Absolutely Anything Else

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

....Stupid rules and regulations just as you have to be a qualified electrician to change plugs or light bulbs.

I think a lot of that is ignored.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but we have had this discussion before. The rules do tend to get overtight and it should be, and is, lawful for a homeowner to do basic wiring. It does not give you carte blanche to whack in any colour of wire you feel like, if you are going to rewire, do it to the proper standard. But we must just disagree with this one. Most of the vermicelli I have to untangle in this place is by people who did not know the basics, You do not need to be a qualified electrician to change plugs or light bulbs, and for most minor works around the house you only need to be a "competent person", you do not have to be a qualified electrician. There  is a strict meaning there of who is a "competent person" and it is in the regs.

If you can!t be bothered to be a member of the IET that is not my problem, because it is not expensive and not difficullt to join. I also have a red card for construction work which I never use but I nursed my mate Karoly/Charlie through it so he could work on the railways, and thought well since I'm there might as well get mine too. Probably well expired by now and is in a box somewhere

But you cannot have it both ways, you can't argue that the qualification is not worth anything when you don't have the qualification, that smacks of petulance, When you get your qualification, then you are in a position to argue it, not before. It is not the piece of paper but the theory and practice you have to do to get that piece of paper, the qualification is proof that you know what you are talking about. I am a qualified electrician, and my ex-landlady!s father is also a qualified electrician. I will still ask him to second-check  my work, and he will do to make sure all my work is fine, I am not so much  up my own backside not to ask for a second-check.  But because we both know what we are doing. it doesn!t take long and even though he speaks no English and my technical Hungarian is not good, we work together really well because we just both know what we are doing.

SimonTrew wrote:

.....

But you cannot have it both ways, you can't argue that the qualification is not worth anything when you don't have the qualification, that smacks of petulance, When you get your qualification, then you are in a position to argue it, not before. It is not the piece of paper but the theory and practice you have to do to get that piece of paper, the qualification is proof that you know what you are talking about. I am a qualified electrician, and my ex-landlady!s father is also a qualified electrician. I will still ask him to second-check  my work, and he will do to make sure all my work is fine, I am not so much  up my own backside not to ask for a second-check.  But because we both know what we are doing. it doesn!t take long and even though he speaks no English and my technical Hungarian is not good, we work together really well because we just both know what we are doing.

It's a question of scale and common sense. 

If someone is a degree level construction engineer working on large buildings, is anyone going to be able to tell them they cannot take on building a house because they don't have a certificate in say plastering?  But the system says they must have that which makes the whole thing rather a nonsense. 

I have faced it myself in other subjects where people ask for school certificates when clearly you are educated to higher levels in the same subject. 

We've had all sorts here purporting to have this and that qualification.  Doesn't mean their work is any good.  And only just a few days ago, we had proof again in our house that some master builders hereabouts think water flows uphill.   All I can say is "D'oh".

fluffy2560 wrote:

[
If someone is a degree level construction engineer working on large buildings, is anyone going to be able to tell them they cannot take on building a house because they don't have a certificate in say plastering?  But the system says they must have that which makes the whole thing rather a nonsense. 

I have faced it myself in other subjects where people ask for school certificates when clearly you are educated to higher levels in the same subject.

Indeed and I think that we would agree that far, that a bit of paper does not mean you can or cannot do the job. I think we would also agree that in Hungary the oklevel seems to be more important than actually having any competence. I think we would be in agreement that far.

Now, when it comes to doing electricity you are gambling with other people!s safety, Mrs Fluffy and the Fluffiettes. If you are a competent person, and I imagine you are, then you might as well get the card to say you are a competent person and then you can self-cert. At some point, you are going to have to prove to the people who buy your house or the lawyers who sell it that your house is safely wired. "I did it myself and it seems all right to me" is not an option, either you get the qualifaction so that you can self-cert, or you are going to need a qualified electrician to come in and check your work. I very much doubt that you would ever put Mrs Fluffy or the Fluffiettes in danger, but your own wiring will have to be checked by a qualified electrician. The simplest solution is for you to take the exam and become a qualified electrician, if you think that you are that good that you could qualify to be an electrician. I have proved that I am capable, my uncle was an electician for the British National Health Service for forty years, I did four years of night school in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, I do have the paperwork, the study, and the practice, to know what I am talking about. I have no doubt that you know what  you are talking about. But you are not going to get very far arguing with a qualified electrician when you are not a qualified electrician.

And that is where we disagree. The reason I put my foot down is that the whole Internet will start taking your advice about it is fine to put a yellow and green cable as a switched live (it is not) and I must counter that because of the way false information leaks over the Internet. I have no doubt that you want to keep your family safe but you are offering bad advice to the world and I don!t like that. I have, as a member of a professional body, a duty to uphold the standards of that body and part of that is to say no, that is not how you do it. It is not pleasant for me to do so because I regard you as a friend but it is my duty to say so.

