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Forum Index : Solar : We had a bit of weather Wednesday night. How did the solar go..
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| Jacob89 Newbie  Joined: 10/09/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 39 |
You've got me fired up to rant about electricians now. Maybe I shouldn't admit it here but I am an electrician too, so I'm railing against my own kind(but not really), I've never felt like I fit in with other sparkies though so who cares. I'm both not surprised and very disappointed about the tiny house story. I've heard similar tales - one just recently about a bloke in NSW who wanted a simple manual changeover switch and inlet socket fitted to his switchboard so he could power a few circuits from a generator or inverter during an outage, and he had to call 3 or 4 different electricians before he found one willing to do it. Another was a friend of my uncles. He was setting up a sandblasting rig for his business, and it needed some basic control wiring, for emergency stops and the like and called a prominent local electrical contractor, and the response was "Sorry mate, I have about 20 sparkies working for me, but I don't think any of them can handle this job" In my experience most electricians don't have any genuine interest in electricity, and they don't have any desire to think outside the box. Someone told them they could make a lot of money at it and that was it. It's worse in Australia than most other countries I think, because its illegal for anyone else to do any electrical work it gives them a superiority complex. I don't really have an issue with requiring a licence for someone who wants to sell their services as an electrician, but the fact that there is no scope whatsoever for a homeowner to so much as replace a dodgy light switch. I mean, in pretty well every state in Australia you can get yourself a firearms licence and own a gun inside of 6-12 months. But if you want to change a faulty powerpoint yourself? Nope, thats too dangerous, unless you make a career out of it and complete a four year apprenticeship. |
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| Davo99 Guru  Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I have read many times of the bedwetter crapping on about that sort of voltage being dangerous and even had arguments with them about it. Of course no end to the far fetched and ridiculous excuses of how one could BBQ oneself that would defy the best attempts of Mythbusters to replicate the scenario. It's all just self interested BS designed to make as much profit for the industry members as possible. Often you find the people that write the standards and rules are industry bodies.... as with rooftop solar. Not one Bit surprised will I be when they bring in a law about needing a licenced sparky to change a light bulb in a home. I think it's already the situation that you are supposed to have a plumber to change a washer in some parts. Then again, I know of too many people including family that wouldn't even think to take the job on themselves. Was minding the brother in laws house 2 years ago while they were OS and saw a leaking tap at the back of the house. Changed the washer in it next time I came over, all good. Told the BIL I fixed it for him and got bit of a 3rd degree about it. Couple of weeks later the nephew told me BIL got a plumber in to check my work. Plumber looked at the tap and said what's the matter with it, not dripping, works fine? Nephew told me he couldn't stop Laughing when his father explained why he got the guy there and the guy shook his head and said WTF and just walked out. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
In some ways I understand it. You could BBQ yourself or Burn a house down with people in it. That said, the dangerous people are the ones that think they know what they are doing when they have no clue. The real problem with these people and where the licencing falls down is they will go ahead and do whatever they are thinking of anyway. I'm a backyard hacker but at least I know my limitations. Not everyone is willing to admit that and as a result cause the problems. I don't see licencing or not will ever change that. The ones that are too scared to do it because they are not licenced are probably too scared to do the job in the first place or they would so that problem is pretty much in the main self eliminating anyway. There are things I have wanted to learn and would be prepared to do the full course on but you can't even get into tech for unless you are employed in the industry. I don't want to make a career out of it, just learn how to do something properly but the way things are, that's not possible. |
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| Jacob89 Newbie Joined: 10/09/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 39 |
