Recent content by LotusDome

Greetings, folks! Thank you all for your advice and flood of information! As Baluncore noted above (thank you, Baluncore!), this thread really isn’t about lightning strikes, it’s about why my BC1200s were getting fried by the electric fields of passing storms, and how to better protect them...

Greetings, folks! After long-pondering Jim’s and Baluncore’s questions about grounding one of the circuit’s conductors, I noted the following: - Being completely off-grid (many miles from asphalt), all electrical devices in the trailer are running, directly or via the DC -> AC inverter, off...

First, thank you, Tom G. for your advice! I was assuming grounding the trailer frame would probably be necessary; your detailed advice was much appreciated! Alas, it did no good . . . To everyone else who offered their much-appreciated advice, please forgive me for not responding much earlier...

Greetings, folks! I just wanted to thank all of you for your very-much appreciated assistance! For the past eight months, I have been using a pair of BriskHeat 24V, etched-foil heating pads (http://www.briskheat.com/pdf/silicone/briskheat-silicone-rubber-heaters-catalog.pdf ), running on 12V...

Greetings, folks! I an a monk, camped out in an aluminum-framed trailer, high up in the mountains of Utah. I try not to pester you kind folks unless absolutely necessary, but yesterday’s storm has me back to “square one” for this bizarre (at least to me!) behavior. Here’s the set-up: 116'...

Greetings, folks! Thank you all again for all your help! For starters ;-) : from: sophiecentaur <rant> Dear friend, I pray that you NEVER have ANY understanding about severe PTSD. (*VERY* FEW DO, and NONE are doctors. We will not debate this in this forum!) The living nightmare that has...

Thank you all so much for your advice; it is very much appreciated! I sincerely apologize for not being able to respond for the past few days, but no sunlight = no electricity = no on-line access. To start, http://www.LotusDome.com/Heating_Plate.jpg is a photo of one of the heating plates...

Greetings, folks! I have spent the past six years developing a matching pair of 13"-square heating plates to mount to the inside bottom (front and rear) of a Sun-Mar Excel NE composting toilet drum. The heating plates are necessary to keep the compost in the composting drum between 70º and...

Thank you all so much! Wow. I feel like a mortal who was allowed to eavesdrop on a debate between the Gods! I got the reed switches and the 18g. magnet wire in! (The 18 gauge wire will minimize any additional resistance in the circuit and the 1.5A switch will be able to do a lot more than...

Blessings and Happy New Year! This is very exciting; thank you all! I am deeply grateful for the patience and effort you have all put into this! from Adjuster: > Please note that the SAME current passes through each resistance in a series string. This is what I did not know; I didn’t...

from vk6kro: > WHAT ACCIDENT? Thanks for asking; it’s detailed (what I have been told—I have no memory of it) on the Status Updates page of www.LotusDome.com . <snip> > All these precise calculations change when the battery voltage rises to 15 volts, though. Please forgive me for...

Thanks for the response, BenchTop! You are the only other person I know, besides the person who told me, what a derder is! ;-) Thank you, Adjuster, for your intuitiveness. I am a monk, living alone in the vast, UT wilderness after the accident; my production company is “dormant.” (The...

Greetings, folks, and thank you all for you kind assistance! I have much technical training and experience, but no training in electronics, thus my vast ignorance in this regard. Also, due to an extreme accident (I am told I fell about 200 feet, head-first into an ice-wall), I currently have...

Thanks, folks, I really appreciate your input! vk6kro’s schematic looks promising and I expect(ed) that Adjuster’s concerns about my (limited) understanding of resistors are correct. Because of the storm that has rolled through, I cannot yet add any more info. as I must get offline, but I...

Greetings, folks! I need easy, visual confirmation of the continuity of a resistance wire-based heating element circuit (~80W, 12VDC): it is simply a loop of Nichrome resistance wire (with a fuse!) connected to a 12VDC battery bank. If the circuit breaks somewhere, I need to know...