Look what landed

[solarman216]

Yes this lot landed in my yard today, lets see how my log splitter gets on with it, but not till this heat goes, incidentally my spring has dried up (first time ever) so we are abstracting water from the stream and triple filtering it, the 8k ltr tank in the background is full after the first filtering and ready to be filtered again into the barn holding tanks, this will be good for bathing etc but drinking and cooking it will be filtered yet again, Rick

[jims-terrano]

It sounds great to be off grid Rick but worrying about the spring drying up if you don’t have any other water source.
Mind you that log store looks Australian, it’s upside down:lol

I thought about you yesterday and wished my setup was like yours. We have the cable layers digging up the roads for fibre broadband. Sure enough I knew it would happen our electric went off at lunchtime yesterday. They’d stuck a jack hammer through our mains cable, it was making interesting noises directly below a gas pipe. I think they were very foolish as they removed the drill bit from the actual jack hammer and left the bit in the cable. I think they were exceptionally lucky with the jack hammer and even more so taking the jack hammer off the bit.
Eventually we had the electric board out early evening and they restored power at about 8 last night.
It’s a shame my solar setup relies on a mains supply to power the controller and of course not having batteries.

[solarman216]

Yes sorry about it being 180 out but that is computer's for you, spring drying up is not a big problem, soon as we get some rain it will come back and the stream is still flowing albeit slowly but more than enough for our total needs including watering the grass, they did correct removing the point from the hammer rather than pulling it out, pulling it out of the cable could have been much worse, Rick

[jims-terrano]

As long as you and Mags are OK for water that’s the main thing Rick, personally I think it was stupid to privatise utility’s like water. I’m guessing a shareholder in a far off land won’t give two hoots about people in this country being under water restrictions as long as they see a return in their investment but that’s another story completely.
As for the jack hammerI totally agree it needed leaving in place but I would of thought the safest thing to do would be to leave the whole thing in the hole and let the electric board remove it. My logic suggests that they put them selves in danger going near the blade to release it from the jack hammer but that’s just me.

[solarman216]

Yes we got plenty water, yes they took a small risk removing it but as all underground cables have a reinforced sheath at Earth potential the point will be in contact with that as well as any other conductor it damaged, problem is if the head which is quite heavy was left in place it could well have put extra strain on the cable and possibly make the situation worse, but I am viewing this from a remote position so will not have the full details that the guys on site would have had at the time, and they will have in place standard procedures to follow in such situations, like if you hit a gas pipe and can get to it, stuff it full of mud, if this cannot be done then if there is nothing too close to burn then throw a match in the hole, if that cannot be done then evacuate immediately within a 300 yard distance, Rick

[solarman216]

Currently got about 10,000 Litres in stock plus a well watered garden, Rick