Ronald Rink

Crimping and using TE AMP SuperSeal 1.5 connectors

Recently, I bought some additional high beam lights from LazerLamps for our truck. For this I had to create and extend a couple of connectors. TE AMP SuperSeal 1.5 connectors, as it turned out. This article serves as an aide-mémoire to me when I have to use and order these connectors in the future. And it might be of no particular interest to you at all. So, feel free and skip reading …

First, these connectors do not have a typical male/female plug/socket arrangement. Instead, they use

“male” plug housing with “female” receptable contacts
“female” cap housing with “male” pins or contacts (called tab contacts)

The SuperSeal 1.5 connector becomes water tight (IP67) by using wire seals that have to be used on every single wire and are crimped to the contacts. So, the contacts have two crimp points:

Outer crimp
for attaching the wire seal and the insulation of the wire insulation which also serves as a bend protection
Inner crimp
for crimping the uninsulated wire to the contact – and this uninsulated part is rather short: only 4mm.
This is suprising as the connectors are still rated for 14A.

Note: The wire seals come in different diameters and colours with “yellow” the most common size (especially when buying no-name clones).

For the correct way of crimping these connectors, I could reuse my existing Knipex Crimp System Plier (97 43 200) and just add the matching crimping dies 97 49 28 along with the wire feed stopper 97 49 28 1. The latter greatly helps to have the right insertion depth when crimping, as one cannot really see anything due to the wire seal attached to the cable.

After crimping the contacts have to be inserted into the housing. And there is only one correct and possible direction which fits. Audible and tactile feedback is given with correct insertion.

Both housings have locks (usually in red) that must be open for insertion and extraction and locked for use. Gettings these locks unlocked is quite tricky and a specialised tool is highly recommended – especially for the cap housing. The same for the actual extraction of the contacts themselves. I found it easy to destroy the contact, housing or screwdriver when not done carefully or properly.

There is a good video (in german) that shows how to use the pliers and assemble the connectors:

Here is a summary of most of the parts along with their contact sizes.

Cross Section mm2	Plug Housing w/ Receptable Contacts	Cap Housing w/ Tab Contacts	Wire Seals
0.35 .. 0.50	282403-1	282404-1	281934-4 (1.2 .. 1.6mm) green
0.75 .. 1.50	282110-1	282109-1	281934-2 (1.7 .. 2.4mm) yellow
1.50 .. 2.50	282466-1	282465-1	281934-3 (2.5 .. 3.3mm) red
Extraction / Insertion Tools	9-1579007-1	9-1579007-1
Positions Number of Contacts / Pins			Extraction / Insertion Tools
1	282079-2	282103-1	2452133-1 785061-1
2	282080-1	282104-1	2452133-1 785061-1
3	282087-1	282105-1	2452133-1 785061-2
4	282088-1	282106-1	2452133-1 785061-2
5	282089-1	282107-1	2452133-1 785061-2
6	282090-1	282108-1	2452133-1 785061-2

TE AMP SuperSeal 1.5 contact part numbers (w/o gold contacts)

There are some additional parts that might be of interest as well:

Rubber boots for housings
2 pin: 880810-1
3 pin: 880811-2
Cavity Plugs for housings with unused pins
282081-1

Example

A complete 3-pin socket/plug for 1.5mm2 thus consists of the following part numbers:

3* receptable contact
282110-1 (or 282466-1)
3* tab contact
282109-1 (or 282465-1)
6* wire seals
281934-2 (or 281934-3)
1* plug housing
282087-1
1* cap housing
282105-1
2* rubber boot
880811-2 optional
insertion / extraction tools optional, but recommended
(especially for extraction)
9-1579007-1, 2452133-1, 785061-2

Here is a copy of the official data sheet from TE:

AMP SuperSeal 1.5 Connectors Part Numbers Download

Note: I first bought a cheap SuperSeal no-name clone for testing the crimping pliers before I tried with the originals. Saved me quite some money …

So, this is it for today. Hope you find this useful. It surely helped me.