Both the blue one and the brown one are called "live" these days, the brown one is "line" if you want to get technical.

SimonTrew wrote:

.....
Now, when it comes to doing electricity you are gambling with other people!s safety, Mrs Fluffy and the Fluffiettes. If you are a competent person, and I imagine you are, then you might as well get the card to say you are a competent person and then you can self-cert. At some point, you are going to have to prove to the people who buy your house or the lawyers who sell it that your house is safely wired. "I did it myself and it seems all right to me" is not an option, either you get the qualifaction so that you can self-cert, or you are going to need a qualified electrician to come in and check your work. I very much doubt that you would ever put Mrs Fluffy or the Fluffiettes in danger, but your own wiring will have to be checked by a qualified electrician. The simplest solution is for you to take the exam and become a qualified electrician, if you think that you are that good that you could qualify to be an electrician.

Before that, it is just bluster, and that is where we disagree. The reason I put my foot down is that the whole Internet will start taking your advice about it is fine to put a yellow and green cable as a switched live (it is not) and I must counter that because of the way false information leaks over the Internet. I have no doubt that you want to keep your family safe but you are offering bad advice to the world and I don!t like that. I have, as a member of a professional body, a duty to uphold the standards of that body and part of that is to say no, that is not how you do it. It is not pleasant for me to do so because I regard you as a friend but it is my duty to say so.

Well, let's not lecture each other.  Houses are  caveat emptor, sold as seen projects. People have to decide for themselves if they think they can mess about with their wiring, plumbing, repair their car or carry out their own minor surgery.  I'm not their minder and they have to sort themselves out.     

But anyway I'm not wrong. I think you need to check the regs on using a non-standard colour cable.  So long as you mark it clearly (by putting appropriate tape or sleeve on it), then that's quite OK. Not marking is not OK.  Sometimes you must just use the conductors you have.   

In any case, I think I've long passed the good enough hurdle of "take the exam and become a qualified electrician, if you think that you are that good that you could qualify to be an electrician".     

Like I said, and here's a bone,  why should I apply for a tradesman type certificate when I have higher level qualifications in paper thin differences of a subject?

And with that, I can hear the Fluffyette sirens of Balaton calling me to the lake........it's holidays again....and I'm going to a concert at 19h!  Better get driving!

fluffy2560 wrote:

[

Like I said, and here's a bone,  why should I apply for a tradesman type certificate when I have higher level qualifications in paper thin differences of a subject?

And with that, I can hear the Fluffyette sirens of Balaton calling me to the lake........it's holidays again....and I'm going to a concert at 19h!  Better get driving!

Have a nice holiday. I will just bitch about you while you are not here

fluffy2560 wrote:

Like I said, and here's a bone,  why should I apply for a tradesman type certificate when I have higher level qualifications in paper thin differences of a subject?

Because your higher level qualifications do not say that you are a qualified electrician. You can bitch as much as you want about whether they should or should not, the fact of the matter is that they don't. If you are refusing to get a certificate on some kind of moral ground that "I don!t need the piece of paper" then from a practical point of view I am entirely with you. From a legal point of view you are simply wrong.  A simple bit of house wiring can be done by a "competent person" but there is a very technical definition of who is a competent person.

And you are absolutely wrong on being able to use a green or green/yellow cable as something other than an earth, collared or not. The only thing you use green or green/yellow for is earth. Yes, I know it is common in Hungary to use it for a switched live, I have it all over my house, with, er, no actual earth, it doesn't mean you should compound the felony. Caveat emptor (Latin: let the buyer beware) is all very good but you have to think caveat vendor also, let the seller beware, because if you go above what you are legally allowed to do - and I imagine you do - then you are going to have to get a qualified electrician in anyway to certify that your work is up to scratch. I have absolutely no doubt it is up to scratch because I know you would not put yourself, Mrs Fluffy or the Fluffiettes in danger, the thing is that I can say that your work is up to scratch but you can't. For all your prevaricating around the bush, I have the qualification, you don't, so the lecture is rather one-sided.

Have a great holiday, my friend, I sincerely mean it

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

[

Like I said, and here's a bone,  why should I apply for a tradesman type certificate when I have higher level qualifications in paper thin differences of a subject?

And with that, I can hear the Fluffyette sirens of Balaton calling me to the lake........it's holidays again....and I'm going to a concert at 19h!  Better get driving!

Have a nice holiday. I will just bitch about you while you are not here

I will still be here, just further away from Fluffy HQ.

SimonTrew wrote:

.... the thing is that I can say that your work is up to scratch but you can't. For all your prevaricating around the bush, I have the qualification, you don't, so the lecture is rather one-sided.

Have a great holiday, my friend, I sincerely mean it

Well how do you know I'm not qualified?  Save you the effort. You don't.

