Tag Archives: dump load

29th April 2015 – TODAY IS ANOTHER DAY …

… when I smell all coconutty.It was a much better day today and the temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the excess solar energy reached 64°C. Consequently, when I knocked off at 18:30 this evening, I put some hot water in a bucket, cooled it down with some cold water, and then had one of my patent “jug showers” in the corner of the verandah. And wasn’t that lovely?

So today, I’ve varnished all of the woodwork that I cut yesterday. So far it’s had two coats on either side but tomorrow morning it will have the third coat on the outer side.

That is, apart from the pine board that will be the front of the beichstuhl. That’s had three coats ion the other side, and nothing on the inside, and for the simple reason that I’m going to tile all of the inside of the beichstuhl. If I’m having the fittings for the composting toilet in there, it needs to have a wipe-down surface and varnished pine boards don’t work.

I’m even going to tile the floor in there too – something that I said that I wouldn’t do, but cleaning has to be the thing with a composting toilet. Consequently, I spent about half an hour going through all of the odds and ends of tiles to find enough for the job.

I’ve started to refit the plasterboard too, which of course I’ll need to do if I’m going to do the tiling.

In other news, I’ve made advances with the electrical system here. Having had a test-bed in the barn with the old internet Livebox running on 12-volt DC non-stop for 10 days, I’ve set up the new one in here and that’s now running on 12-volt DC instead of the mains and an adapter. It took ages to set up, but the situation was greatly eased when I remembered to switch on the Livebox.

But this is yet more progress around the house.

And on my travels during the night, I was joined by someone else with whom I wouldn’t aprticularly care to pss any real time. I was in my car and explaining to the aforementioned about MP3s in car radios with either memory sticks or SD cards – an invention which hadn’t, apparently, penetrated into the depths of darkest Crewe.

But all of these unwelcome people turning up in my nocturnal voyages. Whatever is this all about?

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Wednesday 15th April 2015 – I HAD AN UNEXPECTED …

rabbit les guis virlet puy de dome france… visitor at the front door this morning.

I’ve no idea what Bugs was doing there but he looked as if he was at home there all the same. Anyway he soon cleared off when I came to the front door and I was lucky to be able to squeeze off a slightly out-of-focus shpt as he scurried back up the drive.

So having been at one with the local wildlife, I carried on with work today.

First thing was to deal with the issue of the solar water heater. The temperature was 59°C in there this morning and at an average of 8°C per hour in the kind of weather that we have been having just now, then once the batteries are fully-charged, the water will boil up before the sun goes down tonight.

So what I did, and for the first time ever, was to drain 20 litres of water off it. Two buckets full, and I simply left it in the buckets to cool down. When the water started to heat up this afternoon, I simply tipped the buckets of lukewarm water into it. As a result, the water didn’t rise past 65°C, and that was fine.

philips les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnother thing that helped keep the water temperature down was to run the coffee machine for the first time this year.

850 watts at half an hour produced a nice pot of coffee as well as swallowing up some of the surplus energy, and I’ll have to do this more often. In any case, it saves on the gas here.

batten for fitting shelf for top of composting toilet les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the work, I carried on in the shower room today.

First thing, I fitted the second batten for the shelf that will form the top of the composting toilet. You can see it here, at right angles to the shelf that I fitted yesterday.

There’s a third shelf too, but that’s in the false wall that I’ve temporarily dismantled while I’m working. The fourth shelf will be the top of the front panel, but you’ll see this in due course as the work progresses.

batten for fitting worktop in shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve also finished the rest of the battens in the bathroom (for now at least).

You’ll see on the left just underneath the window the batten which will support the worktop into which I’ll be fitting the sink. This is something that I’ll be tackling sooner than you might think.

As for the battens, I’ve finally found my mitre gauge and with setting it up to 13mm (the battens are 26mm) I can mark off the mitres with some kind of accuracy. And even with my slightly-bent mitre saw with a couple of teeth missing, and my 100 year-old wood chisel, the level of accuracy that I’ve been managing has certainly astounded me.

So I’m having a well-earned rest and I might even have an early night too.

