Tag Archives: eric hall

Saturday 18th February 2012 – WASN’T SATURDAY A WEIRD DAY?

The temperature in here was 15.4°C when I woke up this morning. And during the course of the day it actually increased without any heat input at all. So much so that at one stage we had 20°C in here.

Mind you, that’s not surprising. Outside we had as much as 16.3°C and in the verandah, over 25°C.

It really was an exceptional day.

So what to do with the surplus electrical energy? After all, no point in heating up here, as it was warm enough on its own.

No point in doing any washing either because although there is a lot to be done, I wasn’t sure if enough water had been melted.

The answer was to resurrect the 12-volt coffee machine. it needed a good clean as it hadn’t been used for a year or so but once it was up and running we managed a good pot of coffee. And why not?

What with electric heating, coffee machines and so on, it does make me wonder what I’m going to be having running next though.

But one of the drawbacks to the warm weather is that the fire, when I finally did light it up, never reached anything like hot enough to cook anything. I was burnt out of the room long before the fire warmed up.

Not that it mattered though because for some unaccountable reason I crashed out at 22:00 and apart from a brief 10 minutes of consciousness to take the readings and to switch off the computer, that was that.

Friday 17th February 2012 – I FINISHED THE CEILING …

… just before lunchtime. And I’m really impressed with how it has turned out, even if it did take ages to do.

And there’s 60mm of insulation underneath that tongue-and-grooving, and that is what is probably helping to keep my little attic warm. I remember just how cold it was in here when I first moved in and there wasn’t any insulation at all.

But it was colder in here this morning too – a mere 14.4°C. Positively arctic, I mused to myself. And that’s a difference too from 9°C from the other day, although the difference between 0.3°C outside last night (first 24-hour period for ages that it didn’t get below freezing) last night and -16°C the other night is even more spectacular.

So after lunch I cleaned the pathways outside now that everywhere is warming up. I can walk about the place without sliding over now.

And then it was back into the bedroom. All the joints in the plasterboard on the wall by the window are now sealed and filled, and I’ve almost finished sealing in the window.

I started off using mastic for that but then I remembered that Terry gave me a load of mastic-type glue that he didn’t think too much of, and so I used a pile of that.

That has gone in from the inside, but I’ll buy some proper stuff tomorrow to do the outside.

Once the window is properly sealed in, I can do the window= framing in the bedroom. The two sides and the top will (of course) be in tongue-and-grooving and I’ve some pine board that will do for the windowsill.

-4

Thursday 16th February 2012 – WHEN I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… der der der der der …

but doesn’t that have all the makings of a really good blues song?

However, to coin a phrase, since I’ve been on the Prozac I haven’t had the blues for years.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning the temperature in here was a massive 15.4°C. And it’s been a long time since it’s been that warm in here without a fire. It just goes to show, firstly, how much things have warmed up outside, and secondly, the benefits of heaping a pile of scrap wood on the fire just as you go to sleep

It was warm outside as well – all of 2°C – and it’s been a long time since it’s been that warm as well. 4mm of rain we had through the night and while it hasn’t washed away the snow, it’s now a messy sticky quagmire outside.

First job was to look at this solar spotlight thing that I bought a few weeks ago and which didn’t want to work. Once I’d worked out how to dismantle … “dispersontle” – ed … it, the rest was easy.

The battery wasn’t fitted correctly. It was only a 600mAh battery though, and so I charged up a spare 2500mAh battery and fitted that.

This evening it lit up at last. It’s not very bright but from where I’ve installed it, it lights up the pathway from where I park Caliburn down to the side of the house. And that was what I wanted it to do.

Next job was to fix the anemometer that didn’t want to record its data. A flat battery (that’s the third it’s had since I bought it in the autumn!) and a badly-seated mounting sorted that out, but each time the battery is relmoved, you need to recalibrate the computer, and I can see that being a pain with three batteries in five months

The rest of the day, in between the phone calls, I spent on the roof of the bedroom. I cracked on as well and I reckon that there’s about 3 hours’ work to do there.