Wind turbines revisited

Back in 2021, when I initially considered a wind turbine, and actually purchased a FuturEnergy AirForce-1 (which has now been acquired by Britwind), I had to find out that financially it really did not pay off to have a micro turbine. Plus, the turbine did not fully convince me, if it could really handle the high wind speeds here in Caithness.

Here is a rough estimate of the energy production and consumption per 24h of the FuturEnergy AirForce-1 for our location at 10m tower height:

FuturEnergy (now: Britwind) AirForce-1 energy generation (avg 7.1m/s at 10m)

As we can see, the turbine does not even come close to what we need. In addition, it cuts off at roughly 11m/s and has a survival speed of 52m/s. So, especially in the winter months when energy is needed most, chances are high that the turbine cuts out and -worst case- breaks if we do not lower it beforehand. This is an additional a nuisance, as lowering the tower is quite an undertaking (taking away all guy lines).

So it is clear, we need something bigger – since “more is more” (the Muldoon principle).

After looking around what works in the Highlands and Islands and what actually got a positive planning decision, I came across two options in the 5kW range:

Britwind H5
aka ISKRA Evance R9000
Ryse Energy E5-HAWT

What both turbines have in common:

delivery of around 5kW peak power (at 11m/s)
cut-off and survival speed 60m/s+ (218km/h or 134mph)

Though the E5 seems to produce energy at lower wind speeds, it seems the H5 is more efficient at higher wind speeds. Here is some data I got from their spec sheets:

Average wind speed	Britwind H5	Ryse Energy E5
2	0	290
3	0	1900
4	4963	3900
5	9167	6900
6	13653	10000
7	17877	14300
8	21581	17700
9	21581	20000
10	21581	22500
m/s	kWh p.a.	kWh p.a.

The NOABL wind speed database classifies our location as 7.1m/s (yearly average at 10m) and their report shows the follwoing information at 10m, 12m and 15m height over the year:

Month	Height 10m	Height 12m	Height 15m
January	9.0	9.2	9.4
February	8.6	8.8	8.9
March	8.4	8.5	8.7
April	6.6	6.8	6.9
May	5.8	5.9	6.0
June	5..0	5.1	5.2
July	5.5	5.5	5.7
August	5.6	5.7	5.8
September	6.9	7	7.1
October	7.5	7.7	7.8
November	7.5	7.8	7.8
December	8.6	8.8	9.0
	avg m/s	avg m/s	avg m/s

Compared to each other this does not look too dramatically different. But the power being generated increases in a cubic order with doubling wind speeds.

Average wind speeds at different heights over the year

So, when I correlate this information with different turbines to our location for a 15m tower height I get the following data:

Power generation of turbines at different heights

But it becomes more interesting when we compare generated versus required power per day over each month.

Here we see that during the winter months generated power seems to be the same (or capped) at just below 60kWh per day. And it also seems that we have a surplus every month (the orange bar is the power required per day).

Power required vs power generated [kWh per 24h]

And if we now show the surplus/deficit power vs power generated we see that the E5 cannot always produce the required amount:

Ryse Energy E5-HAWT at 15m [kWh per 24h]

From this we can see the following problems:

The E5 will not be able to deliver the amount of energy on its own for over 4 months and barely only during half of the year. During summer we can compensate that easily with PV if we so like.
Hiwever, for winter months this can become harder to achieve.
For the H5, the average surplus of power is quite small in August, so chances are high we have to top up as well (easy in August with PV).
Based on the current “capacity” of our batteries (86kWh) and the little amount of surplus energy in the darker months, it is quite probable that we run out of power (regardless of the brand).

To illustrate the last point, we have a look at the battery runtime based on our battery “capacity” and required power per day. For a third of a year the runtime is below 2 days. And for half of the year it is below or just over 2 days. Only in the two brightest months of the year we have a runtime of over 4 days.

Battery runtime based on required power [h p.m.]

