Sun Pipes

 

The photo shows the sun pipes, which bring the light into the centre of the building.

A Mobile Phone Problem

 

On the stud, the new offices are so insulated that they keep mobile phone signals out, much to everyones annoyance. So I bought a system from Cell Antenna, that puts an aerial outside and an aerial inside with an amplifier between.


The image shows the outside aerial which is pointed at the nearest mobile phone mast.


The inside aerial is fairly small and discrete.

But the system works very well and was easily installed.

The Simple IP Camera

 

It looks like being another glorious February day here today and the picture shows the view from a new camera on the drive.


The picture is displayed in the Daisy Presentation Browser, which is a simple program, that can be used to print and display web pages in a clean format without the baggage of Internet Explorer. For example, if you want to print a web page without the top and bottom headers to frame for your office wall, then this is the program.

The picture below shows the camera and the aerial that links the office network to the house.


This camera and the aerial were purchased from Solwise.

The camera uses a Sony camera tube, is IP65-compliant and is installed by just plugging one cable into the network and the other into a 13-amp socket. When it is first installed it sets itself up on your network with a default IP-address of 192.168.0.20. You just log in to this from your browser and adjust the settings of the camera accordingly.

It takes you longer to screw them to the wall, than to get them to work properly.

If you want to setup a camera at a remote location, all you need is to pair the camera with a wireless AP/bridge and arrange a suitable aerial that links to your main network. It is very easy to setup a range of about fifty to a hundred metres.

Watch, Cook and Eat

 

One of the great advantages of using IP cameras instead of CCTV is that you can watch the pictures on any computer.

Here, I'm using a laptop, whilst I'm cooking my supper.


I prefer the second picture, as all the hard work has been done.


The software on the laptop is currently showing up to four cameras. If required it can show up to sixteen.

LED Rope lights

 

LED rope lights are a very exciting development in the field of lighting.

The outside of the new offices are lit at night by a single LED rope light. As you can see in the first picture it downlights the walls and sufficient of the concrete outside, so you can see where you are going.


Note that because the light is in the eaves of the building, there is no wasted light and all of it goes where you want it. There is also no visual intrusion of unsightly fittings on the outside of the building.

The second picture shows the rope light screwed behind the beams on the front of the building.


It is only when you see it in this shot, that you realise all the advantages of using an LED rope light in this situation.

1. There is no visual intrusion on the outside of the building.

2. The light is continuous and there is no variation due to separate fittings.

3. LEDs can be dimmed and this light is fitted with a dimmer control.

4. The whole front of the building is lit by one twenty metre LED rope light, which is only connected to the electricity at one end. This means that although the rope light costs just over twenty pounds a metre, in many cases you save a lot of money on installation costs, as you only need to run the LED rope light rather than electricity as well.

5. LED rope lights are available in lengths up to fifty metres and are full IP65 compliant. The only thing you can't do is submerge them in water.

Our installation is twenty metres long and consumes about 110 watts. It gives out 560 lumens of light which is directed downwards in a forty degree angle.

If you want to know more about the LED rope lights we used, then this is the data sheet. We obtained them from Excled.

Clamping a Broken Water Pipe

 

As you can imagine on a stud you have a lot of water pipes and valves.

It has been very cold here lately and one of the valves froze solid and broke, sending a spray of water everywhere. As sometimes happens, I couldn't locate where the stop-cock was located, despite going down some very wet and cold manholes looking for it.

In the end I gave up, as I was wet through and frozen, and retired to a hot bath.

But I did find a tool at the Drain Centre in Cambridge.

In the first picture you can see the rather fearsome tool clamped around the pipe, with the broken valve still in place.


Note the big crack in the valve. But the water flow has stopped.

In the end, I just cut the valve off with a saw and then cleaned up the pipe.


The final picture shows the new valve attached to the pipe.


Note the dent in the pipe, where the clamp was applied. It actually shows how strong these plastic water pipes are.

