did speak their own
language
at home and his mother has almost no english at all. His dad isnt too
bad at all.
Initially, difficult. Then, easy. It is an easy grammar. Spelling is
just memory, I never learned any rules. I either know the word or not.

English is generally considered very difficult to learn. While it
doesn\'t have the complication of everything being gendered, it has drawn
on so many other languages from around the world, retains lots of words
or derivations of them from very long ago and has had Latin grammar
forced upon it, so much of it is inconsistent, non-intuitive and
downright impossible to guess at.

For a good example of pronunciation, see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1edPxKqiptw

Fark. All those foreign devils who have just hanged themselves are all
your fault.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 14:13:05 -0000, Ian Jackson <ianREMOVETHISjackson@g3ohx.co.uk> wrote:

In message <tsfpf9$2g99s$5@dont-email.me>, Vir Campestris
vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> writes
On 12/02/2023 13:44, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2023-02-11 14:15, Commander Kinsey wrote:
...

What I\'ve never understood is people indicating the wrong way. I
know someone who can\'t remember which is which - I pointed out you
move the stalk the same way you\'re going too turn then wheel, and
she thought that was some kind of brilliant idea. And I know
someone else who came up with some crazy reason it\'s best to tell
people you\'re going the other way as somehow lying puts you at an advantage?
A teacher of mine said \"up is right, similar to the right wing being
up\"
:-D
Many people have difficulty with that control. And the person that
taught them to drive did not told them how to remember it, either.
(that teacher made to parliament or senate later)

My car (Right hand drive, built in Japan) has the indicator switch on
the off side, so I can flick it with my fingers while my other hand is
on the gear stick.

I think that one of the last \'normal\' cars in the UK to have the
indicator stalk (correctly) on the offside was the Toyota Corolla (in
the 1990s). I certainly didn\'t like the change to left side, but
(surprisingly) soon got used to it. [You had no choice.]

I didn\'t know we ever had it on the wrong side. Strangely the only time I came across this problem was my boss driving a company car with me as a passenger. The company car had the indicator on the left, he turned on the wipers and claimed his car had the indicators on the right. But he had a 1995 Ford Focus. I doubt that was still backwards, since my 1990 Ford Sierra had them on the left. Maybe he was remembering an older car he used to own. I\'ve never owned anything pre-1988.

My wife\'s car follows the European convention that the indicators are
on the left. Which is correct for the rest of Europe where they are all
LHD and drive on the right, but wrong for the UK.

I often turn on the wipers instead of signalling.

I certainly used to (especially in an unfamiliar car).

I turn the wipers faster instead of off. My stupid Renault has up for faster. Never seen a wiper stalk work that way in a car.

I drove my neighbour\'s Rover 75 for her when she was ill, and I couldn\'t find the headlights on the stalk. It was a seperate switch on the dashboard, which I couldn\'t find since it didn\'t even have a timer on the interior light, so I was in pitch black as soon as I closed the door!

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:45:35 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

On 2/15/2023 0:23, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 14:55:37 -0700, Don Y
blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

A colleague sent along a copy of an article espousing a 2KW/hr/person
energy consumption rate as if it was a practical goal.

What sort of unit is 2KW/hr/person ?


Yes, I\'m sure in some parts of the world, folks get by with
considerably *less*.

But, given that our cooling season will be starting RSN (despite
the fact that we\'re expecting ~20F overnight, this week) and
that guzzles power at an alarming rate.

I don\'t see any evidence that other parts of the country are
*considerably* more frugal/efficient, though.

www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/state_briefs/pdf/az.pdf

That calculates to about 1400 watts average electrical per household.


https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/state_briefs/

California averages about 800 watts per household.


But \"it never rains\" there, remember .

We were just walking in the rain! It was unpredicted, of course.

But here on the coast, where most of the population is, it doesn\'t get
very hot or cold. Most people don\'t have a/c. Our gas heater broke in
January and it was no big deal.

Here the rooms I usually occupy take about 1kW to stay 20C above the
outside cold, and the winters can be harsh (not lately though we saw
-12C a few mornings last week). April to end of October usually is OK
without heating; cooling during the summer is not needed, though there
may be a few days when you\'d wish you had it (we don\'t).