But as far as here is concerned, there's no issue. What goes on other places like the UK doesn't matter very much.  But when I said regs, I did mean UK regs but please, do look it up to satisfy yourself as to what is allowed and not allowed. 

I'd better leave. Right now.

fluffy2560 wrote:

Well how do you know I'm not qualified?  Save you the effort. You don't.

I know you are not qualifiied. Were you qualified you would have said so and cut the argument short. It is for you to prove to me that you are qualified, not the other way around, because all you have to do is look up "Simon Trew" on the IET register of members. Now, assuming you are a member of the IET, i.e. qualified, that would be a very easy thing for you to do. You are right that I am not certain that  you are qualified, but I would bet all Lombard-street to a China orange that you are not.

When I was a youngster in England we sometimes got Sesame Street on Anglia Television, this is in the days when we only had three channels and if you wanted to change the channel you had to get off your backisde and walk three feet to the telly.

The rather bizarre thing was it was the Spanish Sesame Street, so I learned Mexican Spanish from Sesame Street. I have absolutely no idea why English Anglia Television would have bought in the Spanish dub of it, but Sesame Street was brought to you by the letter Ñ and the  numbers uno and ocho...

(Anglia in Hungarian means England, but Anglia in England is just a region of the country, not the whole country, it is what linguistically is called a "false friend", words that seem similar but have different meanings.)

SimCityAT wrote:

No, its true, half my family are teachers back in the UK. Stupid rules and regulations just as you have to be a qualified electrician to change plugs or light bulbs.

You do not have to be a qualified electrician to change plugs or light bulbs. For most basic house wiring you have to be a "competent person" but even incompetent people are allowed to change light bulbs:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the electric light
Himself. It struck him dead. And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artesan.
   --- Hillaire Belloc.

SimCityAT wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

Conkers another school activity played in the breaktime no longer allowed.

I think that is a myth, I remember the story but the headmaster of that school was doing it on purpose, as the good Albert Haddock said, the quickest way of ending a stupid law is not to ignore it but to enforce it.

No, its true, half my family are teachers back in the UK.

I will take your word for it, and I totally agree that over-regulation is ridiculous, but that is usually just CYA Syndrome i,e, cover your ass and nothing to do with the law, just the fear of being sued.

One of the finest pieces of legislation ever made was the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. But all it really says is "look after yourself, and those around you". The key thing, the thing that seems to have been forgotten, is first you have to look after yourself. If you trip over a kerb/curb, don't blame the kerb. Employers have a duty to make workplaces safe "as far as is reasonably practicable". and nowadays HASAWA is almost a running joke. But that has nothing to do with the Act, which is an extremely fine Act. It is to do with companies covering their arses in case they get sued.

It seems perfectly sensible to me that if you have a high speed turning lathe you have a guard on it so if something goes wrong then the piece on the lathe as it flies out it doesn!t knock your head off. It is "reasonably practicable" to put a perspex guard on a machine lathe, or that a seamstress wears a thimble. There is no statute definition of what is "reasonably practicable", that is a matter for the common law i,.e. a jury decides.

When it comes to electricals I don!t care that much about it because it is only your own family you are going to kill. I put my foot down with fluffy because fluffy knows what he is doing, I know what I am doing, but that doesn't mean some idiot reading this on a google search or whatever will know what he is doing.

The whole point about standards is it saves you a lot of bother, that someone else has already thought through whetherthat bolt will fit into that nut, or the green wire is earth and not switched live, or whether 2B pencil is softer than a 2Trew pencil or whatever, standards are there partly so that we can take things for granted, also because huge committees of experts have thought it through to save you the bother. Deliberately with no good reason to flout a standard seems entirely harmful to me. I am not authoritarian, as long as you don't hurt me you can do whatever you please, but if your shoddy work can put me in danger, that is where I draw the line.

To give an analogy, I am a nudist or naturist I am not particularly care what you call it, I just prefer not to wear clothes, that is my style or fashion. My house is very private and not overlooked so if I go around naked in my own house and garden it is not bothering anyone else. as if a naked body should bother anyone else, but the standard or convention is we have to wear clothes and I would probably get arrested for breaking the law in Hungary were I to go to the shop naked, which would not bother me in the least, but society says no you are not allowed to be naked. (Technically in English law being naked is perfectly fine, the offence is "indecent exposure" and again whether being naked is indecent is a matter for the courts. The charity Naked Bike Ride, presumably Officer Dibble does not arrest all the riders for indecent exposure). So there is a standard, a social or moral standard, that we have to wear clothes. I can choose in the privacy of my own home to have my own standards which is not to wear clothes, which also saves me a fortune in washing powder. If I want to change the rules so that it is OK for me to be naked while people have offensive slogans on their T-shirts, I have to argue the case and try to get the law changed. What I cannot do is just take the law into my own hands, well I could, but I would very quickly find myself in the slammer.