So, it only needs a short period of calm to run out out of power. Of course, there is a solution to it. Actually, more than one:

Use less energy (such as not to wash for a day when SoC is low).
Use solar to help out (also works in darker months, see our calculation here).
Use diesel (we still have and always will have the backup generator).
Use a bigger battery bank (such as 10 batteries with 144kWh that would give us a runtime of three days).
Use a bigger turbine (see below for a power generation with a Britwind H11) –
again: Iain knows – “more is more”.

Britwind Desk Assessment

My above values differ quite a lot from the desk assessment that Britwind prepared for me. For the same turbine and tower height they predict a much higher energy prodution:

If these values were to be achieved, we are less likely to run out of power. Of course, with no wind at all, we still run out of power after exactly the same time. But chances are much lower.

But I rather use my values and be positively surprised if actual generation exceeds my prediction than the other way round as in relying on wrong numbers and have too little energy.

A bigger turbine?

When going for a bigger turbine such as the Britwind H11 we would have excess power so it became unlikely to ever deplete the batteries. We could probably even shrink the size of our battery bank. Or we could run a Bitcoin miner with the excess energy. But, I find that quite a waste. Plus, the bigger turbine is much more expensive, heavier and needs more maintenance (read: even more expensive).

Price and Cost Estimate

When I looked online to get an indication for the price of turbines, I found sources that stated arounf 23'000 GBP for a Britwind H5. The estimates I was given by Britwind range from 35'000 GBP to 45'000 GBP (and optionally a 700 GBP p.a. service contract).

I will have to see what (electrical) components I already have that I can reuse and what works I can do myself (such as preparing the ground) in order to reduce the total cost.

To buy the energy needed (13844kWh p.a.) from Scottish Power I would have to spend nearly 3'000 GBP.

And to produce this from my Diesel generator I would need roughly 4'250l of Diesel and thus spend about 3'250 GBP.

With a turbine lifetime of maybe 20 years, I still do not think this really pays off – unless, of course, fuel prices righ considerably. However, wind power seems to me much more environment friendly (not only compared to Diesel but also to PV).

Conclusion and Next Steps

So, the next step in my evaluation is to get more technical and legal information and requirements about the turbines (such as output voltages, approved electrical eqipment, required permits). Do they work in an off-grid environment – and, if yes, how? How can control our complete electrical system to avoid overchargin, and have safeties and fallbacks in place? I will find out.

And this is it for today.

Building a 4-way “industrial looking” junction box

Note: this post continues our adventure of converting a workshop into a flat.

After the successful build of the terminal blocks of our distribution enclosure I continued to design a junction box for the electric wiring in the rooms.

First, I had to decide on the maximum number of connections I would expect to have in a single junction box. I came up with the number of 4. And here is why:

Most of the time, we will have a standard “Tee” to either connect sockets or to distribute to a different part of a room; and sometimes we will have a “Tee” and additionally connect a socket which will be a Feller 2xT23 Standard to which we run 5-core (3LNPE) to distribute phases. Besides, much more than 4 connections to and from the box would be difficult to achieve.

In order to facilitate testing and maintenance, I decided to equip the junction boxes with a neutral-disconnect. For this the Wago 2003-6641 comes in handy (which is much harder to get than the Wago 2003-764x models). It has a lever with a “disconnect knife” that cuts the neutral. As I want a 3LNPE 4-way junction, we have to use 2 of these next to each other with a jumper. That means, depending on what circuit we want to test, we have to remove that jumper as well.

Our initial version would therefore look like this and would fit easily within 2 modules (including stop-ends):

Top view: 4-way junction with neutral-disconnect and jumpers
Side view with end plate and stop-end
PE is connected via DIN rail

For most of our lights we want to use an Intertechno radio receiver to switch the loads. We already have some existing ITL-1000 which we will be repurposing for this conversion. However, there is also a newer version, the ITL-2000, which can switch two 1000W loads independently – which is actually the preferred way. But this means we have to split the neutral and have additional PE terminals. For this, we use the “Tested and Approved” (anyone remembering this from the 90?) Wago 221-413 connectors mounted on a mounting carrier. So, here is the final layout:

4-way junction box with 35mm DIN rail-mounted terminal blocks
Junction box with neutral-disconnect
Top view with dimensions
Part numbers
Junction box with Intertechno ITL-1000 receiver

But to make this junction box look “industrial” we have to find a suitable enclosure. In my opinion it must have a transparent cover. Like this (which I found on Amazon):

Junction box with transparent cover, image taken from https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07BM58W29

And here the box as a prototype with the terminal blocks with 2003-764x, jumpers missing and an ITL-1000 (the other parts are still in the mail). As soon as I have installed one of these on the wall with all the cabling I will post an update.

