Tag Archives: cutting wood

Tuesday 18th September 2012 – I’M WHACKED!

Yes, cutting wood is not necessarily all that easy.

Especially when you have as much to do as we did. We had Terry’s Ifor Williams trailer (about 5mx2m) stacked 1m high of wood, and then about another 3 or 4 cubic metres in his van.

We started at about 10:00 and by 17:30 the wood was finished – and so were we!

cutting wood caliburn les guis virlet puy de dome franceAll cut into 30cm lengths and split where necessary, and there’s about 3 or 4 cubic metres in the back of Caliburn.

I could have had much more than that but Caliburn was right down on the suspension and the tyres were bulging so that’ll do me for now.

That should last me all this winter and then some more.

Another problem that I need to face is that I have nowhere to store it. But then again, I would rather have that problem than the problem of having no wood in the middle of winter.

And it was certainly nice coming back home with the smell of newly cut wood percolating through the bulkhead from the back.

Mind you, it was hard to start to move again after sitting down. I wasn’t going to put a row or two of mortar on the wall, that’s for sure – even if it hadn’t been raining.

I’m not sure how I’ll be feeling tomorrow either.

Still, this was a good deal and I’m quite happy about it – and doesn’t that make a change these days?

-2

Monday 17th September 2012 – IT ISNT HALF …

… going dark early these days.

collapsed lean to pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI was still out pointing the wall this evening when the first of the solar night-lights came on.

19:40 that was, and long after my knocking off time of 19:00 when I’m on Summer Hours working.

Mind you, it wasn’t as if I was unaware of the time either – I knew almost exactly how late it was, but I’m falling behind again with this wall and I need to press on.

And I’m not going to be here tomorrow either.

This morning I had to go to help Rosemary unload this van with all of this new furniture.

Quite modern it is, but made of oak and in a period style that perfectly matches the type of house that you find round here. I’m not much of a one for aesthetics as you know, but it really is beautiful stuff.

The guy who delivers it was quite a useful person to know. He runs a business having articles delivered to him which he then brings down to France for the purchaser. We had a lengthy chat and I’ll be having a few more chats with him in the future too.

Then I had to go with Terry to the quarry for a trailer-load sand.

All in all it was 16:20 when I started on the wall, so you see why I’m getting all behind.

I had a couple more stones drop out on me when I was raking out the old cement – that part of wall really was badly damaged. Anyway, a few oversized stones hammered deep into the gap and that should hold it up, I hope.

So why aren’t I going up the wall tomorrow then?

Simply that Terry and I own a mini digger that we hire out and it was out at the weekend. The guy offered us cash, or a huge load of wood instead. Wood being more valuable than the cash, Terry ended up with a huge trailer load.

So tomorrow I have to go to help Terry cut it into 30cm lengths and then I can load up Caliburn with my share. Wood is a vital part of life round here, especially when it’s -20°C here in February.

I’ve still not found my dictaphone and neither have I found the mobile phone, but 1O minutes searching threw up a few other things that I’ve been looking for.

And I almost forgot to mention that I did go to LIDL this morning and they had 3 packets of those lights left. Or, rather, they did. So now I have enough for the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, as well as for over the workbenches in the barn and the lean-to.

But I still need plenty more so I might go a little farther afield this weekend.

In other news, we were having a little chat about this affair in Annecy with this Iraqi family that was massacred. You know, the more I look at this and the more I think about it, the more it looks to me like something that MOSSAD might well have organised.

I smell a very large rat with all of this.

-5

Thursday 23rd February 2012 – HAVING FINALLY …

… broken the back of my presentation, I can get on and do other things.

This morning I cut up another pile of wood for in here, and doesn’t the lean-to start to look empty now, especially as I discovered that a major proportion of the heap in the middle is actually bricks and stone from when the wall collapsed all those years ago.

Moving some of that stuff out has made quite a difference, that’s for sure.

It’s going to be a while though before I can finish in there though – a term of years is not unlikely. The more wood I cut up, the more that I seem to find.

I also had a good look at the window in the bedroom. Having given the matter considerable thought, I now reckon that I know how I’m going to do the surround. And the next chance that I have to work in there, I’ll be making a start.