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Tuesday 14th April 2015 – THIS MAKES DEPRESSING VIEWING;

plasterboard taken off back wall in shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, if you look very carefully at the back wall of the shower room, you’ll see that the plasterboard has been taken down.

And that’s not all either, for half of the plasterboard on the side wall has gone too. And when all of that is sorted out, half on the other side wall will be coming off.

You may remember that I did the plasterboarding in a hurry in 2013 in between trips to belgium, and I really wish that I hadn’t, because firstly, it’s a total mess, and secondy, the studding is all wrong.

I have to fit a variety of shelves in here, and it would have been ohh so easy to have fitted them and then done the plasterboarding around it like I did with the stairs, but that’s far too simple an idea. When I was looking this morning at how to fit the shelving in, and not seeing a satisfactory solution, I thought “sod this for a game of soldiers”. It was quicker to take off the plasterboard and start again.

I don’t know how I’m going to find the space to cut it down to the new shape, by the way, but I’ll worry about that in due course.

shelving bracket for composting toilet shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis is what I should have done before I fitted the plasterboarding.

Here’s the shelf mounting for the top of the composting toilet and it took me about an hour and a half to make it, including searching for the wood and changing a few light bulbs in the barn. However, it took about 5 hours altogether given all of the messing about. And that’s sad news. You can see what I mean about having done it first rather than last.

There needs to ne another shelf bracket fitted to the adjacent wall and I’ll finish that tomorrow – I’m well on my way to doing that already.

blossom on trees les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn other news, the blossom has finally arrived on the trees. 3 weeks later than usual, but it’s here nevertheless. And it does look pretty too – well worth the wait.

And you can see how nice the weather was – another beautiful blue sky all day long.

199.3 amp-hours of surplus solar energy (and wind energy too because we’ve had a nice windy day) went into the dump load – the home-made 12 volt immersion heater. The water temperature in the dump load was off the scale (over 70°C) by 15:00 and when I went to fetch hot water to do the washing up at 22:00, it was still not back on the scale again.

I’ve finally fixed the data logger too – the new one that I bought a few months ago. And this is what I call accuracy. I checked it tonight with a 1-watt bulb and it showed a discharge of … errrr …. 1 watt. I rigged up a few other low-powered items and the discharge was 9 watts. Switching everything off again went straight to 0.

I’m well impressed with this.

I was back in Crewe on my travels, with some people who figure more in my nocturnal adventures that they do in real life which is just as well as they aren’t people whose company I would appreciate for real.

We were in one house – a Victorian semi with waste land at the side that was a zone of special scientific interest – a marshy wetland. A car driven by a woman went past, did a U-turn across the marsh, went across the drive behind my car, and out across the lawn and back onto the Highway. This had caused a huge pile of light-grey gravel to be pushed into the marsh and had totally dried it up.

Then, I had to take one of these people to see his father, and he gave me directions. When we came to what he reckoned was the house number, it was an empty plot of land in Delamere Street where the little old school used to be. Now it’s been 23 years since I last lived in Crewe, and yet I could tell the difference between Delamere Street and Flag Lane, even when I’m deep in the arms of Morpheus.

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Tuesday 7th April 2015 – THE WIND FINALLY DROPPED THIS EVENING.

That made quite a change as we’ve had non-stop wind for the last three days or so.

All kinds of records have been broken too with the wind. For example, of all the wind energy created by the big AIR 403 wibd turbine since I reset the meter in December, 40% of it came today. And with the small wind turbine, today has doubled the previous record of wind generated.

It really was impressive but now it’s blown out and we are all quiet.

This morning, I took decisive action and ripped out all of the masking and protection on the stairs and on the landing downstairs. I gave the stairs and landing a thorough clean, sanded all of the imperfections, vacuumed it thoroughly and then gave it all a really good coat of varnish.

That took about an hour and a half in total, and so for the rest of the morning I went outside. First job was to sort out a huge pile of old cardboard that I had put on one side when I tidied the barn out the other day.

cardboard cover raised beds les guis virlet puy de dome franceWith all of that, I went down to the raised beds in the garden where I grow my crops of vegetables. Nothing is going to be done there this year, so I’ve covered over all of the beds with cardboard. I did 6 this morning, and then this afternoon I dismantled the bean frames and did the rest.