Wago: LEGO for grown-ups

Note: this post continues our adventure of converting a workshop into a flat.

Most of the electrical parts arrived. So it was time to draw the rest of the electricial installation inside the enclosure – and of course to apply some last minute changes …

The first thing I had to change was the vertical bus bars due to a bug in the Hager Ready software which turned out to be not so ready. Based on my RCBOs the software suggested to use a Hager FWB72N3 7-row 2-field 150mm field enclosure – in combination with the 125mm quickconnect bus bars. Surprisingly they did not play along that well. So now, I exactly had to do what I did not want to do: excessive cabling from row to row inside the enclosure. What a bummer. Luckily, there are fixed vertical jumpers available from Hager in the required size:

Problem solved – just not with “quickconnect”. On the other hand, even with quickconnect I would have had to screw in the vertical bus bars anyway.

But now back to our terminal blocks. As we have a total of 11 RCBOs I see no point to install a bunch of separate neutral bus bars. Instead I opted for rail-mount terminal blocks from Wago that are also known as Wago TOPJOB S (how this rolls off the tongue). And Wago provides a web-based Smart Designer to help layout the terminal blocks and fight through their jungle of product names.

And this is what I came up with first:

3D view: terminal blocks w/o N disconnect

Looks neat?! The software goes even further and produces a comprehensive bill of material which facilitates ordering the right stuff:

Wago bill of material for our terminal blocks including acessories, taken from Wago Smart Designer

But there the next problem was already waiting for me. As I wanted to connect the RCBOs not directly to the cabling that led to the appliances, but via a row of terminal blocks, I found out that despite the FWB72N3 being a Type II enclosure the upper to DIN rails were not insulated from the main chassis. So, I could not use these DIN rails to distribute PE over it – unless I replaced them with 4 UTC22C. Another “bug” in the Hager Ready software? Ok, not really a bug, but definitely a nuisance. The longer the more I began to question the advantage of buying a pre-fitted and pre-installed enclosure and using an app that calls itself “Ready” (with capital R).

And just when I thought I was finished, I changed my mind and added a neutral-disconnector into every outgoing RCBO connection – to facilitate testing an future maintenance. Now, I just have to lift the orange lever and the neutral is disconected – no plugging and unplugging of cables, no lose ends …

And this is what the final model of our layout looks like (and it just fits onto a 210mm 12 module DIN rail):

3D view: mains in, 4x3x4 with neutral disconnect
View with material information
Bottom view
Top view
Side with with height information
Upside down

I must say, playing with the Wago configurator is a lot of fun. And unpacking it is also great – reminds me of my long-gone days of LEGO:

With these 2 rows of terminal blocks I can easily change my configuration inside the enclosure or the cabling in the rooms without affecting each other.

The main terminal blocks accept 16mm2 for fine-strained wire and 25mm2 for fixed wire and the rest of the blocks accepts 2.5mm2 (fine-strained) or 4mm2 (fixed). Enough for all of our cabling needs. Each of the smaller terminal blocks accepts up to 20A whereas the larger terminal blocks accept 76A (all at 230V)

The next thing is to design a junction box for the rooms to distribute the cabling to the appliances.

Will keep you posted.

Converting a workshop into a flat

Now, that we just finished our plumbing course, it is time to apply our freshly acquired skills.

A prowd owner of a Certificate of Unit Credit towards Level 2 Diploma in Plumbing Studies

What better opportunity could there be than to convert an old workshop into a modern flat? During the next weeks we will document our plans and progress towards that conversion.