But tomorrow I’ll be printing off my notes because the presentation is at 20:00 tomorrow evening. So just you watch the printer break down or run out of ink

But assuming that we do go ahead, everyone is invited!

20:00 at the village hall in Virlet

-2

Monday 13th February 2012 – I HAD MY FIRST …

… culinary disaster tonight – almost inevitable that there would be one sooner or later.

Returning home after the Anglo-French group meeting (hardly a group meeting, there was just me, myself and I there) it was a wicked 6.4°C in my little room. That called for some desperate measures.

I’d finished off the beans and chips last night and so that meant pizza this evening. And I soon had a roaring blaze going – one that had the room up to 18°C in under an hour.

Unfortunately it was rather too roaring and it burnt the base of the pizza and of the garlic bread. I’ve never ever had that before – it just goes to show you what you can do when you really try. Especially as the rice pudding was cooked to perfection, and that’s a first as well

But this morning, in the cold and damp overcast weather I had another marathon woodcutting session in the lean-to. I’m cutting up the wood that is in there. It’s perfectly dry and been that way for years hence I can burn it up here straight away without having to leave it standing for a year or so.

That explains the roaring inferno that I had this evening.

Apart from that, I’ve been working on the ceiling of the bedroom again. It’s taking ages to do, but it won’t half look nice when it’s finished.

Tonight it didn’t go cold again. It just stayed hovering around the -3°C mark.

And at 18:00 the heavens opened and we had about a ton and a half of snow dropped on us.

It’s still snowing now in fact. Haven’t times changed?

-1

Friday 10th February 2012 – THIS WEATHER IS STARTING …

… to get on my wick a little bit.

Yes. Deep-frozen veg and deep-frozen chili beans for tea tonight.

No big deal, you might think, but these were deep-frozen vegetables and beans from out of tins. And when your tins of food are freezing then you know that you really do have problems.

Not much water today either. It’s becoming harder and harder to melt the solid ice that is in the water butts.

We are at the stage where I’m beginning to think that the next time we have a really decent day’s solar energy, I’ll take the halogen heater outside and use that to melt the ice.

So I spent a major part of the day in the lean-to. I’ve stacked some of the wood so much better, moved some bricks outside, moved some stones upstairs, shovelled some bits and pieces out of the way, made up three large containers of wood for up here, and that’s given me plenty of space to move stuff from out of the house.

But you’ll be amazed (or maybe you won’t) at just how quickly the space is filled up, and things don’t look all that much different in the house either, which is really rather sad.

Anyway, there’s tons of old waste paper and old waste cardboard so if I have a huge bonfire once the weather improves (whenever that might be) it’ll make the place look emptier (I hope).

I’ve also done a bit more on the ceiling.

I was going to have a really good crack at it but Rosemary rang up and we had a big long chat instead. It’s her first winter living here, and she needs encouragement. Luckily she decided on moving here more-or-less full-time to sell her old rear-wheel drive saloon and buy a 4×4. She’ll certainly benefit from that decision. 

Confronted with the deep-frozen tinned food, I’m now moving more and more stuff up here. The washing-up stuff is now in the attic (the sink in the verandah has been frozen up for over a week anyway) and so all of the crockery, cutlery and saucepans will be staying up here.

It’s pointless taking them all downstairs to wash, leaving them there overnight and then bringing them back up here the following evening. It’s the coldest winter for decades, apparently, and no-one expected it to go on for as long as this.

Consecutive minuses in double figures for well over a week – something that’s unheard-of. But I have done the roof in the lean-to and I have a really good wood stove, so who cares?

-4

Thursday 9th February 2012 – IT WASN’T QUITE …

… the stinker that I was expecting last night.

Here I was expecting some kind of phenomenal temperature and all we had was a measly -14.1°C.

A bagatelle.

But it was cold up here in my attic this morning though, 8°C when I woke up. And that’s not surprising that the temperature up here is falling slowly. This cold spell has lasted well over a week and shows no sign of letting up

So after breakfast it was down into the firewood and I’m at the stage of looking for larger kindling because that’s getting low up here. I’ve worked my way through a big pile this winter.