You don't change a law by ignoring it. You change it by enforcing it to such a ridiculous level of pedantry that eventually people wake up and say "that is a very stupid law, we should change or abolish that".

SimonTrew wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

No, its true, half my family are teachers back in the UK. Stupid rules and regulations just as you have to be a qualified electrician to change plugs or light bulbs.

You do not have to be a qualified electrician to change plugs or light bulbs. For most basic house wiring you have to be a "competent person" but even incompetent people are allowed to change light bulbs:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the electric light
Himself. It struck him dead. And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artesan.
   --- Hillaire Belloc.

In some local education, authorities insist that you do have to a qualified electrician to do such tasks.

SimCityAT wrote:

In some local education, authorities insist that you do have to a qualified electrician to do such tasks.

Yes. For a start if you are in a workplace (and a school is a workplace because teachers work there ) then zou need to do PAT "portable appliance testing" and it is just easier to get a qualified electrician to certificate that the whole lot is safe, the testing  is usually done by a bunch of brainless people who unplug your computer or oscilloscope to  check whether the live neutral and earth have a ground fault, which they don't, obviously, and then plug it back in again after checking whether the socket has a ground fault, which it doesn't.

I have worked in labs and clean rooms with oscilloscopes and other kinds of gadgets that costs about thirty thousand quid a piece, on a stabilised power supply to the building with its own high-volts substation, so I am not very likely to then say oh I use a bit of tinfoil rather than replace this fuse. It does get a bit ridiculous in that way, I agree,

It is just easier or perhaps I should say lazier for the local authority to get someone to do the whole lot, because then they don't have to think. There is so much nonsense like that. Light bulbs for example tend to have an MBTF, a Mean Time Between Failures, this is the statistical mean average of when your light bulb or fluourescent tube is going to blow. If you have a thousand fluorescent tubes and the number is right, lets assume the mean is the same as the median, then half of them will blow before the MTBF and half of them will after. And I know of at least one local authority, and one national health trust, who would change every fluorescent tube in the building shortly before its MBTF. If the lamp above you happened to blow quicker than the MBTF, you could sit in darkness for a couple of months, whereas they would also chuck out thousands of fluorescent tubes that had managed to last longer than the average. The idea of replacing a fluorescent tube when it actually blew instead of replacing them all at the MTBF seemed totally beyond them.

SimonTrew wrote:

Light bulbs for example tend to have an MBTF, a Mean Time Between Failures.

That might even be a MTBF intead of an MBTF I am going to let that stand to show my own incompetence!

SimCityAT wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

No, its true, half my family are teachers back in the UK. Stupid rules and regulations just as you have to be a qualified electrician to change plugs or light bulbs.

You do not have to be a qualified electrician to change plugs or light bulbs. For most basic house wiring you have to be a "competent person" but even incompetent people are allowed to change light bulbs:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the electric light
Himself. It struck him dead. And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artesan.
   --- Hillaire Belloc.

In some local education, authorities insist that you do have to a qualified electrician to do such tasks.

Then vote out the incompetent local authority. It has nothing to do with the law of the land or the IET Regs (which are not law or statute but can be used in evidence as to put it briefly as if the IET were an expert witness) , so that is just because you have an incompetent local authority. Since most local authorities are incompetent and only about 30% of people bother to vote in local elections, they get what they deserve.

(Not as expats we get a vote in local UK elections, although I am still on the electoral register and vote in UK nationals. They are very kind and send me, post paid, a slip to give me a postal vote, including a prepaid second-class UK envelope so I don't even have to buy a stamp, and to my initial surprise they do actually manage to get back to Blighty).

Now today I am mostly grumbling about where to buy stamps in Hungary. Or rather, that it is impossible to buy stamps in Hungary.

Okay, you can go to the post office, the Posta, to get stamps. But by that time you are already at the post office so you might as well get the clerk to stick the postage on. You just can't seem to get postage stamps anywhere other than at a post office. nor does there seem to be any published guide about how much it might cost to post something somewhere.

Naturally, being the last day of July I have all my Christmas cards ready to post and I need to get a load of stamps but instead of just having stamps that I can then stick them in the, I am not sure what you would call the things where you post letters into, the postal box or whatever, then I have to go to the post office to get the stamps to.... well if I am already at the post office....

My local postie Szebastien is very good though, he is a nice bloke, but even he is not perfect because he supports Manchester United.

SimCityAT wrote:

In some local education, authorities insist that you do have to a qualified electrician to do such tasks.

The basic problem is all this "outsourcing" malarkey that you have to go to private tender for jobs that patently should be done in-house, if you have let's say a hundred primary and secondary schools in your borough, an in-house electrician would be able easily to do two a week, fifty weeks in the year (losing a bit for holidays), there you go, one sparky, full time job just going around year on year on rotation. Pretty much what my uncle (also a sparky) did for forty years working for he British National Health service. And the sparky would probably have a stack of spare fluorescent tubes and starters to replace them as he went along rather than having to say "oh I need to order a part", but it all has to be "outsourced" so that private companies can cock it up at the taxpayer's expense.

