Enviroswim Problem

Last week I turned on my pool for its daily 6 hour cycle and although the pump was working fine the enviroswim had no power.

Troubleshooting

The pool pump is connected through the enviroswim box but presumably is
on another separately fused circuit as no Enviroswim indication lights showed at all. I haven't had this happen before, but this was probably a fuse. I checked my manual and it stated the fuse will blow if you add too much undiluted chemicals to the skimmer box. I presume that this means more solutes therefore greater conductivity and therefore more power is drawn. I have been careful not to place undiluted chemicals in my skimmer box so this wasn't the case. I removed the fuse which is easily visible and labeled on the front of the Enviroswim control box. It has a label stating "slow blow" fuse. Insert a screwdriver into the slot on the fuse-holder and push in and turn. It will pop out. Yep, there was a black and silver carbonised blob in the middle of the glass fuse where the fuse-wire had been.

Silensor Pool pump.... Why the Enviroswim fuse blew

I have a Davey Silensor pool pump servicing my pool. This pump has low power consumption and is very quiet. It is also relatively easy to service. I am generally quite happy with this Australian design award winning pump, but it has one shortcoming. The capacitor blows around every 4 years. I have 2 pumps. One for the pool and one for the spa. In 9 years I  have now replaced the capacitor twice on each pump. This is an easy task and only takes around 5 minutes.  Unfortunately the capacitors are not easy to source and as they are around $15 each I generally don't have a spare lying around.

 How to get your faulty Davey Silensor to start

If your Davey Silensor just hums and will not start I have found a way to get a few emergency starts out of it. The humming is due to a faulty capacitor that can be accessed via the end of the pool pump body by unscsrewing a single bolt. I have documented this in a previous post.

Before the capacitor gives up completely it can be overridden by turning the power switch on and off very quickly... perhaps 5 or 6 times in 3 or 4 seconds. The capacitor will hum as each power cycle is turned on and off and then the pump will catch and start up. I had been doing this for the past month as I hadn't a chance to get to the local electronics store to get a replacement capacitor. The frequent cycling on and off must have caused my fuse to blow.

Fixing the Blown fuse

Finding a replacement fuse wasn't that easy. The fuse looked like any other 5 amp 3ag (30mm long glass cartridge fuse) that you can find in the autoshop... but the Enviroswim box was marked  "slow blow" above the fuse holder.  A slow blow fuse has a time-delay before it blows. This way it can have a small surge of higher current and still not blow. These are however not easy items to find. The identification markings on the on my Enviroswim fuse were confusing. The label on the Enviroswim control box stated "slow blow", yet the fuse itself was marked with an "F" (needed my glasses and a torch to see this) identifier as the first alphanumeric of the code on the base of the fuse.  This usually would indicate it was a standard "fast blow", not slow blow fuse.

After 2 hours of driving around and trying Bunnings, Supercheap auto and Jaycar.  I gave up and bought a pack of 4 standard 5amp 3ag fuses from Supercheap Auto for under $4 and decided to try one. As it is fast blow I figure the worst that can happen is that the fuse may blow more frequently. So far a week in and everything is fine.... Oh, and I replaced my faulty capacitor as well and it now switches on first time every time.... Bliss!!

IF YOU ARE HELPED BY THIS JUST HAVE A LOOK AT MY NEW WEBSITE AS I NEED GOOGLE TO GIVE ME A BIT MORE LOVE AND EVERY CLICK HELPS INCREASE MY GOOGLE TRAFFIC ....more traffic means being ranked higher on the Google search results page....and that means more business. Unbelievably it seems that I am ranked number one for about a dozen Swimming pool and Garage queries, but am on about page 10 for Adelaide Architects. Any search phrase with the words "Adelaide" and/or "Architect" in it is highly competitive and Google pay per click results will come in before any natural organic searches. Highly visited sites will however will gain page rank and win out in the end.... so every click helps.

ENERGY EFFICIENT POOL and POOL-HOUSE

This new building I designed in my Adelaide Architectural Practice is cutting edge technology and a world first. By using solar tiles
across the entire roof the hope is to provide more electricity and
heating than the existing house, new Pool-house and swimming pool can
consume. The product we are using to power and heat this new development is an Australian photo-voltaic roof tile called "Tractile". 

