Wednesday 18th July 2018 – I’M WHACKED!

And it’s no surprise either. The last three pieces of furniture came up from Caliburn today, they are assembled, partly filled and now in place.

And what was funny was that when I was at IKEA and loading Caliburn with the two large cabinets, I couldn’t manage it and needed some help. But yet this morning I could pick one of them up with one hand and run up the stairs with it.

The big chest of drawers, well that was a different matter. That needed two trips as I expected. And at about 19:00 at the end of the day when I had to bring up the other large cabinet, it was something of a stagger.

Anyway, now they are all assembled and in position. The bedroom now actually looks like a bedroom-cum-office as it’s supposed to do. And not only that, I’ve even started to tidy up Caliburn.

Caliburn needs a good tidying out too because there needs to be room for the European Cardboard Box Mountain which is now totally out of control. All of that needs taking down and loading into Caliburn so that I can take it to the dechetterie when I’m out and about on my travels on Saturday.

And then I need to start to tidy up in here.

The problem with this illness is that I’m like a lithium battery in that I can work and work, and then just suddenly I hit the wall and all of my energy completely disappears and I’m fit for nothing. So there are paperwork, tools and everything around here and I’m too tired to put them away.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I did go to bed and some kind of early-ish night. But I lay awake for hours tossing and turning anf trying to make myself comfortable.

And when I finally did go off to sleep I was awoken at 05:45 by the lorry emptying the bins.

So all in all I didn’t have much sleep.

To treat myself I made a nice fresh load of muesli and had a nice breakfast, and then there were a few things to be done.

Once I’d organised that, I started to attack the furniture. That took a while, especially as I was interrupted on a couple of occasions.

Remember me saying yesterday that I needed to telephone Belgium? Well, they telephoned me. And what I reckoned might have been a really complicated procedure was resolved in three minutes flat, entirely to my satisfaction, for which I’m extremely grateful.

I first dealt with this company back in – I think – 2001 and despite all of the issues that have arisen, they have never yet let me down or disappointed me. So Chapeau to them.

Lunch was very late, and one of the lizards came for a chat which was nice. He seems to be quite tame right now.

But yet again I’ve gone without tea. It must be doing me some good – I’m not forcing myself to eat as I have a few kilos to lose, but I’ll be intrigued to see what my weight will be right now.

ferry ile de chausey marker light port de granville harbour manche normandy franceInstead, I went for my evening walk around the headland.

The tide was quite far out and so we could see the marker light for entry to the harbour. We saw it the other day when the tide was right in, with just the red bands out of the water.

The Ile de Chausey ferries here will give you some idea of how high the red bands are, and this how high the tide is when it comes right in.

port de granville harbour manche normandy franceAnd even more interestingly, there was some kind of activity going on at the foot of the new harbour gates.

I’m not quite sure exactly what they are doing in those red boats but they seemed to be quite interested in something that was happening there.

And you can also see here too just how high the tide will rise here on the harbour wall.

But I can’t wait for that. I’ve not crashed out yet, much to my surprise but I’m going to have an early night. It’s LIDL tomorrow and then I have to start the tidying up.

My favourite occupation, I don’t think.

trawler ferry ile de chausey granville manche normandy france
trawler ferry ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

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4 thoughts on “Wednesday 18th July 2018 – I’M WHACKED!

  1. Insane School Bus Driver

    New charge controller arrived. Seems better made than the $10 controllers. It’s the one Harbor Freight sells for $75 but sold as HQST for $30. Massive heatsink. It’s pwm not mppt. Several times the size of the others. They say from AGM, set it as Gel.

  2. Insane School Bus Driver

    On the whole, it seems to be doing reasonably. I cannot envisage using more solar capacity than I currently have given the battery size. I cannot envisage using more than 20Ah of my 35AH in a day either.

    The good is the charge controller does work. The bad – The battery won’t go higher than 13.3v though this morning the controller did say it had reached 13.9v. According to what I read about AGM, that’s supposed to run up to 13.8v. In any case – the battery was full according to the charge controller.

    Three different charge controllers tell me the battery has been full. All three cannot be wrong. My little handheld meter tells me the voltage is 13.4v and puts the battery in the orange. I have various meters reckoning between 13.2 and 13.4v

    Given that the battery went from 11.9v to 13.4v in about two hours on a cloudy day I’m going to say that the battery is likely landfill. It was reading 13.8v this morning and was depleted within 26 minutes of a 3.74A load being applied. That does not sound typical behavior for a 35AH battery.

    I suspect that the battery is a Harbor Freight customer return and because I didn’t start using it for a few months after purchase, I’d passed the return by date. Mind, I’d not installed the full fan load until much more recently anyway.

    So – next step. Take the battery out and take it to Autozone to get a drop test done on it. I’m also going to put a battery connector on it so I don’t have to fiddle about connecting wires under the bus. That connector should arrive soon.

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