Having seen the power in this tool, I hope people don't ever misuse it.

Golf Buggy at Work

 

We are now using the golf buggy on a regular basis. Typically the longest trips the buggy does are the morning and evening feeds, when it probably carries two to three 25 Kg sacks of feed.

The first two pictures show it working much harder, as it carries about ten thirty or so kilogram sandbags, which are being used for a bridge.


Note how down on the rear wheels the buggy sits.

Bear in mind though that total payload was about 300 Kg in addition to about 65 Kg of driver. So this is really only the equivalent of three averagely-obese American golfers.


The last picture shows the bridge being completed.


One advantage here is that the buggy has a very good turning circle and can thus turn round easily without going off the track too much.

Golf Buggy

 

We now have a golf buggy which we have acquired from Weatherley Buggies.


It is electric and has been modified with a carrying box on the back.

Although here Celia is using it for transport with Anna and Wilma in the box on the back, there are a lot of uses around the stud from feeding to carrying tools and other bits and pieces.

The Stud Network

 

The new offices are connected to the existing stud network through a simple wireless bridge in the attic above the workshop.


Note that all the network points are traced back to this point and a simple wireless access point is used to connect to the aerial on the chimney.

Underfloor Central Heating

 

We have electric underfloor central heating in the new office and it is controlled by the usual type of thermostat. I would have perhaps preferred one that connected into the wireless network for the stud, so that the heating could be controlled by the computer. That way, you'd probably save even more money on the heating.

We're bound to lose the manual of the controllers.

But they are elements eStat 761/762 controllers.

The manual is on the Internet and it's here.

LED Floodlights

 

We've just replaced the outside light which is on all night with an LED floodlight from Savenergi.com.


It looks good and produces almost as much light as the halogen it replaced. But energy costs are about £9 a year instead of about £81.

The picture below shows the light it replaced.

The Definitive Water Trough

 

Water troughs can be a real pain on a stud. And although I have no experience on a cattle farm too.

You plumb one in and rest assured on the wettest and coldest day in the winter something will fail. In the pitch dark you will be trying to avoid pouring a large number of litres of water from creating a quagmire.

From many years experience of fixing the damn things, I like to think that I've come up with a better way of doing things. I probably haven't, as there will always be better methods and I suspect others have gone down the same route as I have.

So what do I do that is different?


One thing is obvious from the picture and that is that there is no back rail, so that the trough can be tipped backwards to both empty it and remove it from its cradle.

You will also notice that instead of hard-plumbing the trough into the cradle it's connected to the water through standard Hozelock components. This means that the trough can be quickly disconnected and removed.

This arrangement also has other advantages.

1. Water is often needed in the paddocks on a stud. Just unclip the connector and fill a bucket.

2. You can also use these connectors to join a hose to the trough, so that this can be used to perhaps fill an adjacent broken trough or supply water to trees.

But the whole point of this arrangement is to avoid using tools in a field on a cold and wet day.

Removing Fence Posts

 

We had a fence by the side of the house that needed to be removed. The fence was typical post and rail, with the posts buried half a metre into the ground. Luckily they were not embedded into concrete.

A few months ago, I made a tool that you could use with a high lift jack to remove fence posts without any great fuss.

As an aside here, just try the normal method of wrapping a chain round the post and then using a tractor to pull the post. This method makes a lot of mess and is very dangerous if the chain breaks.


You start by just dropping the tool over the post.


Note that there are no moving parts in the tool and it doesn't need to be adjusted.

Note too, that the post is in pretty good condition. If the post has broken off at the ground as they often do, then all you need to do is dig a few inches into the ground so that the tool can grip the good part of the post.

The tool is linked to the jack using a shackle with a breaking strain of about a tonne and a half.


Note that the high lift jack is stood on a fence rail to equalise the ground pressure.

The jack is now lifted to pull the post out of the ground.