I’ve only weeded two of them, the rest can take their chance. BUt it’s not going to be a problem for as soon as it rains and the cardboard becomes waterlogged, it’ll fold down flat onto the soil in the raised beds, suffocate the weeds and then slowly disintegrate into the soil over the period of the coming year.

Immediately after lunch, I put the second coat of varnish on, and I’ll do the third coat first thing in the morning.

For tea tonight I made a mega-mushroom and potato curry. Mushrooms were cheap at the weekend and I had some potatoes left over from winter.

And there was so much surplus energy today that the water in the dump load (the home-made 12-volt immersion heater) went off the scale – ie over 70°C. I had some lovely hot wahing-up water this evening.

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Monday 6th April 2015 – I SMELL ALL OF COCONUT RIGHT NOW

Temperature in the verandah, 36°C – temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the excess solar energy – 43°C. This can only mean one thing – a nice shower in the corner of the verandah specially set aside for the purpose.

The shower might only be a bucket and a jug to pour the water over me, but it’s a shower all the same and with the rainwater that I use (remember that there is no running water here) and the electricity that the sun generates for me, it’s all my own work.

There is as you know, a shower cubicle outside but it’ll be a couple of weeks before the water in the black plastic container on its roof has water hot enough to shower properly in that.

I knew that it would be like that today though. Last night it was cold, but one of these “warm colds”, with a steady breeze and totally clear sky. Not a cloud in the sky, millions of stars and a huge moon. And today, not a cloud in the sky either. I certainly made up today for the 9 consecutive days of miserable weather that we have just had.

As for the wind, we’ve had a steady wind all day. And to prove a point that I make regularly and which no-one else believes, this is another day in which the small 90-watt wind turbine outperformed the 400-watt wind turbine. In fact, the small wind turbine today produced more that twice as much energy as the larger one has produced since I reset the counter back in December last year – 4 months ago.

The reason for this is simple. They both have electrical generators in them, as you might expect. And in common with all electrical generators, they have magnets in them. And the bigger the generator, the bigger the magnet, so a more powerful wind speed is needed to overcome the resistance and start up the machine. That’s why the smaller wind turbine will start up and generate electricity in a much lower wind speed.

Apart from that, I’ve done nothing else except enjoy the last day of my Easter break. I’m back at work tomorrow.

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Tuesday 3rd March 2015 – I HAD A GOOD DAY …

… at work today, for a change. Although, as usual, you wouldn’t really notice.

I was up early enough and after breakfast had a good crack on at the laptop. As well as the Radio Anglais programmes, I’ve restarted work on my website again. I’ve done almost nothing on it during the winter but now Spring is here and it’s time to come out of hibernation and get a wiggle on

upper doors fitted wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn the bedroom I spent some of the morning finishing off the second door on the upper part of the wardrobe, cutting out the lets for the hinges and fitting them, and then fitting the door handle and the magnetic catch. Once I’d done all of that, I could hang the door.

And then take the door off, file down part of the edges so that it would fit better and then rehang it.

Off to Caliburn next, to fetch another pack of floorboarding and bring that upstairs. Then I could make up a board out of seven planks, ready to cut down to make doors 3,4,5 and 6.

After lunch, I cut two strips 770mm wide out of the board that I had made. 770mm is the height of the upper doors (give or take a millimetre or two) and these two strips will form the four doors that I mentioned just now.

One of the strips I cut down to make two doors of exactly the right width for doors 3 and 4, and then fitted the reinforcing battens. I had to cut down some wood for the battens, and the table saw that I bought in Commentry a couple of months ago did the job expertly. In fact, I was running the electricity and power tools today (the circular saw, the belt sander and the table saw) until 18:40 today without significantly draining the batteries and I’m well pleased with that.

So now the two doors are ready to be hung tomorrow morning, and then I can crack on with cutting down doors 5 and 6. When they are done, there will be just door 7 to fit, and then the upper fascia panels and then I can varnish the wardrobe.

Tonight, I didn’t light a fire. 17.8°C in the attic it was, which was impressive for this time of year. I cooked tea on the single burner camping stove that I use for making coffee and as well as working perfectly (a good plan making these huge curries and packing them into individual portions – they don’t take much heating) it warmed up the place by 1°C.

