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efunc

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Everything posted by efunc

  1. Good idea, no harm in trying that first I suppose. Thanks
  2. Excellent! Very encouraging. If you've got examples of your experiment I'd love to see the pics. I'll go and hunt for some diamond discs that will fit my backing plate and give it a whirl. Thanks
  3. Yes, very good point. However, I see them as separate issues and the colour fading is less important than the flaking. I have other limestone which I think is very similar, but it's honed, so seems much more resilient and less porous. I was thinking I could stop the new slabs disintegrating by polishing them down a bit. I might then use a sealer, and even the colour restorer, but I'll cross that bridge later.
  4. Thanks! Do you have the Kestral Das-6, or the water fed one? And if so, which discs did you use?
  5. Hi all, I picked up 12 Indian Limestone slabs which are black in colour for a givaway price on eBay. Unfortunately I didn't realise they were heavily weathered and the surface is silver/grey and flaking away sheets. As they're slightly riven I thought it must be possible to polish them to match my sawn/honed Limestone I have elsewehere. I don't want to acheive a high polish at all, but just remove some of the flakiness and smooth/seal the surface some more. Obviously a dedicated patio polisher is out of the question but I've noticed you can buy 4" diamond discs in various grades quite cheap for polishing stone and concrete. I've also seen this wet polisher quite cheap, but don't want to buy another tool either given that the limestone only cost me £20: Wet Polisher I do have Kestral Das-6 Pro Dual Action (random orbital) polisher I use to compound my car bodywork. Would a diamond disc fitted to my DA polisher with a thoroughly wetted stone acehive any results?? Das-6 Pro Failing that, I could get a basic angle grinder if that can be used perfectly flat to the stone face. Here's the limestone laid as coping stones in the dry: and once wet:
  6. Yes, I've bought 4 of the 3-gang dimmers, however for the downlights in the actual garden room it's been wired to fit a varilight dimmer switch. I figured I use that as planned rather than get yet another wireless dimming receiver and try to hide it somewhere. The alternative was to get a 2-gang MK Faceplate, with one side with a wired dimmer and the other side with a quinetic dimmer. Basically I'll have have to see which solution I can actually get away with.
  7. I've got one dual receiver for some garden lights, but that's not dimming, so I've got 3 or 4 dimming ones for most of the lighting.
  8. Thanks, it's worth a try. On the outside wall I wanted to hide two receivers and two 3-gang Quinetic switches. So I'll see if I can acheive all that by modding one dual 1 gang back box as you suggest. For inside the room I just need one receiver, one 3-gang Quinetic switch and one varilight dimmer switch. Again, I'll give it a go with another dual 1 gang back box.
  9. Thanks for checking for me. Those are 2 gang boxes but I think I need dual 1 gang otherwise I won't be able to mount 2 x Quinetic switches on them, or 1 Qunietic switch and one Varilight dimmer, as in the case of the one inside the room. However your essential dimensions will be very similar in either case and are very helpful. Probably fine for one receiver, but not so much for 2.
  10. Thanks, that's very kind! I've found the plastic versions of this dual 1 gang box, and they're inexpensive enough. However, I think it's highly unlikely I could fit 2 receivers in them - maybe one at a push if I cut through the partition. The problem is the receivers really are large: Height: 31mm Length: 89mm Length: 98mm inc lug Width: 43mm If you could perhaps confirm the size of yours that would be great.
  11. Yes, OK, that is a good point. I'm not so worried about reception because the receiver will be mounted next to the french doors, which is an external wall, so the signal will just have to traverse some OSB and cedar cladding which will hopefully be manageable. However I was going to experiment with sinking this double backbox into the plasterboard thee, if I can squeeze it in: But, based on your observation I will try and source plastic ones instead. I'm hoping these boxes will accommodate on receiver and one hard wired varilight switch, or alternatively 2 receivers behind two quinetic switches. Anyone know for certain?
  12. Right, I'm still looking at possible solutions for hiding these receivers in my garden room. There's one tiny cavity available for wiring the backbox for the 'wired' dimmer switch for the 4 downlighters: What I'm wondering is if a standard backbox can accommodate one of the receivers if I use the flush plate over it?? If so, I could possibly use a 2-gang MK plate with a wired dimmer and a quinetic dimmer with the receiver in the box. Is this too tight?
