The Home Improvements Thread (2)

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So I am done with the maintenance on my 2 rental houses. Now it's my turn for my house. Fsck me. It never ends.
The paint and sealers etc comes to 20 drums. This is just for the house and not the boundary walls. Thats still extra.

1659091300801.png
 
Does anyone have experience with / would recommend / advise against trying to retrofit double glazed windows into a wooden window frame? It is for a large compound window with pixed panes and I was considering the option of redoing the windows with aluminium frames with double glazing. This is mainly to dampen noise from the road, but the thermal insulation would be a bonus.
 
I have an asbestos roof which I want to encapsulate (to penetrate and harden the asbestos fibres) and paint over it. I was reading that a water based bonding liquid should be used. Does anyone have recommendations on this? Phoned a few hardware shops and I think the "asbestos" aspect is throwing them off a bit.
 
How would you trace electricity usage accurately? I've got a clamp meter - and we used 60kw yesterday - and for the life of me I can't figure out where. I've got smart monitors on just about every heavy user, combined they add up to 22kw. (geyser, pool, fridges, washing machine, dishwasher).

The only items not really monitored are the oven (30min use yesterday), light circuits (all led and off during the day), bedroom plugs (cell chargers and stuff), aircons (not in use at the moment).
 
xrapidx said:
How would you trace electricity usage accurately? I've got a clamp meter - and we used 60kw yesterday - and for the life of me I can't figure out where. I've got smart monitors on just about every heavy user, combined they add up to 22kw. (geyser, pool, fridges, washing machine, dishwasher).

The only items not really monitored are the oven (30min use yesterday), light circuits (all led and off during the day), bedroom plugs (cell chargers and stuff), aircons (not in use at the moment).
Click to expand...
How about an efergy meter? Could show you what times the usage occurs.
 
xrapidx said:
How would you trace electricity usage accurately? I've got a clamp meter - and we used 60kw yesterday - and for the life of me I can't figure out where. I've got smart monitors on just about every heavy user, combined they add up to 22kw. (geyser, pool, fridges, washing machine, dishwasher).

The only items not really monitored are the oven (30min use yesterday), light circuits (all led and off during the day), bedroom plugs (cell chargers and stuff), aircons (not in use at the moment).
Click to expand...
almost 40kWh? that really is a heavy user running a few hours.

The only times in our house we used 60kWh+ in a single day, is when we ran the big aircon for many hours. Thats a 4kW device. I doubt your oven used 30kWh in 30 minutes. Our oven uses between 2.2 and 2.8kW and its not for the full duration, usually the heating cycle and then goes down to lower usage while the oven is at temp only boosting it every now and then, you know, similar to how a thermostat work on a geyser.

Was nothing else used, like a high wattage lawn mower working the whole day, or some other tool where someone did work at the house the day etc? Cleaning lady running a vacuum most of the day or mix of vacuum, ironing and whatever else?
 
Tinuva said:
almost 40kWh? that really is a heavy user running a few hours.

The only times in our house we used 60kWh+ in a single day, is when we ran the big aircon for many hours. Thats a 4kW device. I doubt your oven used 30kWh in 30 minutes. Our oven uses between 2.2 and 2.8kW and its not for the full duration, usually the heating cycle and then goes down to lower usage while the oven is at temp only boosting it every now and then, you know, similar to how a thermostat work on a geyser.

Was nothing else used, like a high wattage lawn mower working the whole day, or some other tool where someone did work at the house the day etc? Cleaning lady running a vacuum most of the day or mix of vacuum, ironing and whatever else?
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Nope -also checked the history, it seems our daily usage ranges between 40-60kw.

Here's yesterday:


Capture.PNG
And same from HA
Capture1.PNG
 
xrapidx said:
How would you trace electricity usage accurately? I've got a clamp meter - and we used 60kw yesterday - and for the life of me I can't figure out where. I've got smart monitors on just about every heavy user, combined they add up to 22kw. (geyser, pool, fridges, washing machine, dishwasher).

The only items not really monitored are the oven (30min use yesterday), light circuits (all led and off during the day), bedroom plugs (cell chargers and stuff), aircons (not in use at the moment).
Click to expand...

First: Not sure if you on prepaid or not, but does the clamp meter correlate to what your prepaid or eskom meter is telling you? Perhaps the clamp is faulty or something.

Oven / Kettle can use a fair whack but 30 mins should equate to most 4kWh.

