How things shrink

Since January 2014 I ran a local server based on a microchip 32MX PIC. It originally connected to a weather station, gave a local read out, controlled remote sockets, uploaded to various logging services such as Thinspeak and Wuinderground, screened phone calls, monitored basic energy use, etc. It was largely ok until this year when the webserver would randomly stop responding.  I'd slowly removed some things like the weather station and the grid tie inverter, which became self contained nodes and did their own logging etc.

I'd planned to replacing it since March 2019, so I finally time to implement it this year. The box with buttons was the RF receiver and display, replaced by a receiver on the blue pcb, bottom left and the display also driven directly. The white board bottom middle is replaced by the blue one too, although its large size was partly driven by needed a hardwired ethernet connection, amd partly due to it being home made and single sided. New board is wifi and double sided with screen printing; I have no idea how them can make 5 of them for around 15€. The board bottom right is caller ID which had both a PIC and a wifi module. This is replaced by a dedicated CID chip and uses serial to communicate the main blue board. Quite a space saving, and the new board also allows me to use modern control methods like MQTT.

Logs

 December 2021. Storing the logs in the small trailer this year, and bringing them into the house in crates. Have 4 crates.

31/12/21 have filled the trailer 4 times, which is about 3 crates each load. 

31/12/21 Trailer pretty full and 2 crates are full.

1/2/22 filled trailer + 3 crates. Used about 1 crate per week since.

About 23 crates, but not clear when winter finished!

Dec 2022 Filled new woodstore (~1.5 stere) with ash. Not quite enough for this winter

Oct 2023 Filled the woodstore with 3.75 trailer load of mostly oak.

Fire sweep

It's that time of year again

Off grid batteries

It had been a long time coming,  but I finally weighed in the batteries we used off grid, plus a bunch of others that had accumulated. The 8 off grid batteries weighed around 300kg, and I weighed in a total of 475kg. Add 5kg of brass (old taps and mixers) and I got a cheque for 278€, 15€ of which was the brass.

A bit more space in the garage! 

Hedges

23/9/21 Hedge near hoogle bed cut back to 1.6m and chipped. About 4m3. 4 hours

26/9 South hedge 3h.

Goodhome sectional garage door

This door is marketed under any number of names. If in doubt look at the instructions. Goodhome is CE marked by a Dutch company Kingfisher. I have read that it is made is Portugal by a large door fabricator, but this would be covered by their CE mark - unless they are trying to disguise the origins of a lower grade door.

Hard to know where to start with this one. Basically this is a sectional garage door with door opener for around 300€ (Dec 2020), or 600€ cheaper than the equivalent Hormann one. I currently have a Hormann door and I've added a Goodhome door adjacent. Clearly the Hormann door is massively over priced, as the piece components are essentially the same; insulated metal door panels, metal uprights, springs, motor and rails.

tldr; don't buy this door unless you have the time and skills to dick around with it for 2-3 days. Would I buy one again? Yes, as I know the pitfalls. Would I recommend it to a friend? No. Too many pitfalls. Would I install it professionally? Definitely not. There would be too many call backs and I seriously doubt they would honour the warranty. Too much hassle. I only install big brands for clients for this very reason; I want a quiet life. 

The Goodhome door rails are more flimsy, but adequate. The QA is lacking and the forums report missing parts and hinges that are incorrectly numbered

I do not intend to list list the numerous design deficiencies here. The manufacturer can contact me and we can discuss it. However, I can't resist this one

This picture shows a hole required in the concrete slab 25 mm from the edge to keep the spring in position. Utter incompetence on the part of the designer; even a 6mm hole would break out the slab, and they recommend 8-10mm. The same can be said of all the rail fixings which are way too close to the edge to be usable. I will make up some longer brackets in due course, but the lack of floor fixing doesn't seem to cause too much flex with the spring stretched.

It is important to check that each panel is the same width, and also that the frame is the correct width (2525mm) Make sure the top rollers are fairly snug on the fails. If not, the door will drift one way or the other. I found the metal end pieces fitted badly and the leading edges cut the weather seals. The holes were badly aligned. Both easily fixed, but it's frustrating.

Lubricate as per the manual once you've ironed out the opening/closing. The door then moves slightly better.

Poor alignment. A poorly specified machining 'don't worry gov, the nearest 5mm on those holes, or just throw a screwdriver and drill a hole where it lands.'  Amateurs.

Slivers of plastic ripped of the door guides as the panel metal side have raised front/leading/trailing edges. Had to remove all the panels and sides and fettle. Another 2 hours of my life wasted through crap manufacture.

The door must open and close relatively easily before fitting the motor. I found shortening the cables another 40mm helped with opening, but too short will mean the door slams shut a bit too quickly. I felt the door was still too stiff to operate manually, but installed the motor anyway.  It runs fine. Out of curiosity I adjusted the motor force setting to minimum and it ran just fine, suggesting the manufacturer expects a bit more friction. The remote appears to use rotating code; it is readable by Keeloq. I think the PSU is SMPS, so very low (<1W) standby, which is a saving of 6W over the one that came with my Hormann door. A definite plus for goodhome.

The manual is good for the door assembly, but the motor installation is poor for the mechanical elements; poor diagrams and you have to guess which bits go where.

The Goodhome door can easily be cut to make it more narrow. Cut the panels on either side. The bottom panels has a metal rail that holds the floor seal and this is screwed on; remove it and cut off the requisite amount.

7/11/23 Door refused to close. It hiccups every now and then and I spray silicon on the sliding parts. However, it entirely refused to open or close even assisted with my boot. I disengaged the door and found the door smooth. Ran the operator and it only moved a few cm either way; it had lost track of the open/closed positions. I reprogrammed it and it ran ok. There was a lot of noise from the left (looking out) side and I thought maybe it need wd40. In doing that I realised that the wires had jumped out of the top pulley. Once all that was done, it ran nice and quietly.