I’ve brought up a large IKEA bag full from out of the lean-to, and that’s making even more space in there, which is good news because I’m at the stage where I need to think about moving things out of the house to give me space to start working elsewhere. It’s beginning to get too crowded in here.

Most of the rest of the day was spent working on the ceiling again, and I’m making good progress, even though I did manage to fall off the trestle thing that I’m standing on. i’m not quite sure how I managed to do that.

But I did find time to rescue the two coffee percolator things and give them a really good clean. I tried the big one on the woodstove and although it took a while it made a decent cup of coffee.

For some unknown reason it took ages to cook the spaghetti though and I’m going to have to think of a way to do this better or to improve my technique.

But I can see why in North America they go for tin-roofed houses. Although it was freezing cold outside it was bright and sunny. And the intensity of the sun must have heated the tin roof of the barn sufficiently for at a certain moment all of the snow slid off the barn roof and fell with a crash to the floor.

And that does rather remind me of the British Trade Delegation to the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. Having been warned about the possibiity of eavesdroping and hidden microphones, they diligently searched the room for hidden wires. And sure enough, they found four wires stapled to the floor under the carpet. A pair of nail scissors took care of them.

Next morning, one of the members of the Trade Delegation engaged the babushka – the old lady who monitors the corridor in the hotel – in casual conversation.
“How are things?” he asked, practising his Russian.
“You won’t believe this” she said “but something really extraordinary happened last night. For no apparent reason, the chandelier in the room under yours came crashing down to the ground!”

-1

Wednesday 8th February 2012 – AFTER ALL …

… that I said yesterday about my heat pad melting the water in the deep-frozen water butt, the sum total of water received today was precisely zero.

Although we had a really warm night for a change (the temperature rose to the dizzy heights of -11.4°C in fact) we had some snow. It was overcast all day with snow flurries and the sun hardly broke through at all, hence the maximun temperature today was a crazy -7.9°C and not even a heat pad can cope with that and do anything worthwhile.

I also had a phone call first thing.

François, who I haven’t seen for ages, came on the blower. He’s having issues with the blog of one of his Associations and now that there’s no technical assistance with the reseau since Liesbeth moved away, it looks like I have the short straw.

That meant the first part of the morning tidying up. Can’t have visitors with the place looking like a tip.

I cut up some wood too, and brought up here a load of wood to make an impressive woodpile up here.

I had a couple of hours in the bedroom, having managed to scrounge enough water to mix some quick-drying filler to do the joints between the plasterboard and the ceiling. And quick-drying it needs to be too – to set and to dry before it freezes.

And after that, I had another good go at the ceiling.

François came round after lunch, and won the prize for being the first private visitor of the year (yes, 6 weeks in as well, it shows just how popular I am). We chatted for quite a while and I sorted out his problems.

But once he had gone, I didn’t resume work. The temperature is dropping rapidy and so I stayed up here in the warm.

As for tea, I had tinned ratatouille standing by but what with my late lunch (17:00) I wasn’t hungry. a kettle with a small amount of water boiled up in no time on the stove and I had a coffee instead.

Anyway, it’s bright moonlight outside and not a cloud in the sky. It’s going to be another stinker tonight.

-1

Monday 6th February 2012 – SO AFTER THE LAZY…

… day yesterday, today though, I was back at work.

But before that I had breakfast of course and as it was so flaming cold in the verandah I ate it up here. And I did something that I have been longing to do – namely to run the electric heater simply for some casual heat for 20 minutes or so. We’re getting all luxurious around here these days

And so this morning I had a pile of paperwork to do and one or two phone calls to make. After that it was some wood to cut up from the dry pile in the lean-to, and to bring a load up here as I’m close to running out.

For the rest of the day I was working on the bedroom ceiling.

But with there being plenty of solar energy I had the electric heater running up here, simply for the sake of using the surplus current.

12 volt electric heated seat pad les guis virlet puy de dome franceMore importantly, bearing in mind the water issuaes that I’m having right now, I had a go with this 12-volt electric heated seat pad idea around the water butts that I mentioned the other day.