My grandfather for many years, nearly thirty years, was the caretaker at a school in northwest London, and had a cottage bungalow on the property, as you did in those days. He would stoke the coal boilers (strangely enough he never seemed to be short of coal) and polish the floors and basically just look after the whole place, I still have pillowcases marked "Property of London County Council" which seem to be indestructible. But he was on site all the time and any small job just got fixed, and he was extremely well respected there, I have his cufflinks presented by the prefects of the school on his retirement, but the idea you have an on-site caretaker, give him a bungalow to live in (presumably rent free) and in return we will wink at a bit of missing coal or that you use the carpentry workshop with your great mate Stapp the woodwork teacher to make all your own furniture at weekends, we will turn a blind eye to that, as long as you are there any time we need you. That idea that to me just seems common sense, but that idea seems to have disappeared now.

My living uncle, my grandfather's son, went to school there for a while and made a beautiful glass-topped table when he was about ten years old I think, and my grandfather showed his son how to make it I have no doubt about it, because he loved doing a bit of carpentry. He was extremely arthritic and his hands were so mashed up in his late years and he would still keep doing it, he would make matchstick models of things I suppose maybe because he was so frustrated with these sodding hands and the patience he had as he dropped the matchsticks as he could not put finger and thumb together with his arthritic hands, and he would still do it. He had a list of jobs that he did once he retired he had a little carpentry workshop muluhely in what would have been the coalhouse really, and he kept a list of jobs done and pad for which goes on for thirty years, and of course he would only charge for the timber and often not even for that, so it says "wheelbarrow planter for Peggy, 2/6" (two shillings and sixpence) and I doubt he even charged Peggy his next door neighbour the two and six, it was just his pleasure to keep track of all these jobs. Whenever I am doing a bit of carpentry my grandfather becomes alive again, "Let the tool do the work, son, let the tool do the work". "It's all part of the business, isn't it granddad?" "Yes, son, it's all part of the business". He was such a wonderful man, but he is still alive, he is long in his grave, wow twenty-four years ago he died and it seems like yesterday, People are alive as long as you remember them. That probably sounds rather precious but people don't really die, their bodies die and they might not have a soul, but as long as people remember you, you are still alive somehow.

"As long as man can read or eye can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee". And that was written quite some time ago.

My youngest brother works at a grade school in Ca.
He is a caretaker there.
His wife is a teacher at the same school.
No living on the school property but the kids just love him.
My uncle was a park caretaker in Conn. in the 50 through his retirement.
My aunt's family got a free house to live in some historical home that was over 200 years old. It was on the park property.

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

Well how do you know I'm not qualified?  Save you the effort. You don't.

I know you are not qualifiied. Were you qualified you would have said so and cut the argument short. It is for you to prove to me that you are qualified, not the other way around, because all you have to do is look up "Simon Trew" on the IET register of members. Now, assuming you are a member of the IET, i.e. qualified, that would be a very easy thing for you to do. You are right that I am not certain that  you are qualified, but I would bet all Lombard-street to a China orange that you are not.

I don't have to prove a thing to you nor do I have to provide you with my secret identity. 

You could be a SMERSH agent with a helicopter base in a volcano near Balaton. 

But in any case, IET used to be the IEE.   I've been in a few of these societies and after a while, I just thought I wasn't getting anything worthwhile out of it and it was costing me money,  so I just dropped them.  I kept a couple on but even then, I thought not worth it as none of them are legally required.  I have thought of coming back to one of them as it seems suddenly to be getting more important again and my interest was stirred. But I've done nothing about it as day-to-day, not really required.

BTW, it's roasting down here in Balaton.  I reckon it's maybe 35-40 C in the sun.

SimonTrew wrote:

all you have to do is look up "Simon Trew" on the IET register of members.

But now prove you are really that Simon Trew. Why should we just take your word for it? We should not. Identity theft is rather easy you know....

SimonTrew wrote:

Okay, you can go to the post office, the Posta, to get stamps. But by that time you are already at the post office so you might as well get the clerk to stick the postage on. You just can't seem to get postage stamps anywhere other than at a post office.

Well.... when you get your letter stamped, why not then buy a few stamps for later use at the same time? In other words, plan ahead.

SimonTrew wrote:

nor does there seem to be any published guide about how much it might cost to post something somewhere

Here are the domestic prices:

https://www.posta.hu/postal_tariffs

klsallee wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

all you have to do is look up "Simon Trew" on the IET register of members.

But now prove you are really that Simon Trew. Why should we just take your word for it? We should not. Identity theft is rather easy you know....