There is a lot of money to be made, but the regulatory burden is huge, as well as the risk you take on. And to really make good money you need a crew of guys working for you, and all the headaches and stress and expense that brings. Every once in a while I get sick of working for other people and think about getting my contractors ticket and going into business for myself, but every time I look into it I get scared off. I had a brief foray into domestic electrical work and very quickly decided it was not for me. Two things put me off, one being crawling in scorching hot ceiling spaces and getting covered in fibreglass insulation, I hated that. No way I was spending my working life doing that everyday. And the pace required, I just couldn't keep up. I like to think that I'm not a completely useless electrician, but I just can't maintain the speed those domestic guys go. They make their money by cramming as many jobs as possible into each day. I do heavy industrial (mining) work now. It has its own downsides, but I don't have to crawl in ceilings, and I can work at a pace more befitting of my own personality. And the pay is much better. I reckon I know exactly what forum you're talking about. Named after a washing machine. Its best avoided most of the time I find. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Yep, spot on. I had my own business with 12 People working for me. Like many others, in my early days that was the goal. Grow and be as big as you could get. Like another friend who did the same thing, we found the stress and the aggro just wasn't worth it. I would more often that not keep myself in reserve and not allocate myself any work so I could fill in if need be. There weren't many times I still wasn't short of manpower. Some people just have no sense of loyalty and I have long said there is a big difference between the mentality of a wage earner and a business earner. It can be REALLY hard to find good workers especially in a trade where work is plentiful and they can blow a job off in the morning and be working for someone else in the afternoon. In the end I just let them all go their own way and didn't replace them. I can't say they were all bad, some were great but I don't know, human nature or something. I went into more upmarket work and just had a secretary doing what I didn't want to be bothered with like bookwork and domestics and that worked nicely. At times I'd get in someone when things got busy and give them some cashie work and that was it. My friend Downsized his business as well to just him and an apprentice that has now been with him 12 years. He also put his son on last year which he says was his contribution to Charity. The kid really is Dumb as an ox but has a family now to support so mate says may as well get some work out of him as just hand him money as he would otherwise have to. He has been in the game 20+ years now and built a great reputation. He charges like a wounded bull but clients happily pay it because they know he will do the job right. He does not advertise or even take on new customers now. All the ones he has are long term and he has got rid of all the ones he didn't want. He has worked Bloody hard to get to where he is though. The Business will Crack $5m turnover this year and I would expect the net profit to be over $1M. No reason what so ever to grow bigger and take on more headaches. I was much the other way, got sick of working for myself and would go out and work for someone else for a change of scenery. That would last about 12 Months and I'd get sick of the long hours for crap pay and working for people that were too lazy to take on new ideas or change to avail themselves of new opportunities. I would just do things and they would make money and then I'd get Kyboshed which was very frustrating and honestly, took all my motivation away. I once got a bit direct with a boss who wasn't a bad bloke all up and said I have proven I can make you money without affecting any other part of the business or requiring any expenditure, why won't you let me run with it? His reason was his other staff could not do what I did and he was scared they would complain and say it was unfair to them. WTF?? I said if that's what you really think, Fk them off and get better staff! The whole place had settled into it's comfort zone like a pair of well worn slippers and they didn't really like this tornado blowing through their Lounge room and ruffling the curtains and stirring the thick settled dust. I offered to work for him purely on commission doing what I had started and selling an exclusive product line he had got in which was a real winner IF it was done properly. Nup. I really think he was just too scared of change and stepping outside of the comfort zone they had all been in for years. I gave my notice the next day. He didn't want me to go but I said how can I stay and be at all motivated knowing I'm working with one hand tied behind my back and I could be doing 10 times better? Another one had old outdated, inefficient methods and procedures that were like a goddam handbrake. The business could have been SO much better and more profitable and I couldn't understand why they were hell bent on dragging an anchor. The owners daughter told me, This is the way Mum has always done it and the way it will always be. She had been frustrated long before I got on the scene and understood completely but that was the way it was. I didn't last long at that one! :0) Another