And that seemed to work okay in principle, because it produced about 20 litres of water out of the frozen mass in there.

But I can do better than this. if I can find some double-sided tape or something I shall make an amendment to that in that I shall set it inside some of that reflective space-blanket insulation stuff, to concentrate the heat against the frozen water.

That might work even better.

-2

Friday 3rd February 2012 – SO HOW DID THIS 06:00 START GO THIS MORNING?

Surprisingly enough, when the alarm went off at 06:00 I was already wide awake. Well, maybe not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I was there.

And what was nice about it was that it was 14.9°C in the room here, and when I riddled the ashes, there was still a glimmer of red heat in there.

So when the guy telephoned at 06:30 to say that he was on his way, I strode out of my room personfully and was almost knocked flat on my back. It wasn’t the -10°C in the verandah that did it but the -15.8°C outside.

The second-lowest temperature ever recorded here.

We inched our way into Montlucon and I went to sit in a cafe until 08:00 when the garage opened and I could reclaim Caliburn, which cost me an arm and a leg to do so;

bUt I’ll tell you what – for the first time ever, there are some real brakes on Caliburn and he stops just like he ought to do. He also handles so much better as well.

And that was only the beginning of the expenditure. After that, it was off to Lapeyre, from where I bought the house windows.

They told me last time I was there that they were discontinuing that particular product line in February and so if I wanted the matching door I needed to order it before then.

And so I did – a nice fully-glazed front door, one large panel to match the windows. Cheapest there is, as it happens but why I wanted it is that it lets in the most light.

Back in Pionsat I bought a few bits and pieces off the tool lorry at the market and then went round to Marianne’s for a coffee and a chinwag.

After that I came home and did some work. There’s a pile more timber gone into the bedroom ceiling and I’ve also carried on drilling away at the wall in the lean-to. But that’s hard work as the drill is really heavy and I’m up against some granite right now.

I also experimented with ways of unfreezing the water, something that I’ll need to be thinking of soon. One way I’m going to try is to wrap an old Volvo heated seat pad around the tap and connect it to the excess charge circuit – see what that does.

Tonight I had a gorgeous tea – a huge plate of chips and baked beans.

It’s so cold that I’ve bought a large bag of oven chips, put it in a plastic container and buried it in a snowdrift. I brought a pile of them up here and cooked them in the oven bit of my stove,

I cooked the pan of beans in there as well. It took a while but it was well worth waiting for, and i’ll be having oven chips again.

But washing up after was something else. Chopping board stuck to the table, tea towel stuck to the oven, everything else stuck to something else. I’ve got the water and the fruit and veg up here with me. Frozen lettuce goes not taste very nice, especially with frozen cucumber

I shall have to do something about this on a long-term footing.

-3

Thursday 2nd February 2012 – I HAVE TO BE …

… up at 06:00 in the morning GRRRRRRR!

Yes, having left Caliburn in the Ford garage at Montlucon and having arranged to pick it up today, the snow fell really heavily in the night.

And snowed to such an extent that Liz was snowed in at her home and couldn’t get out to go to work, and so couldn’t take me to Montlucon to rescue Caliburn and Strawberry Moose.

She doesn’t go back into work until Tuesday and that’s a long time to be without transport – not that there’s anywhere you can actually get to right now with all of this.

Anyway so ringing up the garage to tell them about the change in plans I ended up talking to a guy who I know who works there, and it turns out that he actually lives in Virlet.

To cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … he’s offered to take me there in the morning which is wonderful. The downside of this being that he opens up the garage in the morning and so leaves home at 06:30.

Still, beggars can’t be choosers.< So what did I do today then if I didn't go to Montlucon? Not much because when I went down to breakfast at 08:45 (early for once) the temperature in the verandah was -6.3°C and outside, a healthy -8.5°C. Yes, winter is here and you don't feel much like working. Back up here I lit a fire and did some more work on my presentation of the Trans Labrador Highway until the laptop battery went flat, and seeing that it was 13:00 I went to keep warm by cutting up some wood.

And I have piles now, but enough about my personal life.