Come to think of it....I reckon there's more than one Simon Trew posting on here considering the volume of postings. 

The question for me currently, just before I go out on the lake to do some heat transfer, is if Simon T can pass the Turing test.

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

Well how do you know I'm not qualified?  Save you the effort. You don't.

I know you are not qualifiied. Were you qualified you would have said so and cut the argument short. It is for you to prove to me that you are qualified, not the other way around, because all you have to do is look up "Simon Trew" on the IET register of members. Now, assuming you are a member of the IET, i.e. qualified, that would be a very easy thing for you to do. You are right that I am not certain that  you are qualified, but I would bet all Lombard-street to a China orange that you are not.

I don't have to prove a thing to you nor do I have to provide you with my secret identity.

OK, I didn!t mean to me personally. I meant that the card is proof that you can do the job, and you well know that is what I meant. You can choose any identity you want, I have never asked you what is your real name or where do you live, I am a bit more liberal in that I use my real name but that is my personal choice and I think we would both respect each other that you have a family to protect and I have nobody to fear so I would rather go under my real name than an alias, but I totally respect your choice and reasons for using an alias.

You have to prove, not to me, but to the courts of law, that you are qualified to do what you are doing. That is what professional qualification is all about. That is why people who have qualifications in certain subjects can be called as expert witnesses, that the court takes it as read that they might know what they are talking about.  It is sheer humbug on your part to say "I know what I am doing but I cannot be bothered to get a piece of paper or laminated card because I actually have more knowledge than what the card says". Without the card you are not qualified. I have no doubt you know what you are doing, it is not my fault the law requires you to have a certificate. I don't make the laws, and indeed I will campaign to change laws that I don't like, but I am confusing you with someone who gives a shit. Go ahead, and invalidate your home insurance if you want, you probably already have. Let's just drop the argument, we have had it all before. It is your choice to do electrics that probably invalidate your home insurance and buildings insurance. There is a reason I get my mate to second check my sparks, it keeps my insurance valid that it is properly signed off. But go ahead, I am very risk averse so I would not take those chances, but we are going round in circles now and we just must simply disagree as I cannot see that I will every persuade you.

SimonTrew wrote:

.....I have never asked you what is your real name or where do you live, I am a bit more liberal in that I use my real name but that is my personal choice and I think we would both respect each other that you have a family to protect and I have nobody to fear so I would rather go under my real name than an alias, but I totally respect your choice and reasons for using an alias.

.....and invalidate your home insurance if you want, you probably already have. Let's just drop the argument, we have had it all before. It is your choice to do electrics that probably invalidate your home insurance and buildings insurance. There is a reason I get my mate to second check my sparks, it keeps my insurance valid that it is properly signed off. But go ahead, I am very risk averse so I would not take those chances, but we are going round in circles now and we just must simply disagree as I cannot see that I will every persuade you.

I'm made no secret of where I live but I do value my privacy.  My electrical work is very much up to scratch as I mess about doing this kind of thing for a living and one thing I am very hot on is safety for contracting reasons.  I'm not required to have a certificate in Hungary for my domestic wiring.   UK yes Part P and all that ballcocks, but HU, no.

fluffy2560 wrote:

[I'm not required to have a certificate in Hungary for my domestic wiring.   UK yes Part P and all that ballcocks, but HU, no.

No you are totally allowed to cock up your own house wiring if you choose, you can blow up Mrs Fluffy and the Fluffyettes if you get it wrong, that is your privilege and right.  I told you the argument is finished. I will never persuade you otherwise. That's  it, done, finished. I work doing safety critical software so I am very well versed in doing risk assessment, you are not the only person in the world who can assess a risk. You're just wrong, simple as that.End of discussion, we are going round and round in circles so there is not much point arguing about it any more.

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

Well how do you know I'm not qualified?  Save you the effort. You don't.

I know you are not qualifiied. Were you qualified you would have said so and cut the argument short. It is for you to prove to me that you are qualified, not the other way around, because all you have to do is look up "Simon Trew" on the IET register of members. Now, assuming you are a member of the IET, i.e. qualified, that would be a very easy thing for you to do. You are right that I am not certain that  you are qualified, but I would bet all Lombard-street to a China orange that you are not.

I don't have to prove a thing to you nor do I have to provide you with my secret identity. 

You could be a SMERSH agent with a helicopter base in a volcano near Balaton. 

But in any case, IET used to be the IEE.   I've been in a few of these societies and after a while, I just thought I wasn't getting anything worthwhile out of it and it was costing me money,  so I just dropped them.  I kept a couple on but even then, I thought not worth it as none of them are legally required.  I have thought of coming back to one of them as it seems suddenly to be getting more important again and my interest was stirred. But I've done nothing about it as day-to-day, not really required.

BTW, it's roasting down here in Balaton.  I reckon it's maybe 35-40 C in the sun.

