Category Archives: Les Guis

Tuesday 16th August 2011 – It’s quite useful …

… being up early in the morning because you can get so much more work done.

And up early I was as well for last night I had an early night. It wasn’t planned, but the internet crashed here quite early on as I told you and so I profited by going to bed early. And that surprised everyone, I bet.

This morning I was up, breakfasted, washed and dressed long before 10:00. And after working on the website again I was finished by 12:30. It was time then to attack the pointing again and I managed to do quite a lot.

thunder box beichstuhl composting toilet les guis virlet puy de dome franceI finished one load of mortar by 13:45 and ir wasn’t worth starting another load prior to lunch so I fitted the toilet seat to the composting beichstuhl. It’s cut like that for a special purpose and that’s why I needed a wooden one.

You can see how the beichstuhl works. There’s a huge 20-litre casserole saucepan in there, complete with lid. Inside there is a compostable bin liner. So you lift the white top of the box (you can see the hinges), take off the casserole lid, put in some sawdust (you can see the blue sawdust container behind the beichstuhl) close the white lid, do what you need to do, put in some more sawdust, lift up the white top and refit the casserole lid. When the bin liner is getting full, you dump it in the compost heap and fit another. It’s as simple as that.

Recycling, self-sufficiency and closed-cycle environments is what it’s all about. The water consumption is zero and I shall have tomatoes as big as your head next year.

This evening the temperature in the solar shower was at 39°:C and so I had a gorgeous shower. That was quite enjoyable too. And to round off the day I was down the garden getting a huge courgette, a pile of beans and a pile of new potatoes and made a huge curried stew that will keep me going for the next couple of days as well.

All in all it was quite a good day today.

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Monday 15th August 2011 – I’M HAVING AN EARLY NIGHT

And quite right too!

pointing field stone house wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI pretty tired because I’d been working quite hard all day. I’d had my usual morning on the computer and in the afternoon I was up the ladder pointing the stonework.

You can see how much I did as well, and that ladder is quite high. It’s a long way up and down, especially when you keep dropping the screwdriver that you are using as a mortar rake.

But at least I am making a good deal of progress up there. You never know – I might even finish it this year if I’m lucky.

Bill and I had a really good chat at our meeting of the Anglo-French Group tonight and then I came back home to do some work on the internet.

I managed about an hour or so, and then I lost the connection, and that was that. I was wondering whether to stay up and wait for it to come back, but badger that for a game of soldiers. I called it a day instead and took advantage of what Providence had sent me.

See you all tomorrow.

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Sunday 14th August 2011 – Every Picture Tellls a Story …

hanging cloud les guis virlet puy de dome france… and this one tells a story of today’s weather. A glance out of the window on the way downstairs to cook my pizza this evening, and I saw a small hanging cloud drift quietly up the valley just down the hill from the house.

The last serious one just like this was in Labrador back in October. Then, we had had rain and snow for most of the day and believe me – never mind the rain, I reckon that it was cold enough to snow just now. It was pretty miserable.

I should have gone out to the Vintage Fair at St Maurice pres Pionsat today but never mind that – I wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, I did some more tidying up in here – the desk received my attention today – and I found more stuff that I reckoned that I had lost or misplaced. It’s good, this tidying up, I’ll tell you. All the rubbish has been binned and so what I need to do now is to have a quiet evening sorting out the papers and filing them away.

I’ve also started packing for Canada – putting the 120-volt electrical items in a bag so that they are all together. And one of the advantages of having a North-American sat-nav is that I can programme it to hold all of the addresses that I’ve been finding – all the shops I’ll be having to visit. I’ve also prepared 3 notebooks – an A5 spiral-bound notebook with all kinds of useful info and addressed, an A6 spiral-bound notebook for mileages, petrol and expenditure, and an A7 spiral bound notebook and pencil to keep in my pocket. I’ve also found a couple of folders to put all of the receipts and papers in.

This evening I’ve been surfing the web and I’ve found a 160cm x 70 cm foam mattress in IKEA for $49 and a bed base of similar size for $15:00 so that’s my sleeping accommodation sorted out for the back of the van. Canadian Tire do a 60-watt solar panel for $299, plenty of deep-discharge caravan batteries and also, interestingly, a 60-amp-hour battery pack with a built-in 400-watt inverter for $99. All of that looks like it might be extremely useful.

As the day for my departure draws close, I’m getting quite excited, and who can blame me?

