Tag Archives: beichstuhl

Monday 5th September 2011 – I AM NOT ALONE

There’s a security camera and radio transmitter now sprung up on the USA side of the border and it’s part-pointing onto the crossing just here and part-pointing onto my property.

It looks as if I’m going to have to have an accident while cleaning my crossbow or dismantling a spring-loaded container. But I’m sure that I can think of some other ways of distracting the attention of the people who stare at these security screens all day

But it’s nice to think that I’m so popular, isn’t it?

This is a good opportunity to show you exactly how I have arranged the Dodge so that I can live in it.

Firstly, why I chose a Dodge Grand Caravan was because the seats fold flat into the floor and there’s enough room to dance in here when you do that, without any obstructions at all to get in the way.

There’s the bed, and the double mattress that stops me rolling down the side and keeps me warm and out of contact with the cold window. The suitcase cooking stove is under the bed and the little table for cooking is right there to hand.

And if you don’t know what the flower pot is for, then you’ve clearly not been keeping up with things.

From the side, you’ll see the tarpaulin that has been cut in two halves and string run through the holes to make curtains.

The suitcase fits under the bed if I were to remove the Ryobi plus one drill that’s in the way. And there’s a brolly in the cup holder in the door.

We have two big storage boxes (there’s a third too between the head of the bed and the back of the passenger seat) and that’s where the food, the cooking items and the tools are stored. We have a Ryobi charger, a small mains inverter and also a power pack with jump leads, an internal battery and a small built-in inverter for powering the laptop and charging up the mobile phone.

I’m all set up for everything with this little set-up.

As for my neighbours, they aren’t very sociable so far. I was expecting them to come over for a chat – after all, I introduced myself to them yesterday, but so far, no such luck. So, in view of the miserable weather, I’ve had a quiet day “at home”.

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Tuesday 16th August 2011 – It’s quite useful …

… being up early in the morning because you can get so much more work done.

And up early I was as well for last night I had an early night. It wasn’t planned, but the internet crashed here quite early on as I told you and so I profited by going to bed early. And that surprised everyone, I bet.

This morning I was up, breakfasted, washed and dressed long before 10:00. And after working on the website again I was finished by 12:30. It was time then to attack the pointing again and I managed to do quite a lot.

I finished one load of mortar by 13:45 and ir wasn’t worth starting another load prior to lunch so I fitted the toilet seat to the composting beichstuhl. It’s cut like that for a special purpose and that’s why I needed a wooden one.

You can see how the beichstuhl works. There’s a huge 20-litre casserole saucepan in there, complete with lid. Inside there is a compostable bin liner. So you lift the white top of the box (you can see the hinges), take off the casserole lid, put in some sawdust (you can see the blue sawdust container behind the beichstuhl) close the white lid, do what you need to do, put in some more sawdust, lift up the white top and refit the casserole lid. When the bin liner is getting full, you dump it in the compost heap and fit another. It’s as simple as that.

Recycling, self-sufficiency and closed-cycle environments is what it’s all about. The water consumption is zero and I shall have tomatoes as big as your head next year.

This evening the temperature in the solar shower was at 39°:C and so I had a gorgeous shower. That was quite enjoyable too. And to round off the day I was down the garden getting a huge courgette, a pile of beans and a pile of new potatoes and made a huge curried stew that will keep me going for the next couple of days as well.

All in all it was quite a good day today.

Thursday 30th June 2011 – This morning …

… I was awake with the alarm clock, just by way of a change, and spent the morning on the computer. I’ve finally reached Halifax, and that has to be anyone’s greatest wish for Halifax is the most beautiful city in North America without any doubt at all. and I had to sort Terry out too – he wanted to know my little secret route around Paris without paying a toll or getting stuck in traffic.

