… as if I’ve done very much today.
There are two circuit breakers now on the control panel. They are at the bottom right and are for the two solar arrays.
On the bottom of the board to the left of centre is the fuse box out of a late 1990s Vauxhall Astra. They are one of the reasons why I visit scrapyards in the UK so often. They have one heavy cable in and 8 maxi fuses (up to 100 amp) and 8 wires out – just the job for the 12-volt circuits I’ll be having in the house.
There’s also some of the wiring installed, and you can also see the insulation and 6 of the batteries already in what will be the battery box.
Mind you, don’t forget that it’s Sunday today so I don’t set the alarm – sleep till I wake up and so on. So at 06:55, a time that doesn’t normally exist on a Sunday morning except when I haven’t been to bed yet, I was wide away and at 07:30 I was up and about.
Another glorious sunny day was promised so I did a load of washing in the little tabletop washer that I bought for 10 Euros last year at the Virlet brocante. And I’ve had my moneysworth out of that. And while the washing was on the go I steamcleaned the verandah and I can actually get to the chemical toilet without falling over something and breaking my neck … "shame" – ed.
Following that it was lunch and then the obligatory visit to Claude’s to fix the trailerboard that Pascal can’t get working after he’s fixed it once.
This afternoon was the battery box followed by a big blazing fire in the grate in the living room to
1) aerate and dry out the house
2) get rid of a week’s accumulation of rubbish
3) cook my baked potatoes for tea.
And there’s definitely something about my own spuds. Shop-bought ones will bake easily in a hot open fire yet those I grow myself won’t cook. It shows you how rotten shop-bought spuds are, and how fresh mine are.
And we’re told that we’ll be having a storm tomorrow afternoon. I can try out my sump idea to see if it helps keep the rainwater clean. But if it’s anything like last week’s storm we’ll have 10 drops of rain and that will be that.
And today’s solar energy in the house? A mere 129.0 amp-hours.
Shop bought spuds are already partially cooked. Just like that half-assed idea of half-baked bread.
Actually there’s a lot of difference between varieties. It’s to do with the type of bonds in the carbohydrates (starch) in the spud. Some make good baking tatties and some don’t. Also the amount of refrigeration makes a difference because it breaks down some of the bonds. It also works for other frozen veg, and meat too.