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Saturday 13th August 2011 – I thought you might…

pointing house wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… like to see the pointing that I did yeaterday. Well, that’s it there, about 1 square metre round about the head of the ladder just there. It’s taking ages to do, especially as I’m having to do it on a ladder, but it’ll be done eventually, that’s for sure. I might have enough time to finish the right-hand side of the wall before I go to Canada, and I’ll do the left-hand side and fix up the wind turbine when I come back.

You can see the anemometer up there as well. As I said before, the batteries are actually in the head and so you can see how I’m intending to deal with the issues of flat batteries. I can lean out of the window, slacken off the allen screw in the key clamp, and the pole will slide down. That will bring the head, and hence the batteries, within reach.

But I’ll tell you something – compared to where I had the anemometer sited before, I’m getting three times the wind speed up there. If I can put the wind turbine up there and push the pole up as high as I can get it, then that would certainly be something to think about. If I had another set of blades, I would even consider putting the second AIR 403 400-watt wind turbine up there.

But to do the left-hand side of the wall I need to take the roof off that side of the lean-to and that’s where I am keeping the washing machine, the gardening tools and the wood. This is going to be quite a manoeuvre.

So today being Saturday I haven’t done much. Some tidying up in here, some cleaning around the kitchen part of the verandah (it was starting to look disgusting) and then the shops at St Eloy les Mines.

LIDL was having a sale and one of the articles on offer was one of those light-stick kind of things, LED powered and charges up off 12 volts. All of €9:99 too and having seen the brightness, it’s well-worth the money. Absolutely superb. I’m glad that I’ve seen the light about that. They also had a small tub of banana-flavoured sorbet. “Had” is definitely the word.

Back here this afternoon, and some more tidying, a few repairs, and a couple of odd jobs. Ahhh – the exciting life that I lead. And with no football anywhere, I just don’t know what to do with myself.

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Friday 12th August 2011 – What a lovely tea …

home grown potatoes beans courgettes puy de dome france… I had tonight. And not only cooked with my own fair hands but grown with them too, for everything that you see came from out of my garden. I used my own herbs as well, but as for onions and garlic, I used shop-bought stuff because I had them and they need using. There’s no reason not to use my own though.

But it’s all exciting, isn’t it? Starting on the harvest of crops out of my garden. But I’m having a struggle to find them as the weeds have gone berserk I wish I had time to do the weeding.

This afternoon anyway, after another morning session on the computer, I restarted at last on the pointing of the end wall, and I’ll post you all a photograph tomorrow when the cement has dried so that you can see where I’ve got to.

Regular readers may recall that I started this at the beginning of last summer but doing my barn roof and then Lieneke’s roof, followed by my trip to Labrador put an end to my progress. And with having to empty the apartment in Brussels and make it ready for sale (which included clearing out the barn and the lean-to so that I can store everything in there), that took up most of the summer so far.

I want to get one side of the wall finished before I go back to Canada because when I come back, I want to put the wind turbine up there. Seeing how the anemometer is doing up there – about 3 times the wind down at ground level, I might even have enough wind to get the turbine to work.

And so I need to get a wiggle on.

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Thursday 11th August 2011 – It smells lovely in my room just now.

Seriously – and for several reasons. Not the least being that I cut down all of the herbs that were running riot – 5 different types of herb – and they are all hanging up in here starting to dry off.

And not only that, we have a clean me too seeing as we had a scorching day today and the water in the solar shower heated up quite nicely. And as well as a clean me we have clean clothes and clean bedding too because I did a huge load of washing. Well, seeing as the water in the home-made immersion heater reached 48°C it was rather appropiate.

So apart from that I’ve been working on the website this morning. I’m just about to go into the New Glasgow Industrial Museum at Stellarton. That’s where you will find the oldest steam locomotive in North America, built by Timothy Hackworth in 1839. Hackworth’s main claim to fame was that he designed the Sans Pareil, one of the rivals to Stephenson’s Rocket at the Rainhill Trials.

This afternoon in between the washing I carried on with some tidying up and now that I have space to put things since I’ve put the shelving up in that room over the bread oven. Slowly but surely I’m making a little progress. In another 20 years I might get somewhere. But what I did find was the missing data head for the new anemometer that I fixed on the barn ages ago. However did that find its way onto the floor underneath the Whitworth toolbox? I haven’t moved that for ages.

Talking of the Rainhill Trials by the way, I can’t remember how many locomotives took part but I do know that they were all found guilty.

OK – I’ll get my coat.

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Wednesday 10th August 2011 – I had an earlier night last night.