This pull took about a minute and the post came quickly out of the ground.

Celia did most of the pulling for these posts as it's actually quicker if someone else (me) holds the post vertically. This just shows how powerful the jack/puller combination is.


Note that little damage is done to the ground and in many cases a new post could be driven firmly into the old hole.

The jack can also be used to lift the heavy gate off its hinges.


This picture shows how easy it is to pull a post in a restricted space.


The wall wasn't damaged or even touched.

In the end five fence posts and one gate post were pulled in about half an hour.

Connecting a Water Trough

 

One of the problems with troughs is that the water is usually connected to the valve, through an elbow joint. Inevitably, they leak.

So we have now connected the new ones using a standard garden tap, two Hozelock tap connectors and a length of professional-quality hose.


The connection seems to work well.

The great advantage though is that the trough can be easily removed and taken to the workshop for repair and cleaning. This should help, as the valves always go on the worst and coldest day in the winter.

A Temporary Connection to a Water Trough

 

The new paddocks need water, but digging in the mains can take a long time. Especially, if like me you want to dig in a land drain to take away the surface water from the road that runs alongside the paddocks.

So I've setup a temporary connection using standard Hozelock components.


One of their standard tap connectors fits the ball cock in the water trough, asthey are both the same thread. The hose is connected using a standard connector.


This shows the connection with the hose removed.

Fencing

 

These pictures show the machine that bangs in the fence posts.



Interesting, the machine was made by a company called Fairbrother Industries in New Zealand.

It certainly works well and saves all that work with a sledgehammer.


This illustrates how increasingly in agriculture, specialist people are doing the tradition jobs, with machines designed for the task.

Heat Pumps and Smart Radiators

 

I went to Norwich to see a company, Econic, about a ground source heat pump for the new offices.

The design looks like it will provide the base level of heat for the offices through underfloor heating and for the house using the existing radiator system. As heat pumps work at a lower temperature than boilers, we are also thinking of using some smart radiators with fans to boost the heat output in the kitchen.

We also intend to use the existing boiler system to boost the heat output on cold days.

LED Lights

 

We have used LED lights under the eaves of the foaling unit to light the building.


They are more efficient and hopefully they will last a long time before they need replacement.


The lights are a set of three lights that we bought from Lighting Direct.

As you can see they are specified as being IP64 and are manufactured by JCC with a product number of JC71068.


This picture shows the three lights which are powered by a transformer and can easily be wired into any standard lighting circuit.

As an aside here, I tried to photograph the lights in the dark. Despite the fact they are more than adequate, they were impossible with my simple camera. So if you want to see what they look like, come and see them in action.

Network Cameras

 

All of the cameras in the new building are connected to the stud network so that they can be viewed from anywhere in the locality on any personal computer.


The picture above, captured on my office computer, shows the image from one of the Sony cameras we have installed in a foaling box. This one has full infra-red and has been fitted with a fish-eye lens to get a complete view of the stable.


The camera is shown here. They cost around £200 each and are made to an IP65 specification, which basically means they are waterproof and dustproof. I wouldn't trust them to be steam proof, when you steam clean a stable, but they may well be.

Note how it is angled down and has been modified by removing the cowl.

You will notice that in this case the camera is linked to mains electricity and also connected directly to the computer network that runs around the stables and offices. You can also link them to computers in the office using a radio link if this is more convenient.


This is another view of a camera. Note that here, the cowel has not been cut back.

I think it is true to say that the advantages of this sort of camera over traditionally CCTV cameras will increase in the next few years, as better software and more capable cameras are released into the market.

New Horse Walker

 

A replacement horse walker has been installed in the barn behind the offices.


The location means that the horses will be exercised under cover and they can be easily watched, either directly or by means of a network camera.

Our horse walker is a Claydon, who are based at Southam in Warwickshire. Their web site is www.claydon.com and phone number is 01926 811526.