Good morning!!!!

[ponytug]

my old insurance company did just send me something interesting.
They are offering to provide a free Ting alarm.
I had never heard of them.
And now, I really wonder how this works and why they think it will prevent four
out of five fires. How does plugging into one isolated receptacle provide data on whole house regardless of wifi.
need some EE assistance here to understand this electrical arc detector.
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Ting is a smart home device and service by Whisker Labs that prevents electrical fires by plugging into a wall outlet and continuously monitoring your home's electrical system for dangerous electrical arcing. It uses digital signal processing to analyze electromagnetic activity, detects tiny, hazardous signals that often lead to fires, and sends real-time alerts to your smartphone via a connected app. The service provides instructions, coordinates with a Ting-authorized electrician for repairs (often with a credit for labor costs), and offers a 24/7 fire safety team.

How it Works

1. Installation:
   Simply plug the Ting sensor into any standard wall outlet and connect it to your home's Wi-Fi network using the Ting app.
   
   
2. • Monitoring:
     The device continuously monitors your entire home's electrical system for hidden faults, damaged wiring, and unsafe devices.
   • Detection:
     Ting identifies dangerous signals from electrical arcing, a leading cause of house fires, and other hazards like power surges.
   • Alerting:
     When a hazard is detected, the Ting app sends instant alerts to your phone.
   • Expert Support:
     A real-time response is provided by the Ting Fire Safety Team and a certified electrician can be coordinated to fix the problem, often with financial support from the service.

1) can the insurance company drop you or raise premiums if the device shows too many issues?
2) It says you only need 1, but there are 2 legs to power in the house, so minimum 2
3) if there are any sub panels, you would need more of them
4) it is a subscription service at $49/year.
5) there are plenty of people commenting how they had issues that the device did not pick up, which leads me to believe it is voltage only and not current.
6) see number 1

So it could help in some cases, make sure the subscription $ is not going to kick in at some point. I also don't see how only one could work on a 2 circuit system. I know they are not fully isolated, but a voltage drop on one leg is not necessarily reflected on the other leg.

I think of the Ting devices as spectrum analyzers for power. It looks for "noise signatures" on the electrical line that correlate with arcs and fires. My inference from the insurance companies paying for these units (my carrier offered me a Ting a while ago) is that the insurance companies must have data showing that it lowers losses. When I dug into Ting devices, their stance was that they can pick up enough noise from the other leg to be able to make the call on an arc. I have no evidence to the contrary and again, see the insurance company support as evidence that the Ting devices work.

Good Morning Again,
Woke up to this outside the corner of the house where the power comes in underground.

That's one way to solve an outage, and good service to boot!

FWIW: I have a number of acquaintances with the meter backup collar that they use for a plug generator and they all seem to like it. We opted for whole house batteries instead as the outages here were just getting too frequent, and of longer and longer duration.

@Popgadget that's a gorgeous solution for an awkward problem! Is that I-beam aluminum? Which model welder do you have?

Off to swap Starlink antennas and get the house back online. (Short version of the saga over on the Starlink thread)

All the best, Peter

 

[kenmbz]

We have had so many outages, mostly to tree falls here, that PECO is starting a whole Pole/wire and tree survey/removal process .
They are going to inform people when they will need to remove trees, I made sure ours were pretty good, but with pole replacement, not sure what they will want.
We have some pine and shagbark hickory about 10-15 feet in from one pole, so they should not interfere, hopefully. They are large and in great shape.

It is strange how they work sometimes, as they marked a tree across the main road from me, which is very dead and tall, but never removed it.

They also had a talk with my neighbor who has bamboo by the road and she has cut it back. Based on what I know from my own Bamboo removal, that will fill back in next spring and be just as bad. During snow storms they have a tendency to fall over into the road.
There is the shared road so they won't come onto my property, but on the other side of the shared road, nothing to slow them down.