Yes, I was in bed by 01:00, just for a change. And so I was up at a reasonable time, fighting fit.

I’ve now reached the other side of Truro on my web site, heading for the industrial museum at Stellartown. I might even arrive there tomorrow if I’m lucky. But this radio web page is giving me a headache. It’s taking ages to upload the programmes to my website and I’ve absolutely no idea why it should be so. It won’t be finished any time soon.

I’ve also finished (for now, at least) the guttering on the barn roof outside here. That’s all re-positioned so I hope that it works better from now on.

solar panels anemometer les guis virlet puy de dome franceNow this is what I’ve been doing for another part of this afternoon. I’ve fitted the cheap anemometer to the roof of the house. It wasn’t giving me an accurate-enough reading from down on ground level in the garden and I still can’t find the data head for the new one.

Now I bet you will all be wondering how I will be changing the batteries in the unit, seeing as they are up there about 40cms above the roof line. Well, that’s easy. The unit is fitted to a 38mm pole that’s 2.5 metres tall, and that’s fastened into a key clamp on the side of the house. I’ve deliberately set it just outside the window at the top of the stairs outside the door into the attic. To change the batteries, you just slacken off the clamp and the pole slides down the kep clamp, and you lean out of the window to change it.

guttering house les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd while we’re on the subject of the guttering and the subject of the house roof, then seeing that I had the ladder out for the anemometer, I propped it up against the front of the house and re-positioned the guttering there a little too so that it looks prettier and is (hopefully) more effective.

And so having done all of that with the guttering, I’m intrigued now to see what will happen now when it rains. But it wasn’t going to work today though – for the first time for ages we have had a glorious summer day.

I hope that it stays like this as well.

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Tuesday 9th August 2011 – I’m off to bed in a sec.

And not surprisingly either. I was working on my stuff for Canada and chatting away to Rhys when he announced “you’re up late”. And indeed I was – 05:15 am. Carried away with work, as well as sleep issues.

And so the best-laid plans etc – they all went gang awa’ today. 10:30 when I woke up and after breakfast I attacked the radio blog. It took ages to sort out all the programmes and convert them from *.wav to *.mp3 format, and ages to upload. They still aren’t finished either. But once I’d emptied the 8GB data stick I copied a load of music onto it. And it works too, which is surprising, although it takes a while to sort out the directory structure.

This afternoon I’ve sorted out the guttering on the house and barn yet again. I know what the problem is on the barn, but that’s not going to be fixed in 5 minutes. It needs the downspout lowering down by 5cms but that needs a pile of brackets re-positioning. But with the improvements that I’ve made today it may well not overflow. We shall see. I also moved around a few more bits and pieces in my quest to tidy up the barn.

And I forgot to say last night – Rhys reminded me of it – on the way back here from St Gervais d’Auvergne last night I was chased along the road by two huge Audi saloons. The road winds around for the most part and is all up and down as well, and surprisingly to some, but not to others. Caliburn outran them for most of the way. Power-on and front-wheel drive into the bends, Caliburn is a match for most things in these sorts of conditions which is not bad at all for a small-engined Ford Transit, although I reckon that the driver and a set of decent expensive tyres have a lot to do with it. In fact it wasn’t until the long straight at La Celette that they managed to pass me. Yes, I’m really lucky to have Caliburn.

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Monday 8th August 2011 – I’ve finished …

… my Halifax pages. You can read them here and find out why I think that Halifax is the most beautiful and interesting city in the whole of North America. You can always add your comments on this blog and let me know your opinion of the place. I’d go and live there if I had the chance.

Anyway, that took most of the day, but I wanted to get it all finished. And that’s not all I did either. I spent a while on the phone sorting out Terry’s windscreen (although we are no further forward) and then getting my French SIM card unblocked. Apparently you can’t use it outside the EU (that’s why I was having so many issues lst year in Canada) unless you tell them and ask them to unblock it.

eric hall renewable energy business signs new brunswick canadaMy Canadian phone number, that one I’ve had all of the issues with, is now up and working, and so I’ve ordered some signs from Vistaprint. They are magnetic and they will fit nicely on the hire car that I will be having.

No harm in a bit of publicity and after all, I’m going there to work. It’s not a holiday.

I couldn’t get yellow and black, would you believe? That’s sad. But I like this layout and even if they are small, they will still stand out, and that’s what it’s all about after all.

I’ve also had notification that my money has been paid into my UK bank account for the sale of Expo – my big apartment in Brussels – and so I’ve had to send a string of letters (snail mail too) to tell people what to do with it. With the stock market in freefall now is the time to invest before it starts to climb back up.