A couple of ceiling fans are enough for the roughly 15 warm days. We
do run the heat all year.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 17:06:22 -0000, Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 14/02/2023 14:13, Ian Jackson wrote:
I think that one of the last \'normal\' cars in the UK to have the
indicator stalk (correctly) on the offside was the Toyota Corolla (in
the 1990s). I certainly didn\'t like the change to left side, but
(surprisingly) soon got used to it. [You had no choice.]

My car is a 1999 Toyota MR2, and end of the production line.

(Yes, I was having a midlife crisis, and that was over 20 years ago...
the PO had bought a sports car when the kids left home, and was selling
it so she could take the grandchildren to nursery...)

My favourite sports car is a Triumph TR7.

 

[Max Demian]

On 18/02/2023 21:48, NY wrote:

On 18/02/2023 12:43, Max Demian wrote:
On 18/02/2023 00:29, Commander Kinsey wrote:
Mains was always AC wasn\'t it?

If course it wasn\'t (in the UK). Mains was AC or DC, and 120V (or so)
to 250V (or so).

I knew that mains was sometimes DC, but I didn\'t know that it was
sometimes as low as 120 V. I that, AC or DC, it was always around 240 V
(actual for DC, or RMS for AC).

Old mains radios had a switch at the back to set the voltage. Easier
with AC than DC as it just switched the tap on the mains transformer.
For DC there was a dropper resistor. If it had to work on 120V AC/DC the
set was designed for the lower voltage and had to dissipate the extra
power in a resistor, often built into the mains lead.

--
Max Demian

 

[Peeler]

On 21 Feb 2023 20:40:28 GMT, lowbrowwoman, the endlessly driveling,
troll-feeding, senile idiot, blabbered again:

9V batteries are a bit uncomfortable if you place your tongue across the
contacts but you can quickly tell the good from the ones that are fading
fast.

I never tried it with the 1.5V cells, not having a tongue like an
anteater.

Thrilling account about your highly interesting personality again. The more
I read about you, the more I am convinced of your gorgeousness! <VBG>

--
Yet more of the so very interesting senile blather by lowbrowwoman:
\"My family loaded me into a \'51 Chevy and drove from NY to Seattle and
back in \'52. I\'m alive. The Chevy had a painted steel dashboard with two
little hand prints worn down to the primer because I liked to stand up
and lean on it to see where we were going.\"
MID: <j2kuc1F3ejsU1@mid.individual.net>

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Wednesday, February 15, 2023 at 8:07:00 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 12:36:26 -0800 (PST), Fred Blog<bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2023 at 3:32:19 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 12:02:19 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2023 at 12:22:49 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 05:49:53 GMT, Jan Panteltje <al...@comet.invalid> wrote:

Blue Origin makes a big lunar announcement without any fanfare
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/blue-origin-makes-a-big-lunar-announcement-without-any-fanfare/

That\'s crazy. If solar panels could be manufactured on the moon, what use would they be?

They would be used to build extensive infrastructure on the moon, and probably Mars too. It\'s too expensive to send all this material from Earth.

And too expensive to send anything back.

John Larkin confuses his ignorance with omniscience.

Stuff like this:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/company-that-3d-prints-houses-on-earth-lands-lunar-construction-contract

https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/building-a-lunar-base-with-3d-printing/

Settlements on the moon or Mars are expensive death sentences with no upside.

Low lunar gravity would be definite upside, and you should be able to keep it free of Covid-19. People smugglers would have a hard time getting illegal immigrants up there.

Well, when you get to about the 2nd generation \"born and raised\" in those places, they\'ll be saying the same thing about Earth.

There would be no second generation.

John Larkin confuses his ignorance with omniscience again.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-02-19 13:40, Max Demian wrote:

On 18/02/2023 21:49, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2023-02-18 21:09, SteveW wrote:
On 18/02/2023 15:05, Max Demian wrote:
On 18/02/2023 13:14, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

\"The Electricity (Supply) Act 1919 merged the 600-odd local
generating companies into area boards, who in turn were centralised
into the Central Electricity Board by the Electricity Supply Act
1925. That is when the voltage was standardised at 240V, and the
National Grid created.