This afternoon I cleaned the trailer and photographed it a few times from various angles. It’ll be going on sale tomorrow to see what good it can do me – I need the money of course. And while I was looking in the barn for something I found the two hinges that I bought for the beichstuhl and then couldn’t find while I was making it. Anyway, they are on now

I’ve also removed some more of the tree that collapsed onto my vegetable beds. What a mess that has made, but I’m not going to be short of wood for quite a while with this lot.

In other news, I see that part of the UK’s nuclear energy creation programme has been brought to a standstill. Terrorists? Protesters? No – not at all. Would you believe Jellyfish?

You really can’t make up a story like that. Whatever is going to happen next to the nuclear industry? It’s a joke.

-2

Saturday 28th May 2011 – The first thing …

… that I remembered this morning was the usual cacophony of bells and whistles and the like. Second thing was the boulangère outside. And I hadn’t left her any money and I wanted to see her to cancel the bread while I’m away. Ahhh well.

And so after a leisurely morning of not doing much it was off to Commentry. And no OSB in the DiY place either. That’s a blow. I’ll have to use one piece of anything that I’ve got around here and then get the rest in the UK. But they did have a bundle of coving stuff there – end of series and the like – all for €3:00 and so that ended up in the back of Caliburn.

At the Bonnes Affaires I bought another one of the huge casseroles with lids, and that will be the beichstuhl for outside, when I come back.

And at the swimming baths at Neris something quite unusual happened. I was there before it opened and in the queue in front of me was a young kid. When she got to the ticket office to pay, the attendant asked her how old she was.

She was 11, so she said, and the age limit for an unaccompanied child is 12, so the attendant turfed her out. The kid burst into tears and so, feeling quite sorry for her, I found myself saying to the attendant “that’s ok – I’ll keep an eye on her”

When I was the stepfather to Roxanne we used to go to the swimming baths every week. I taught her to swim and to do lots of other aquatic things too and we used to have a great time there. It was something that I really missed after I split up with her mother – I was such a good dad to her, I reckon – and so with this girl we had the same kind of fun in the swimming baths. I taught her to do somersaults underwater, to swim on her back, and then we did a quick 12 lengths of the pool, and it’s quite a long one too and I was shattered. I have to say that I haven’t had so much fun for ages. It’s what I really miss, doing something useful and productive.

But just imagine that in the UK!

And while I was at Neris-les-Bains I encoutered another old car from the early 1960s parked up outside the swimming baths. The Simca Aronde was one of the most popular cars of its size in France during the 50s and early 60s, selling almost one and a half million examples, and there are still quite a few about here and there.

This is a P60 model, launched in 1959 and manufactured up until 1964. This one here is in surprisingly good condition for its age and looked really nice.

Tomorrow it’s the final matches of the season. We have Pionsat’s 1st XI, having blown their season last week, playing against Manzat who are already relegated. That’s at 15:00. That clashes with Marcillat’s 1st XI playing Commentry, but Marcillat’s 2nd XI are playing at 13:00, also at home, and so I reckon I’ll go there first and make a good day of it.

-2

Tuesday 17th May 2011 – I now have a new beichstuhl

and here’s a photo of it in ill its glory – minus the tongue-and-grooved cladding of course.

Did I mention that when I was at Les Bonnes Affaires the other day they had a couple of 20-litre aluminium casseroles? And just €9:99 too. I thought that I would try one because being a casserole it would be watertight, it has a tight-fitting lid and it shouldn’t be prone to rusting.

That so-called stainless steel bin that I bought from IKEA is rusty already and leaking, after less that a year and so it needed to be changed. At least this gives me an opportunity to redesign it.

It isn’t finished because I can’t find the hinges for the top part, and I can’t find the clips to hold the seat on, but they’ll turn up somewhere sometime.

Such delightful things that I talk about on my blog.

I started that after I’d been working on my voyage around Cape Breton Island, but I didn’t get a head start on it like I wanted. Another succession of cold canvassers, and the guy from Pionsat Patrimoine who doesn’t understand the meaning of the sentence “I’m busy and I don’t have time to deal with these photos right now” – mind you, the time it took him on the phone, I could have done it.

