Only one EV charger at home?!

<unnecessary expletive elided>

Which is the opposite of what you wrote above.

If you mean GFI breakers their use is limited. I only have one on an external outlet. In the cold months I have a small shelter with a heated pad for the cat and I'd prefer not to electrocute her.

Note: I've invited the cat inside but she declined.

High school had separate curricula for shop, business, and college entrance. Only grade school (years 1-8) was one size fits all. Religious indoctrination was optional and was handled off school grounds, usually at a church of the selected denomination. The exception were the Catholic schools. Other areas might have religious schools but where I grew up wasn't enriched with vibrant diversity.

Yeah. Some of the eighth grade kids were target shooting in a gravel pit and one was killed by a ricochet. Shit happens. No grief counseling, no call to ban firearms. A classmate's younger brother was killed riding his bicycle. Ditto. No calls for mandatory bicycle helmets. I don't know when that came about but we certainly didn't have them.

Luckily there are no mandatory helmets here. Although most psycholists seem to wear them anyway. Whenever I pass a cyclist wearing lycra, a helmet, and or with lights on during the day, I pass with a 2 inch gap. Seems to upset them for some reason. Maybe they should learn not to wobble.

I doubt many shocks are live to neutral, so they stop pretty much all of them. However they trip at many things which aren't shocks. Just like burglar alarms and car alarms and fire alarms, they aren't intelligent enough to know what's real. I'll stick to fuses.

They seem to be whole house ones here. And badly done, they trip the whole house instead of a single circuit.

They have fur, they don't need heat.

Why would the heated pad do that?

She'll come in if she wants. Clearly she doesn't mind the cold.

It's inefficient to only cut 50% of the time. Why not mow both ways? I see no disadvantage to leaving the blades spinning continuously.

I wonder why some mowers won't cut when you reverse the mower's drive to the wheels.

My Husquvarna mower maintains drive to the cutters all the time that the engine is running, providing the cutter deck is lowered into the cutting position. If you raise the cutters, the drive to the cutter deck stops, to allow to you move the mower (eg over rough, loose ground) without the blades catching on or "sucking up" loose gravel. I use that when driving the mower from the garage to the lawns, over the gravel drive.

But if the cutters are down, they are cutting, no matter how fast the wheels are turning forwards or backwards. On my mower, there are two separate pedals (forwards/backwards) to the right of the steering column which vary the flow of oil from the engine-driven compressor to the wheels to drive them one way or the other at variable speed. Lifting right off either pedal stops the mower very quickly, so the mechanical brake pedal on the left of the steering column is not normally needed; it tends to be used as a parking brake for if you stop on a hill. The engine automatically cuts out if you get out of the seat with the cutter down, or if you haven't locked the parking brake in the "applied" position even with the cutter raised, and you need to be sitting in the seat, with the cutter raised and the parking brake applied in order for the starter motor to work.

It's incredible how small a turning circle the mower has, because it's rear-wheel steering of the engine unit, with the cutter and front wheels (and seat) on a separate unit. The two can turn at more than right-angles to each other. When I was test-driving the mower at the shop, I noticed a one-foot square drain in the centre of the car park where I was testing it, and I was able to steer it around the drain as if it was a tree in the centre of a lawn. This had come in very useful because we have a row of apple-tree saplings that I need to cut around, with a two-foot diameter hole in the lawn around each one. The shop where I bought the mower got an extra sale, because soon after I bought my mower, my neighbour decided to buy one just like mine (although with a wider cutting deck) to replace her old ride-on mower which was starting to become unreliable. We've agreed that we will get the shop to collect and return both mowers at the same time when they need to be serviced, and go halves on the collection cost. Cheaper than paying separately for collection/return.

"The Natural Philosopher" snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid wrote in message news:uhod32$fqam$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

That's an intriguing way of enforcing the "don't cut while reversing" restriction: to stop the engine when you select reverse with the cutters down (unless you press the bypass button) seems excessive when it could (presumably) just disable the drive to the cutter (unless you press the button) while keeping the engine running to drive the mower backwards.

I wonder what is considered to be so bad about reversing with the cutter engaged, that it needs an interlock that prevents it happening unless you press a "yes I really want to do that" bypass switch.

Is it a horizontal blade spinning about a vertical axis (like a hover mower) or is it a cylinder blade spinning about a horizontal axis that cuts against a fixed horizontal blade, like old-fashioned walk-behind mowers? I can imagine that a cylinder mower may not cut as effectively if you drive it backward, but a "hover-mower" type blade will cut equally well no matter whether the mower is travelling forwads, backwards or (if it was possible with a ride-on!) sideways.

My dad's walk-behind cylinder mower (a Qualcast, IIRC) would keep the blade spinning even if you temporarily disengaged the drive to the drive roller and freewheeled the mower in reverse while reversing out of a corner of a flower-bed etc. Interesting that the defaults of its controls were the opposite way round to a modern mower, so inherently less safe: the throttle would stay in whatever position you put it and wasn't spring-loaded to cut off the power if you released the throttle control; and the driver roller was permanently engaged as long as the cutter/drive mechanism was in gear, unless you pulled a lever which disengaged the roller (while leaving the blades spinning) but which re-engaged the drive as soon as you released the clutch. Our walk-behind rotary mower needs you to keep the throttle and drive handles permanently in the "on" position by pulling them against springs towards the push-handle; if you release one or the other, the engine cuts out and/or the drive to the wheels disengages, which is a lot safer. That mower is now push-only because the cable from then handle to the drive clutch has broken so even if the handle is pulled against the push-handle, it doesn't engage the drive. I decided that with nearly an acre of grass to cut (which was very good exercise!) that 'd treat myself to a ride-on mower, like all my neighbours had for their similarly-sized gardens. At the age of

60, I no longer needed to prove my macho "I can manage with a walk-behind mower" credentials to anyone ;-) Best decision I ever made. The walk-behind mower is now needed only for cutting the small and steeply-sloping grass verge on the roadside, and for cutting the very steep slope down from the lawn to a stream at the bottom of the garden.