one I had to deal with completely incompetent Bosses and management that literally did not have the first clue on how to treat people or industrial regulations. That was fun for a while putting them in their place but got old too. I left and the rest of the staff bar 2 did as well. Really screwed that lot over but they deserved it. They folded not that long after. I'd get bored once the learning curve was over and things settled down to the same old rinse and repeat. I'd go back to my own gig with new ideas, enthusiasm and pick up very quickly where I left off. Was also glad and appreciative then of the good fortune I had to be able to do that. In many ways was a good thing. Gave me a mental break, stopped me getting tunnel visioned and made me thankful of the abilities I had. Not a bad thing to step back and smell the roses once in a while and count your blessings. I hear you there! Exactly why I got a young bloke in to do the work I wanted. My mate could have done it but wasn't prepared to stuff round in ceilings either. Was happy to do some of the prep outside work but that was it. I like electrical but I find a lot of the mechanics of it fiddly and frustrating.I could never do it every day. I like playing with things I can get at easily but like you mentioned, replacing a power point where some drop-kick has left 1 inch of free cable and having to work like a watchmaker is not for me. ALL the wiring in this place is like that and drives me insane. I leave plenty of cable so I can work with ease and don't care how much I waste by over allowing. In reality with what I do would probably amount to $20 worth for the next 20 years and worth 100X over for the lack of frustration. The way the eaves are in this house, I can barely get to the wall cavity's with my fat long frame so being a jockey or squeezing into any confined space is not for me. At my last house, getting under the place to do anything meant crawling over broken bricks, tiles and cement sitting on mud. Equally not fun. Yep. Easy to see by looking at what they do, the shortcuts they take and the mess they leave. All about getting to the next job as fast as possible and doing the bare minimum required. It's where my mate scores a lot of points in his business and gets the big bucks. He's fastidious about getting to a job on time, keeping clients updated and will literally employ a cleaner to come in after him and make the place as neat and tidy as can be and preferably better than what it was when he went in there. His clients are all companies and the money is not coming out of the managers pockets so are happy to give the job to my mate whom makes them look good to their bosses. He will work Nights, weekends, Christmas holidays when they are shut down, whatever. Many won't but again, mate is not cheap and they don't care because he works in with what what suits them not him. Like the guy I got in that does work for my mate. He mainly does factory/ industrial work. Does the domestic on the weekends to get ahead on paying off the Mortgage as he's only young and newly married. He did a good job and didn't rush although didn't dawdle either. That would be the one! The mentality there does my head in. What a bunch of useless whining pussies! |
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Clockmanfr Guru Joined: 23/10/2015 Location: FrancePosts: 429 |
Hi Davo99, Yes COVID 19, been stuck here in Normandy for over a year now, i just can not travel out of the Country. Well i can but i need to pay hundreds at a time for all the tests. Tried getting Vaccinated here, but don't have all the required French paper work and can not remember my grandmas hat size, my gosh the French civil servants love the paper work. Youngest boy now 14 is now back in the Uk from Christmas as the French school he was at was just stupid, and teachers and pupils were testing positive and their grandparents dying. But still kept the school open no matter what. So a year of just me, 4 cats and a sheepdog, no sheep at present, and a trip into the local town supermarkets once a week. No paid work at present either as i can not visit customers. But bless them they are paying half up front for all the work they have ready for me. Yes, I am just a boring Mechanical Engineer that tends to do stuff properly and i build in the 'Just in Case' scenario. My Mrs keeps saying, "oh no not the Engineer way!". Those big PV panels are flipping awkward, but made up a wood jig to put them into the correct position on a new roof install as its just me here. see photo.....  