On the subject of electricity, I noticed that at one stage we were having 42 amp-hours of surplus electricity. It didn’t last long but it pumped uop the heat in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load.

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Monday 2nd March 2015 – I DIDN’T GET …

… as much done as I wanted to today – but then I had quite an interruption round about lunchtime.

I struggled to get out of bed this morning, but nevertheless I cracked on with my stuff about Algeria and managed to finish that, at least, even though I was late going down to work.

I managed to fit all of the framework for the upper doors, although one piece had to be recut after it split while I was malleting it into position. All of that took much longer than I anticipated, due mainly to my having to cut a couple more fascia pieces as the ones that I had set aside were not strong enough.

Once that had been done, I went out to fetch a pile of floorboards from Caliburn and then made the first of the upper doors.

But this was when I noticed the smell of burning.

We had a brief patch of sun today and I ended up with 45 amp-hours of power going down the cables to the home-made 12-volt immersion heater. It seems that the connector on the positive cable wasn’t up to that and the connection was arcing out. I ended up having to cut it off, fit a new connector, cut off the insulation and then solder it using the new gas soldering gun that Terry bought me for Christmas.

My soldering is total rubbish as you know, but it has to be better than my crimping, so it seems. and it was then that I noticed that the thread appears to be stripped in the heater element. I had to remove the screw and do my best with a nut and bolt, but that’s not looking so good and I’m going to have to deal with this.

All in all, I ended up having lunch at about 16:30.

Back at work I carried on until 19:00. All of the hinges are in place but the door needs trimming down. That’s not the kind of thing that you can do when you are tired and so I’ll be dealing with that first thing tomorrow.

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Wednesday 11th February 2015 – THIS MUST BE SOMETHING OF A RECORD

Today, I had a massive 169 amp-hours of excess solar energy and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load went off the scale (ie more than 70°C). There has never been that much surplus solar energy in the month of February – in fact we would not find too many days in July and August where we would have more than that.

That gives you some idea of what today wad like. The temperature outside reached 15.1°C and this was the first day for I don’t know how long when the temperature in my attic rose during the day rather than fell.

The increase in temperature prompted me into action and first job that I tackled was to paint the landing. But that wasn’t how it panned out, as I dropped my pliers into the 8 litres of white paint. They will be nice and pretty when I finally get down to the bottom of the tub and can fish them out. But that’s not going to be for a while yet.

landing painted yellow les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo here we are. You can’t really see things very well in the landing, but here’s the first coat of yellow paint on the wall. This is basically 8 litres of white emulsion and a tube of yellow paint pigment.

It’s not brilliant, but it will look much better tomorrow after I have done the second coat. And I don’t really like the colour – it’s come out much darker than I was expecting and much darker than what I wanted.

But never mind. it’s on and it’s staying on.

osb wall wardrobe s les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch, I started on the second piece of OSB for the end wall of the wardrobe. That eventually went into place with a little bit of manoeuvring and fine adjustment, and it won’t be coming out again.

It’s a different colour than the rest, due to the fact that I didn’t have enough OSB in the house and had to go outside and scrounge a piece that I had been using as part of the false floor in Caliburn. But as it’s being coated in crepi, it won’t make much of a difference.

This afternoon, after a few other bits and pieces that I had to do, I made use of the surplus solar energy and started to sand down the plasterboard. That took ages and I’ve only done about half of it, but the sandpaper on the sander split itself, at exactly 18:05, and I took that as being the signal to knock off for the day.

And those falafel balls and oven chips for tea were delicious again.

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Tuesday 10th February 2015 – IN WHICH OUR HERO MAKES GREAT STRIDES

The first lot of great strides took me up to Virlet and the mairie to be censored, seeing as how it’s census time again and I missed both visits of the census team. And it’s clear that the people at the mairie read this rubbish because the first question that I was asked was ” did I manage okay seeing as how I was snowed in for 10 days at home?” and the second topic of discussion was about the postie and an explanation as to why she couldn’t make it here. All totally unprompted.

Not only that, I was taken to see the new snow-clearing apparatus and I was asked for my advice about some technical aspects. Well, well, well. Whatever next?