Building Integrated PV Roofing Tiles

Winning Australian Design awards for its innovation, Tractile is the first building integrated photo-voltaic thermal (BIPV-T) product on the market. As the product is "building integrated" there is no need for a secondary cladding underneath. Tractile is a roofing tile formed from a composite material that has a photovoltaic upper surface and a series of water cooled fins underneath. The individual photo-voltaic tiles have  electric and hydraulic connections that allow them to be connected together to make up as big an array as required. Other options in the Tractile range are similar looking tiles that only heat water, as well as ones that are just roof cladding. As all the tiles look the same the roof looks more aesthetically pleasing that one with retrofit PV units on top.

Off the Grid

All that excess power needs to be stored somewhere or put back into the Grid. Two Tesla Power walls will store the energy for use at night and during sub-optimal days. Tesla also has a roofing product for use with its power walls, but the specifications of the Australian product where so impressive it was the natural choice for this project. By using solar tiles
across the entire roof the hope is to provide more electricity and
heating than the existing house, new Pool-house and swimming pool can
consume which will enable the owners to be "off the grid".

Hydronic Heating

Not impressed yet? I haven't mentioned that the water used to cool the solar cells down gives them a much more efficient energy creation profile...up to a 100% improvement over standard PV cells. In addition this water jacket on the underside of the tile can be used to keep the house both warm and cool. The heat collected in the water isn't wasted as it will be used as a hydronic heat source in winter.  Tractiles waste hot water will be used to heat the house by placing high density polyethelene tubing in the floorslab and connecting it to the Tractile manifolds. A simple heat exchange between water and concrete allows the water to be pumped back up to the roof at a cooler temperature to repeat the cycle.  Underground ballast tanks connected to the roofs gutter collect rainwater that will be used to dissipate the heat in summer.

Pool Heating

Additional heat can be exchanged via the 70kl swimming pool by using it
to keep the water within a nice swimming range in summer. The pool (without the pool-house) was the initial brief for this project, but the more the clients learned about Tractile the more their brief changed. Initially the idea was to include a small outbuilding for solar heating but as they analysed the benefits this was upgraded to become the 160sqm pool-house. The pool-house design will be used as a party room/bar as well as guest accommodation. The pool-house is essentially a moderate sized house with a  mono pitched roof facing North. Although this is only a single storey house the roof is elevated to the height of a two storey building to both give it the solar access it requires and give the party space some visual drama. At night when the lights are on the roof will appear to float as there is a continuous band of highlight windows underneath it.

Not Quite Goodbye

After 10 years it seems that Google no longer loves me and I need to move with the times and have a smaller, mobile-friendly website. As a consequence it has been a while since I have posted much here as I have been spending my spare time building my new website. Although I will be posting less frequently, this (my original) website will continue to be on-line as it is crammed with lots of information and facts about what an Architect does, Architectural documentation, the Building Industry, planning and building approval processes as well as previous projects.

My new website is mainly a portfolio of recent domestic houses, house extensions and up-market swimming pools that I have designed. It also has a new blog which will be concentrating mainly on the small business aspect of Architecture, 3d design and documentation with Sketchup. In addition I will be posting regularly about this new Energy efficient build, currently under construction during 2018.

Google Analytics Tracking Code

Google is king when it comes to Marketing. I could not run my Architectural business on the internet without it.

In order to work out how your site is performing with Google you need Google Analytics. The idea is that you add a bit (snippet) of code into your site which lets Google monitor how people find you and how they navigate through your site. The Google information and help files on how to do this are well put together, but a little confusing if you don't have much experience with code or haven't had much experience in building websites.

RVsitebuilder CMS and Google Analytics Tracking Code Insertion

Rvsitebuilder is a default program for building websites that comes with my provider (Ventraip). It really isn't that easy to use compared to modern website building programs but it does have a lot of flexibility. The problem is that it makes .Php files not .Html. If you look at the filenames shown on your browser the filetype is shown at the end of the URL. Most content manager driven website or blog programs such as wordpress, Drupal or rvsitebuilder use the php file system. This means that access to parts of the code that forms the website may be difficult, or in some cases (depending on what CMS software you are using) impossible. HTML code is easy to change as you just can paste bits of code in where you want. Php is trickier however as the code isn't directly accessed as changes are made through the Content management system (CMS) of the RVsitebuilder program.  Analytics typically asks the snippet to be put at the end of the head tag just before the body. How to edit a header or body tag in a RVsitebuilder .php file isnt that obvious.

Which Google Tracking Code Snippet Type To Use On RVsitebuilder Generated Website?

