Swimming Pool

Another trip to the local hardware store this morning.  This time five metres of 6mm plastic tubing was purchased for Jan's swimming pool acid dispenser.  The pool system is supposed to automatically dispense Muriatic Acid to maintain the required water pH balance.  You may recall I discovered the original tubing had burst and drained all the acid from the 5 litre container. 

Before replacing the original tubing I read the label on the new plastic tubing to satisfy myself it was acid resistant .

I'm not sure whether the acid or the sunlight has changed the colour of the original tubing.  It's gone from clear to milky white.  After some research I'd identified muriatic acid is actually hydrochloric acid and I've already ordered another five litres.

Jan started grumbling when an email was received from the State Department of Transport advising the annual trailer registration fee was due.

Annual trailer registration breakdown

• Licence Fee  $57.95
• Insurance $13.23
• GST (VAT) on Insurance $1.32
• Insurance Duty $1.45
• Recording Fee $10.30
• Total $83.95

Governments do have a way of collecting additional money.  The insurance is 3rd Party, which I won't quibble about.  Then there is GST(VAT) on the fee.  A tax on a tax.  Then the State government collects insurance duty.  A tax on the tax and tax.  Finally there is a Recording Fee; which I would have thought was part of the Licence Fee.  So what did the Licence Fee actually buy me?  Certainly not the cost of maintaining a record of the ownership of the trailer. 

Geoff,

The electric utility network company is owned by the State government.  West Australia has a number of issues with it's electrical network.  The first is too much residential rooftop solar power being produced during the day with no means of storing the surplus.  The base power is provided by old thermal power (coal fired) power station which are steadily being decommissioned.  The network provider is starting to experiment with local network batteries.  The idea is the utility company gets residents to buy a share of the battery and contribute their surplus power for storage.  However the utility company then sells the power back to the resident at an increased price. I don't see why I should contribute to the cost of a neighbourhood battery and store my surplus energy only to have to buy it back. 

Eventually residential storage batteries will reach a price point where they are financially viable.  We will install one at that time and disconnect from the network.  As more people disconnect from the network the cost of maintaining it (poles, wires, transformers, sub-stations, etc) will be borne by those who don't have solar and a battery.  The poor, those renting, etc.  In anticipation of this happening the government will have reduced it's investment in infrastructure to cut costs.  It would not surprise me if they also legislated making it compulsory to be connected to the network in order to continue to receive the daily service charge to maintain the network.

The government already restricts the amount of solar the resident can install to a maximum of 5kW if they are connected to the network.  One assumes that once disconnected from the network the resident can install as much solar capacity as they want.  We will need more to charge our electric cars      

 

That Birthday Party

COVID

My brother's birthday party turned out to be quite an event.  You may recall both Jan and I attended.  four days later my brother sent us a text message to advise his eldest son, his (son's) wife and three daughters had all tested positive for covid.  A week on my brother and sister in law are positive along with half of the party attendees.  Jan and I tested ourselves.  We are negative!  But have stayed at home for seven days just in case. 

Windows 11

The self-enforced isolation has given me time to upgrade the laptop to Windows 11.  It turned out to be less complicated than the upgrade from Windows 8 to 10.  I've also been able to remove all the 'bloatware' and unnecessary Microsoft services and apps.  I still have the 'Classic Menu' application running which means Windows 11 looks like Windows XP.  Do I notice any difference in performance since upgrading?  NO!  The only thing that appears to have changed is Windows 11 has the wifi drivers to make the laptop onboard wifi adapter work.

Seniors Moment

I went for a bike ride yesterday after selecting a route that kept me away from others.  It was a hot, dry and very sunny day.  After recently having some skin cancers cut out I'm even more conscious of the need to 'Slip, Slop, Slap and Slide'.  I carefully applied sunblock to my face, arms and the tops of my ears.  Whilst placing the little container of cream back down I noticed the tube of 50+ sunblock cream beside it.  That's when I realised I'd had a 'seniors moment' and liberally applied some of my cycling 'Genuine Aussie Butt Cream' to my face!  Won't be much use as a sunblock but it might smooth out the wrinkles.

One observation during the ride was the arrival of the circus at our local shopping centre.

Two large tents which appear to be manufactured from vinyl rather than canvas.

"The Great Moscow Circus"

It would have to be decades since this circus left Russia… If ever!  Looking at the information in this article it appears the circus arrived from NZ in 2009 and it is based in Queensland. 

Thirty years ago I remember we took our three children to "The Great 3 Ring American Circus" which was touring New Zealand after being in Australia for decades.  The days of a circus containing elephants, lions and tigers are long gone.  More likely to be dogs, ponies, acrobats and clowns.