Second lot of great strides were down to the bottom of the garden and the composting bin, where I empted out the beichstuhl and refilled it. Such delightful jobs that I have to do around here. Still, it’s all grist to the mill, and compost for the garden too.

Once those delights were sorted out, I attacked the bedroom and gave it a thorough cleaning – or, at least, the best cleaning that I can do seeing as how there are still four sheets of plasterboard in the middle of the floor. And as usual, running my big magnetic dish through the pile of sawdust and plaster dust and ordinary dust, I salvage about a hundredweight of screws and nails that have been dropped over the passage of time.

plasterboard stud wall bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceWith that out of the way, I can press on and fill all of the joins in the plasterboard. And how I wish that I have the time and the money (and the inclination) to rip off the wall everything that I did a few years ago in here and start again.

All of that work so far took until lunchtime and it really is quite impressive, even though I say it myself (apart from the rubbish plasterbaording of course). I could be quite happy living here.

Although it was still very cold today, we had another really bright alpine day. Not good enough for varnishing or painting, but good enough to sort out the circular saw and cut the first of the two end-pieces for the remaining unfinished wall of the wardrobe. To cut it, shape it and fit it, it took all afternoon firstly because it needed to be an exact fit – 1mm out and it’s no good at all, and secondly because trying to fit it on my own was almost impossible.

It had to be the upper piece that needed doing. That needs to be fitted first and difficult as it might be with nothing underneath it holding it in position, fitting it in second is impossible. In the end I had a crowbar wedged underneath it at the bottom and an endstop nailed to the beam above, and I was gently levering it into position between the uprights with a big wood chisel.

osb wall boarding wardrobe end les guis virlet puy de dome franceI had it in position and screwed in nicely after about an hour and a half, only to find out that it had slipped down the crowbar and was about 15mm out at the top. Taking it out was a barrel of laughs too, as was putting it back in again in the correct position but finally, at about 18:30 it was in exactly where it ought to be, and all screwed in position.

A wash in the beautiful warm water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater (we had 104 amp-hours of surplus electrical energy today and we would have had more had I not used the circular saw) and up here for a nice warm fire and oven chips with peas, carrots and falafel balls.

What I’ll do tomorrow depends on the weather and the sun. We are promised a warm day and if that is indeed so, I’ll be painting the landing. Otherwise, I’ll be sanding down the filler.

But starting work on the wardrobe already. Isn’t this progress?

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Monday 9th February 2015 – THIS IS IMPRESSIVE!

Yes, I’ve had 105 amp-hours of excess solar energy today. The temperature of the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load rose from 0°C (yes, it was really cold in the living room) to 41°C and on knocking off this evening I was able to wash my hands in nice warm water.

That tells you the kind of day it was today. Clear blue skies for most of the day with just a few clouds scudding by round about lunchtime. And I was able to extract Caliburn out from under hsi snowdrift and go into Pionsat and the Intermarché to stock up on the grub.

Mind you, that was rather problematical because, on arriving at the supermarket at 14:00 I discovered that it was exceptionally closed until 16:00 due to a bereavement, so I had to go back a second time. Anyway, I’m now good for another week if we are snowed in again.*

I’ve also been able to fill up all of the water containers, seeing as how for a brief period this afternoon everything unfroze itself.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I started off this morning by tidying out the bedroom. I’ve emptied tons of stuff and taken it downstairs and in doing so, I’ve …
1) cluttered up downstairs completely
2) made a few exciting discoveries of things that I had lost an subsequently forgotten.

But here’s an interesting thing. I took the gas heater downstairs and in order to move it easier, I took out the gas bottle. I had a look on the date on it (I date the gas bottles when I fit them so that I know how long they last) and this one was dated 10th November 2010, and it’s almost full. That means that it’s over 4 years since I’ve paid for any heating here and at €30 every three weeks for 18 weeks or so per year, that’s a saving of 88 weeks divided by 3 and multiplied by €30, that’s about €900.

The woodstove on the other hand cost me €279 and of course my wood is free, and there’s also a saving on gas for cooking in the winter too. So you can see that this woodstove really is the best thing since sliced bread.

So having spent all morning emptying out the bedroom, I can walk all the way around and reach all of the walls ready to start the filling. And after lunch and shopping, I made a start. But I stopped pretty quickly too because, looking at some of the plasterboarding that I had done back in 2010, I ripped a huge pile out and redid it, with proper bracing. It’s amazing how much I’ve learnt and how far I’ve come on since I started on this.

Consequently, I didn’t get much of the filling done, and I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow.

However, that’s going to be interrupted too as I’ve been summoned to the Mairie tomorrow morning. I told you that I missed the census the other week while I was on my one and only day out, and they came round today to catch me – the first day for well over a week that I’ve been able to leave the house.

Typical, isn’t it?

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Wednesday 21st January 2015 – I HAD A NICE …

… day out today. I needed a couple of things from Terry and he needed a couple of things from me, and so I went round there this morning.

Mind you, it didn’t mean that I did no work here. I was up bright and early for once and after breakfast I put the second coat of varnish onto the shower room floor and then off I went in the deep sub-zero temperature to Liz and Terry’s.

We spent all of the morning dealing with some things for Terry and then after lunch we had a look at a couple of things that I needed doing, which included a trip out to Montaigut.

I was back here by 17:45 and first thing that I did was to put the third and final coat of varnish on the shower room floor. That’s now all nicely sealed in and in the morning it will be lovely, and ready for me to move the beichstuhl into there.

In other news, we had near-record days of sunshine while I was out. I had 95 amps of surplus solar energy and that pushed the water in the dump load up to 46°C. It’s all looking quite impressive

And it will be even more impressive if I can have a good day here tomorrow.

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Tuesday 23rd December 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

stairs up to attic les guis virlet puy de dome france … the stairs up to the attic.

Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t really. All of the wood has been cut and shaped, that’s for sure, but they haven’t been nailed into place. This is because the filler that I used on the screw holes took quite a while to dry. I wanted it to dry before I nailed down the stair treads, because access is so much easier to sand down the filler, paste the wallpaper and paint everywhere when the treads aren’t in place.

Not only that, I can put the varnish on the stair treads and risers before I nail them down too, and that will be another task completed. I’ll have two lovely shelves when they are finished and I can start to stack away the china and so on.

I had plenty of fun cutting the treads though. Two of them had to be cut by trial and error because taking measurements on the slant was not very easy. And much to my surprise, it all fitted where it ought to do.

We also had another Alpine day today and I had almost 60 amps of surplus solar energy today, with the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump loa reaching 33°C, which is the highest that it’s been for a considerable time.

In other news, you can imagine that with the events of the couple of nights over the weekend, about which I talked at the relevant moment, I’ve been on something of a nostalgia trip, spending a lot of time musing on events that happened, didn’t happen, could have happened, might have happened and what I would have liked to have happened at a certain moment in my life. This wasn’t helped today because the *.mp3 player reached the point where five particular albums suddenly presented themselves, one after the other,

These five albums, Benefit, Aqualung, A Passion Play and Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull and Nicely Out Of Tune by Lindisfarne, were five albums that were being played non-stop by a certain few of us during this particular 18-month period and it must be something more than just coincidence that they suddenly appeared, one ofter the other, at the time when I have all of this nonsense going on in my head.

It’s all becoming quite eerie.

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Friday 5th December 2014 – IT WASN’T QUITE AS EARLY …

… as last night. Still, being in bed by 23:30 is still something relatively unknown around here, as regular readers of this rubbish will realise.

And as you might expect, I was wide awake by 06:00 and if this carries on, I shall be emulating Rosemary in that I shall be making myself a coffee early in the morning and then going back to bed. And I forgot to say that Percy Penguin – she who doesn’t feature on these pages half as much as she deserves – put in an appearnce during the night, as I was on my travels in Cheshire.

First job after breakfast was to empty the compost bucket that I have up here. And then second job was to empty the beichstuhl – such are the delights of my living habits around here.

Once all of those were out of the way I carried on with the power board. This involved making up a flying lead so that I can connect all kinds of things to it – including the portable power board, if ever the need arises.

Once I had done that, I had to make some cables to connect the dump load. This le to a good half an hour looking for the negative 25mm cable.