Once that’s done, I need to deal with the sealing of the joints in the plasterboard – and now I have the water to do that. I also have to seal the window so that I can build up around it.

Tonight I had a gorgeous tea. Baked potatoes of course, but I put a baking tray in there, lightly oiled, and cut up an onion and some garlic to fry on it. Then, a small tin of mushrooms and a ladle of tinned vegetables. All finished off by some curry and gravy powder into the resultant liquid. It really was nice.

But a downside of this warm weather is that with having to heat up the oven sufficiently to cook the food, the temperature soared to an astonishing 24°C. It’s now 5 hours since I last put any fuel on the fire, I’m sitting here in shirt sleeves (not even a pullover) and it’s still over 20°C.

And in other news, I was chatting on the phone to this Canadian guy whom I’m working with. We were talking about fires and I was saying that I was looking for a woodstove that has an oven and also a water boiler, to fit in the cabin that I’m going to build on my plot of land in Canada.

“Ohh – I have an old one of those that I took out of here a few years ago. It’s in my shed – I’ll sort it out for you”

Blimey!

-4

Wednesday 15th February 2012 – THIS WATER ISSUE …

… might have solved itself.

And for several different reasons too.

f you see that icicle in the photo here that I took a week or so ago (the weather was nothing like that today of course) it started to melt today. And so I simply stuck a bucket underneath it.

Meantime, I took one of those plastic drinks bottles, the type with a very long pointed neck, and cut the bottom off. Then I stuffed a load of fine fibreglass mesh up the neck.

Each time a bucket was filled, I poured it through my home-made filter into one of these proprietary jug filters and let it filter through there, and then I decanted it into my water container.

I managed to capture about 40 litres over the course of the afternoon and that’s eased the situation considerably.

However like most things, solutions don’t come on their own. Like London buses, after you’ve been waiting for hours, three turn up all at once.

And so it is with this. By the end of the afternoon the water butt had started to unfreeze itself.

Not that that’s a quick solution, because I looked inside the rear tank and that’s a frozen mass of ice, but I still managed 5 litres out of there as well.

And the third solution? Well, after all the freezing weather that we’ve had just recently, it’s p155ing down outside. All the snow will be gone by tomorrow if it carries on like this, and then we will be in the floods again. Then we’ll be having a different kind of water problem.

Despite a constant stream of interruptions today, I’ve now started on the final row of the tongue-and-grooving in the bedroom.

That involved finishing off the previous row, moving piles of stuff around the room, and then mixing some polyfilla to fill in the joins between the wood and the insulation that is already in the ceiling.

Maybe if I have a decent day tomorrow I can crack on with this. It would be nice to have it finished for the weekend.

One thing that has helped is that this row is by far the narrowest of them. When I’ve been doing the other rows and cutting down lengths of tongue-and-grooving, I’ve always been left with leftover bits that wouldn’t fit anywhere.

I’ve been labelling them with the size, and these are all fitting into the row that I’m doing now. This will save me a load of time cutting up full-size lengths.

For tea tonight I had ratatouille, green beans and baked potatoes. This time the potatoes were done properly and it was one of the nicest meals I’ve had for ages. It was definitely a good plan to move the kitchen up here for the duration.

-2

Tuesday 14th February 2012 – IT WAS A PLEASURE …

… to wake up this morning with a temperature of 13.5°C up here in the room. It’s been a while since I’ve had a temperature like that.

Mind you, what wasn’t a pleasure was being woken up by a phone call at some ungodly hour of the morning. However, it did concern work so I can’t complain too much I suppose, even if it did get me off on the wrong foot.

After all of that, I went to beat the bounds of the property. As you know, we had a right caning of snow through the night and I wanted to see what the weather had done to the place.

The answer is, as you might expect, that I’m properly snowed in and I shan’t be going anywhere for a bit. Luckily I had the foresight to leave Caliburn up at he top of the bank

As an aside, you can see the Sankey trailer and the Minerva, and also the old orange central heating tank that Simon gave me to use to store biofuels in.