Enjoy Balaton, just get in the water!
Went swimming yesterday, could go everyday if my skin could take the burn.
Have fun and take some photos for your memory book!

It's been 37°C here in my hometown, tomorrow and Thursday will be hotter still I have switched the fan on with the doors wide open in my Garden Room. There is just no breeze outside.

I have my Ice cube machine on daily now.

I am doing my gardening at 6am before the day starts to heat up, but even at that time, it can be 25°C. Now the sun has moved to the front I can water my Zucchini and Tomatoes, check on the Grapes and other delights.

SimCityAT wrote:

I
I have my Ice cube machine on daily now.

Oh you are such a show-off. I trump you, my fridge freezer has an ice making machine and is plumbed into the water main, so that I have ice whenever I want. I see your jegygép and raise you a Samsung

When we have family BBQ's, parties etc..... the machine is portable, far better than a fridge/freezer with an icemaker. We did contemplate getting one but thought pointless and took to much room up.

SimCityAT wrote:

When we have family BBQ's, parties etc..... the machine is portable, far better than a fridge/freezer with an icemaker. We did contemplate getting one but thought pointless and took to much room up.

I know the feeling.  The built in ice machines with water supply are on what they call side-by-side fridges. I saw some in a shop recently that had built in TVs. I thought that was quite interesting. 

My own fridge is an LG and for improved gadgetness, it has WiFi.  There's an app on our smartphones and we can monitor the temperature and put it on "express freeze" which is a bit of a waste of time. I think you'e supposed  to put it on express when you are on way back from the shops with loads of frozen food.  I am quite sure the fridge is contact with a higher power - LG HQ - and it's reporting in on it's experiences in the Fluffy household. I can see it's transmitting and receiving data on a regular basis but what it's talking about I am not exactly sure - every day is the same!

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

When we have family BBQ's, parties etc..... the machine is portable, far better than a fridge/freezer with an icemaker. We did contemplate getting one but thought pointless and took to much room up.

I know the feeling.  The built in ice machines with water supply are on what they call side-by-side fridges. I saw some in a shop recently that had built in TVs. I thought that was quite interesting. 

My own fridge is an LG and for improved gadgetness, it has WiFi.  There's an app on our smartphones and we can monitor the temperature and put it on "express freeze" which is a bit of a waste of time. I think you'e supposed  to put it on express when you are on way back from the shops with loads of frozen food.  I am quite sure the fridge is contact with a higher power - LG HQ - and it's reporting in on it's experiences in the Fluffy household. I can see it's transmitting and receiving data on a regular basis but what it's talking about I am not exactly sure - every day is the same!

Our dishwasher has Wifi, tells us when it's finished or you can switch it on etc... Completely pointless really. Just a sign of the times I guess.

SimCityAT wrote:

....
Our dishwasher has Wifi, tells us when it's finished or you can switch it on etc... Completely pointless really. Just a sign of the times I guess.

That's a bit of an odd one.  My dishwasher is about 10m away from the sofa and I can hear it beep when it's finished.  Good enough!  Our washing machine is majorly musical - all sorts of tones and beeps for this and that.   Like Close Encounters without the lighting effects.

BTW, how often do you use your dishwasher? I've told  Mrs Fluffy that we seem to use it a lot.  It's been on about 5 times a day when we've had visitors and about 3-4 times otherwise. I wondered if that was a lot? Seems a lot.

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

....
Our dishwasher has Wifi, tells us when it's finished or you can switch it on etc... Completely pointless really. Just a sign of the times I guess.

Ah,what you have there is not a dishwasher but a wishdasher, it automatically dashes your wishes.

fluffy2560 wrote:

BTW, how often do you use your dishwasher?

When the missus is on her travels I tend to use it about once a week, just wait until it gets full, because even though I am a single husband I do actually own more than one plate, but on my own on a twelve place setting for the wishdasher then it is empty on Monday morning after the missus gets into the taxi to the airport, and full or rather ran and emptied on a Friday night.

I think a single husband wouldn't need to run a wishdasher more than once a week.  Obviously if you have other people to feed it will be more frequent. And I don't put frying pans etc into it because you want to have a nice coating of grease or oil on them and the wishdasher tablets pulls it all off, a rinse under the tap is all you need for those, i suppose you could put non stick frying pans in if you want to see what happens to polytetrafluoroethylene

fluffy2560 wrote:

BTW, how often do you use your dishwasher? I've told  Mrs Fluffy that we seem to use it a lot.  It's been on about 5 times a day when we've had visitors and about 3-4 times otherwise. I wondered if that was a lot? Seems a lot.

Ours sings to us when its finished as well, but depending on the program you know roughly when it will finish anyway if doors are shut and can't hear its beeps.

Anyway normally its on every 2 days, as there are just the 2 of us, but if we entertain it can be on twice a day.