And then the EU stole ten of our good, English volts!

Have we got them back yet?

No they didn\'t. The reference simply changed to 230V, so that 220V
and 240V countries could use the same, single design of 230V
equipment, designed with a wide enough tolerance to cope with the
lowest permitted voltage on 220V systems and the highest permitted
voltage on 240V systems. The voltage supplied did not change.

Here it did change. We had 220 and they changed silently to 230
without telling us anything. I just noticed that when I measured it I
read 230 on a digital multimeter (so there was no error, and I
measured in more than one house/city), and when I bought bulbs they
also said 230.

How do you know it wasn\'t accommodated within the acceptable tolerance
for mains voltage? 230 is just \"nominal\".

Just barely for the old bulbs. 230 would be OK, but the new margins
meant the voltage could go to 240, and that was not OK for appliances.
Slowly, eventually, we had to replace everything. But not possible to
claim that they failed sooner for overvoltage.

They had changed silently the contracts, too. They said we had to
renew with some unrelated excuse, and the fine print said 230.

Same here. The stated voltage just changed.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E. R.]

On 2023-02-21 22:33, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 21 Feb 2023 21:21:42 -0000, \"NY\" <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
\"rbowman\" <bowman@montana.com> wrote in message
news:k5kohsF3q0lU2@mid.individual.net...
On Tue, 21 Feb 2023 09:34:55 -0000, NY wrote:


I imagine different people are affected differently by the same voltage
of shock. I used to know a woman at university who could feel voltages
of a few volts through her fingers - she could touch the terminals of an
AA battery (eg between finger and thumb) and tell whether it was dead.
She described 9 V from a PP9 battery as \"uncomfortable\".

9V batteries are a bit uncomfortable if you place your tongue across the
contacts but you can quickly tell the good from the ones that are fading
fast.

I never tried it with the 1.5V cells, not having a tongue like an
anteater.

I nearly said that the \"tongue test\" works for batteries, but then tongues
are a lot more sensitive than fingers (oo, Matron\"). In lieu of an
anteater\'s tongue, a little bit of wire shows that the tongue can also
detect 1.5 V. Done it also with those flat 4.5 batteries with two springy
brass terminals, as used in torches in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ve23i5K334

It must be a fake!

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 23:25:06 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\"
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2023-02-14 21:40, NY wrote:
On 14/02/2023 19:50, Rod Speed wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2023 06:10:59 +1100, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2023-02-14 19:54, Rod Speed wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2023 05:30:17 +1100, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2023-02-14 19:18, Rod Speed wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2023 01:17:43 +1100, Ian Jackson <ianREMOVETHISjackson@g3ohx.co.uk> wrote:
In message <op.10bquhfubyq249@pvr2.lan>, Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> writes
On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 08:00:14 +1100, NY <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:




Yes, I\'m not saying that Japanese grass and veg is blue, just
they (apparently) used the same word to describe both green and
blue.

Sounds unlikely given that they must have noticed that the sky
and grass  arent the same color

Languages are strange things,
 Specially  the ones like english which have hijacked
useful words from any language of a country they
have fucked over or had anything to do with.

and some don\'t have words for the bleedin\' obvious.
 Can\'t think of any examples of that.

For example, Latin and in Gaelic seem to have difficulty with the
simple concept of \'Yes\' and \'No\'.
 Presumably because they prefer more subtle variations of those
words.
 Same with languages which dont have a simple \'you\' and
have different words used for those you know well and
those you don\'t.

English uses \"you\" for both plural and singular.
 Some use the word yous for the plural. I used to say \'you too\'
when asking the parents what they planned to do when together
and for some reason my stupid step mother didnt like that phrase.

\"Thou\" is not used.
 I didn\'t mean that. I meant when two different words are
used in some languages like german for people who are
familiar to the speaker or not.

