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Again thanks Les – your comment about capacitors prompted me to delve into all the spec sheets I could find. The Grundfos IS fitted with a capacitor which I assume is a startup capacitor, it also states that it is “Impedance-protected. Short-circuit-proof. No external motor protection required”.
About the only warning I could find states that a pure sine wave supply is required. As my Schneider UPS outputs a pure sine wave. I feel that I’m in good shape to use the UPS on the heating circuit, but I’ll keep the shower pumps on the mains system.
Thanks for the input Les.
I did a web search on UPS+Central Heating Boiler. Lots of probably Russian/Ukrainian sites (use Cyrillic alphabet) suggest it is ‘easy’. However I worry about them a little as they suggest that a 0.7 power factor will take care of the startup, and that doesn’t gel with my knowledge of motors (admittedly all 3-phase). There are however .uk sites that also give general comfort and suggest a factor of x three is adequate for motor startup load. The link for a slightly smaller Grundfos gives me comfort that a 1Kv UPS with true sine wave output will be OK using just double the rated power for the pump even without a soft starter!
I think I’ll make sure that our spare 1Kv UPS is fully charged, and make the decision to use it or not when we get too uncomfortable.
Are you able to access both Windows and Linux games?
Lots of US companies had a small fission reactor in their research labs. The one I saw was immersed in a ‘swimming pool’ of water which resulted in a very pretty blue glow all around the reactor, due to the Cherenkov radiation as charged particles slowed down in the water.
IIRC one of the early Bond movies showed a nuclear reactor and this blue light.
The Eurofighter uses a more high-tech way of reducing fan noise by aerodynamic techniques.
“Fan noise is pressure fluctuations shed by the impeller. We cut these at source without affecting efficiency and without using costly silencers by designing aerodynamic inserts that fit inside the casing.”
I wouldn’t be surprised to see nVidia picking up on this as it does not increase the size of the setup.
I think I would rather not put the heat out in the first place – that way my electricity bill will be lower!
That said, it was a very interesting video.It was very like chemical engineering in miniature.
I’ll admit I thought that they just used heat pipes to get from the hot end to the fan end, I did not realise that they were using condensing vapours to move the heat. They do however seem to be missing a trick in their fan design. Stacked fans would allow the same overall air flow but dramatically reduce the noise level. I guess that size/cost/complexity drove them away from that route.
In order to get French cooperation on illegal immigration, Truss is set to commit us to power cuts this winter.
Speaking to The Times:
“Truss said the UK and its neighbours, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, should commit to keeping open energy connections this winter. The UK sends and receives gas and electricity through undersea cables and pipelines linked to the continent.”
Previously the National Grid had plans to cut off the inter-connectors rather than have UK power cuts. As the (probable US) sabotage of the Russian Nordstream gas pipelines (Russia had nothing to gain by such action) now means inevitable winter energy shortages in Europe we are going to get sucked into the same problem.
Everyone had better update their power cut strategies e.g. buy UPS boxes, battery lamps, candles and extra thick onesies!
This link may be a good start for your battery research, coupled with the article’s link to the Off-grid example. (I think the pair of big grey switches next to the Blue Victron battery controller are the bits the local Electrical Authority have to bless)
It reminded me that I have a 1Kv UPS not currently in use. When the cuts start I’ll make sure it is fully charged and plug the telly, Sky box and some lights into it – that will REALLY annoy any nosy neighbours! (We will however still be cold because of the large startup current draw of even small motors.)
Dave can correct me if I’m wrong, but I have the impression that the IP numbers dished out by the DHCP server are random within the allowed range. Mine seem to be all over the place, but the address space not only fills up with the PCs and IoT stuff, but every other bit of connected hardware grabs space and this sometimes grabs quite a lot of IP addresses. e.g. Sky box, Wifi extenders, visitor’s phones/pads etc etc. My BT Homehub does not seem to have any housekeeping system of its own. I do not know if my own housekeeping is necessary, but I like to keep an eye on things that connect to my system.
Incidentally the free version of Fing for the iPhone is a good way to look at your connections whether live or not.
Wild thoughts again.
Is DHCP enabled on the pc networking? If it is, is your router full up with unused IP addresses, Because I play with Raspberry Pis I find that I have to housekeep on my router now and then to delete shedloads of redundant IP addresses.
I do not know how Tasmota works, but I’d guess that on initiation it first looks for a spare DHCP address.
Just a thought, as these are smart plugs is everything within the same electrical context? i.e. no isolating circuit boards or the like in between the smart plug and the ‘wifi sender’ plug?
SSD die totally silently imho!
+1 on that remark. You can get a tiny bit of a warning by running utilities such as ClearDiskInfo.
While this is at heart a S.M.A.R.T reader it puts the info together in a very clear and comprehensible manner.
As the ClearDiskView image shows, I am living dangerously with this old SSD and living on good backups is not really the answer!
Time to raid the piggy bank, and also to donate a bit to ClearDiskView.
Sounds like the time has come for a £75 1TB SSD replacement, or £50 hdd if funds are tight. Once you get those sorts of messages then the end is near for an hdd. However, your friend should remember that ssd drives fail hard and backups are an essential part of better performance.
Good choice. Sysinternals is a great set of tools but far from intuitive.
I see that M$ have produced another similar book ‘Troubleshooting with the Windows Sysinternals Tools‘. Scanning the index for this, it looks like it covers a lot of topics in one place, and saves hunting through the Internet – better in fact as one problem with on-line searches is that you either have to know roughly what you want, or need to use the correct terminology. I might treat myself to a Kindle version. ( I have too many out of date computer reference books in hardback.)