The Google analytics help files give a lot of information for different website setups with several different snippets of code available and several methods of implementation depending on what kind of site you have. They aren't that good at explaining where you put your code in specific cases like RVsitebuilder generated websites. The Rvsitebuilder help files aren't that good either. I have built several websites for friends over the past decade and every time I do it seems that the Google analytics snippet changes, as does the process to insert it. This means that what should take 5 minutes usually takes me half a day.

Typical Google Analytics gtag.js Snippet

A typical analytics  gtag javascript snippet looks like this (I have blanked out the actual UA code portion). This is the  recommended basic snippet installation and it is to be put at the end of the head tag in your page. It will be generated for each individual user as part of the analytics registration process.

<!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-xxxxxxxxx-x"></script>
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());

  gtag('config', 'UA-xxxxxxxxx-x');
</script>

How To Insert Your Analytics Snippet Into Your Rvsitebuilder Webpage

To insert the Analytics snippet into my Architectural business site using RVsitebuilder I needed to:

Navigate to step2 in RVsitebuilder

Go to "Site Properties". (This lets you edit your template). It is at the bottom of the left menu so you may need to scroll down to see it. Next Click on "Edit head tag" then click into the "other embedded" edit box. Paste the code in to this box. Press the "update" button then "save" then re-publish your site. It may take a few days for google to start entering data, so be patient.

Inode Limit and Management on Cpanel

My Cpanel informed me that my Inodes were in the Red zone. Whaat? I didnt even know I had any Inodes.... What where they and what were the sneaky little blighters doing multiplying away all by themselves. I hadn't done anything much on my website for years. It was all pretty well self maintaining wasn't it?

Simple Inode Reduction Methods

I googled it & found out it is just a fancy name for a file size limit. Each Inode is a single file... Ok this should be easy. Just reduce the amount of files. I cleaned out all the obvious things like EMAILS and files in my junk folder in my Cpanel File Manager. I also cleaned out thousands of un-moderated spam forum replies that had been languishing for years in my blog before I turned the respond feature off.

Inode level still in Red zone

I checked after the clean-out and I had reduced it by 5%. I needed about a 25% reduction to be down to the blue safety zone (there is a yellow caution zone in-between). I needed to do something else. What about temp folders and files that aren't actually needed by my website?

RVsitebuilder Issue with Temp File Creation

I checked and the culprit was Rvsitebuilder. I am not sure if it is due to a glitch or something malicious but there is a temp folder buried within the Rvsitebuilder/Websitepublish/(my sites code number) Var/tmp folder. This single folder contained a heap of Temporary files that I deleted. It carries about one year of temp files and on some days creates a dozen and on other days thousands. Unfortunately File Manager is really clunky and keeps freezing when you try to delete too many files at one time.   Fire-fox then freezes and dies and requiring multiple log-ins and so many small deletions are required rather than one large Quick-fix. 2 hours later and I had managed to delete 52,000 files, getting my Inoded down from 161,000 to 109,000. I still have a bit of work to do, but at least I am down into the "Blue zone" again. All I now need to do is find out why RVsitebuilder created these files in the first place.

NBN: CONNECTION SPEED AND LANDLINE PROBLEM

I changed my small architectural home office to NBN last Friday and it was a mess. Four days later and I have just sorted it out. In that time I have had to go to the Telstra shop for a new phone as well as Bunnings for cable and plugs. I have
had my internet slow down then fail completely and needed a 52 minute call to Telsta/Bigpond to get back on-line….and that was the easy bit.

NTD TO TELSTRA BIGPOND ROUTER ISSUE

I already had cable internet at my home office and so no new wires to the house were needed. What needed to be done was provide a point at which NBN could say “that is my equipment and from there on that is yours”. The way this is done is that a NBN box  (Network termination device or NTD) is put in and connected to the end of my cable and my Telsta router/distribution box which was only 6 months old was thrown away. A
new NBN ready Telstra ready one was then installed. I now have 2 ugly boxed to look at instead of one. This also means when fault finding there is one more link in the chain that can go wrong. Digressing now for a bit of a gripe about big business being stupid and inefficient….. I cannot understand why Telstra would supply me with a new router during the NBN run-out that isn’t NBN ready.... especially when the existing one was still working without problem, This
means that in 6 months I have thrown away 2 perfectly working pieces of equipment. Telsta to prove it is being “Green” does provide a recycling point that they can be returned to…. Mmmm does that make sense ???