Solar Panel Cleaning

Cleaning the solar panels does not appear to have made much difference to their performance producing approximately 40kWh daily.  We consume approximately 30kWh daily sending the surplus back to the network.  However some of our consumption is at night where we are obviously purchasing electricity.  What we sell to the network a $0.07kW covers the cost of what we purchase at $0.37kW.    However we can't produce enough surplus electricity to cover the daily $1 supply change.

 

 

Birthday Party

Last Friday Jan and I were invited to my younger brother's 70th Birthday Party.  He proclaimed he never believed he would reach 70.  Of course I am very aware how important birthdays are to longevity having recently read the conclusion of a four year university research project into birthdays.  The research concluded the more birthdays you had; the longer you would live!

Anyway, the party was a great success with all West Australian based members of the extended Jones family attending along with some of his former work colleagues and friends.  It was a large gathering.  On the following Monday we received a text message from my brother.  His eldest son, wife and three children had all tested positive for covid.  By Wednesday my brother and sister-in-law had it along with one niece, nephew's wife and two family friends.  It was starting to look like a 'super-spreader event'.  Jan and I did a RAT yesterday and are negative.  We are either lucky, hardy, or waiting!

The Pool

It looks like I am taking over the job of 'Swen the Poolman'.  Jan's swimming pool has been throwing some very strange pool chemical readings and I am now frantically attempting to remember my high school chemistry lessons.  Both the pH and chlorine reading are extremely high.   Jan mentioned water was dripping from the pool water heater on the workshop roof.  It wasn't likely this was the cause of the chemical problem, but I did examine the weeping pipe joint.  Then I decided to run the pool pump on maximum speed to see if this would flush the system and return normal levels.  That's when I discovered the 10mm tube that supplies hydrochloric acid to the pool had ruptured.

Instead of the acid going into the pool and maintaining the pH balance it was squirting out on the ground.  The acid container was empty.  I've ordered a new container of acid and will repair the tube having cut our the damaged section.  Hopefully this is the simple solution to the current problem with the pool.

Solar Panels

It's only two days since I took my life in my hands and climbed onto the roof to clean the solar panels.  There doesn't appear to have been any improvement in the output.  It's too early to make any conclusions regarding the merit of cleaning the panels.  I will continue to monitor the output.

Windows 10

On a more positive note, I was able to upgrade the laptop from Windows 8.1 to 10.  The myriad of issues have been overcome and my Windows 10 now looks like Windows XP.  Obviously I've reached an age where I don't like change.  I know my way around Windows XP and don't want to be bothered relearning a new screen layout every time Windows releases a new version of their operating system.

My thoughts are that Microsoft have created a 'fork' with their operating system.  The 'Enterprise' version of Windows 10 (and 11) is designed for businesses and must be purchased.  The 'Home' version is a free upgrade or comes already installed on a new purchase.  The difference between the two versions appears to be the Home version is loaded with 'Bloatware'.  To use the computer a user is required to register an account with Microsoft.  Moreover, a number of the background services running on the Home version appear to be collecting data about the user.  My assumption is Microsoft sells this data to advertisers, much like Facebook, etc.

I've been able to erase the Microsoft account and login from my new Windows 10 setup.  I haven't noticed any improvement with Windows 10 but the upgrade has allowed me to use the onboard wifi adapter.  This didn't work with Windows 8.1 as there were no suitable wifi drivers.

I've now downloaded Windows 11 and will attempt to install it.  Again avoiding the requirement to create a Microsoft account along with removing the bloatware.

Bricked it!

More huge problems with the laptop.  Rather than boring you at the beginning of the post, for those who are interested, I'll leave it to the end.

Solar Array

The solar panels on the roof look filthy.  There are two schools of thought.  Those who state they must be regularly cleaned and those who say not to bother are they will self clean with rain.

I noticed our array is only producing 4.56kW but it has a maximum output of 5kW.  Looking at the output history I could see times when the 5kW peak was being generated.  However it was only a brief peak and as we have 6.6kW of panels I expected a constant 5kW on a sunny day.  Cleaning the panels might improve the output.

Placing the aluminium stepladder against the roof steel guttering has two disadvantages.  Metal on metal can slip and the ladder can damage the paint on the gutter.  I went to the local hardware store and looked at 'gutter guards'.  These clip over the lip of the gutter protecting it and preventing the ladder from slipping.  I'm NOT PAYING $60 for a simple plastic gutter guard.  Scrounging around the workshop I found some plywood offcuts, an old rubber floor mat from the car along with a short length of dowel.

My DIY gutter guard

 Safety is important.  I needed to secure myself against a fall.