After lunch, which was exciting as the water in the water jug that I was using to fetch water from the container in the barn was freezing over in just the time it took to walk 10 metres,

Another thing that I did was to into the bedroom and made a good bit of progress on the ceiling.

I had a few phone calls, not the least of which was from Dave in Hexham and that’s always a pleasant surprise.

Cooking tea was exciting. -7.0°C in the verandah and the food was freezzing rather than cooking, and washing up with snow is exciting too. But I’m not going far – in fact I’m off to bed. I need my beauty sleep.

06:00 in the morning. Hah! 

-2

Tuesday 31st January 2012 I DIDN’T LAST LONG …

… outside this morning.

Just enough to cut up an old rotten chevron and then cold damp hands (I forgot to dry my gloves) drove me inside.

First thing that I did was to clear the bedroom of some of the junk that was in there. A pile of cardboard boxes were flattened down, the old woodstove went outside, and they were followed by the old windows. And as an aside, I now have a woodshed with windows 😉

Next task was to dig Caliburn out of the snow. And there was plenty of that to move as well. I eventually put him at the top of the hill and we went for a little drive in the snow – I need to be sure that I can move around tomorrow as he is off to be serviced.

After lunch I made some more space in the bedroom and carried on in there.

Now all of the plasterboarding on the outside walls of the bedroom is finished – something about which I am very pleased. I’m glad that I’ve done that. It looks quite good too. What it needs now is to be all taped down at the edges and then filled.

And when that’s done, I can carry on with the ceiling.

That’s two outside walls that have been plasterboarded. The third wall is the back wall and of course there’s a fitted wardrobe built into that. The fourth wall is of course the stud wall and half of that – against the corridor – is done. The half that is against the bathroom I can’t do yet until I’m able to sort out the plumbing. And then I also need to fit the door.

The window opening needs edging too, and then the floor has to be done.

But thinking about it, I’ll be putting hardboard on the floor and then putting some of that flooring stuff on top.

But it’s nice to see some light down at the far end of the tunnel and if this cold spell continues, I might see even more.

I’m also at the stage where I’m actively thinking about the bathroom too and how that is going to evolve. I reckon that it won’t be long before I have the plasterboard on there as well. But that means replacing the floor first.

But seeing how the weather has suddenly turned nasty, I’m still impressed with that 10 days of warm weather just after New Year when I managed to do the roof on the lean-to.

It really was astonishing and I’ll be talking about that for years.

-2

Monday 30th January 2012 – I FORGOT …

… what I was intending to to today.

It’s sad, isn’t it, when that happens.

But probably the … errr … late start this morning might have had something to do with it.

And when I noticed that the sun was actually shining, I had a run round and cleared the solar panels of snow, to give them a head start.

So woodcutting came next, and I spent quite some time dealing with two huge tree trunks that filled a good deal of the woodshed and will keep me going for three months, I reckon.

And when I talked the other day, about all of the wood that I had on hand on the ground floor of the lean-to, which is almost full of the stuff. All of that has been in there for years (and I do mean years) so seeing as I’m short of wood in my little room, I cut up a pile of that and brought it up here. It’s bone dry of course and so it burns quite well.

But that led me on to sorting out some of the wood in there and I made a little more space. And what with finding the box of hooks, I screwed some of them into the beams and started to hang gardening tools and the like from them.

Even the brushcutter has a hook of its own now.

This afternoon I started to move the wood around on the car park by the end of the barn. I’m making more space there now and I reckon I can start to think about how I’m going to build the shed to keep the motorbikes and the cement mixer

I’ve also done a little experiment.

I bought a handful of 12-volt work lights – the type that look like the halogen security lights that you hang from a building. What I did is to try it with a LED cluster light rather than a 50-watt halogen. And while it’s nothing like as bright, of course, it’s effective and I shall be using that for working purposes in future.

Finally I carried on with the wiring in the lean-to. I’ve found the pull light switches so I’ll be installing that tomorrow.

I had to cut a hole in the floor of the upstairs part of the lean-to to pass a cable through. Off to the barn I went to find a holesaw. I happened to glance at the sky and thought to myself “that looks like it might snow”. So I went into the barn, found the 33mm holesaw, and walked out right into a blizzard.