And while I was checking up on the house, I had a brainwave, And it’s so simple that I’ve no idea why I never thought of it before – and I’m kicking myself for having suffered like this these last couple of weeks.

And so I dashed off for a rummage in the barn.

In the apartment in Brussels I had a small white kitchen table with two drop leaves and I remember bringing it down here. That had to be around somewhere and eventually I found all of the pieces.

I brought it up into the attic and assembled it in the room, and laid all of the kitchen stuff on it. It’s now making quite a useful kitchen worktop up here and I wished that I had remembered it earlier.

This afternoon I didn’t manage to do very much as I had a whole series of phone calls one after the other, and so it was pretty much a wasted day. Still, there will be other days.

Tea was baked potatoes and spicy beans, cooked in the oven. This was an excellent buy, this new woodstove.

But the temperature outside just now is astonishing – minus 1.6°C. That’s over 10°C improvement from last night. If that kind of temperature transforms itself into a decent daytime temperature, I might even have some water tomorrow.

And not before time either – I’m now reduced to melting buckets of snow.

-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

Sunday 12th February 2012 – IF ANYONE THINKS …

… that I’m going out and looking for a football match today, then they are very much mistaken.

Sunday is a Day of Rest, and that means not trying to extricate myself out of the little lane here and sliding and slithering around 100 miles of French countryside trying to find a football pitch that might be playable.

Because there will certainly be nothing anywhere in this vicinity.

Instead, I had a lie-in and when I finally did heave myself out of my stinking pit into Ice Station Zebra, I lit the fire and spent most of the day within about 6 inches thereof with the laptop, a good book and a couple of films.

Tea tonight was the rest of the oven chips that I didn’t cook yesterday, and that, dear reader, is your lot.

We are told that it will warm up tomorrow – I suppose that instead of -11°C that will mean -9°C.

We shall see.

Saturday 11th February 2012 – IT WAS COLD …

… this morning … "ohh what a surprise" – ed … 9.5°C or thereabouts up here at 10:00 am this morning.

But that really was no surprise really because at that moment outside it was a mere -12°C. This weather certainly is ridiculous.

Anyway a blazing wood fire had the temperature up to 18.5°C within an hour and that was the important bit.

I stayed in and cracked on with the presentation about the Trans-Labrador Highway that I’ll be doing for the village, and by 14:30 it was done.

At least the text and the graphics are. I just have to make a powerpoint presentation of the photos, and that won’t take too long.

From there I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines and did some shopping. And I excelled myself. Some potatoes to cook in my oven, and also some more oven chips.

Saturday night might be curry night and it has been for as long as I can remember, but not when it’s cold enough outside that half a packet of frozen oven chips will stay frozen for a couple of days while I had the rest with a veggie burger and baked beans.

But in Carrefour there were some young kids running amok, nominally (but not actually) under the control of a young woman with earrings and piercings through the nose and chin and the like.

And when she spoke – yes, it was in English. and we came out here to keep away from people like that, snobs that we are. Jarspur and Hooray Henries one week, chavs the next week.

I picked my way delicately to Rosemary’s after that, eventually, and we had a good chat for a couple of hours.

and so back here where I have a big fire going and I’m not moving.

The word on the streets is that things shall warm up dramatically on Monday night. The bad news is that we shall be covered in snow though. If it’s not one thing it’s another.

And once you get started, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

-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

Tuesday 7th February 2012 – I’M MORE AND MORE …

… impressed with this new little woodstove of mine.

Almost impressed, in fact, as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Last night I cooked myself the rest of the oven chips, some baked beans and a veggie burger in the oven.

Tonight though, leaving the oven open, I cooked a saucepan of pasta, beans and lentils in a kind-of curry sauce. And it’s all working really well.

And I think that I’ve found the secret of heating the room even quicker.

A nail has fallen down the back of the fire and as a result I can’t close up the ash tray completely. It’s open about a quarter of an inch. and if I open the air intake just a fraction, it roars away like nobody’s business.

Another thing that helps is having turned the divan round so that it is across the room, it acts as a heat-stop and all of the heat is concentrated between me and the fire.