I also managed a couple of hours tidying in the barn, sorting a few things out and putting more stuff on the shelves that I built the other day.

Tomorrow I’m going to bring the radio blog up-to-date and copy all of my music onto my 8GB memory stick to take with me. I’ve done it all on to CDs but I reckon that with battery issues with laptops, some non-moving media will be better.

And then I’m going to do some more work on the guttering

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Sunday 7th August 2011 – I DIDN’T GET MUCH …

… sleep last night either. Not because I wasn’t tired, but the torrential rain – all 11mm of it, that fell through the night was enough to keep anyone awake.

bourree de vergheas folk dance music musique danse folklorique pionsat puy de dome franceSo I missed the start of the Sunday meeting in Pionsat but made the brocante, but just like everything in Pionsat, it’s getting worse and worse.

But the Bourrée de Vergheas, the Auvergnat folk dancing and folk music group from Vergheas down the road, they were in attendance. Giving one of their dancing sessions in the square and inviting the local people (and the tourists) to take part.

Back home, Terry rang me up. He’s had a stone chip on the windscreen of his van and it’s split the screen. With no Liz around, he needs the benefit of yours truly to sort out the claim so we met up at Pionsat again to discuss things.

Apart from that, I’ve had a Sunday off. I deserve one too, because I’ve been working hard just recently. And I’m back at work tomorrow.

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Saturday 6th August 2011 – I didn’t think much of today.

I was up early yet again – I dunno what’s happened just recently – but seeing as it’s Saturday I had a nice leisurely morning doing not very much.

This afternoon I went shopping – to Commentry as it happens – and just for a change I spent nothing above what would normally spend during a budget-shopping outing. They didn’t even have one of the gutter ends that I wanted.

But I was importuned on the LIDL Car Park and a lengthy chat about wind turbines ensued. I can’t say it often enough – vehicle advertising seems to work for me, and work for me in spades.

It was cold in the pool in Neris les Bains – it’s been a cloudy muggy day (right now we are having torrential rainstorms of quite a violent kind) and yet they had the sides of the pool open. I don’t understand that. And the lock on the closed shower is broken too – that means I have to shower in the full public gaze and so can’t have my customary “plumbing the depths” type of shower.

20 laps of the pool wore me out though and in the middle of watching a film and drinking my coffee I crashed right out again, and it wasn’t until 23:50 that I came round again. I probably won’t sleep now and I’ve been cleaning all of my SD cards ready to take them to Canada at the end of the month. Things are proceeding apace.

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Friday 5th August 2011 – We didn’t manage to start the Minerva :-(

Bill came round this afternoon as planned and we had a good play with the Minerva. But we didn’t manage to start it. We cleaned the plugs and the points, checked the electrics out and made sure that there was a nice bright spark wherever there should be one.

We worked out how to hot-wire it so that we had the ignition circuit live, but the starter bendix gear wouldn’t slide out. In the end we removed the starter (and that entailed removing the floor and the oil filter of the Minerva) and cleaned it so that the bendix gear would slide out, but the starter still wouldn’t turn over. After dismantling it, we found the cause as well. While the vehicle has been standing, there’s been a slight oil leak and it’s dripped inside the starter motor and fouled all the coils. 8 or 9 years of standing hasn’t done it much good and I need a new starter for it now.

But it does fire up though – I tried it on the starting handle and not only is there plenty of compression I got it to backfire twice – that with my bad arm as well and now it is even worse.

I freed off the clutch pedal too. Simple lack of use. I took off the grease nipple heated it with a blow torch to melt away the old manky grease, refitted the nipple and pumped a huge load of grease into it. That’s quite nice now.

I had a mind to invite Bill in afterwards for coffee but he was in a hurry to get away. But no matter. I had spent the morning tidying up in my room and fitting a couple more bookshelves so that the place is so much tidier now, so some good will come out of it all.

Tomorrow is shopping. I think that I’ll go to Commentry, and then go for a swim at Neris les Bains.

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Thursday 4th August 2011 – Having waxed so lyrical …

… about the surprising people who follow this garbage, it’s only fair that I comment that there are, would you believe, some people who don’t actually follow it. Yes, this afternoon while I was working outside, Simon turned up in his van
“I was just passing by so I thought I’d drop by to help you unload the oil tank”.