Yes, we’re back in the snow again.

I’ll be up to my knees in the stuff tomorrow morning.

-3

Friday 27th January 2012 – I CAN ALWAYS TELL …

… when I’m enjoying myself when i’m working. It’s when I suddenly notice that the light has gone and it’s 18:15 and I’m still out there happily working away.

And so it was today

I did the customary pile of woodcutting and now the woodshed is looking quite impressive. There’s probably now enough cut to last me for next winter as well and there’s still a load to do out by the barn.
And then there’s all the wood from last winter, that’s still down the fields.
And then there are all the chevrons off the house roof and the barn roof.
Wood isn’t something that I’m going to be short of for a while

air 403 wind turbine replacement metal blades les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce I had done the wood, I made a start on the wind turbine, and that is now in position.

Doesn’t it look smart with its new stylish aerodynamic blades. But I shall have to stop mounting all of these wind turbines. I’ll end up being arrested.

It wasn’t as easy as you might think, organising this wind turbine. But then again, nothing ever is when I’m involved, is it?

It all started to go wrong when I tried to mount the hub onto the spindle. And immediately the bolts holding the blades to the hub fouled the casing.

So I turned the bolts round so that the threads were exposed – hardly aerodynamic but it all fitted.

Then, tightening up the hub, the hub ground out against the casing and locked up the blades. That meant using a couple of packing washers underneath the hub.

One I had, the correct size of diameter, I had to file out the hole to 19mm. The second one, I had the correct sized hole but the diameter was wrong so I had to grind the excess off with the angle grinder and the bench grinder.

So instead of an interference fit, I now have three extra faces and so under a great deal of wind pressure, I can see the faces sliding instead of the blades turning.

Won’t that be fun?

Much to my surprise, the wiring was pretty straightforward and didn’t call for any major revision. But putting it into position was something else. I didn’t have a scaffolding pole long enough and so I had to join two together and that’s no fun trying to do that on a ladder with that kind of weight at that height pressing down on your shoulders.

It’s for that reason that, after much cursing, I invented the wind turbine pole lifting handle, and I was astonished at how easy it was once I had a lifting handle in place.

I had to lower the anenometer though – the wind turbine was fouling it

12 volt external electrical wiring air 403 wind turbine les guis virlet puy de dome franceWind turbines need a load in order to work, and so I’ve wired it directly to an external weatherproof 12-volt socket, and to the socket I’ve wired a 12-volt 100-watt halogen light.

The faster the wind turbine turns, the brighter the light will become.

It reminds me of Doctor RV Jones and his experiments into the cathode ray tube. In his book Most Secret War, one of the best books I have ever read, he describes that they tentatively connected two lorry headlights to the tube, hoping for a faint glimmer of light. Instead, they managed to illuminate the whole building before the headlights blew out with the intensity of current.

Wouldn’t I like to have something like that with this wind turbine?

-3

Friday 20th January 2012 – I CAN’T SEE …

… a thing right now in my room.

There’s a gusting wind blowing up outside and it’s in just the right direction to blow right down my chimney so every couple of minutes a load of smoke is blown back down the fire and out of the air vent into the room.

I’m being done up like a kipper just now.

But I was right about the weather – it’s rained for most of the day. And it is indeed nice to see the rail cascading off the new roof on the lean-to onto the ground, well away from the wall, and everything inside the lean-to being bone-dry for a change.

I can’t believe my luck with the weather for that 10-day spell when I decided to go for broke and do the lean-to roof. It’s not like me at all.

So I did some sawing of the wood this morning, but a downside of this now is that I’m cutting it faster than I’m burning it and I’m now running out of room to store it. I suppose that I shall have to make a larger woodpile, or a taller one or something.

I could, I suppose, even dig the trench that I need to dig at the side of the house by the “other” lean-to, drop the drainage pipe in there that needs to go in there and connect it into the drainage system, fill the trench with gravel, cover it over with a weed blanket and then build the real woodshed where it is supposed to go, but that’s not the work of half an hour.

After the woodcutting (which I managed to do without any interruption for a change) I did some more tidying up, starting in the lean-to.