If it's not that:-

I think the best way to figure this out, is to just use a power monitor connected to a multiplug and then connect them inside the room to the stuff that is connected. Move the multiple plug to different rooms/areas every few days and you will get a power profile for what each room is doing

For example, I don't know how many TV's etc you have, but those things chow power too if you have a big TV and it's on a for a long time. Perhaps you will find the source.

Stupid things I found:-
On the smart plug connected to my dishwasher/washing machine. It uses 6w when both devices in standby. It's the washing machine. So now it gets turned off by HA , on the days we don't use it.

On my kitchen appliances : it's uses 3w when nothing is being used.

I guess my chargers and stuff in each room also drawing all the time but those I am not too concerned about tracking because at least in my case, I know all the 'heavy' stuff is accounted for.

More
 
xrapidx said:
That's the clamp meter I was referring to.

At night, 10pm - 5am when nothing is on we're using 2-2.5kw/h (geyser is off)
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Shew!!

external Lights? Somebody turn on a heater that you don't know about? Underfloor heating?

Edit:
When did the base load increase to 2-2.5 or has it always been like that.

HA will report the same usage (overall) as Efergy because it just reads those values. I was a previous Efergy user

Edit 2:
Has somebody tapped into your feed and using your electricity?
 
TedLasso said:
Shew!!

external Lights? Somebody turn on a heater that you don't know about? Underfloor heating?
Click to expand...
TedLasso said:
First: Not sure if you on prepaid or not, but does the clamp meter correlate to what your prepaid or eskom meter is telling you? Perhaps the clamp is faulty or something.

Oven / Kettle can use a fair whack but 30 mins should equate to most 4kWh.

If it's not that:-

I think the best way to figure this out, is to just use a power monitor connected to a multiplug and then connect them inside the room to the stuff that is connected. Move the multiple plug to different rooms/areas every few days and you will get a power profile for what each room is doing

For example, I don't know how many TV's etc you have, but those things chow power too if you have a big TV and it's on a for a long time. Perhaps you will find the source.

Stupid things I found:-
On the smart plug connected to my dishwasher/washing machine. It uses 6w when both devices in standby. It's the washing machine. So now it gets turned off by HA , on the days we don't use it.

On my kitchen appliances : it's uses 3w when nothing is being used.

I guess my chargers and stuff in each room also drawing all the time but those I am not too concerned about tracking because at least in my case, I know all the 'heavy' stuff is accounted for.

More
Click to expand...
All the TV circuits are monitored - I suspected the washing machine and dishwasher - so installed Shelly 1PMs this weekend, but they're barely using electricty.

Only outside lights on at night are in the front of the house, 5x 7w bulbs

Oh - and the clamp meter is within 5% of our prepaid units. Around 4k a month now.
 
xrapidx said:
Nope -also checked the history, it seems our daily usage ranges between 40-60kw.

Here's yesterday:


View attachment 1358113
And same from HA
View attachment 1358115
Click to expand...
ooh that paints a different picture.

Your base load is definitely the issue. 2.5kW where as ours is literally 330w to 500w. During sleep hours 330w and while awake and office laptops running we at 550-650w.

This is ours:
Screenshot 2022-08-02 at 09.16.23.png
Same graph showing where some of the power go in/out according to inverter:
Screenshot 2022-08-02 at 09.20.18.png


So yeah, you have something running the whole day and night that uses a lot of power. Probably heating. Usually heating devices that runs high like that. Heater in a kid's room?
 
Yeh, its kind of weird, looking back many months it used to be 700w.

Now to try and find what it is - we have a heater in the babies room - but we turn it off when we go to bed.
 
xrapidx said:
Yeh, its kind of weird, looking back many months it used to be 700w.

Now to try and find what it is - we have a heater in the babies room - but we turn it off when we go to bed.
Click to expand...
Well if you can figure out when it changed, then you can try and think what changed around that time. Only thing I can think about.
 
xrapidx said:
Yeh, its kind of weird, looking back many months it used to be 700w.

Now to try and find what it is - we have a heater in the babies room - but we turn it off when we go to bed.
Click to expand...
Also, start by turning off DB switches 1 by 1 until that base load drop. Then at least you have it isolated to a specific db switch and can trace it that way, by seeing what else is off at the same time. You will eventually find it.
 
xrapidx said:
That's the clamp meter I was referring to.

At night, 10pm - 5am when nothing is on we're using 2-2.5kw/h (geyser is off)
Click to expand...
Maybe if you can identify what happened here, you can identify what caused the base load to drop...

1659428436629.png
 
yup, looks like something ups the baseload around 8pm then drops around 6am.

Almost like an aircon thats scheduled to run during the night.
 
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