Sadly all my electrical stuff has to be up to and beyond the French regs, as we are our own Generating Power station, and French folk come to learn, what, how and why. I have posted more detailed stuff here:- http://www.bryanhorology.com/pv-photovoltaics-installations.php We have started detailing stuff as its about time we published some of our 20 years of findings, as you can imagine we really are upsetting the RE commercial guys, but we are used to that, and besides I am at that age where I can make a difference about what is happening and where things are going. We have empirical evidence and true use data, so we can influence in the right direction. Education is a big issue, and most spark'ys I know and used to know, want a gentle life, so they just conform to the status qua. And according to them new guys just memorise all the latest product codes and rules and code numbers, than actually learn a true trade and learn dexterity skills. Sounds to me that Australia has gone like the UK with only allowing Certified/qualified Electricians to work on domestic household electrics. However, the word competent is still in the UK regulations. So define competent?. Take care davo99, and carry on your good works at Saving the Planet from the administrator's morons. Edited 2021-06-27 00:05 by Clockmanfr Everything is possible, just give me time. 3 HughP's 3.7m Wind T's (14 years). 5kW PV on 3 Trackers, (10 yrs). 21kW PV AC coupled SH GTI's. OzInverter created Grid. 1300ah 48v. |
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| johnmc Senior Member  Joined: 21/01/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 282 |
Good day Clockmanfr, Pleased to hear you are well ,thanks for your detailed installation notes. I do not think your ,French civil servants love the paper work, differ greatly to the lot we have Australia.  Cheers and best wishes john johnmc |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Hey mate, Sorry to hear this is still causing you so much grief. At least it sounds like you are recovered and healthy and your precious boy is out of danger. Funny the different approaches. Here it has been revealed that they were closing schools when they felt they did not need to for health reasons but rather it would send a message to the community and essentially increase the fear mongering and hysteria. I think the handling of this problem has been universally pathetic. No one seems to have taken a balanced and relevant approach. Either too much or too little for the relevant circumstances. I take it you no longer have to go to town with your space suit on and scare the local Constabulary? I tell everyone about that when the topic comes up. Hilarious and telling of the stupidity of so much to do with this. I wanted to get one the same but the other half blew a fuse. She won't let me wear my respirator out either. Keep telling her I just want to be safe even though I really just want to show this up for the ineffective stupidity it is. Here in Oz it's getting so they can't give the poxine away. People do not want it because there is so much information coming out about the deaths and side effects it is causing. There are all sorts of excuses being made as to why the Vax rate is low but the truth is people don't want it here. We haven't had anything like the cases and deaths they have in other parts of the world and people want to at least wait till more testing is done and the problems better known and hopefully fixed. Someone that understands and has had to do them solo as well! I was not smart enough to think of the Frame you made and I can straight off see how much easier that would make things. I was using a long ladder to pull them up on at one stage but then found it was just as easy without. I thought my roof was difficult being tin and pretty steep pitched but is nothing in comparison to yours! Aside from the pitch, the slate would create a whole set of difficulties on it's own. Here the great majority of our roofs are terracotta tiles or corrugated iron, mostly powder coated for some time now. I have put the lower row of panels on first which my roof is low enough to get up from the ground with a ladder as a trestle and then used the edge of those panels as a foothold to pull up and place the successive rows. I actually found it was easier to do them staircase style so I am not pulling panels over the others, just the roof. The frame would still have been an asset though. That makes sense and from what I gather, you are able to do the work yourself unlike me. If I could do that, I may pay more attention to compliance but the roof isolators would be there merely as ornaments and be totally ignored in the wiring layout. :0) Your page is excellently written and illustrated as usual and would be all a person needed to know in one manual. So much misinformation on the net and overboard safety paranoia as people from a certain country seem so prone to. Like many other things I have learned from the net, there is much advise and methodology that is not what it seems with solar. The impressions I got when I was learning and reading up on solar I soon found through real world measurement and experimentation to be nothing like what I still read and are the parroted mantras today. Haven't been doing a fraction of the time you have but ebing very hands on and inquisitive, The learning curve has been rapid and the BS detector working overtime. Yes, much as with my own game. Real skills went out the window 10+ years ago. Things The old gaurd prided themselves on have been done away with by those too lazy and in a hurry to learn and perfect them so they have brought in whole new ways and Ideas to hide their lack of understanding and what is really, incompetence. They all pretty much do the same thing with