Besides I was limping around with an injured knee from two bad falls. The first was a slip in the bathroom twisting my right knee with full body weight on it; never felt such a sharp pain before! Took me more than 2 months to recover. After that came 2nd time at a Thai restaurant - a piece of loose wood of the stairway slipped off on the way down. OMG.. twisting the same knee with the same pain again. Such bad luck!
Went back recently and saw how they patch up the stair step... not a great job, isn't it?
I really needed a break. Two months later back from Melbourne, I was anxious to check on the progress. Not a good feeling when I arrived at the farm - saw no birds flying around the bird house and the external sound was off. It hit me something must be wrong! There was an eerie silence as I went inside too. Internal sound was off too. Didn't take long to find out the electricity was cut-off.
Several spots of bird droppings were dried without fresh ones. These birds didn't came back obviously. Fortunately some residents were still around. So what went wrong?
Electricity was cut off - how could it be? I arranged for auto-payment via bank account! Oh..no, it was the wrong account in the application form. Somebody filled on my behalf but a mistake is a mistake!
It was a set back no doubt but soon birds came back and played with the sound system up & running again.
Then one day the sound system began to trip erratically for unknown reason. I had to reset it daily. Did the power supply fluctuate so much? It came to a point the sound system even tripped when I turned on a light! How can it be?
The voltage supply was 100V down when measured - almost halved! Voltage at the electric meter was good, probing along the 800M incoming wires to the farm soon reveal the fault location. It was the section where electric lines crossed the river - or rather submerged in water!
The electric pole at the river's edge tilted so badly the river crossing section sagged and submerged in water. The amount of floating plants grown over tells it occurred a long while ago.
P'Wah chopped through the vegetation to pull up the wires. Other electric lines were pretty low too, but mine went into water!
Finally he found the broken link. It was the neutral wire slashed by a knife blade. It became apparent that fishermen or farmers who came to cut the veggies inflicted the damage. It did not break the line completely and was a hidden problem. I still get electricity until corrosion over time severe the link eventually. I could still get some electricity with return path through the earth. This explains for large voltage drop and all the mysterious trips.
P'Wah was repairing the broken wire.
I have changed all the electric poles to taller ones and anchored deeper into ground to fix the problem once and for all. See how other poles inclined around mine's - the one most up right as it was recently erected.
The isolation "cut-out" switch was also broken by someone - an act of sabotage?
P'Wah was raising the wires high on ladder with safety harness.
Isolation switch was relocated higher out of easy reach.
The lesson was not to employ makeshift electric poles in the first place. The contractor did it the easy way that suited him. I thought it was OK as others were doing the same. But over time as nature forces took over in combination with unexpected events, things can go awe fully wrong - what if the live wire was cut accidentally instead? Somebody can get badly hurt if not electrocuted!
So don't compromise your standards by following others blindly.
5 comments:
Good read your update on swiftlet farm. I thought this blog will never be updated again. Hope you have recovered from your fall as said.
Sorry to give an impression the blog is abandoned. But sometimes I wondered if my blog really matters to anybody at all.
i wonder why you have to had 800 meter of power wire. taht's too long, isn't it. i think that you can get the power in the other way. maybe naturally.
Yes, 800m is a long stretch. I could use solar if it is just for the BH. But it is still expensive relatively and I need additional capacity in future.
we have A BH in chumpon this's a tryout pilot project. finished in last August. sound has been started on ever since. size is 10x15meters three storey. we are still waiting for the results.you said right that the onsumption of electric power is not much for only BH. previously, when looking to buy a plot of land to locate the BH what concerned me was whether they are power accessable.
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