Yes, if he had seen Tuesday’s entry, he would have known …

But while we are on the subject of oil tanks, I may well soon have another. Anne, who sometimes reads this rubbish, saw that I had been given Simon’s, and she wondered if I would like hers as well. “What are you going to do with them?” I hear you ask. That is simple. One will be at the top of the bank and the other one will be at the bottom. They will be connected by a pipe with a series of filters in line, and the idea will be to tip used waste oil into the top tank, let it settle for a while, and then run it through the filters into the bottom tank. With the reasonably-clean waste oil, I can then refine it.

And so with being up fairly early this morning I had a good day outside. I’ve finished the shelving (well, as far as I can until I can sort out some more wood) and I’ve moved the paint from out of the barn into this little room. There will be lots of other stuff to follow it and that will give me the space to tidy things a little. I’ve already sorted out the plumbing stuff, and that makes a difference.

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Wednesday 3rd August 2011 – Well, I’m exhausted this evening.

I had another early start for a change and then attacked the web site. I’ve almost finished the Halifax pages and it won’t be too long before they are on line.

After that, seeing as the weather was miserable, I attacked the Sankey Trailer. That’s now empty at last, and I’ve fitted the new bracket for the jockey wheel. That meant drilling the chassis, seeing as it’s a heavy duty bracket and doesn’t fit into the holes of the lightweight one, and the huge inverter, a LIDL 300-watt electric drill and sone decent bits (stepping up from 3mm, 5mm, 8mm, 10mm) made short work of that. But the problem isn’t really the bracket – the jockey wheel just isn’t strong enough for it. But never mind – there will be one on one of the old caravan chassis that I can use.

After lunch I set about cleaning out the room that is over the bread oven in the lean-to. Full of tiles, dust, straw, all kinds of stuff in there since God knows when. That took a while and I’m now on the way to building a pile of wooden shelving to go in there. I’m going to store in there everything that won’t be spoiled by rats – such as engine oil, paint, all kinds of things like that. It’s high time I had a go at getting my storage sorted out.

So that took until about 18:30 when I ran out of easily-available wood. What I did then was to move the Sankey trailer into its new home. And I rather wish I hadn’t because you have no idea how heavy it is, and it’s all uphill as well. I finally got it to move and then I realised that I couldn’t let it go as it would roll back down right into Caliburn. A Sankey (these are the old British Army Land-rover trailers in case you are wondering) weighs about half a ton and that is blasted heavy going uphill on your own when you have a pulled muscle in your shoulder, I can tell you. But it’s now in place and I had to go and lie down for an hour afterwards. It’s a long time since I’ve hurt like that.

This evening I’ve been surfing the web. Shopping on IKEA Montreal, Walmart Montreal, a Solar Panel shop in St Laurent, and a few other places besides. I’m having to do all of this on my own of course, the way things have turned out, but it’s still exciting all the same.

With regard to a mobile phone, that scam company never got back to me, as I suspected that they might not. I was looking on eBay for a triband phone for North America but the prices are absurd, and then I saw a battery for the ancient Nokia 6110 that is hanging around here – just £2:49 plus 35p postage. What I’ll do is just pile loads of credit on my French mobile number and use that with the Nokia. It would have been easier with a proper phone and a proper phone number but there are some things that you just can’t do remotely.

One thing that I realised years ago, and I can’t ever remember why I keep on forgetting it, is that at the end of the day I just have to be self-reliant, do what I can do myself, and not lose any sleep about anything else.

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Tuesday 2nd August 2011 – The best-laid plans …

… of mice and men oft go gang agley’. And today was no exception.

Dunno what happened last night but at 05:30 I was lying in bed still awake reading a book in the dawn sunlight. That kind of thing can upset your day and as a result it was rather a late start again (nothing like as late as Sunday though).

Working on the website again this morning and then after lunch I started to empty the trailer while I was waiting for the water to reach temperature. But a phone call soon stopped that. Was I free to do a furniture delivery to the other side of Montlucon?

“Caliburn will only work if you know the magic words” I said
“Stop messing around, Eric. You’ll be well-paid”
“Ahhh – you DO know the magic words”

And so two guys came and helped me unload the oil tank and we all went off to do this delivery – and I was indeed well-paid. Thank you, Pascal.

I also discovered a really cheap fruit and veg shop there and now that’s me sorted out with tomatoes and cucumbers.

Mind you, I didn;t get the rest of my washing done and it won’t be done any time soon as the weather has broken, the glorious summer weather has gone and we are back in storms again – just about 30 seconds after I made the point that we have been 4 days without rain and the place is beginning to need watering. You can’t get any better timing than that.

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