…. where everything you do turns out really well, where it seems to last for ever and you don’t want it to stop?
Well, today was nothing like that.
I woke up to torrential rain again and even worse, it was pitch-black outside. We had a pathetic total of just over 5 amp-hours worth of power, off almost 1200 watts of panels. That gives you some indication of the weather. Back in the heady days of August I was generating 250 amp-hours per day on occasions. Wasn’t that a long time ago? I’m up to my knees in mud again and I’m wondering if this rain will ever stop. We’ve had 18 consecutive days of rain and more is forecast for tomorrow.
And the blasted baker left the lid off my bread bucket so when I went to get the bread at lunchtime it was a soggy mass and I had to dry it in the oven so I could eat it.
I didn’t take a pic today because quite frankly there isn’t much to see. I put the insulation down the stairwell (or at least the stairwell where the head of the stairs will be) and then sat down to work out how to fit the stairs. After much deliberation I’ve binned the idea of reusing the sides of the existing stairs. I’m not sure what the guy was drinking while he was cutting them but I wouldn’t mind a pint of it myself. The treads and risers aren’t equal, and they aren’t vertical and horizontal either. I’m going to fit the cheap builders’ staircase up to here and I’ll think again about the ground floor staircase – I might see if it’s possible to recut the sides of the existing stairs for that.
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Perhaps you need to set up some paddy fields? It sounds like you really need to get the drainage worked out around your house before you start anything near the ground floor. I suggest digging some deep trenches around the perimiter of the house and around the garden then laying some porous piping – if needs must then simply lay some clay or thick-walled plastic pipes with holes drilled in it in a bed of gravel at the bottom of your trenches. This should sort out the drainage for a couple of decades. Remember water flows best downhill so you’ll have to arrange your pipes and trenches so that everything flows down and away from the house etc – preferably right off your land.
Paddy fields would work well around here.
But I do like the idea of the trenches and the plastic pipes with holes in – you can buy them here as they are used for the disperal pipes for septic tanks. No reason at all why I can’t turn them upside down so that the slits are on the top and cover them with gravel so that the water drains into the slits.
I can even integrate them into the waste water drainage system that I have here.