The verb \"to be\" in Spanish is two different verbs with obviously
different meanings (to us Spanish), but English speakers confuse
them all the time.
 How did you find english ?  It can be a bizarrely complicated language
for some like a mate of mine who while being turkish/kurdish, spent his
entire school time in australian schools. They did speak their own
language
at home and his mother has almost no english at all. His dad isnt
too bad at all.

Initially, difficult. Then, easy. It is an easy grammar. Spelling is
just memory, I never learned any rules. I either know the word or
not. Pronunciation was more difficult:

Yes, I imagine that the lack of gender and the lack of word-ending
agreement, and the separate \"little words\" (prepositions, articles,
pronouns) as opposed to conveying those things in word endings - all
those are things that probably make it easier. English is probably an
easy language to *speak* (when you can use a subset of the vocabulary)
but a hard language to *understand* when people use unusual vocabulary
or make subtle distinctions between words and/or phrases which might be
the same in another language.

Yes, one can learn a limited subset of a language, enough to do things
(even professionally), but beyond that there is a lot to learn. Then
there is a moment in which there are many little things that make a
difference. Including cultural knowledge of the society where one is
conversing.

You notice this if you try to read texts that are three or four
centuries old, in your own language, because unless you are a scholar
you miss the context. The archetypical example in Spanish is Don
Quixote. The novel has so much context that you can get editions where
the comments and explanations on the side are larger than the novel itself.


For instance, the book I started learning English taught the expression
\"it is raining cats and dogs\". Most of the times I tried to use it,
nobody understood it and I had to explain :-D


Yeah, I have always maintained that the poms particularly
pronounce some stuff wierdly, so they can instantly work
out who are unspeakable foreign devils. Particularly words
like Cholmondeley, pronounced chummly.

Pronunciation is definitely weird. Cholmondley and Featherstoneshaugh
(Fanshaw) are beyond weird. Leicester, Gloucester, Bicester are weird
but it\'s an easy rule to learn - but as usual there are exceptions:
Cirencester is pronounced as-spelled (Siren-sess-ter) unlike all the
other -cesters. Then there are Chesham Bois and Theydon Bois where the
\"bois\" is clearly from the French for \"wood\", but it\'s pronounced \"boys\"
rather than \"bwa\" (the French way). Do other English-speaking countries
have their own place/people names that have non-intuitive pronunciations?

Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott are perfectly readable. Shakespeare,
less so. Chaucer is difficult.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-02-16 16:26, Scott Lurndal wrote:

micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> writes:
In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 13:30:34 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\" <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2023-02-16 05:45, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Wed, 15 Feb 2023 23:32:44 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\" <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


I think all houses have circuit breakers, but that doesn\'t mean they
have a fully compliant installation.

I don\'t think they\'ve ever ordered that here. Althought some people
remodel and upgrade on their own. A friend bought a 100-year old
farmhouse about 10 years ago and it still had knob and tube wiring. I
think it was connected and in use.

A lot of insurance companies will exclude electric-caused issues
from the policy if the home has knob and tube here in the states.

I had to look it up.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob-and-tube_wiring>

I\'ve never seen it here. Maybe, just maybe, something related from
before I was born. But we don\'t build houses with wood, like in the
photos. All brick, mortar, stone, concrete.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-02-19 01:37, SteveW wrote:

On 18/02/2023 20:10, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2023-02-18 14:09, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/02/2023 12:37, Max Demian wrote:
On 17/02/2023 21:04, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2023 16:57:19 -0000, Max Demian
max_demian@bigfoot.com> wrote:
On 15/02/2023 14:48, Commander Kinsey wrote:

Mind you the whole idea of metal wheels on metal tracks is crazy.
If I
drive my car with bald tyres, I\'m breaking the law.

Works though; provided there are no \"leaves on the line\".

(Something to with the friction between similar metals I think.)

There\'s fuck all friction, which is why they want the cars to wait
for the train at a level crossing, and not the other way round.
And why the new tunnel the Germans are building couldn\'t go right
underground and had to be installed on the bottom of the ocean,
because the pathetic toy trains couldn\'t handle the incline.  This
is the 21st century, we have cars.  Public transport is for chavs.

If there were no friction between train wheels and track
acceleration and braking wouldn\'t happen.