 

[gstrom99]

'morning all. Going up to mid/high 80's today and tomorrow. I've been closing the windows at night, but may have to turn the a/c back on. My 45 year old MIG welder died (only second issue - ever) and I decided to buy a new one, rather than search out a possible repair shop here (rural Iowa). USA made, Hobart 190. This one has a cooling fan to get used to, which the old (big-transformer based) one didn't. Easy setup, works great, but the power cord is pretty short and I needed to upgrade the outlet and breaker to 30 amp. I bought two #10 extension cords (20' and 50') to get to the far end of the shop. I have 12 black walnut trees that shed nuts terribly. I ordered a neat roller/basket thing to try, but I'm pretty sure I'll revert to my standard corded shop vac process to pick 'em all up. I get about TEN tractor loader buckets worth, so I bet that little basket thing will get real tiresome fast (and get sent back to Amzn)...

 

[LouNY]

Good Morning Again,
Woke up to this outside the corner of the house where the power comes in underground.

Interesting contraption;
some type of rechargeable power station?

 

[ponytug]

Interesting contraption;
some type of rechargeable power station?

Basically a house sized UPS;

RESTORE-LITE® 10kVA 300 amp Connector 80 amp Circuit Breaker

RESTORE-LITE® 80070 is a convenient, lightweight system to restore power. It has a maximum of 80 amps and requires a 300 amp connector.

sncmfg.com

(300A charge rate, 80A supply maximum)

All the best, Peter

 

[rswyan]

66F and partly cloudy @ 11:30, heading up to around 78F for the day's high. Low this morning was 42.8F.

Got hay wagon/van swapped around and relocated/moved. Van has started on first try the last 3 or 4 times I have tried to start it. This was after I tried jiggling the relays in their sockets under the driver's seat ... so maybe just a poor connection.

Swapped 6" auger for the 12", cleaned out a couple of holes.

Swapped bucket for forks on the Kubota.

Hauled some fallen branches up to the burn pile.

Moved some other 12' 4 x 4 posts that were sitting on 8' 4 x 4's on the ground onto the hay wagon.

Took Kubota over to the barn and fueled it up.

Grabbed a bucket of dirt while I was over there and brought it back and placed it around the southeast corner post and watered it in. Needs built up further, still about 9' or so of post showing.

Went back and got a second bucket and placed most of that around the northeast corner post and watered it in. That pretty much brought grade up to close to where I want it to be, with 8' 1" of the post showing above grade.

Placed order with TSC for Gripple Torq Tool and 4 of their BeFast fence brace kits. Should be here tomorrow.

They were on sale - the tool itself was $10 off ... plus a dollar off on each kit ... lol. I'll actually need 8 but won't likely need the next 4 kits until next year. Seems like a pretty slick system:

Also need to order a staple starter tool, which oddly enough TSC did appear to have.

Should have some large spikes that were used for pinning landscape timbers/railroad ties together that I can use for pins on the H-braces down in the basement. So will venture down into the basement to see if I can locate those.

Have been looking around for the second string line and a new roll of string without success. Hard to imagine where they have gotten off to ...

Hope everyone is having a decent Thursday ...

 

[sodamo]

69°F and .06 inches rain

Much better mouth this morning. Replacing that 40+ yo Army filling was a bit more work than anticipated, but dentist did a great job I think.

Need to get more mowing this morning.

H & F at friends later.

Prayers for all
Be safe
Have a great day

 

[daugen]

safe and sound at KOA in Temperanceville VA, down near bottom of Delmarva peninsula. Weak wifi here, can't handle pictures, pretty remote here
but enough I have some soft music playing on the tv and sound bar.

very breezy out, over 20mph now, got shoved around a little crossing open areas.
I think it will calm down tomorrow.

tire guy could not find the tpms sensor, maybe I'll find it in my driveway when I get home, but I sure looked. At least no issues.

time for a nap while the wind whistles through the pines all around me.

 

[Looking4new]

I might have been up early this morning, but I was back to bed by 7:30 and got up to stay at 9:30.

Body work didn't get done, nor did anything else. I will get around to it before freeze up, maybe.

Another hour and I will get the laundry off the dryer.

I'm gonna go back down the rabbit hole.