My dad being on his own, I guess he could put his on once a week but set in his old ways does it every day, but he tells me he making use of the solar panels and it costs him nothing to run. In fact he all his electricity is free and the unused electricity that gets pumped back into the grid pays for his gas.

SimCityAT wrote:

My dad being on his own, I guess he could put his on once a week but set in his old ways does it every day, but he tells me he making use of the solar panels and it costs him nothing to run. In fact he all his electricity is free and the unused electricity that gets pumped back into the grid pays for his gas.

That is pretty cool. Next year I am going to get the house re-roofed and I am very much minded to put in a lot of solar panels, if it is going to be re-roofed and it really needs it then might as well do that as part of the job. They get more and more efficient every year so obvoiusly i haven't even bothered to choose a brand or anything yet, but it seems the obvious thing to do to put a load of solar panels on. My next-door neighbour is a roofer so it is not as if I have far to look to get the roof changed, but I don't think he has ever done solar panels before.. there's a first time for everything.

SimCityAT wrote:

Ours sings to us when its finished as wel

Ours just turns itself off, for energy saving etc, so there is always a bit of uncertainty of whether it has finished or has just given up. It has a little LED display with cryptic error codes and for some reason Media Markt did not supply the manual that has the Hungarian or English instructions, only the one that has French, German and various other languages.... this is fine for me because I am quite good at French but the missus doesn't know any French at all, there is a weird thing that it has four or five programmes but the rotary dial you can rotate all the way round so you can set it on programmes that do not exist then the microcontroller gets a bit confused and just puts ":" on its little LED display. Now I have discovered that, it is easy, make sure the programme control knob is actually on a programme not on a non-programme, but the missus did think for a while that it had somehow got really broken and nothing in the manual warns you against that, there is no kinda Troubleshooting section at the back of the manual as you might expect.

And this is Bosch, not some cheap Chinese import. I try to treat it nicely, I plumbed in its own water feed and wastepipe and it even has its own dedicated power socket, so you wouold think it would behave itself but it seems that its elektronik brane sometimes is too clever. I hate technology.

Its little LED display does tell you how long it has to finish as hours and minutesd, the missus must have put it on before going to work as it said 0:58 when I just went in the kitchen, but then when it does actually finish it turns itself off so you have no kinda visual indication that it has finished.

while on the subject of hating technology, how many programmes do you use on your mosogép, washing machine? I am a man, so obviously there are only two programmes, "white things" and "coloured things", I do not know why they bother to have all the other programmes because no real person ever runs the washing machine on "silk delicates" or "cold wash wool" or anything, do they? Every man knows, there are only two programmes, "white things" and "coloured things".

Wow WiFi on the fridge, washer, etc.
You guys crack me up!
We have gone old school here, just the basics.
When I visit my son in the states I still hand wash the dishes, I forget there is a dish washer right there, the only thing i do sometimes think would be nice to have but have gotten used to not having one is a garbage disposal.
I no longer really use ice for anything other then a sore muscle.
Not good for the old teeth , chewing and using ice ruined my back teeth.Have 3 crowns now...

I've seen those nice modern machines here but our flat is too small for such large items.
Still WiFi in the fridge? Don't even use our I-phone.
Bought it years ago and never even used it once.
Reminds me, we were going to buy a new battery for it.

My 2nd step-dad used to own his own heating and A/C business. Had like 15 trucks at one time with employees.
Hard to get my mind around that, since he was a big drinker by the time we met him and my mom bought him a truck.
He did heating and A/C work after they married at a big co. later he did some side work doing home repairs on washers, dishwashers, stoves, fridges clothing dryers etc.
If the parts were too expensive many people just gave him their broken machines and bought new ones.
He would take them home with plans to fix them up and resale as used.
He had taken over one of my mothers larger patios in her back yard with broken down machines.
It bugged her to no end that he didn't just fix them faster or toss them out.
Her own fridge went out and instead of him using his expert knowledge and skills to fix it he just went out and bought her a $2,000 new one!
This was in the 1980's so that was a top of the line fridge.
It was a sort of running joke in the family since he had a good half dozen in the yard he could of fixed up.
When I bought my house I was given a perfectly running used set of a washer and clothing dryer as a gift from my step- dad.
Looked brand new too. I used them for about 12 or more years and never had any problems with them, Whirlpool brand.
Odd how sometimes he actually fixed things and other times he let it all slide.
When they sold their home and moved away my mom had to call up a junk yard and pay to have all those broken machines hauled away.
Years of looking at junk in her back yard.
It's funny now to look back on it, big dreams and no action.
My neighbor in Ca. was in her late 70's when we bought our home.
I just loved to go inside her house, it was like a time capsule from the late 50's.
Her house was always in perfect order, nothing out of place and clean as can be.
Her washer and clothing dryer were from the 1950's but looked like she had bought them the other day.
If you take care of things they sometimes do last forever.