I joked a little about a kerosene lamp. I already possess an LED rechargeable battery powered lamp that gives far more light for less power usage – but unfortunately it does not put out the warmth of a kerosene lamp. As we live in a late 60s house we still have a standby gas fire in the living room. When this is set on high it heats the chimney stack and a lot of the house as well. SWMBO and I just need to stock up our pads with lots of films and books and we will be a lot better off than we were in those 70s days of rolling blackouts.
I sympathise with your issue of lighting off a big furnace. When I worked in a refinery one of our furnaces was a gas-fired issue that worked a bit like the combustion half of a jet engine (so called high intensity burners). It was near instant on, but scary and noisy as hell. Today these are often used by power generation setups because they are relatively small, and very quick to get on-stream and producing power.
I thought of using an off-the-shelf UPS just to run the central heating system – boiler controls plus one central heating pump.
I calculated that the running load would be adequately served by an off-the-shelf £200 0.5Kw UPS. Unfortunately the ‘running’ load is a LOT less then the motor startup load which I think would be as much as seven times greater. At that point I gave up as a 5Kw UPS would be well outside my budget at something like £5000!
Unusual for Windows to fail on its own assuming no virus etc – what is the problem you are trying to fix?
Registry corruption through improper shutdown (write-behind problems) used to be common on Windows 7 and earlier maybe it is the registry that has been zapped..
IF it is a registry problem – this link might help.
Be careful wrt batteries, the standard installation does NOT give you an UPS. When the mains feed goes down the battery stops feeding the house – this is for the safety of any workers working on power lines. Of course when your power goes down your gas fired central heating safeties shut everything down to ensure that you are not only in the dark, but cold as well. Still it saves gas!
In order to run a battery as an UPS you need another bit of kit that cuts the link between house and mains supply that has been approved by your power supply authority.
Life is never easy
I ask for your indulgence/pity when I make my reply as today has stripped out all optimism from me.
First Ben Wallace stated that Putin would not use nuclear weapons, but then followed it up by saying that Putin is mad enough to do anything! After that I was hit by the Conservatives doing pirouettes, and a Chancellor who forgot the main findings of his economic history thesis, which were that the value of money is purely what the market thinks it is, and is totally dependent in the market;s confidence that the currency is in safe hands and knows what its doing. Kwasi forgot all that with speeches aimed at the Conservative Conference and forgot that his real audiences were not just Daily Mail readers but the financial markets and the electorate. This made me wonder at the wisdom of having democracy if it results in naive leaders such as these.
Anyway to turn to your post in this spirit of doom and gloom:
The problem with all this prognostication is that you cannot get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ instantaneously and without spending megabucks and an awful lot of pain.
a) An oft proffered solution is to move to electric heat pumps. These really only work well in well-insulated homes, (biggest size is about 15Kw) but only 25% of houses were built after the 1980s and many are deliberately designed to be draughty in order to support gas/coal fires. Insulating such homes (especially rented properties) is a BIG ask, will take decades to complete and may not even be practical.
b) Today, roughly 80% of homes are heated by gas. Switching to other forms of heating is both costly and will take time. Again I’d say it will take decades, and need megabucks of support from the Government.
c) OK – assuming that miraculously all dwellings now only use electric heating. Of course the Government is investing in upgrading the grid – Huh – I think not, even now, due to grid restrictions no more computer centres can be built in the Thames power area!
d) So we won’t need gas – again huh! Unfortunately with everyone on electric heating and nuclear running late what will we use for heating during the night when the wind doesn’t blow, or even during still cold foggy days? Only gas-fired power generation offers the ‘instant on’ generation capability. Even if nuclear power is plentiful that does not take kindly to a rapidly changing demand. (slow to ramp up or down)
e) So we will built mega-sized battery storage instead. No, again as the scale and cost would be huge and even if those could be addressed it will take decades. Probably a better medium term solution would be pumped storage and a barrage across the Severn. We will have two next year please!
Looking on the really gloomy side, this winter we also face huge short term problems caused by Ukraine/Russia. It will be a big ask for Europe to go cold and short of power to support Ukraine. But if that happens it could result in UK gas shortages if our balancing Norwegian supply is diverted into Europe. Cutting off domestic gas is ‘hard’ as it is an all or nothing route. So the Government will cut gas-fired power generation which will result in rolling power cuts (keeping ‘essential supplies running), and possibly a 3 or 4 day working week with candles and no TV in the evening. I’ve been there once, it was called the 70s ‘Winter of Discontent’. I think I’ll go out and buy a kerosene lamp and some candles.
Interesting times, I wish that I had retired to the Antipodes!.
Seems like a long time for any of those operations.
Assuming the hdd is not ancient try a SMART check first. e.g. wmic diskdrive get status from an elevated command line
This works on Win10 but I really do not know if it was on Win7. A predicted fail means the drive is probably toast or pretty heavily singed.
If it passes then I’d start to blame a corrupt partition table (normally caused by someone yanking out the power lead rather than carrying out a proper shutdown – good luck in ever getting anyone to admit that!
Check using the old DOS command chkdsk. OnWin10 you can most safely do it from the file explorer. Right click on This PC, and the duff drive, select properties, tools, and error checking. This will check if you REALLY need to run chkdsk via the Scan Drive command.
If you remember chkdsk/f supposedly fixes the drive but what it normally did was to present you with a pile of orphan links! I think it might be better to use one of these.
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