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an overtaxed relay
Friday, May 17 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
[REDACTED]
Today Gretchen and I would be driving to the cabin for the weekend, though we got a later start than I would've preferred. Gretchen had arranged to go to Poughkeepsie late this morning with Fern to get bakery goods, and she didn't return until nearly 3:00pm. Not only was it late, but the battery on the Bolt was less charged than usual. Fortunately, though, conditions were expected to be sunnier this weekend than they had been.
We'd only gotten a little ways down Woodworth Lake when Gretchen suggested she and the dogs get out, as they often do (so they can walk the rest of the way). She asked where they might be with respect to the gate (where they would normally get out) and I said it was only about a quarter mile. But then as I drove off without them, I realized I'd let them out something more like 3/4 of a mile short of the gate, meaning the walk to the cabin would be something like 1.7 miles. Then I also remembered that a significant fraction of that would entail walking past other people's houses (westen Woodworth Lake Road has a fair number), where there were likely to be dogs and other distractions/potential problems. These thoughts were going through my head as I stopped a couple times to pick up nice stackable stones I found on the side of the road, since I have no limit to the number of such stones I need.
After I got to the cabin and unloaded the car, I thought about maybe driving back out to pick Gretchen and the dogs up. But now the car didn't have its key fob (was it with Gretchen?), and I couldn't even put its windows up. I retrieved one of the mountain bikes, the one that had been my daily driver in Los Angeles (and which had been partially buried in sand under the screened-in porch) and used the electric air pump in the Bolt to reinflate both its tires to 40psi and headed out. I found Gretchen and Charlotte had already made it to the driveway and Neville wasn't too far behind. But, as I'd feared, the walk hadn't been great. The problem had mostly been Neville, who kept going into the yards of "rednecks," exciting their dogs, and then flamboyantly scratching at the ground to cover up his piss or whatever.
Back at the cabin, I was monitoring the automation part of my remote control system to see if it shut off car charging automatically when the cabin battery dropped into the low-50s of percentage charged. That milestone came and went, and the system said it had shut off. But when I went outside to look at the car, it was still somehow charging. I went down to the basement, which had the fragrance of burned and melted PVC. Then, when I put my hand on it, I felt that the PVC junction box containing the relay that controlled power to the car charger was warm to the touch. I opened it up and I saw that the relay had suffered a minor electrical fire that had damaged both it and the socket it had been inserted into. The fire had apparently locked the relay forever in the "on" position. These relays are supposedly rated to switch 10 amps at 240 volts, and because I'd used both poles in parallel, it should've been capable of handling 20 amps, which is more than this particular car charger uses (16 amps at 240 volts). But when I looked carefully at the relay (a cheap no-name model from China), I saw that its puny little conductors (which were maybe around 20 gauge) weren't up to the task. So after dinner (a delicious beige meal of clam-shell pasta with tempeh and perhaps pesto), I replaced that relay with a beefier one rated for 30 amps. I also considered replacing the one other relay I'm using that is identical to the one that just burned up, which controls an outlet on the west basement wall and has happily been switching a 1.3 kilowatt space heater on and off without problems.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?240517 feedback
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