The reason railway tracks are so level is so that the engines can
have the minimum power to pull the train. Very steep inclines would
require extra locomotives to be put on to get up the hills.

Steam locos were not rated in horsepower, but \'tractive effort\' . How
many tons of pull they could generate before the wheels slipped.

That\'s why they had a lot of driving wheels - at least four,
generally 6   and up to 8.

I suppose this assumes that the tracks do not bend, vertically or
horizontally, or some of the wheels could loose pressure, as there are
no springs on the loco wheels (but the wagons do have them, so there
must be imperfections on the tracks).

Steam locos certainly did have springs. The axles passed through
bearings that were guided in hornblocks fixed to the locomotive frames.
In some cases the springs were a leaf spring and in others, pairs of
coil springs.

They might be visible from the outside:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3b/94/80/3b948008d40f4205006ad794cc543053.jpg

Ok, I see them. I will have to look more carefully at others.

or hidden behind the wheels:

https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/suspension-old-soviet-steam-locomotive-260nw-2069405948.jpg

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E. R.]

On 2023-02-21 22:21, NY wrote:

\"rbowman\" <bowman@montana.com> wrote in message
news:k5kohsF3q0lU2@mid.individual.net...
On Tue, 21 Feb 2023 09:34:55 -0000, NY wrote:


I imagine different people are affected differently by the same voltage
of shock. I used to know a woman at university who could feel voltages
of a few volts through her fingers - she could touch the terminals of an
AA battery (eg between finger and thumb) and tell whether it was dead.
She described 9 V from a PP9 battery as \"uncomfortable\".

9V batteries are a bit uncomfortable if you place your tongue across the
contacts but you can quickly tell the good from the ones that are fading
fast.

I never tried it with the 1.5V cells, not having a tongue like an
anteater.

I nearly said that the \"tongue test\" works for batteries, but then
tongues are a lot more sensitive than fingers (oo, Matron\"). In lieu of
an anteater\'s tongue, a little bit of wire shows that the tongue can
also detect 1.5 V. Done it also with those flat 4.5 batteries with two
springy brass terminals, as used in torches in the past.

Just touch the other end of the battery with your wet finger. The tongue
test works fine.


--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

 

[rbowman]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:29:27 -0800, John Larkin wrote:

> The US 411 directory assistance was sometimes confused with 911.

Just don\'t confuse it with 988 or the white coats will be on their way.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-02-16 22:58, micky wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 15:26:25 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> writes:
In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 16 Feb 2023 13:30:34 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\" <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2023-02-16 05:45, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Wed, 15 Feb 2023 23:32:44 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\" <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


I think all houses have circuit breakers, but that doesn\'t mean they
have a fully compliant installation.

I don\'t think they\'ve ever ordered that here. Althought some people
remodel and upgrade on their own. A friend bought a 100-year old
farmhouse about 10 years ago and it still had knob and tube wiring. I

Not everything in the house. It was all over the attic, and in truth,
I\'m not positive it was still connected. I should ask my friend about
that too.

think it was connected and in use.

A lot of insurance companies will exclude electric-caused issues
from the policy if the home has knob and tube here in the states.

Ah. A lof of safety enforcement is done by insurance companies that is
not covered by government regulation. Is that true in Spain and Europe
too?

No, the insurance company doesn\'t ask details about my house.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-02-19 13:37, Max Demian wrote:

On 18/02/2023 20:09, SteveW wrote:
On 18/02/2023 15:05, Max Demian wrote:
On 18/02/2023 13:14, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

\"The Electricity (Supply) Act 1919 merged the 600-odd local
generating companies into area boards, who in turn were centralised
into the Central Electricity Board by the Electricity Supply Act
1925. That is when the voltage was standardised at 240V, and the
National Grid created.

And then the EU stole ten of our good, English volts!

Have we got them back yet?

No they didn\'t. The reference simply changed to 230V, so that 220V and
240V countries could use the same, single design of 230V equipment,
designed with a wide enough tolerance to cope with the lowest
permitted voltage on 220V systems and the highest permitted voltage on
240V systems. The voltage supplied did not change.