And while I’m sitting on the sofa, if I prop open the lid about 30° when the fire is roaring, the lid deflects all of the heat right into my upper body.

But this morning it was cold in here – all of 8.2°C in fact.

And that’s hardly surprising because last night outside, was -16.3°C, the coldest temperature that I have ever recorded here.

It was cruel downstairs. Even the orange juice was frozen solid.

I had to go to the mairie as well to check over the projector for this exhibition I’m doing on the Trans-Labrador Highway, and Caliburn had a little struggle to start – not that I’m surprised.

Back here I made a heat pad with that heated seat pad and some insulation, and throughout the afternoon it melted about 25 litres of water. I’m now seemingly melting more water than I’m using so that’s progress of a sort.

I’ve also made much more progress doing the ceiling in the bedroom, and the unexpectred good side of this is that in moving a lot of the stuff around, I’m finding loads of things that I have misplaced. Knives, saws, the large mitre clamps, and also the missing 650-watt circular saw for which I’ve been hunting for ages.

So tonight, with having a big fire in here, it’s quite warm and so I’m off to bed in a minute.

Tomorrow I need to use some of that excess water to make some polyfilla stuff to fill the cracks in the plasterboarding that I did the other day. 15 minutes will see me finish the ceiling as far as I can go and I can’t do any more until the joints in the wall are sealed and smoothed down.

-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.

More 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

Sunday 5th February 2012 – SUNDAY …

… is a Day of Rest.

And so I did nothing – not even to write up my blog. I just stayed in here in the warmth, read the odd book, watched a film and did some more of my presentation on the Trans-Labrador Highway. And cooked pizza, garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven. I didn’t even manage to watch the superbowl – I was asleep a long time before that.

Mind you, I did actually do something else.

I’ve changed the furniture round in the room yet again and I now have the bed-settee going across the room in front of the fire where I can see the flames. That’s a much more logocal arrangement and it also helps to break up some of the draughts that circulate around the place.

I’m certainly living the nomadic life these days, aren’t I?

Saturday 4th February 2012 – THIS OUGHT TO SILENCE …

… a few of my critics.

But I bet that it won’t!

Yes, it’s a halogen heater with two bars – that’s 800 watts – quite happily burning away this afternoon in my attic.

Considering that it’s the middle of winter, receiving more than 200 amp-hours (that’s over 2.5 kw) of solar energy must be something of a record and with the batteries fully-charged by 10:00 I had to do something with the surplus energy – solar-heated water might be fun but I felt like being adventurous.

At first I ran the heater at 400 watts but at the peak time (between 13:00 and 14:00) I ran it at 800 watts and the system took it quite happily.

I was quite impressed of course.

My next step now is to find a small microwave oven, and to cook my tea in it. You all know the reason behind this story.

For the benefit of those who don’t, a coule of years ago I was sharing my thoughts about running a microwave oven in here with someone whom I thought was a good friend. And what he did after this was to post the details of this chat into an internet discussion forum of which he was a member so that they could all have a good laugh about it and call me some rude and offensive names.

Of course, no friendship can remain after that kind of behaviour. And I am determined to prove them wrong.

This morning the temperature in here was just 9°C – rather disappointing because last night was quite warm outside, just a mere -14.1°C.

It was far too cold to go outside and work this morning of course and so I stayed in, had the halogen heater on and read a book or two. The room slowly warmed up (and I mean slowly) but with halogen heat, it heats a person pretty quickly and I was quite comfortable here with that

After lunch (durng which I encountered the likes of deep-frozen tomato) I carried on with the ceiling in the bedroom, seeing as there was no shopping to do today (I’d dealt with that in Montlucon yesterday).

That kept me busy for a couple of hours right up until 18:00 and then I knocked off. I’d done enough down there and I was freezing.

And so I came up here and lit the fire.

Tea at 21:00 was agony. Minus 8 in the verandah and everything was frozen to everything else. Outside we had -13°C and that was at 21:50 – I shudder to think what it might be now.

-2

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality