Tag Archives: caliburn insurance

Tuesday 4th August 2009 – A PHOTO FROM A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT ANGLE TONIGHT

painting facade kwikstage scaffolding les guis virlet puy de dome franceand if you look closely you will notice that the facade of the house has been painted down to the level of the decking on the scaffolding.

That was this afternoon’s task – the morning was taken up in cementing underneath the rest of the eaves. It wasn’t easy without a bricklayer’s trowel, that it until I tried out a piece of recycled plastic slate. What a good finish you can get with a few offcuts of those!

Lunchtime involved a visit to the bank at Pionsat. The temporary insurance certificate for Caliburn has run out
and they haven’t sent me a new one yet.
“Well, you haven’t sent us the log book” was their story
“You didn’t ask for it” I replied. “You just asked for proof of Caliburn’s new registration number and I dropped off the certificate three weeks ago”
“Yes, but we still need the log book”
So GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR to the Credit Agricole! I wish they’d make up their blasted minds!

And it was so hot today that the 15 litres of water in my mini-heat-exchanger was scorching. So I took advantage of that and had another shower. Two in a week! I’ll wash myself away at that rate.

I also connected up the fridge. I’ve decided just to run it during the daylight hours in sunny conditions. I have to do something with the excess solar charge seeing as how the batteries in the house now top out after just 30 minutes and isn’t this a change from a short while ago? I’ve filled it full of these ice-packs so that it should retain the cold for a while and I’ll have nice cool orange juice for breakfast.

After the shower I xylophened the two planks that I’m going to be using for the fascia boards on the house, and put the first coat of wood preservative on. I’ll do the second as soon as I wake up and then put the second coat on the house under the eaves while the planks are drying. When they are dry I’ll fit them and then fit the guttering. After that, the scaffolding will come down another level.

And in other news, I had a phone call from a guy I met in the Auchan. He wants to come round and talk Solar Energy so we’ve arranged for Saturday at 18:00. Good job it looks like we’ve been working around here. I’d hate him to think that this total disorder is habitual.

Perish the thought, hey?

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Thursday 16th July 2009 – I TELL YOU WHAT ….

…. I’m ever so impressed with my electrical set-up.

We had four bags of concrete mix today and a 375-watt cement mixer. And it mixed all of the concrete using the power off the batteries in the barn. Admittedly there was bright sunlight pushing up the amps but nevertheless it was impressive. Just as impressive was that all of the concrete was mixed using rainwater out of the water butts.

But it was hard work today. The heat was unbearable. The morning was bad enough as Terry was painting and I was shuttering in between the rafters and infilling with stones. In the afternoon it was even worse, and I was climbing up the ladders to the top of the scaffolding carrying bricks, stones, buckets of concrete and the like. It’s just as well that we ran out of concrete (we’re going shopping tomorrow for more) because we couldn’t carry on like that in that heat.

I also dropped off Caliburn’s temporary registration at the bank so they can change the insurance over, and the postie came, bringing Caliburn’s permanent log book. She said that there would be a very violent storm at 19:00 tonight so I told her that when she’s finished her round she can get up on the roof with us and help us do the slating.

She never turned up though, and she was wrong about the storm. At about 21:00 the clouds closed in and we had some rain and there was thunder rumbling away in the distance. Right now, it’s P155ing down outside but nothing like what she promised us. We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.

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