Repairing an Ikea tap

 A bit disappointed in Ikea. We've got a kitchen tap with a removable spout. After only 10 years it has worn out. Ikea dont do spares. It also seems that they build stuff using bits they found lying around. The hose needs to be M15 x 1 female to 1/2" female. I only worked this out after a lot of research. I can find shower hoses like this with a smooth outside, but nothing with the normal corrugated hose. A smooth hose would jam in the neck of the tap. And it's made by Grohe, so the price is stupid (40€ + delivery)

A replacement tap from Ikea is nearly 200€, so 40€ might be fair, but it's not sold as a spare for Ikea so it might not fit.

A french forum has 2 people trying to find the same part. 

https://www.forumconstruire.com/construire/topic-344258-difference-15x100-3-8-flexible.php

https://www.forumconstruire.com/construire/topic-344392-denomination-raccord-femelle-15mm.php

tldr;

Short version is they bought a M15x1 male to 1/2" female and found a coupler in the heating section. I can find a coupler, but it's 10€ plus 7€ delivery. They ain't very common.

I guess everyone else just bins the tap and gets a new one.

I ended up taking the female union off the old hose and soldering it to male on the mixer. Sounds harder than it was. I can now swap the hose easily in the future as M15 x 1 male to 1/2" female are readily available. Fancy that. Spares that can be bought off the shelf. A male end passes through the spout a whole lot easier than a female. Trainee's first job at Ikea?

I'm guessing the ceramic mixer will fail tomorrow. And that will be the end of the tap. If Ikea build custom stuff (that the customers pay for) instead of looking at the market, I can't imagine that the mixer cartridge will available. It'll be 1mm off.

I should have bought a 3/8 to 1/2" hose as 3/8 should pass, then the adapter would have been easier. I have a feeling they are just as common.

The soldered join is at the tip of the blue screwdriver.

Green stuff 2021

2020

installed smaller water heater (65L vs 200L) which needs much less energy 

new cordless hoover

2021

changed electric tarif to 100% renewable 

replaced gas oven with electric oven

replaced gas hob with induction hob, but retained 2 ring gas hob for certain pans that are occasionally used. Gone from 4 bottles per year to less than 1. Further, electric cooking uses significantly less energy

installed another 700W of solar PV taking us to 1780W. This provides our daytime usage 100% even on cloudy days, and the surplus is fed into the hot water tank; In 2021 we spent less than 1€ on domestic hot water

Installed a heat pump to heat the house in spring/autumn running off PV, and reducing our dependance on wood for heating.

Extended the house and used nearly 3 times the legal minimum insulation.

The garage extension was built with the smallest possible foundations/concrete and wood used for the walls.

New panels

Our base load has crept up, partly due to crappy design of electrical products such as hobs, oven, washing machines etc that do not have an off switch and pull 'a bit' ie waste energy all the time and partly due to using more appliances eg heat pump

As a result I decided and additional 600W would help on the east facing roof.  300W isnt much cheaper as the micro-inverter price is front loaded ie 150€ for 300W, 180€ for 600W, and panels are relatively cheap (130€) The worst is delivery at 80€, but it was a lovely pallet! 579€ including roof kit. 

Opted for a Hoymiles mi600, which, unlike the competition with a similar part number (AP systems YC600 anyone?) actually produces 600W. This is a twin channel device, and the panels are 1/2 cell meaning they will produce more power on the roof which is badly shaded until 9ish summer, 10ish winter. Each panel is 370W so when it's sunny I throw away 140 watts even before it leaves the inverter, but the panels are new and keen to generate; the situation will change in few years.  Panels never really generate their rated power as they get hot and inefficient, and they age.

To give you an idea, today, the old set (1180 Wc) were producing 800W on the south face at 3pm. The new panels on east face were giving 600W. If they were the same age, it would be 2/3, so around 530W.

We're not allowed to give the power away that we're not using, so it gets wasted. A real shame and I'm hoping the authorities will change their minds; it's only been 2 years ish since we're allowed to install stuff ourselves, so fingers crossed.

They are pretty heavy at 20kg, and a bit unwieldly to put over your shoulder at 1.7m x 1m. I made a lifting block and slid them up the ladder. Cardboard to protect the panel (a larger piece is better) and a couple of strops.

And don't forget the bolts at the bottom of the panels to stop them sliding off the roof rails!

Heat pump

 Finally got one. Airton 2500W.

Found support for the remote control.

LEDVANCE wifi socket

An Amazon bargain (9€), this socket also has power monitoring using a really nice chip HLW8012.

This one came with a ESP8265 chip, which I programmed using ESP01 settings.

Panel move

Moved the panels between 4pm and 7pm. More power in the evening and less in the morning.

The roof slope means more generation in the summer, but the same annual generation overall. The house is pointing SSW, so power starts later in the morning (~30 mins later) but as the panels are now higher, the power ramps up quicker.

Hedges

 West hedge cut and chipped to bamboo. Was pretty tall, now 1.6m. 4 hours

Ecostar garage door opener

The Ecostar garage door opener that I have is over 8 years old, so things may have changed. This ecological disaster of a design takes 8W on standby. And it's all down to a cheap crappy transformer that Ecostar have tested and accepted.

They have deliberately undersized the trafo, and it gets over-loaded albeit for a very short time when the door opens or closes. This is fine, but is a trade-off. The rest of the time it's on standby, waiting for the 2 or 3 times per week that it gets used. 

I know it's the trafo, as I found a 200VA unit in my junk box. It takes 2W on standby. So, really well done Ecostar for saving yourselves a few euro and killing the planet.