the idea of all being the best as the key to success. The fact not everyone can be the "best" as in their parameters and other ways and approaches as well as the ability to problem solve does not even occur. I suppose this is the mentality when you have kids coming through school that got a trophy for coming last so their feelings weren't hurt. Yes, that is an excellent and very relevant point. Some of the work I have seen first hand and even seen in my own house has stunned me. I am completely untrained but I know right from wrong and what I have seen is so bad it would not even cross my mind to think about let alone do! My old house was wired by my father in law. Also untrained but probably wasn't even a requirement back in his day. I added to it of the same overbuilt and protected standard he did. When I look at this place, I shake my head. Of course I have already done many upgrades, splitting circuits and putting in much heavier cable so I can sleep better at night. Many rooms only have one outlet point which drives me insane. Already punched a lot of holes in walls and put another outlet piggbacking off another in a different room hence the circuit splitting but still more new cables to drop. The other place had an outlet on at least 3 walls and some rooms like the lounge and kitchen had 6 or 8. I go nuts only having a single outlet and having to orientate the room around that or run leads. There was always an outlet handy in the other place and because the house and circuits were divided around the house, you could run whatever you wanted and never have to worry about an overload. I miss that but have solved it here for where it counts in the main living areas. Luckily I have 3 phase here with 2 phases on meters I can backfeed. I have those phases pretty well loaded with the solar though and fortunately the roof space limits me to about 30 Kw total so I'm still comfortably under the current I can push back which is always a lot more than I draw. 24 hours to use power 6-12 to generate it so have to make it at a higher rate than what it's used. What do you pay per KWh there and what are you paid for what you generate and push back? Keep well mate. |
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poida Guru Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418 |
I'm both not surprised and very disappointed about the tiny house story. I've heard similar tales - one just recently about a bloke in NSW who wanted a simple manual changeover switch and inlet socket fitted to his switchboard so he could power a few circuits from a generator or inverter during an outage, and he had to call 3 or 4 different electricians before he found one willing to do it. Another mate wants a changeover switch installed. many called. None could do it. Mt Dandenong. He has some money too... Another was a friend of my uncles. He was setting up a sandblasting rig for his business, and it needed some basic control wiring, for emergency stops and the like and called a prominent local electrical contractor, and the response was "Sorry mate, I have about 20 sparkies working for me, but I don't think any of them can handle this job" In my experience most electricians don't have any genuine interest in electricity, and they don't have any desire to think outside the box. Someone told them they could make a lot of money at it and that was it. Sorry to say it but it's just this: tradesmen. Not a lot of brains. follow the training. send the invoices. safe as. buy the 3rd investment house. always get the new 4wd upgrade work ute every year. tax deductable too. etc... but ask them to show me Ohms Law. And then, Ohms law with AC voltage. (hmmm, that's complex..sorry a bit of an in-joke for the mathematicians here) And then ask him how a choke works. .. .. crickets. ... It's worse in Australia than most other countries I think, because its illegal for anyone else to do any electrical work it gives them a superiority complex. I don't really have an issue with requiring a licence for someone who wants to sell their services as an electrician, but the fact that there is no scope whatsoever for a homeowner to so much as replace a dodgy light switch. I mean, in pretty well every state in Australia you can get yourself a firearms licence and own a gun inside of 6-12 months. But if you want to change a faulty powerpoint yourself? Nope, thats too dangerous, unless you make a career out of it and complete a four year apprenticeship. I recall clearly the time when I had to replace a light switch in my family home. I was 12 years old. Dad had worked in the SEC for decades investigating electrical accidents. He instilled in my tiny head to f**kin well be careful with it. So I got my trusty old analog meter out. proved AC power was there. pulled the fuse. proved power was NOT there with the meter. replaced the switch. fuse back in. all good. nobody died. I was 12. Can you imagine the foaming at the mouth of all the TV current affair "journalists" should this happen today? It's all about insurance and nothing else. Edited 2021-06-27 21:40 by poida wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I was teaching my son at about 8 how to