  13. Well, yes and no. I've designed this whole build hyper-efficiently, so have stud walls with 70mm and 100mm PIR everywhere, taped off and VCL membrane before plasterboard. It was all pre-wired to accommodate hard wired switches since I originally thought that's what I needed locally, with the wireless stuff being located elsewhere. Now I've got all these oversized receivers I need to hide somewhere, but you'd laugh if you saw how I did all the recessed lighting and sockets. I built in vapour sealed PP cavities cut into the PIR all sealed off and hidden behind plasterboard: So, if I'd factored in the Quinetic receivers at an earlier stage it could have been a neat installation. But now these thing's will have to be in large surface mounted boxes with cable trunking all over the walls too. The original Curv360 receivers I planned to use were much smaller and I could have been squeezed into the back boxes, but the Quinetic stuff is really rather big. That's the dilemma I'm mulling over right now. Hmmm..
  14. So, just blew a small fortune on this lot. Reckon it should do what I need, for now:
  15. OK, thanks. And I just checked again and there is a 3-gang version too: QU WS3W So, if I'm to understand correctly, you can't have a hard-wired switch and a wireless receiver controlling the same circuit? If there's only one permanent Live coming in it has to go to either the wired switch or the wireless receiver I guess, and daisy chain off that, so one is always 'master'. That was the basis of my wiring plan, but appears to be a mistake. In fact I just watched Part 1 of the Shed Wiring video on Youtube and realised the hard wired switch I thought he'd installed in that installation was actually a Quinetic one inside an MK faceplate! Shed Rewire, Part 1 So, on that basis, could you set me in the right direction for re-envisioning my light wiring plan? I have 1 circuit in the garden room of 4 dimmable downlighters which need be controlled only from inside that room. But I also have one circuit of the outside lights wired to a switch here which also needs to be controlled from outside too. So the 4 downlighters need a wired dimmer switch, and the outside circuit needs a QU R301 dimming receiver. So for this I might need one of the 2-gang MK or Varilight faceplates with one being hardwired for the inside and one being a Quinetic dimmer (if these are dimmable). Failing that, a normal 1-gang hardwired dimmer, and a separate QU D11W for controlling the outside. For the switch outside doing the remaining 3 circuits I just need to bin my Masterplug weatherproof hardwired switch and fit one QU WS3W and place another 2 QU R301 dimming receivers into the wiring. I'm guessing this is about right.
  16. Well, I hope this is OK, a few months down the line and I'm having to revive this thread because I've a bit of a brick wall. I've completed my garden room and the wiring is done. My electrician has attempted to wire in my kinetic receivers but has hit a snag. I have 4 lighting circuits for the outhouse; 1 inside and a further 3 outside. All of them are hardwired to switches, but I intended to use the wireless receivers and switches to enable 2-way control from the house too. My electrician's wired in a temporary switch and a receiver from 'Curv 360' and claims it can't be done: with the receiver in circuit it's either set to pass a signal which can be turned off and on again by the wired switch, or set to break the signal, in which case the wired switch can't 'un-break' it. Both switches can't seem to have independent control of the the circuit, if that makes any sense. Is it actually possible to take an existing wired installation and add wireless controllers into it, or do I have to go completely wireless and bin the wired stuff (or go wired and have to run new cables to the house)? Neither scenario is attractive as I have 4 separate circuits, all of which need to be dimmable, but Quinetic only do 2 gang dimmer switches, and they are not IP68 either. I could use lots of powergrid compatible modules, but then the budget really does get out of hand. Has anyone had any experience mixing wired with wireless?
  17. OK, thanks. I'll try and devise a neat solution. The cable is the end of the radial power circuit of the garden room. It will start from a new CU inside the room I've yet to put in. It's possible to just put a 2-gang slim main socket in the DriBox outside, but the extension sockets just seem more suited.
  18. OK, thanks for confirming. In that case I'll need to put the QUR323 on the mains output and put 2 x 12v transformers after it. The transformers come with 3A fuses in moulded 3-pin plugs which will have to be removed. I'm guessing the dual 6A QUR323 should be fine in this regard. Are the 3A in-line fuses still advisable though? And anyone know what the residual current draw of the QUR323 would be? I couldn't find this info in the product description.