Tomorrow I’m going to strip out Caliburn, including removing the seats, and see what’s in there, and see if I can’t find that SatNav (although I’m not optimistic about that). I need to get ready to go to the UK.

-2

Wednesday 11th May 2011 – That blasted hornet …

… flew into my attic at 06:45 this morning. GRRRRRRR. I’m not standing for that and after a while when it settled on the floor I dropped an atlas on top of it. After a few minutes it staggered into the air a nd staggered out ouf the window, which I then closed and went back to bed. And I’ll close them again tonight when I go to bed. I’m not having this again.

And after being on the computer I went to hunt down some old demi-chevrons that I had lying around and made one of the sides of the greenhouse. This is how it will look, but with some diagonal sloping facings from back to front.

You’ll see that it’s divided into a front and back section. The front sction is for a window and the rear will have a door in it.

Building the four sides like this, fitting them together and then installing the windows is how I intend to do it, but if you imagine that instead of fitting windows I were to clad it with OSB and then put overlapping thin planks horizontally over the OSB, then that’s how you build a North American balloon-framed house.

Once you master the technique you can build anything out of it. I started off by building the beichstuhl as a balloon-frame and then graduated to building the verandah. After the greenhouse, I’m going to build a garden shed and then I might even graduate onto a double garage. You never know.

Late this afternoon we had clouds – and this evening there was some rain. I thought at first that we might even have an amount of rain worth collecting but it didn’t last long. I’ve given up worrying about the rain anyway – things will just have to take care of themselves.

Thursday 5th May 2011 – Considering that it’s only …

… the 5th of May today and there’s about 6 or 7 weeks to the apex of the year, I am proud to announce that nevertheless I’ve set a new record today for solar energy. In the house, bank one received 173 amp-hours and bank two received 166 amp-hours. That’s over 4 KwH of solar power and whichever way you look at it, that’s impressive for just 780 watts of generating capacity.

And so you can tell the kind of day that we had. Beautiful blue skies and not a cloud anywhere. The kind of day that you would expect the solar water heater to give me enough heat to have a shower, a shave and a coffee as well. But it isn’t to be because I’ve made some kind of error in my calculations. Looking for a place to install it in a hurry while I demolished the beichstuhl, I fastened upon a nice spot out of the way and in full sun, but shaded by the fence so that I can shower there in peace. But what I didn’t take into my calculations is that while in the spring the sun has no problem heating the water, we are having issues with leaf shading from the trees and the water is struggling to heat up to a respectable temperature.

There is a way round this. The heat eschanger is really hot – 50°C is no big deal at all – and so I could run the water in the solar heater through the heat exchanger so that the water would heat up through there, and I even have a suitable pump to do it. But I can’t get electricity down there to power the pump and Terry can’t find the hole saw that he has for cutting through the stone walls so that I can run a cable through. I’ll have to think of a plan B. Such as tipping some hot water out of the electric immersion heater into the solar tank.

Today was a paperwork day. I worked on the website first and then caught up with some paperwork that needed doing. I had a delivery from FEDEX and the contents of that required my attention too. I ended up having to go into Pionsat to the Post and to the Bank, and I’ve had to spend a shed-load of money today – errrr about €7,000 in fact. But it’s all going to be worth it in the long run.

Back from the town, it wasn’t worth starting in the barn and so I planted the tomato and aubergine plants that I bought 10 days ago, and thoroughly watered the garden. And despite having had 7mm of rain two days ago it was as dry as a bone and I used about 175 litres out of the dirty water butt that takes the rainfall off the barn roof. And if there had been more water there I would have used that too. It’s hard to believe just how dry the soil is.

Anyway tomorrow I’ll move the caravan body from the barn and burn it if I can, and then move the Ford Cortina 2000E estate and the Ford Escort van. I’ll be glad to have them in a secure place.

