Boxing Day +1

[Bill Wright]

Last night, at bedtime, one of the stairlifts started to beep. The fault code said 'no charge'. This has always in the past meant that the track needed cleaning. This morning I started to clean the track, tried turning the chair on, and even on the clean bit of track it beeped. The track wasn't dirty to start with, anyway. I checked the voltage on the track. 0V. It turned out that the wallplate was faulty! Any plug when plugged in would only work if pressed downwards and fiddled with. I fitted a new plate, with moderate difficulty because a spur came from there for the smoke alarm. So there were three conductors for each terminal. I checked the voltage on the rail. 32V. I thought that was odd because I 'knew' that the battery was 12V. This firm belief (I would have sworn an oath on it) was, on deep reflection, entirely without foundation: a lesson for life I think. I consulted the manual to find that the rail voltage should be 32 to

35V. This powers an internal circuit that charges the 24V battery. Whilst looking in the stock room for a 13A wallplate I had chanced upon a brushed steel light switch. Since one of the kitchen lights has been working on a connector block for months (the dimmer switch having failed) I decided to make use of the find. I'm not fitting dimmers any more in the kitchen; they aren't necessary. I'll be changing the halogens for LEDs soon and I don't want dimmer hassle. So I disconnected the connector block and some of the lights went out. I'd isolated the kitchen ring main rather than the kitchen lights. The switches for both are near the door and adjacent. I had been vaguely annoyed that the telly had gone off, but I didn't pursue the thought. It's lucky I always work in gloves.

Bill

[Brian Gaff]

Well keep one hand in the pocket and you are fine as my dad used to say.

I hate 2 way switches for hall and landing light. Luckily I never use the light myself but somebody tried it and told me the landing one was not lighting. I took about the bayonet CFL that was in it and plugged it into a lamp. It worked. Plugged it back in the hall light it did not work. After some inspection it seemed that the plunger for one of the contacts was wedged down. How on earth can that happen? A bit of pushing and some wd 40 later and all was well again.

Unexplained events seem to be occurring a lot lately. Why does fan heater plug get warm. Look at it, moulded on plug, fuse in bottom, prize out fuse, clean ends and scrape the contacts in the plug refit, problem gone. its surely not that polluted around here or is it just they use such crap materials in these thing that mere corrosion causes the issues?

Bah humbug. Brian

[Broadback]

Many moons ago, as an RAF fitter we were taught to keep one hand in our pocket when working, in fact there was a large notice to that effect on the workshop wall. We had a particularly thick officer at one point, he came into the workshop and chastised an airman, who was hard at work, for having his hand in his pocket. Turned to me and told me to place said airman on a charge. I silently pointed to the notice, he withdrew with a red face!

[Andrew]

Surely chop the silly thing off and fit a quality MK plug where the cable wraps around a post that gives lots of contact twixt cable and pin ?.