pull down a 2 stroke Victa mower engine and rebuild it then fire it up. Imagine letting a Kid do that these days with these do gooders. Tools, Flammable liquids, moving parts, spinning blades, hot exhausts..... If a kid told the teacher they did that now there would be DOCs on the door in an hour. He Never got a stretch because he was taught how to look for and recognise dangers and think through what he was ABOUT to do BEFORE he did it.... same as I was. I am also pedantic about checking Circuits. All the ones on my solar setups are triple isolated. One at the box, one on the sub board I put on and one to each inverter. I will walk the 50M to the meter box and back as many times as I have to and turn each and every breaker off in between with no shortcuts every time. Same as on the DC side which If I am doing anything significant, I get up on the roof and Break a connector and then get down and test twice to make sure. Yeah, I do a lot of things people say are dangerous and I'm mad for doing but I know what really is a threat and what I need to do to prevent brain fades and the Mrs finding me that pale colour of death one gets when they are gone lying on the ground when she gets home. |
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| johnmc Senior Member Joined: 21/01/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 282 |
Davo99 quote (He Never got a stretch because he was taught how to look for and recognise dangers and think through what he was ABOUT to do BEFORE he did it.... same as I was) The world has changed, It is now a world were the young are not always taught the skills of life but left to their own devices (mobile phone) By the time I was 12 year old (1953), I had full run of the workshop, had built a saw bench, small tin boat,model airplanes,radio crystal sets, been fruit picking and trapping rabbits for pocket money and food, could weld , taught to safely handle firearms, also how to tow vehicles driven by the old man to the workshop (so did many other kids who lived in the local district). Most of my generation in the country were at times called on to act as responsible young adults. This meant we were always busy and as mum would say not getting up to mischief End of Rant. cheers john johnmc |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
That is for sure! The problem of why kids grow up often so damn useless these days is Obvious. You grew up in the country, probably on land, I grew up in the suburbs in a House with a decent back yard and a wide street. So many kids these days are growing up in unit blocks. There is no shed or workshop as we knew it, No backyard, no opportunity to do anything with their hands including play Mud Pies and the majority of parents this generation and Mine were not hands on people anyway and could do little for themselves. They have no skills or knowledge to pass down to their kids so whom they going to learn from or have them even watch over them if they want to do anything? I could make things in the shed using the tools ( bar power tools) when I was a kid, light fires in the backyard, ride push bikes and minibikes, help Dad or Grandad work on the car or do things around the house like changing tap washers and play with my Bow and arrow set shooting the home made arrows through ply wood. None of this Suction cup stuff 6 Ft across a room. You disappeared playing somewhere till dark and came home covered in mud which you had to strip off at the back door and get in the bath and as long as you were home by dark, not a problem. Even in the suburbs near me which is on the very edge of the Suburban sprawl, they are building these tiny dog boxes all on top of one another where the only things kids can do is play on video games. I guarantee 90% of them don't even have a pushbike like was the standard when I was a kid. Who DIDN'T have a push bike... and a skate board and soccer, footballs, Cricket bat.. every second kid had a Billy cart... I wonder how many prison block raised kids or those about to be born into these often attached dog boxes will have anything like that? And of course some totally useless academic will be paid a fortune to come to the stunning conclusion that these kids spend too much time on video games, don't get enough exercise and other revelations that all come from when they built these places at the start. When you see these places one can only think, what in the hell CAN the kids do in this environment OTHER than play video games? Not enough room to ride bikes in the street or play ball games like we used to and the parks are FAR and few between and have so much pretty landscaping " Features" there isn't enough room to do anything anyway. Country kids will be much better off but City kids don't have a hope in hell of being the least bit hands on or self sufficient. Tradies are going to earn more and be in bigger demand that doctors and lawyers whom will be in gross oversupply as will every other " Professional" with soft, moisturised hands that have never seen dirt under their fingernails. Pointing out facts and problems is not a rant in my book. Not enough of it. |
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