These are the things that need to be done:

Add an interiour wall to separate bath room from kitchen
Add an interiour wall to separate bed room form entrée
Paint walls and ceiling
Lay laminate flooring
Rewire electricity, add energy meter and distribution board
-and of course now to the plumbing- Install pipe work for water in bath room and kitchen
Move soil stack up to first floor
Install shower, toilet, basin and washing machine
Install kitchen sink and dish washer
decommission existing connections
… and clean up and make space first

We first started with a basic room layout which I did in Sketchup Make 2017, the last *free* version of Sketchup by Google (now owned by Trimble). Though Trimble does not support or offer that version, thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine the version can still be downloaded.

Note: the “PRO Trial” will revert to the free version aftert 30 days.

My last Sketchup experience dates back to 2015 when I modelled the packaging for the beer bottles of our then breweey, so the model I came up with now (not completed) is not really stable not particularily beautiful. But you will get an idea.

Front view
Back view through invisible wall
Top view
From kitchen/bath area into entrée
From living area into entrée
From bed room into entrée
From study into entrée

As the walls of the building are made of ferroconcrete and we are not fans of flush mounting we decided to put all the pipework and cabling on the walls and not hide them in conduits.

For the pipework we decided to use Geberit Mapress 15mm stainless steel pipes. There we go for the slightly cheaper 1.4521 variant (and not 1.4401) which is also approved for drinking water:

Application overview – Geberit Mapress Stainless Steel for liquid media, taken from https://cdn.data.geberit.com/overviews/GB-en/DAS_157952.pdf

For the electrical installation we have to install a distribution board with a separate energy meter. For this, we chose Hager and wanted to try out the quickconnect system, where everything is just plugged into place instead of being screwed down.

With the Hager Ready app (on Windows) it was suprisingly easy to configure and validate the layout (though the “wizard” was not working in my favour and always picked the “wrong” products which is why I added the components manually):

It even generated a 3D view of the selected enclosure:

For the connection of the actual wires from the rooms to the 11 RCBOs I chose to go via 2003 WAGO DIN rail terminal blocks (on row 1 of the board). So with quickconnect in place and these terminal blocks, I only have to run 56 2.5mm2 wires (plus one 16mm2 PE) for the whole distribution board!

To make calculation of the required cable lengths a little bit easier I threw the numbers into this spread sheet:

Required cable length for a 2×7 distribution board

For 33 phases and 23 neutrals RCBOs I would need nearly 60m of wire! This is because I really cannot use bus bars for neutral. For a comparison: If I had got a 2×6 distribution board I would have used nearly 10m less for the internal cabling (but unfortunately, there was none available):

Required cable length for a 2×6 distribution board

I ordered most of the electrical stuff today and will have an update on it when the material arrives.

And this is it for today.

Sunrise in Caithness

Thursday is bin day for where we are. So, on my way to the main road across our neighbour’s plot I came across this stunning view which my phone camera hopefully truefully captured. On the right (toward south-east), we can see the newly installed turbines south of the existing Beatrice wind farm.

Func fact: despite all the power off-shore, the electricity line you see running through the pictures (from north-to-south, left-to-right) seems to be only an 11'000V line shared by all the houses along the coast with 3-phase power generally not being an option up here but frequent power-cuts included as part of the service level agreement.

Just that you know … ( 2 )

Some time ago, we announced our ever-expanding presence on then Twitter, now X. And now, we depart from that:

We are no longer posting to Twitter or X, as others such as The Guardian also already announced. You can find news and posts apart from here on our Youtube channel in the Community section.

We will try to get the content from there to here and eventually close the account.

Getting a CSCS card in the UK

For certain tasks or jobs in the United Kingdom a trades worker is required to have a “Construction Skills Certification Scheme” card – CSCS for short. Primarily targeted at the construction industry and not being a legal requirement a worker might still need this card even when working in different sectory such as electricity or plumbing. Actually not this card, but some card – as they come in different types and colours (see below).

