Setting charset and collation on every query, is it neccessary and can I suppress it?

[eluser]InsiteFX[/eluser]
You can try the below, not tested.
But this is still telling me that your database is using the latin1_swedish_ci collation, this is the number one problem that causes this error for SET NAMES.

Run it before you do other queries.

Code:

$this->db->query('SET NAMES '.$this->db->escape_str("utf8");

InsiteFX