mending things

I have had a 4 slot Dualit toaster for the last 15 or so years, and it has worked well. I replaced one of the heating elements some time ago, covered in another post. The timer switch had recently become unreliable, sometimes when you turn it, the red "on" light didn't engage and the elements didn't come on. I ordered a new timer from Dualit, which was not cheap , £27 from Dualit via their website, but I like the toaster and don't like throwing items away when a small part fails. The spare duly arrived and this is the fairly easy replacement procedure. NOTE : TOASTERS USE MAINS ELECTRICITY. ONLY ATTEMPT THIS IF YOU ARE COMPETENT WITH ELECTRICAL REPAIRS.  ALWAYS ENSURE THE ITEM IS FULLY DISCONNECTED AT THE WALL FROM THE MAINS SUPPLY BEFORE UNDERTAKING ANY OF THE FOLLOWING To gain access to the timer you need to remove the crumb tray and flip the toaster on its top. I use a plastic tray to sit the toaster in, collecting any screws and bread crumbs tha...

A number of my posts here regard my battle to replace GU10 and MR16 Halolgen bulbs with LED equivalents, via a short period of CFL bulbs. This has been successful, with all the 40 halogens having been replaced with LED some 5 years ago. My energy consumption has gone down and so has the amount of heat generated into the loft and ceiling space from the bulbs. Since then I have kept an eye on LED full size light bulbs for ES (Edison Screw) SES (Small Edison Screw and Bayonet fitting bulbs, all of which are represented in my house. Until recently I had found the LED lightbulbs to have dimmer light and a cold blue tint, much as the first Halogen replacements had. A few weeks back while in my local B&Q DIY store I saw a display of Philips LED Bulbs, some of which featured clear glass and a kind of internal perspex crown-shaped diffractor. I'm pleased to say I have tied both in SES , ES and Bayonet form-factors and they are superior to the Com...

Common themes across most of my posts are energy conservation , its monitoring and technology. This post sort of combines all three in one. We have a Sky+ satellite unit with integral hard disk recorder. In the UK this is known as a Sky+ box. The unit can be programmed to easily record programmes 24 hours per day and record complete series at a repeating time. It has lots of features, including OnDemand  services where a wide range of channels are recorded on the off chance you might want to watch them. My specific Model Sky + HD unit is made by Amstrad We also have a 46" Samsung LED TV which is hooked up to the Sky+ unit . I use a CurrentCost household energy monitor, which is hooked up to the internet via a unit called a netsmart, also from CurrentCost (see my other post on currentcost). I can see on a web page a graph of my household energy consumption in close to real time. A 3rd type of device from CurrentCost is the Individual Alliance Monitor (IAM) which is a unit whi...

I have seperately blogged my experiences with LED replacements for halogen bulbs, where their size, low heat and beam characteristics work well, but what about normal light bulbs i.e the kind you have in ceiling lights, reading lights and elsewhere ? While on holiday in the USA I picked up a couple of small golf ball LED bulbs with ES fittings. These were to replace the two conventional light bulbs in my fridge freezer. They work well in this setting, and while a bit dimmer the light quality works well. While only on for a few minutes while the door was open, using conventional bulbs in a fridge bugged me, as it seemed they would introduce some heat into the fridge. Recenetly i purchased a 60 watt equivalent LED bulb from my usual supplier, simplyLED, to see how far these have come. This one was advertised as a true 60 watt bulb replacement in terms of brightness and colour temperature. As you can see the bulb has a semi opaque cover and some yellow sections are visible in...

I grew up with vinyl LP's in the 60s and 70s but by the mid 80s I embraced the new CD revolution and sold my LP's. However recently my teenage son started buying vinyl LP's even before we had a turntable. I got him a NAD 5120 for Christmas, which needed a little work but now plays very well with a modest Audio Technica AT95 cartridge. Our vinyl collection has grown and grown, some new but mostly old copies from charity shops, record stores and eBay. Often with purchases from charity shops ( thrift stores in the US) the records might be in poor condition. Always worth inspecting the disc out of its sleeve to see if it has any serious scratches. If it does its probably worth giving it a miss, but if its just dirt or grease these clean up very well. Its fun browsing boxes of old LP’s again, and if the charity makes some money then even better. However even apparently clean records sometimes "skip". This can be due to scratches but if the skip is a single one off i....

Some while ago we got a 4 slot Dualit toaster. They look great with their 1950's Italian styling but actually are made in East London. They are also substantial and the hope was that, while they are more expensive they would last. Other toasters have not faired so well. Well they are very well made, but eventually one of the heating elements failed. Toast was getting heated on one side. Time to replace the element. I went to the Dualit website and ordered a new element. You need to know the model of toaster that you have. You also need to choose the right element. Within a toaster you have single sided heating elements for the two end positions and do uble sided for the positions between. My toaster has 4 slots meaning that I have 3double sided elements and 2 single sided. It was one of the double sided elements that had failed. I searched on google and found this   brilliant illustrated   site  By Peter Eland, on how to change the element. The only differenc...