CSCS – Types of CSCS cards, https://www.cscs.uk.com/types-of-cscs-cards/

But it does not end there. The UK being the UK not only has one body to award these cards but a whole CSCS Alliance working under the recommendations of the Construction Leadership Council that currently (today, 2025-01-12) seems to consist of 38 (sic) members. That means that your card could come from CSCS, SKILLcard (which have also all sorts of colourful cards, see image below) or from ALLMI, the Association of Lorry Loader Manufacturers and Importers, that only offer a white card.

SKILLcard- Types of SKILLcard, https://www.skillcard.org.uk/types-of-skillcard

And the hat goes deeper. With Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England, all being a nation in the Kingdom (first question every aspiring plumber must answer, for those who know), they certainly operate different schemes for electricians, plumbers and the like (sometimes combined, joined, separate, you name it). Examples:

All these cards differ – sometimes more, sometimes less. E.g. the Electrotechnical Certification Scheme of the JIB offers a “Gold Card” (Digital Security Technician) with some relatively easy entry requirements, such as a CompTIA Security+ certification. In contrast, a plumber would need a Level 3 NVQ and some years of experience to be admitted for a “Gold Card”.

Side note: the Electrotechnical Certification Scheme in Scotland (SJIB) does not offer this type of “Gold Card” and you can only apply for it when you have an address in England.

Digital Security Technician – Eligibility and requirements

But of course, if you do not want to go for “Gold” and are happy with a “White Card” as a Professionally Qualified Person there seems to be a a much easier route:

You simply join the British Computer Society as a member (optionally by providing “evidence” of some over-sea qualification) and then apply for the “White Card” with CSCS.

But hold on, isn’t there a requirement to pass a Health, Safety & Environment test for Managers and Professionals (HS&E MAP) with CITB (as needed for most of the cards)? With this test we are supposed to make sure we follow and understand health and safety requirements such as RIDDOR, CDM and the like. Rest assured – we got you covered.

Except – for this PQP we do not need to prove our knowledge to CITB, an independant testing provider, and achieve a 90%+ score to pass the test as everyone else. We are professionals (the hint is in the name) and therefore may take a self-invigilated exam with the Construction Industry Council (CIC): the CIC Health & Safety Certification. This consists of a learning web site at the cost of <50GBP where we study everything we need. And after that, we take the exam “closed book” and a work colleague of yours makes sure you do not cheat. After all – we are professionals.

So, in the end we get a “White Card” with the CSCS logo as “proof that individuals working on construction sites have the appropriate training and qualifications for the job they do, thereby helping to improve standards and safety in UK construction” (https://www.cscs.uk.com/). Glad to read.

CSCS cards – “proof [for] appropriate […] qualifications […] helping to improve […] safety in the UK”, https://www.cscs.uk.com/

The empire strikes back…

Water Filter Build

Here is the state of our current water filter build and installation:

With these 2 strings of 4 serial 20″ Pentek Big Blue compatible water housings we can filter in 4 steps from 50um, 20um and 5um down to 1um before it gets processed via the Wedeco Aquada UV lamp. However, we use Purefer Filter Housing from Global Water Solutions.

By running 2 strings in parallel we reduce the pressure drop stemming from the sediment filters and allow for maintenance and changing the filters without interruption of the water service to the barn.

The whole installation is just under 1200mm * 800mm (length, width) and fits on a standard EUR-pallet (EPAL).

Next step is to install the pipe works running from the “mains” connection (rainwater from both 6’000l tanks) to the filter housings and from the UV lamp to the DAB EsyBox Mini 3.

Alternate Access to the Plot – Part 2

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about trying to get an alternate access to our plot. And yesterday, we finally were able to test it. Not the way we originally envisioned – but doable. The exact path is shown on an old entry in the Sasine Register of Scotland as shown below.

Servitude right of vehicular and pedestrian access

We actually only wanted to move our digger to our neighbour’s site to assist in setting fence strainers but along this exercise we had to take our Mule as well. The Mule just fits the track …