Outdoor lights

The house has nice built-in outdoor lights. Sort of a roof tile incorporate in the wall and plaster, with a lightbulb inside. All fittings, however, made of plastic, have not survived well. 10 of these, eh. Engineer Jansen was not impressed.

La Ribina, subestacion (30 April 2022)

There are plans for high voltage lines and a big substation... 

En Antas, en Vera, en la Ribina, en el Cabezo Maria, esto es solo el principio, el núcleo energético de Almeria.

Un par de preguntas o tres:

¿porque la estación AVE no conecta directamente a la linea litoral 400kv que lleva 30 años funcionando entre Carboneras y Murcia? y en cambio ¿hay que esperar a construir una subestación y una linea expresamente para el AVE cerca del Cabezo Maria? y que ¿conlleva un coste extra de 5 millones de euros y aumento de lineas e impacto ambiental?

¿porque llaman subestación Ribina a la subestación del Cabezo María, y en la Ribina no la construyen?

¿Alguien ha visto o previsto, el avispero de lineas que sera Antas?

En todo este desastre ¿ha tenido algo que ver el imputado en proceso penal don Jose Luis SANCHEZ TERUEL, que estaba en 2008 de vocal en el Consejo Rector de la Agencia Andaluza de la Energía, junto al que ahora es jefe de Red Ecléctica de España en Andalucía, Jorge Juan? y que se presenta tercero al Parlamento de Andalucía? 

 

Power to the people, or not

Power to the people, or not, if your RCD breaks during the night. All switches are up, none auto-switched off, power to the top of the RCD, but none from it’s bottom. Engineer Jansen concluded the RCD needs replacing. He made it so.

Luckily the cellar has it’s own switchboard, and RCD, so we could power the fridge-freezer from there with an extension cord.

Cant’t even have a quiet nightly pee in this house!

We had quite a few short power interruptions the past few weeks, and naturally blamed Endesa for being useless, still. We’ll see what happens, and maybe we can be sorry for Endesa. (Update: 10 days on: no power interruptions) (Update: 20 days: still fine)

Postes electricas quitado

Finally. The ugly electricity posts that were attached to the house in the past, some 50 years ago, are finally gone. They were simply screwed onto the walls, breaking the side roof tiles in a bad way.

Also, the holes under the tiles at the side of the house are neatly filled with white mortar again. No more use for the plastic bottle in the middle picture to keep the birds out. (Second tile left off the post in the middle picture.)

Electrickery

Today a happy announcement: the electricity in the living room and bathroom nr. 2 stays ON! Since the new earth wire the "earth leakage circuit breaker" (ELCB) tripped, and we were without power. We narrowed the problem to the living and that bathroom, because they would trigger the problem. But what caused it? A spider in a socket? We were afraid of faulty wiring, as the "electrician" that installed the cables here is a damn *@$^^@(^6!Grr IDIOT (see below).

Anyway. Decided to disconnect everything, and see if there is a (change in) resistance between the two wires, or to earth. Removed those IKEA chandeliers first. Measured a resistance between the wires of 700Ω with open light switch. Flip the switch and it would be 78Ω. Odd, and not good. I expected ∞. Flipping the light switch for the bathroom made the resistance change too. Removed the lights in the bathroom. Still not good. What else. Ah, there still is that old wall ventilator. Cracked it open, and disconnected it. Ahhh.. now we're in the range of 17MΩ between the cables. Still not ∞, but the ELCB has not tripped since, so we're still good. (Fingers crossed.)

Yes, putting these blocks in plaster like that is a great idea. NOT.

Switches like these, with holes to stick a wire in, are intended for solid copper cables, NOT the multi-strand wires like these. Tinned it's a bit better.

Here we have a junction box, where wires in the wall are connected further. If you use multi-strand copper you need to tin the ends before screwing them tight in a block. Else you can just pull them out a few years later, like the visible copper. I could pull that out without unscrewing the block. Morons!

Here is a wall socket that was loose. Again, untinned wires just stuck in there.

Three wires in one hole, which does not fit, so you cut off half the strands. And you don't tin them, of course. F*cking idiots!

And no, this is not Spanish workmanship. So far we only encountered decent professionals here. This is British' work. Well, some 15 more switches and wall sockets await improvement. Things can only get better.

Chispas!

Every time there was rain and hard wind, as today, the electricity blinked, and the light, and the computers, and (gasp!) the internet connection. And we don't want that. Today the blinking was accompanied by loud cracks outside. After a few times I saw that this was caused by sparks (chispas in Spanish) at the top of the electricity pole near the unused water pumping station. Called the electricity company, who were here within the hour with a platform car. Hopefully it's disconnected and stable now.

Unwelcome visitors

Many people here have an Indalo man figure on their house. Usually made of some iron wires bent and welded together.

← Look! Here it is still on our house!

Ours is now gone. Only a faint rusty trail remains. Where did he go?

And who broke the lock of the gate to the workshop, bent the gate in the process, but decided to not break the door of the workshop itself? (Which would have been dead easy because the wood there is quite gone.)

So, we need to take anti-burglary measures. (With as much electricity as we like.)