First job was to rescue the remaining Hawker deep-discharge batteries and charge them up.

And here I’ve hit a problem, in that the battery box I made for the previous batteries is too small – the Hawkers are taller. But anyway once they were out of the way I tidied up in the lean-to, collected all of the stray solar panels and stacked them in a corner, and then hung up the smaller gardening tools so that I’m not tripping over them.

Having moved a couple of solar panels out of the barn I could then get in there and make some space to put the old Rutland wind turbine tidily out of the way.

This led to the discovery of a circular saw, not the 600-watt one that I can’t find anywhere at all, but the old 1050-watt one that was all rusted solid having been left in a container that filled with water through a leak in the barn roof when I was ill and which had subsequently been partly-dismantled for spares.

Of course, now that I have a 1200-watt inverter all things are possible, so I gave the saw a good spray with WD40 and reassembled it with some other bits and pieces. And much to my surprise it fired up!

Even more surprising was that the inverter didn’t even bat an eyelid.

The saw needs some “attention to detail” before I can use it to cut wood, but this is definitely progress.

This afternoon, with the weather deteriorating, I restarted work in the bedroom – the first time for God knows how long. I’ve fitted the false beam at the side wall – the beam that hides all of the electrical cable – and I’ve also packed out one of the plasterboard panels that didn’t quite mate with the others.

It was then that I lost the light and so I spent the last hour tidying up in the barn again.

And despite all of this time that I’ve spent tidying up, a I really can’t see any difference at all.

This evening by way of an experiment, I brought a kettle of water up here and put it on top of the woodstove. And after about 2.5 hours it was gloriously warm and I had a lovely hot wash and shave in front of the fire.

Definitely the highlight of the week, that, and I can’t think why I hadn’t done that before.

Next step is the coffee pot on the stove, and put the produce in a thermos ready for the following morning.

I ought to be much-better organised than I am.

-3

Thursday 19th January 2012 – THE WEATHER …

… changed during the night, just as I suspected that it might when I saw the clouds gathering yesterday afternoon.

I woke up this morning to a grey and miserable overcast day, and that’s how it remained all day.

The third of these cold-calling solar panel salesmen came to see me at about 11:00 and he was gone by 11:05, interrupting my woodcutting.

I need to do as much as I can of that because I want the space at the back of the barn, where I’m storing the tree trunks, for other things. Getting it out of the way by cutting it up seems like a good idea to me and I’m planning to do half an hour each day. Warm me up for other things.

Once my time was up I went to look for something in the barn and I can’t remember what it was now, but I didn’t find it, as you might expect in my barn.

I ended up doing some kind of tidying up (after a fashion) and repairing the lights up there so that I can see what I’m doing, and I found the 400-watt halogen heater that I brought back from Brussels.

The oil heater isn’t heating as much as I had hoped and it’s not keeping its heat as long as it ought to either, and so I’ve decided to go with the halogen one for now.

100 watts less, but of course halogen is much more efficient than most other forms of electric heating and I recall getting quite warm with that in the old days. I’ll be intrigued to see what it can do in a glorious alpine day.

I also found a pair of steel toecapped work shoes that I had forgotten all about. They’ve been rescued and put to good use. It’s nice to have decent footwear.

This afternoon I went about and inspected the trees overhanging the next stage of the garden development – the space to where I’ll be moving the compost bins. There were a couple of them that looked rather dodgy and so they came down.

I also cut up the tree that had fallen down in the gale last summer and flattened my spuds and onions, and moved it out of the way.

I DO like this new saw.

To finish off, I started to weed one of the raised beds where I grow my vegetables and I’m making quite a pile of stuff for burning, right where the greenhouse is going to be.

And four reasons too.

  1. it’s a nice big clear space there
  2. it’ll get rid of all the rubbish that’s accumulating
  3. it’ll burn the weeds that are growing there
  4. the ashes will fertilise the soil

But I won’t be burning anything tomorrow, and I won’t be working in the garden either. We’re having a torrential rainstorm right now outside and I’ll be intrigued to see how the new roof is coping with it all.

-2