… literally “daddy then puts his plug into mammy’s socket”.

YouTube :)

Forced Irish! No choice but to ‘learn’ it.

I am pretty sure i had no choice in any of my subjects until Second Level.

This should be part of the driving test, if you can’t chance the wheel of your car then you can’t pass the test

How many professional electricians are competent to use an oscilloscope for measuring timing of contact bounce/ release times of contacts. Or using generic meters to test rather than one click machines. Many DIYers are very capable. Of course some know their limitations. I have met loads of professional electricians who don’t understand peak, rms, power factor, and j notation, capacitive and inductive circuits etc. Few electricians would know how to measure peak voltage with an ordinary moving coil meter calibrated for rms. Few know the effect of using too high an input impedence meter on a dead cable when testing before working on.

@Aurfur 99.99% of domestic electrical call outs would never need any of what you mentioned.

only speaking from personal experience but then i don’t suppose those who are genuine need a sparks to fix it. Fas syllabus has everything you mention in it and if you know the theory and maths behind electricity an rms meter is all you need to get peak.

If you want to test a residual current breaker, or test a capacitor (well pumps) and subsequently change it you need to understand peak and rms values and how to use generic test gear. Also need to understand how to calculate capacitance in series and parallel if the correct value is not to hand on a call out. Whilst we are on that subject adjusting relay tension, follow through and residual gaps all come into play on switch gear for pumps. Surely the object of a competent person is to safely restore service to non working equipment as soon as possible.

I saw a professional electrician test a dead cable with a 10 Mohms per volt input impedance meter and then couldn’t understand why he had a 100 volt reading on it. I lent him a 20 Kohm per volt analogue meter and suggested he try that. He never understood why he now had a zero reading but was happy to then work on the cable.

Finally if a boiler doesnt work you can’t just change the boiler you need to be able to test which component is faulty before disconnecting and repairing or replacing.

Pauline K

True you can calculate peak from rms and vice versa, but to actually measure peak with an rms calibrated multimeter you have to make up some circuitry. Square root of two and reciprocal of root two only apply to pure sine waves. With modified waveforms found in inverters there might be some uncertainty. Certainly most analogue meters with the exception of moving iron meters are calibrated to measure full sine waves at rms and within some frequency limitations. Hence a half wave rectified non smoothed interface would give a false rms reading, and if smoothed would read peak even if not a sine wave, provided the components used were suitably chosen. And to be correct if making up an interface to measure peak the losses in the components would need also to be taken into account.

Sh*t, you played with hand grenades and we learned about Peig!

Do people now believe that if they have a go at religion everytime they open their mouths that they are somehow making some kind of comment that is intelligent or what. It is the new sheeple activity….lemmings

No Sheelagh, but replacing the teaching of it in schools is a valid opinion these days.

I remember that. It came in handy there a couple of months ago.. a good 15 years later!

@Hanley I was not picking on Religion classes just for the sake of picking on religion. I only suggested them be used because in a lot of schools they are used as free classes or study periods. I had three a week when I was in school and it would have been beneficial for myself and my classmates to take one of those classes and be taught how to change a tire or something to that effect. It wouldn’t have spoiled my religious education if I had two instead of three classes a week.

Interesting points!! Now when the person adjusts the oil pump pressure instead of bleeding the oil pump on a Riello G3b what happens or when they bleed the radiators and it drops the system pressure so much the circ pump cavitates and the boiler shuts down what do you do?

Call a plumber? You wouldn’t know any would ya Thomas? ;)

Make sandwich (easy) but i still go to subway;)

Buy a gauge, bleed the fuel, look at the pump manual, follow fault finding flow chart and reset procedure. Adjust pressure to manufacturers settings.
Recharge the primary water system with the filling loop to about 1bar. Get system going and calculate correct running pressure for system and size of pressure vessel.

How many plumbers over here fit a micronic filter to the fuel supply and a capillary fuel cut off outside the building with internal and external manual fuel shut off valves as per most boiler manufacturers manuals.

Sorry forgot wont have to buy a pressure gauge or smoke pump or gas analyser as I already got them in my tool box some years ago. Competent DIYer.

Keyboard typing lessons (touch typing) would be also handy.

Pressure drop? You must have some sort of a gague (manometer) somewhere in your hotpress or around boiler where you can see current pressure and add more water from the mains using tap provided to increase the pressure. Pretty simple thing, there must be even some sort of a red arrow which points to the safe limit value, just keep adding water until black arrow reaches red one. If you do not have red arrow, no problem : usually safe limit is about 1,5 or 2 bar. Rocket science?

Agreed and then you clear the leak from the potential fault that the plumber left some years ago cos either he didn’t solder the joints properly and clean up afterward, or the compression joints weren’t tightened properly. How many plumbers can lead weld (burn) and know how to solder lead today.

Agree. Let teachers teach.

Getting teachers to teach DIY is like parents abdicating responsibility for teaching menial tasks which should be taught at home.

Helena,

With the greatest of respect but if someone cannot cook a simple meal, it is due entirely to laziness or personal choice, not inability.

but if there is a gap in the passing on of these life skills then somewhere along the way it needs to be taught. I think most people point out that maybe as part of the TY programme not everyday teaching.

Very reasonable and good on you