I know that if I were to drive the ride-on forwards (never sideways, because of the risk of rolling over) down that bank, it would get stuck and wouldn't have enough wheel traction to get back up again - and I'm not strong enough to push a 300 kg mower up a steep hill; there isn't even a convenient post or tree nearby to attach a winch to... The last owner of the house apparently drove his mower down that bank by accident and needed help from his neighbours to pull/push it back onto level ground. I have once had to lift the back end of my mower (the heavy end with the engine) a few inches sideways when I got stuck on another part of the lawn that slopes down to a pond, and the mower lost traction to reverse out of trouble. That was a case of getting an old carpet mast that was more grippy that tyre-churned lawn, lifting the mower sideways onto it and then standing on the mat to prevent is slipping while my wife reversed the mower. It only needed to reverse about 6" before it was on firm and level ground. If the mower is 300 kg total and the weight is mainly over the axle I was trying to lift, I probably had to lift/jog over 150 kg, so I'm not sure how I did it! I take very great care to avoid getting into that state again!

Yes, earth-leakage circuit breakers to prevent electric shock are often more expensive that over-current breakers which simply protect against high live-neutral current, so you tend to get each ring main, lighting or cooker circuit protected by over-current MCB, and then the whole house protected by ELCB - so an ELCB fault takes out the whole house.

At our previous house, there was a circuit that fed an outside shed. We found out that if its MCB was turned on during a thunderstorm, the house ELCB would occasionally trip, which is bad news if it were to happen while we were away on holiday and the freezers were turned off. We got into the habit of keeping the shed's MCB turned off at all times except when we needed it (eg while mowing the lawn from a cable plugged into the shed) to prevent false triggering of the whole-house ELCB if there was a thunderstorm.

What is the guidance for new-build houses? Is there still one ELCB for the whole house, or are there combined MCBs (rated 15 A for lighting or 30 A for ring-main/cooker) and ECLBs (rated at 30 mA live-to-earth) for each circuit, so a false trigger only kills one circuit and not the whole house?

ELCBs protect against both live to neutral and live to earth. I was glad of that when I stupidly touched a live wire on a lighting circuit while also touching the neutral with my opposite hand. That would have been very nasty because it would have been an across-the-body shock which might not have doe my heart much good, given that I'd had a heart attack some 10 years earlier. It was a very stupid and amateurish mistake.

*Beware of Philips Hue bulbs and others that can be turned off at an app while retaining power to the bulb.*

I'd been changing lots of GU10 lamp holders around the house. Each time, I turned off the wall switch and the MCB for the lighting circuit. My wife said "Can you do this one as well". The GU10s were not lit so I thought the walls switch was off. It was not: there was power to the bulbs on that circuit but all the bulbs were turned off at the app.

It's the first mains shock I've had in a house with an ELCB. Previously the only protection has been over-current fuses or MCBs. This shock was a nasty belt, but a *lot* less painful, both at the time and afterwards because the power was cut within the rated 30 msec instead of when I managed to pull my hand away as for previous shocks. A previous shock was made worse because I gashed my finger on a sharp bit of metal as I was pulling it away. That was another stupid on: an appliance which was turned off at its own switch, but the soldered connections where the mains lead connected to the switch were still live.

So I've had two "stupid pillock making assumptions" shocks ;-) That's in addition to a couple of forgetting things were live, as opposed to thinking that it was safe (a subtle distinction!).

Because most people don't bother looking before they back up their riding mower.

So you don't accidentally back over and injure or kill a child or pet.

Yes.

When the children were growing up and I lived on a 1/2 acer lot I did not let them out of the house while I was mowing. Now they are moved out and I have a much larger yard there are no children around. So I bypassed that switch. The other mower was old enough to not have that anti backup switch.

True, but she seems to like a little warmth.

On the off chance she chewed on something or sharpened her claws but cats are a lot smarter than other creatures.

We'll see when it gets down towards 0F. So far it's only been in the low teens. I don't know the cat's history but she's skittish.

I don't have experience with children but the cat decides she has urgent business someplace else when the mower gets closer than 50'. No danger anyway; it's a push mower so the only thing it's going to back over is me.

There is no state law requiring helmets although some cities might have regulations for children. There is no motorcycle helmet requirement either although I've gotten better about wearing on. Bugs in your teeth gets old after a while and hail storms truly suck.

I have a bicycle helmet I bought because a private bike trail required it. Ut was the cheapest I could find and did not inspire confidence. They also required a headlight and I found the cheapest light was really inadequate for long railroad tunnels.

Not all animals are that smart.

I believe we were talking about lawn tractors, riding lawnmowers, etc..

There is here, and there's also a requirement to take it off if going in to the shop to pay for petrol/buy a newspaper. They don't bother enforcing that one.

I'd ride naked.

When required to do something, always do the minimum you can get away with.

There's always the house. Turn the warmer off and she might come in. Pets are more fun when they actually interact.

Not in my experience. And I've seen the result of a cat pissing repeatedly on an outlet. Salt conducts well.

About when diesel freezes.

50% of cats are.