Pointless as modern power supplies can easily accommodate wide ranges of
voltage. They should have left it up to manufacturers to decide what
range of voltage to cope with, depending on where they wanted to sell
the goods. 100-250V (50/60Hz) for Europe and US, 200-250V for UK and
Europe, 220-250V for UK only. Some goods are/were only suitable for the
UK due to language and TV system.

Euroharmonising for the sake of it.

Not for the sake of it.

I have been able to buy UK appliances via Amazon to use here, knowing
that they would work fine.

>

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 22:46:35 +0000, Ian Jackson
<ianREMOVETHISjackson@g3ohx.co.uk> wrote:

In message <2betbjxebg.ln2@Telcontar.valinor>, Carlos E.R.
robin_listas@es.invalid> writes




For instance, the book I started learning English taught the expression
\"it is raining cats and dogs\". Most of the times I tried to use it,
nobody understood it and I had to explain :-D

\"We are British, dear. We only show affection for dogs and horses.\"

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-02-16 15:22, NY wrote:

On 16/02/2023 12:30, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I think all houses have circuit breakers, but that doesn\'t mean they
have a fully compliant installation.

If you include fuse-wire fuses in the category of \"circuit breakers\",
then yes.

No, I was thinking of electromechanical devices. The old ones were
called \"magnetothermics\", I guess indicating how they worked.

look at the photos in this one to see how we do it:

<https://bricoladores.simonelectric.com/donde-instalar-el-cuadro-electrico-de-la-vivienda-segun-normativa>

That\'s of course, modern. But old houses try to retrofit something like
that.

I presume MCBs (miniature circuit breakers) are mandated (or at least
strongly advised!) in current UK wiring regulations (not \"code\"!).

I was surprised that my first house, built in 1986, was fitted with wire
fuses rather than circuit breakers - and no RCD. I have a photo of the
fuse box with black staining over the Bakelite fuse-wire holders and
extending up the wall, when my immersion heater switched itself on at 1
AM when the Economy 7 tariff kicked in, and the immersion heater
developed a short circuit. I was woken by a loud bang with a metallic
resonance to it. The fuse box and wallpaper were coated with vaporised
metal (I presume) from what *had* be a 30 A fuse, and there was a slight
outward dent in the copper cylinder where I imagine the end of the
immersion heater element had been fired into the wall of the cylinder.

It was an \"amusing\" job draining the header tank (built onto the top of
the cylinder), disconnecting the outlet pipe, \"walking\" the full tank
round far enough to reach the drain cock (which was at the *back* - good
old Sod\'s Law) and then draining the cylinder through a hosepipe. I
hired a box spanner to undo the immersion heater (in the wall of the
cylinder, near the bottom) and after a lot of \"persuasion\" with a hammer
managed to loosen the heater. I removed the tank altogether and washed
out as much of the loose limescale and bits of shredded immersion heater
element, before fitting the new element and connecting up the pipes again.

I mentioned at work that hassle I\'d had, and one colleague sheepishly
told me that he\'d once had to do this, but he\'d forgotten one crucial
step: emptying the cylinder. He got the element almost unscrewed and
when there was only one thread holding it in place, the pressure of
water ripped off the last thread and fired the element into his thigh,
followed by a 4\" \"plug\" of water. There was nothing he could do except
watch a hundred litres of water cascade onto the floor, down the stairs
and through the ceilings. :-(

I think I will need a photo of that type of thing to imagine what you
are talking about


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-02-19 13:24, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 18/02/2023 20:21, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Well, hopefully you are alert and keeping distances and you see the
danger with ample time 😂

Completely impractical if the danger is hidden until you get there.
Children and animals dashing across the road. wheel smashing potholes
full of water that the council can\'t afford to fix because they spent
the budget on speed cameras sleeping policemen and totally unnecessary
traffic lights. Old truck brake drums dropped from pedestrian bridges by
bored teenagers.

In that case, I won\'t be able to hit the blinkers, either.

The list of \'stuff that you can hit that wasn\'t there last time you
looked\' is endless.

Maintaining idealised safe distances is an idea only people who don\'t
really do much driving believe in.

Tell that to the regulators.

--
Cheers, Carlos.