Inspired by the success of my bridged energy monitor which enables me to publish to and access data from the web, I decided to also get an IAM. CurrentCost is a household energy monitor, which uses wireless technology to communicate with an inductive 'clamp' installed around the mains electricity cable in my meter box (see other currentCost post). Recently the bridge enables the display to post data to the web. The IAM is a small unit resembling an electrical plug with a socket on the back. Basically you unplug a piece of equipment in your house, plug it into the IAM and plug the IAM into the wall socket. What it does is enable you to monitor individual appliances in your household using the CurrentCost display, in addition to the whole household. My Display supports up to 9 IAMs in addition to the primary function of displaying the total household consumption. I've always been a bit mystified as to why my background usage never falls much below 300 watts. Even while...

I just got a 'bridge' for my current Cost CC128 device enabling me to publish data to dashboard etc. Early days but here is my currentusage Works well, and meant that I could monitor my household energy use from abroad while on holiday ! The currentcost dashboard at my.currentcost.com has a mobile browser version which worked on my Android phone.

So in my previous blog I outlined how it's easy to log your consumption, how to convert everything to the same units (KwH) and a site - imeasure - which makes this a lot easier. If you do all of the above , or even some of it, you will see how much energy you use per week. Over time you may see trends, probably connected to the seasons. My household gas usage drops in the summer and rises in the winter - pretty predictable stuff. I'm going to park oil, as I don't have any experience of using heating oil, but much of what I describe will be similar for gas & oil. Separating the consumption of gas , in my case for central heating (CH) and hot water (HW), from electricty for a moment, it's worth thinking about what determines how much is used. for gas, it's used by a boiler. the boiler heats water in a heat exchanger which is pumped through the house, and diverted either through a coil in a how water tank (HW) or through radiators in the house. This is referred in...

So sometimes I fail to fix things, and it is only fair to document those occasions too. I am very fond of the stories of Sherlock Holmes. In the short story "The Adventure of the Yellow Face", set at Norbury, Staffordshire. Holmes gets the case completely wrong. Later Holmes says: " Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you. " For me, that whisper goes ' nano ' A few weeks ago I opened the washing machine and out tumbled my sons iPod nano, with the recently washed clothes. It had been in his shirt pocket and not been noticed. So.... consulting the web the general consensus was that slow drying stood the best chance of resurrecting the device. Some advocated keeping the iPod in a bag of dry rice. I just placed it inside our airing cupboard and left it for a week. I then pl...

I know more than I want to about these light bulbs. While the UK Government is waging war on the 100 watt incandescent light bulb, they have, typically, ignored the growing trend of using these bulbs. I guess they pay people to change bulbs for them. We had our house gutted and rebuilt in 2000, and as a consequence had around 40 recessed lights fitted, each of which take the GU10 mains voltage (240v) GU10 light bulbs. At first, the main issue was that the halogen bulbs had a very short life span and cost a lot to buy, around £5. I seemed to be changing a couple a week. Things have improved and now the bulbs are relatively cheap ( £1-£2) and have a fairly long life expectancy. So what is my gripe ? Well these bulbs are rated at a hefty 35 or 50 watts. The packaging even implies that they are energy saving in some way, but of course watts are watts. i If you have 5 * 50 watts halogen bulbs in your kitchen, then you are using a unit every 4 hours they are on. If I turn on all th...

My latest gadget, which I have had for a few months is the Current Cost CC128 . This device displays how much electricity we use , in real time. It also gathers historical data which I can download to a computer for analysis. There are quite a number of these type of devices from Owl, Wattson and others and they all work in broadly the same manner. The device has a display unit , as seen in the picture. It communicates with a sensor which you install alongside your electricity meter via a wireless connection. The sensor unit has a clamp which loosely attaches around the cable leaving your electricity meter. That's it ! Takes about 2 minutes to install and does not require an electrician. Nor does it interfere with your electrical supply or wiring in any way. Completely non invasive. I had previously had an Owl device which worked very well, but did not record historical data. I passed this unit on to my mother-in-law who is using it in France, where it also works well. I chose the...

A gadget which I think goes largely unnoticed by consumers and plumbers alike is the programmable thermostat. I have a Honeywell CM67 but the model has been superseded by the CM907. Worcester do a similar model- I'm sure there are others as good. You can get them for around £50 online at plumbing shops. There is a range called Heatmiser too, you can find these on Amazon.  These devices replace the room thermostat, which in many cases is the classic "clunk-dial" based on a bi-metallic strip. These old style stats are based on 19th century technology. Their strip is made up of 2 thin layers of different metals, bonded and when it heats up the strip bends due to the differing rates of expansion of the two metals and this forms the pole of a switch. Because of the phenomena of hysteresis, these types of system are slow to respond, and take too long for the stat to switch on or off. To compensate , they actually have a tiny heater in them and actually consume some power. The h...

I have an Apple G5 iMac and I use the standard Apple Mighty Mouse with it. This is a wired, optical mouse , with a small tracker ball on top for scrolling. The top ball develops the same dirt build up on the underlying rollers that afflicts conventional ball mice. However the Mighty Mouse is much harder to remove the ball. Mine stopped up scrolling , so I googled this problem and found this excellent site. http://www.linklink.co.uk/apple-computers/cleaning-inside-and-dismantling-the-apple-mighty-mouse/ It's a fiddly job, and the tiny magnetic rollers are best handled with non ferrous (i.e. non-magnetic) tools, so a pair of plastic tweezers are a big help. I followed the instructions above and my mouse is back to normal. Shame it's so hard and involves forcing the "skirt" section away, necessitating super glue to fix it back on though Update May 2010 Well once again the tiny roller ball has stopped working. I really like the look of the new magic mouse which has no sc...