  19. OK, inspired by Onoff's wiring installation I've been looking into this some more and getting closer to choosing what I need. If I purchase a 'DriBox' and place a 2 or 4 gang trailing socket can this be connected directly to the 240v power cable I have coming down from the ceiling without yet another mains socket in between? The box will house a transformer (or two PSUs) for the 2 EZVIZ security cameras, and one of the following layouts for the Techmar garden light kit I linked to previously: Or Because the Techmar transformer has a special weather sealed connector on the 21v output I would need one of their special output splitters and then cut the cable for the Quinetic QUR323 before requiring another one of their connectors to rejoin the cable for the lights. For this reason I would prefer running two of their transformers independently instead. Also I thought that maybe the residual power draw of the transformers could be contained better if they're placed after the QUR323. However TLC could not tell me what the power draw of the QUR323 when switched off, nor whether it supports 12v A/C. Would this setup otherwise work OK?
  20. Yes indeed! All good ideas. My original plan was to place a very small junction box for all the connections on the 6x2 timber as you identified. However once ceiling cladding is complete would only provide about 120mm depth, and I underestimated the number/size of PSUs and 3-pin sockets, etc required. I'm now thinking about a slightly reduced installation which might only require 2 sockets (or potentially one), and it could be fitted more discretely into a metal box or something. If I purchase this techmar albus 12v kit: It'll come with one 22w 12v A/C transformer which can also run the 2 x 2w LED light strings on a separate circuit via a 2 way divider, and I can place a receiver on each output leg. I could even go further and loose the 3-pin plug and wire the transformer directly, provided I include a 3A inline fuse. That should be a fairly diminutive box of tricks. That just leaves the cameras though, which require a PSU each. But again, I could source a transformer for those too and just run them directly off that, foregoing the bulky plugs. So, two transformers wired directly, and sitting in a junction box with two quinetic switching receivers? Does it sound safe? The 22w Techmar transformer is 12v A/C. Would the Quinetic 6A Dual Wireless Receiver be able to work wit that though? https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/QUR323.html
  21. Yes, I like that. I wasn't sure if I'd get away with indoor sockets in an outdoor space, but it's a bit of a grey area because it's effectively covered and dry in there. At a push I may be forced to make a box, mount it on the brick wall and fill it with PSU, sockets and receivers. It needn't look too big or too ugly I suppose...
  22. Yes, there will be a ceiling made of T&G treated spruce cladding. I'm currently filling it with offcuts of Kingspan PIR, just because it'll end up in the skip otherwise. I could do as you advise. It's not a bad idea. I'll have to give it some though once I figure out exactly how much electrical stuff I need to shove up there.
  23. Thanks, I may have to do something like that, but at 355 mm (W) x 265 mm (D) x 120 mm (H) I'd have to fit it to the damp brick wall instead, and it would be something of 'a feature'! I originally envisioned something small, or hidden, screwed to the 6x2 timber head plate that would hardly be visible. ie 130 x 200mm or thereabouts, max. Now I realise I may have been a bit naive about the connections.
  24. OK, thank you, that's useful to know. Which ones did you choose in the end? Also, I can see the combination of outdoor socket and PSU will be a no-go now. The case will not close and the plug cannot even go into the socket all the way due to raised bezel around the enclosure: I thought this was a fairly typical installation for outdoor devices, lights, camera, etc. How does everybody else do this then?
  25. Oh sorry, I completely misunderstood. I thought they were remote transformers supplying 12v or 24v for some reason. My mistake! In that case I'll stick with this sort of plan: Curv CV05 receivers controlling two of these transformers: https://www.gardenlightshop.com/transformers/169-techmar-12v-22w-outdoor-transformer-6046011.html one for the 2 LED light strings, and one for the 6 bollard lights. Excuse the building site, but this is what I'm working on: The main thing I'm struggling with is the location for the wiring and transformers. I'd planned to place it all discretely in a corner of a side-shelter next to my garden room. It'll be up against the ceiling on either the 6x2 timber head plate, or the brick wall next to it. The wiring is currently wired through the rafters up to this point. The problem is I was hoping for a small discrete box containing transformers and receivers that would be fed by that mains cable. Instead all the solutions seem to require 3-pin plugs which in turn would require one of those enormous outdoor IP68 2-gang sockets. That would take up a large and prominent area of the line of sight when sat on benches in that covered area: The lights will then travel along this wall, one zone for 10m and another zone for the next 10m: Is there a way of doing the supply avoiding the need for a 2-gang mains socket?
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