And hereby hangs a tale. This cable only comes in blue and red, and I use only red and black for the 12-volt circuits. So you can see an immediate problem. However, I have learnt, by serendipity, that the red cable, if left out in the sunlight, fades to a nice dull yellow. I therefore have a couple,of lengths hanging upoutside quietly fading, but it took me ages to find the length that had already changed colour.

Eventually I found it, and so I could make up a red cable and a yellow cable for thr dump load. As you know, my sldering is rubbish but I have a crimping tool for fastening the big aliminium terminals that I use, and then I finish off with half a dozen turns with the vice.

Cecile rang up too for a chat,and she was on the phone for a good hour. Terry rang up too for a chat. It is nice to be popular.

After lunch, I made up a couple of cables for the big Studer inverter. But I’m not at all sure about this. I bought it years ago off eBay and it’s never been installed, although when I gave it a whirl a few years ago, I found that the capacitor was faulty and I had to send it away to be repaired.

The cables were not much problem, but fitting the inverter certainly was. You have no idea how heavy it is, and it’s hel on by screws through bolt holes, rather that cutaways, so you need at least four hands. After much binding in the marsh, I fitted a shelf onto the power board in the barn and put the inverter on that so that it was in the correct place – and then I could screw it up.

I remain unconvinced about its effectiveness and I might end up taking it off again.

I spent the rest of the evening looking for the keyswich that I put on one side on Sunday. This is actually a keyswitched battery isolator and I need that in my circuit so that I can disconnect the batteries without disrupting the system. I had it in my hand on Monday and put it safe where I knew that it wouldn’t be lost.

And I have another three somewhere too – and could I ‘eck as like find one of those either. But this is the story of my life, isn’t it? I spend more time looking for stuff than I do actually using it or fitting it.

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Saturday 1st November 2014 – THAT WAS A WASTE OF TIME …

… wasn’t it just? Yes, my early night was interrupted by the mouse that is trying to hibernate in the ceiling, and then when I finally did go back to sleep I was wide-awake and up and about at all of … would you believe … 07:30. So much for my long lie-in.

After breakfast, I’ve spent all day doing nothing. I forgot to mention to you that it’s a Bank Holiday here today. I’ve been just organising files on the laptop and that’s about it.

Well, not quite. I’ve had to make a few phone calls today, two of which were to Canada, and more of this anon. Another one was to book a room at the local hotel, because I’m having visitors here et the end of the week.

Another thing that I’ve done is to have another shower today – the “bucket and jug” type of shower. Well, it was bright blue skies all day, temperature in the home-made 12 volt immersion heater had gone off the scale and the temperature in the verandah was 24°C. And now, I’m all clean, smell of coconut and have noce clean clothes on.

There’s a pile of dirty clothes here now. I need to consider the washing machine at the Intermarche at Pionsat again. That’s probably the most useful thing in town, I reckon.

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Tuesday 28th October 2014 – I HAD A SHOWER TODAY.

Well, it wasn’t actually too much of a shower but when I came back downstairs after lunch the temperature in the verandah was 24.2°C and the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that is the dump load for the overcharge on the solar panels had gone off the temperature scale ie over 70°C. Yes, over 100 amps of excess solar charge today.

I mixed 10 litres of water to 40°C and had a shower in the corner of the verandah. Nothing complicated – just a water jug and a large bucket of nice hot water but it didn’t half fetch me up nice and clean, just for a change, and in no time flat too.

And, yes, in the verandah too. Because this morning I was out there at 09:30 going through absolutely everything. I’ve made enormous headway in there, although it doesn’t look all that much different as you might expect. But the floor is clear now, hence the space to have a shower.

There is still a great deal to do in there however but the aim was to round up all of the loose paper that needs throwing out.

Having done that this morning, then this afternoon I went around the house and rounded up another pile of scrap paper, as well as all of the plastic bottles and tin cans as they can also go into the yellow sacks, according to the notice on the side of the sacks. This is an exciting discovery and saves me a journey down to the big dechetterie at St Eloy in the near future.

All in all, there are no less that 16 yellow sacks for me to take down to Pionsat tonight for the morning collection tomorrow and that’s really something. But it really doesn’t look much different here all the same.

Tomorrow, I’m going to start outside tomorrow, tidying up out there. I’ll have this place looking pretty even if it kills me, which it probably will.

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