NTD AND LAND-LINE PROBLEM

CONNECTION TO OLD PHONES AND POWER

NBN CONNECTION TO EXISTING PHONES MAY NOT WORK

Prior to the NBN I had an old wall phone and another from the 60’s that looks a little
like the bat-phone, plus a Telstra T-hub with 2 stations. The problem was that
they are not NBN ready and so was told I
needed a new NBN ready phone to keep my service working…..Simple? Not a bit …

NBN CONNECTION FROM NEW PHONE TO OLD  PHONES

My new NBN ready phone was plugged directly into the back of the new Modem and
(unexpectedly) everything worked fine. The problem was my other phones. The
instructions that come with the NBN and Telstra don’t say much about that. The
NBN guy just installs the NBN. He knows nothing about phones. After all the NBN
stops at the NBN box so he doesn’t have to…..

It is up to the user to make sense of the self-install kit their provider (in my case
Telstra) provides. OK, I’ll confess now,
I did 7 years with Telstra as a Tech back 30 years ago in the old pre-computer
world. Surely I was up to it?

I plugged the auxiliary extension lead into the back of the new phone and connected it
into one of my houses pre-wired phone-points and checked that I had dial tone
and that I could dial out. It turned out that I could receive calls but I
couldn’t get a ring tone. There is no point in having a phone if it doesn’t
ring. I had to check and see what the problem was. I plugged and unplugged
phones one by one to see where the fault lay. Even with everything unplugged
but the new phone I still didn’t ring. It looked like something was faulty somewhere in my wiring. It worked fine on the old system, but not the
new. I thought it may be due to cable length as I probably had hundreds of
meters of cable through the house.

I had 7 phone extensions in my house run with a birds nest of wiring I had added to over the last 30 years. I have raked
ceilings in my home and therefore no trafficable ceiling spaces, so I had run
the wires up and down stud wall cavities, behind plaster, through one double
brick part of the house, under the floorboards and between the roof tiles and
the sarking. I had also done things like
terminating 2 or 3 wires to one telephone jack and go off in multiple
directions …some of which were now redundant after swapping my office through 3
different parts of the house as each successive child was born and we needed
more room. The house is also on 5 different levels which adds interest to the
floor-plan but makes running cables a nightmare. It also makes tracing where the
various cables go a nightmare. I gave up after a couple of hours and decided to
start from scratch.

I went to Bunnings and purchased a couple of 15m
pre-terminated cables with RJ12 ends (like a computer cable but smaller &
with only 2 wires). I bypassed all my existing cable and ran the new one in and
I managed to get my 30 year old wall phone up and running as well as the new
phone. This was progress. I now had my
office phone and my extension in the house working fine.….

CONNECTION FROM NEW PHONE TO TELSTRA T-HUB FAILED

All I needed was to put a double connector onto the back of the new cable and connect in my T-hub
and I would also have a couple of hands free stations…. Perfect.....Unfortunately
plugging in the T-Hub killed everything. No phones would ring. Bugger….

I figure I can get by with what I have for a while and go out and purchase a new NBN ready
hands free system as my auxiliary phone. It is a pity my T-hub doesn’t work
anymore as it was the most modern phone I had in the house and I liked the
tablet and the clock. I have 2 working lines and will be content with that for
the time being.

NBN CONNECTION TO INTERNET FAILED

As for the Internet….at least it works.... Well actually it worked
then it didn’t…. then after almost an hour with an exceptionally friendly but
technically and linguistically challenged technician it worked again.

NBN CONNECTION SPEED SLOWER THAN I PAID FOR

I still have an open support ticket out with TELSTRA as the
NBN speed I am getting is rubbish….. I was getting around 30MB/s prior to NBN
and was paying $94 a month for it. Bigpond/Telstra promised up to 100MB/s if I kept on the same plan.

The moment I was connected to the NBN I was down to 22 MB/s. I could get that on a plan that cost half
what I am paying. I was told after another trip to the Telstra shop that speed
would pick up after another 48 hours. I waited and tested again. Still 22MB/s….
I inquired again and was told that it would pick up after 18 months…… So why
would I pay an extra $50 a month for something I cannot get?

NBN PROVIDER NOT PROVIDING.... LOOKING FOR ANOTHER PLAN

Ok, I have decided that I will look around for another cheaper plan as well as for a new
phone. Problem sorted…. Yes?....not quite.

I thought I had better check my recorded messages to see what business my office had missed while
my phones were down. I dialed my Telstra message bank and put in my pin…..
Guess what? Yep, it doesn’t work
anymore. It now tells me that my pin is wrong and to try again!!!!!