Posts by Stoneshop

Re: RE: Phil

How do we apply?

As said, using glue.

"Earworn Wearables"

FRTA 'earworm wearables'

what am I missing?

Sufficient current to blow a fuse or trip a circuit breaker, commonly 16A, occasionally 10A or in few cases even less but still not below 2A.

With a non-grounded device the (now live) ground prongs in the socket weren't going to be part of the circuit anyway. Look up pictures of a Schuko socket and an Euro plug for enlightenment.

Grounded devices would have their chassis become live, but internally this won't be connected to the proper live and neutral circuits anywhere, so on its own there won't be current flowing from that live chassis to (proper) ground. A PC with LRF[0] sitting on a wooden or vinyl-covered desk will not even cause sufficient leakage current to trip a GFCI if one is present. Touching that PC's metal chassis will cause a small current to flow, dependent on your skin resistance. This current can be anything between tens of microamps (some buzzing feeling in that particular limb) to tens of milliamps (hurts a lot, may even kill), but in any case not enough to blow even a 2A fuse.

Only if you then have another device which is properly powered (not connected to the same faulty socket) and hence its chassis _is_ correctly grounded _and_ you have a cable between them that connects both chassis (via cable shielding) you now have a hard short between live and ground, and the fuse/breaker will blow/trip.

[0] Little Rubber Feet, parts that support quite a lot of computing equipment.

Re: Based on the tiling story I would have thought Dabbsy's Bog would be appropriate...

Only several? You must be new here! :-)

Hanging out on this, predominantly British, forum I seem to have absorbed your tendency for understatement a bit.

Re: The new world we're in.

On a practical level, the signal to the boiler is a yes/no from the Hive

Eh, modern boilers communicate with modern thermostats in more sophisticated[0] ways than a simple on/off, although almost all boilers will fall back to on/off if you hook up an old-fashioned on/off thermostat.

[0] usually proprietary, though often reverse-engineered.

Re: I need an electrician

Depends on what your path to neutral/ground is. Standing on a dry, wooden stepladder plus non-conducting footwear will keep you from being zapped, even though they may not be fully approved stuff.

And my own skin resistance is high enough (when dry) that I barely notice a wire being live even when touching it directly. Not that I do so out of habit, but if simply touching 220V (back then, 230V now) would have killed me, as stated above, I'd be dead more than a hundred times over.

Which I think I'm not.

Re: I need an electrician

I occasionally switch off a circuit by tripping[0] its[1] GFCI. Which you're supposed to test regularly anyway, so that can be ticked off too.

[0] Using a Benning Duspol (or similar) you check between live and earth, then simultaneously push a button on both probes.

[1] individual CFCI/CB combination unit per circuit

Re: I go bang!

Something similar happened to me - but with a wall, not a socket.

An uncle and his family would be moving shortly, and I was helping getting the target house ready by hanging the ceiling lights and such. In one of the rooms I had the odd sensation of feeling a bit of AC when touching a wall close to one of the wall sockets. Touching the (unpainted) radiator valve I could get one of those neon voltage probe screwdrivers to light up; the indication was strongest right where the conduit for the wiring would be, falling off when probing the wall a bit further away. On showing, my uncle agreed that this was Not At All Right, and allowed me to extricate the conduit from the freshly-plastered wall.

It turned out to be a metal conduit (common for a house built in the 1950's), and the plasterers had clearly wielded their Hilti with great gusto but with less attention regarding not hitting the conduit, which was damaged over the entire length from socket to ceiling. And inside it the wiring had also been damaged; not enough to cause a hard short, but the leakage current could make a small bulb dimly glow when I tested some more (no GFCI back then)

Re: Performance a little choppy ...

...Actually, this is BOFH, maybe that's not the best idea. May find a roll of carpet with something unpleasant inside!

Only if you added too little quicklime.

Eh?

Which appears to be listed as a Station de Lavage.

Re: Old electric bar heaters

We have one that's not actually a bar heater; rather a casing of chamotte stones with a bunch of heater elements inside. Dimensions are roughly those of a tower case, a bit lower and wider. It heats really nicely, much more convection and less radiation than bar heaters. It's a holdover from when we lived in a building that had a broken central heating system and no other option to keep us from freezing than electrical. Other holdovers are two 1950's/1960's Magicoal heaters and an UFO-like ventilator heater.

Re: Recycling

surely enough people die and leave one behind

They clearly don't do so in a timely enough manner. In addition to that, even if they had just two kids those will have gotten shacked up, had kids of their own and then divorced, which seems a most common scenario. That divorce means you now need one extra house.

Re: ArtJl - old fires

Pity the artist isn't aware of the latest way to save the environment

In a couple of years we'll be all going back, eh, forward to electrical heating to augment our heat pumps and geothermal, ditching oil and gas powered central heating systems and boilers.

And those vintage incandescents will make a glorious comeback.

And leave one with the company that owns the kiosk instead

Unless that rental shop also offers a wide selection of household goods, computers and parts, car accessories, in short close to everything including a kitchen sink, and keeps shoving ads at you for items, ahem, related to your rental history, I see that as a very minor problem.

402

Prayment required

Re: Saint Isidore of Seville

Apparently he invented the first Wikipedia,

Unless anyone could have edited or added to its contents it would at best be just an encyclopedia, not a wikipedia.

And I very much doubt that there were more than just a select few editors involved, if it wasn't old Ididore on his own.

Re: A good TV would be one that doesn't want to connect itself to the internet.

(Maybe not so) Surprisingly, I've seen a lot of 1080p monitors being more expensive than 1080p TVs.

Fair enough; if you don't want to hand over your data you hand over your money.

Depending on the type of coffee-maker, you'll have various tasks like loading coffee

You do that when you set the timer. Been doing that since my student days.

and heating milk

Err, what? Black. And no sugar either.

a matter of time until the smart hob burns the house down.

That's because it got depressed from just being a hob, and not even being able to sulk in the basement like those elevators.

Next must have invention: edible RFID tags..

And with an RFID reader fitted to your stomach your DietAIcian can check if you've actually eaten the stuff you were scheduled for

Re: Teas Maid

Teasmade, you heathen.

The Teasmaid proves that there is a market for totally useless appliances.

It's an alarm clock that makes tea for you to wake up to.. Instead of a nasty ringer you get the creak of the clockwork, the water starting to boil, the hissing of steam and at the end a nasty buzzer.

All the other steps you mention you would have to do anyway, It also saves you from having to deal with boiling water before being fully woken up.