Not like this…………

Whilst I was on the roof playing Tarzan with the hose and brush Jan was busy making Damson plum jam using the last of the plums from her tree.

The Laptop

I 'bricked' the laptop attempting an upgrade from Windows 8.1 to version 10.  All the online instructions stated it would be easy.  It wasn't!  There were a number of problems.  The first was my version of Windows had never been updated.  When I did attempt to update the system I discovered the update program wouldn't work because my laptop was "too modern" (as a result of me downgrading it to Windows 8.1 when purchased). 

I then decided to directly install Windows 10 onto the Laptop using the backup copy I had made when the laptop was purchased.  That didn't work!  Eventually I decided to reinstall the backup version I had made of my Windows 8.1 last week only to discover that didn't work either.  The laptop wouldn't boot.  I was left with a 'brick'!

This all occurred over several days.  Eventually I downloaded a copy of Windows 8.1 and installed it onto to the laptop.  This gave me a working pc with a Windows Boot Manager.  But I had lost all my programs and data.  However I then booted the laptop from a Linux thumb drive and reinstalled my backup using the Linux dd command.

All my original programs and data was restored <phew>.  However I still had a problem with the Windows update program and the laptop also required me to login with a password. 

Eventually I managed to find a solution on how to activate the Windows Update routine <here> and update the system.  I'm still working on the password issue.

Now that Windows 8.1 is fully updated I might again try upgrading to Windows 10.

Why no posts?

Over a week has passed since the last blog post and the reason why is because I've been attempting to make a comprehensive backup of the computer software.

The pc has two solid state drives and I wanted 'cloned' copies of both.  A simple 'copying' of the drives wouldn't be sufficient as there are 'hidden files' and partitions, etc.

My first attempt was to start the pc using a usb thumbstick with Linux on it.  Once Linux had loaded I could use GParted to see the computer drives and disk partitions along with their identifications.  Then I used the powerful Linux 'dd' command to clone the c:/ drive to an external usb drive.

It took 2½ days of continuous running to clone the disk….. And it failed!  The second attempt; another 2½ days; was successful .  Then the second drive needed to be cloned.  It's taken 7 days, but I now have a cloned copy of the computer.

Meanwhile, Jan has been busy picking fruit from some of her trees.  The Bramley produced some useful fruit and the Damson plum was heavily laden.

Jan stewed the apples and some of the plums to make several apple & plum sponge puddings.

  

Several days latter she picked the remaining plums.

These will probably be made into jam.

We appear to now have a small orchard.

• Gravenstein Apple
• Bramley Apple
• Red Fuji Apple
• Pink Lady Apple
• Lemon
• Lime
• Orange
• Apricot
• Mulberry
• Avocado
• Damson Plum
• Peacherine
• Mango

My brother had also given us a passionfruit vine cutting

 

 

 

New Toy

The story goes like this.   One tree in our neighbours back yard is growing across and over our land .  It's creating a problem for the pool equipment and solar array on the workshop roof.  The leaves and pods are also filling the workshop gutters creating a potential fire hazard.

I was getting ready to trim the overhanging branches when the neighbour came out and asked me not to do it as it was Spring and birds were nesting in the tree.  She then said she would have the tree pruned at the end of the nesting season.  That was two years ago!   The tree is now even more of an issue.

Jan and I discussed the problem and decided to buy a suitable saw to prune the now larger tree.  A reasonable quality manual pole saw would cost approximately $100 whilst a battery powered pole saw was $120.  A powered pole saw seemed the better option.

Not wanting to rush to a decision we took some time to reflect.  It became obvious the pole saw would be used very infrequently.   My thoughts turned to a chainsaw.  At various times during our early married life we owned two.  A small Black & Decker and a larger Husqvarna.  Moving to Australia resulted in us no longer having a wood burning fire and they were sold.

Rather than considering a petrol chainsaw my attention was drawn to battery powered chainsaws.  They are small and light, but with sufficient power to do moderate work.  I've been standardizing my battery power tools on DeWalt.  Specifically their 18V series.  Currently I have four tools and two 18V 4Ah batteries.  Looking at battery powered chainsaws I noted DeWalt had an 18V saw.  It was retailing at $325 without a battery.  However TotalTools had it on special for $329, including the battery.  The battery usually cost $99 and $4 for the battery seemed a bargain.

The new toy

I took one of my batteries to TotalTools and confirmed my existing DeWalt batteries were compatible with the saw.

I'm very impressed with the saw.  It cut some sizeable tree limbs without any difficult.  It's also much quieter than a petrol chainsaw

Jan then pointed out I could take it with me on outback trips where it could be used for tasks such as cutting firewood or remove fallen trees blocking tracks.