Why does central heating always fail when the shops are shut??

What law is it that causes things to fail when you can't go out and get spares? Friday night at 6pm I noticed that it seemed a bit cold, bl**dy freezing in fact. Boiler not firing, not even attempting to. Quick check that no trips had gone and that there was gas in the tank and then out with the DVM and wiring diagrams. After a false start with a wire loose in a choc block it turned out to be an O/C motor on a valve. No movement and hence no operation of the microswitch. By a great deal of luck I had a spare motorised valve in the garage left over from an automatic watering system that had been there for ages in the " it will come in handy one day " drawer. It did, phew! I'm going to use this incident for years to come to explain to my wife why I have a garage full of junk, useful items.............................

Reply to
Bill
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Sod's Law. Sod being the instigator of the saying "Why the full kit happened at a time when you were going to put your feet up and rest" :-)

"Keep it for seven years and it will find a use." Another of Sods sayings. Said at a time when he was trying to fix the problems that nagged at him, when he should have been resting. :-)

The loose materials box is a necessity to all good DIYers. We should never be without it at our side. lol

Now you'll have to go and buy a new automatic watering system, as a Christmas present of course.

Reply to
BigWallop

In message , BigWallop writes

I have adopted the Australian usage of *possibles* for any apparently useless articles carefully stored here.

regards

Reply to
Tim Lamb

Why does anything not work only when you want to use it! ;-)

Reply to
Broadback

How come "wrong numbers" always answer the phone?

Reply to
Andy Burns

Closely followed by having an urgent and desprate need that junk widget within weeks, if not hours, of returning from the dump after a major clear out.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Yesterday, I eventually got round to modifying a light fitting so it can take large CFLs. The light has a giant plastic BC holder which means it couldn't take a bulb which was much longer than a standard

105mm, which limited it to a piddly little CFL, for what needs to be 100W light output. Rumaging through bits of old discarded light fittings, I found one with a small brass BC lampholder with the right thread. It's now got a 23W spiral CFL which seems to be pretty similar to 100W bulb. Junk box to the rescue again...
Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Boiler extractor fan failed 2 days before Xmas on a weekend. Bought a

10kilo gas bottle and a gas heater. It sat there for 7 years before something similar happened but this time we had heat for three days until I could get the boiler fixed. I also keep a couple of torches and two oil lamps with a litre of oil in a bottle and a box of candles. I've thought of getting a car battery and inverter for standby but can't really justify it for making sure the wife doesn't miss a soap once in 10 years.
Reply to
Alang

I've been very pleased with the performance of a cheap 300W inverter on an old car battery, runs some CFLs for many hours at our stables (no mains electricity).

Reply to
newshound

I changed the boiler to a plug and socket, so I can easily plug it into an inverter running from one of CPC's 17Ahr jumpstart battery units. Tested it, but not yet had cause to use it in anger.

I'm sure its time will come. The electricity supply in this country is steadily falling to bits, and we've had one load-shedding incident this year when parts of England had to be dropped off the grid to keep it running for everyone else, and we've had lots of near misses over the last 3-4 years.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

You might want to look at 12V CFL's...

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would be more efficient, but voltage drop in long cable runs could be an issue.

The other thing you need to be _extremely_ careful about is any earth leakage in stables or near any livestock. Horses are killed by small leakage currents through the ground you can't feel. (A horse doesn't have an option to "let go" of the ground.)

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

In message , Alang writes

One of my neighbours had similar foresight, unfortunately by the time he needed it, last week, he had forgotten how to remove the valve assembly from the empty cylinder. He had a cold day until he was shown how to change it over.

Have you done a risk assessment on that statement? Very bold of you..

Reply to
Bill

How often do the backup batteries in those need replacing?

We have had a few power cuts over the years. All caused by builders slicing cables. The worst problem was a builder cutting a water main. No water all day and no bowser. Local supermarket ran out of bottled water. We keep two litres in a cupboard now.

Reply to
Alang

That's another reason why I'll never install a combi, no stored water.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Never for me.

A friend wrecked his the first (and last) time he charged it. He put it on charge in his garage, and only remembered it several days later. The battery was destroyed. The cheapest way to buy a new battery (by far) was to buy a new jumpstarter.

I don't use the crappy charger which came with it. I used to use a bench supply which could be accurately set for voltage and current limit, but I now use a proper 3-stage lead acid charger (the ones ALDI and LIDL have done cheaply a number of times).

I've got a number of lead acid batteries, some very old (from routine

5 year replacements in the alarm), but they all still work fine and at full capacity. The life of SLA's in low-end UPS's is very short. I suspect that's a combination of fast charging (so the UPS can operate again quickly after being drained) and poor control, maybe to ensure they need regular replacing as consumables. Lead acid batteries in high end UPS's (>100kVA) and telephone exchanges last decades due to proper treatment (actually, they often outlast the UPS electronics and the telephone exchange respectively).

I keep 50 gallons in the loft.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

I get about 3 years in my APC Smart UPS 700, mostly in standby used in anger maybe 2 or 3 times in that period. I think it's more down to the heat, the unit sits at the upper 30's C.

More like 250 here, historical mains water only arrived about 20 years ago.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

I have one application which has a SLA battery in the loft, which sits betweem 25 and 50C all summer. That's still fine after 8 years. I stuggle to imagine exactly how UPS manufactures contrive to destroy the batteries in 3 years (which exactly matches my experience with them too), but it's a bloody good marketing ploy on their part to make the batteries into consumables, which assures a regular revenue stream for replacements (batteries or UPS's). If you check the capacity at intervals, you find it's dropping in a dead straight line from full capacity at brand new to zero at about

4 years old (although I did hit zero at 3 years old in one case). Of course, you can't wait until it's zero, or you've got no UPS. I never see such fast degredation outside of the cheap UPS's.

Outside of a UPS environment, the oldest one I have is a 19 year old

12V 7Ahr (ex-alarm) battery, which I use with a hand lamp, and have flattened more than I should a few times (and it's not a deep discharge type). At a 1A load, it still lasts well over 7 hours.

I recently sold my car which I'd had for 12 years, still with the original battery, which still had at least at least 48AHrs capacity left (worked out from having left the interior lights on several days, and not flattened the battery). I didn't check what the original rated capacity of the battery was though (probably 60Ahr).

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

In article , Andrew Gabriel writes

picture says "not representative", but I can't find any more information.

1.5mm2 T&E should be ok for runs of a few tens of metres.
Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

In article , Andrew Gabriel writes

They do abuse the batteries, agreed that it makes a good revenue stream for them. Sometimes backfires though, we've had replacement UPSes under warranty from APC which have cooked the batteries to such an extent that they cannot be physically removed from the UPS.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

It's a spare part for a solar lighting kit

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does look like it really is an ES screw in that too.

I've just stuck one on my next CPC order out of curiosity, although I won't be sending the order off until later in the week.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

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