-1

Wednesday 13th April 2011 – I’m having a change of plan here.

Well, not a strategic plan, but more of a tactical plan. I’ve finished my Labrador pages and I’ve been making a start on the Newfoundland pages of my mega-voyage to Canada.

However one thing always leads to another and once you make a start you’ll be surprised just how many other things that there are. I now seem to be writing a mega-opus about the Viking exploration of North America. Ahhh well.

So that took me to midday and then I went outside and made more progress planting seeds – more of those that I planted two weeks ago. And to my surprise I now have some baby leeks sprouting – the first of the seeds to come up. I wish the others would get a move on.

Those of you with long memories will recall that ages ago I built a heat exchanger that was basically the radiator out of an air-conditioning unit. I put a 70°C thermostat in it – to switch on a water pump when the temperature reached that figure – but that was far too high. It only ran 4 times that summer. After that I stuck it on one side and forgot about it. I bought some 50°C thermostats a couple of years ago and so this afternoon I rebuilt it, and I’ve sited it next to the solar shower unit. The aim is to run some electricity to there, plug the pump in and wire it to the thermostat so that when the temperature inside the heat exchanger reaches 50°C it will start to pump water through the heat exchanger so that the water will heat up.

Once that was fixed up (but not wired in yet) I took down the old heat exchanger and demolished the old beichstuhl. That was another link with Liz that has now gone, but it was redundant since I’ve had the dry composting toilets and apart from being an eyesore, it was in the way and I’m in a vague tidying-up mode as you know. Still in gardening mode I dug a small patch out at the end of the raised beds, just under where the apple trees are, and then planted the 2 blackcurrant and 1 blueberry shrubs. I’ll be in jam-making mode later this year I hope.

To finish off, I gave everything a thorough watering. About 100 litres of water has gone onto the plants and seeds this evening and they needed it, that’s for sure. There’s been no rain of any substance since a week last Monday.

Now it’s back up here with the Vikings. I’m enjoying writing this.

Thursday 23rd December 2010 – IT WAS HARD TO GET UP …

… this morning with the buckets of rain that were crashing down on the roof. Not a very pleasant start to the day. But the rainsoon stopped and was replaced by a hanging cloud and that was that. The temperature fell significantly but as yet that snow that we were promised – it isn’t here yet even though it’s flaming cold.

I’ve hardly been outside today – I stayed in to work and as you can see I’ve finished off the major part of the wall that I’ve been plasterboarding.

I had to refit part of the floor where the previous occupiers had fitted a concrete pad for the stove that was here. What I did was to pull up some of the existing floor in the corridor outside and fit it in the bedroom. I’ll be fitting all new flooring out there so it won’t make any difference but at the moment it’s quite eventful walking out there.

After finishing off there I went to make a start on putting the studding on the wall by the window but what with the weather it was hopeless – couldn’t see a thing. And it was too wet and miserable to go outside and so at 17:25 I knocked off and came up here to do some tidying. And the place needs it – I’ve been letting it slip just recently.

-3

Thursday 31st December 2009 – Fiat even more Lux!

Yes, the lighting is slowly progressing around the house now. Even with having light up and down the stairwell, it still meant that I needed a torch to move around the house as the living room was in darkness. But I remedied that this morning by using the other half of the light switch at the foot of the stairs and an old redundant light switch by the door into the kitchen, and I now have a light by the front door over the control panel and I can now happily move around torchless.

You might think that this light isn’t all that bright. But firstly, it’s plenty bright enough to move around with and secondly, it’s only 1.2 watts, believe it or not. Yes, these 12-volt LED lights from LIDL, at €4.49 a shot, they are definitely the way to go.

Don’t look too closely at the wiring by the way. Terry takes the mickey out of it even when I do what I consider to be a good job. But here, I ran out of wire and had to cobble together whatever I could find .

I also ran out of time. I did in fact allow myself plenty of time but Claude came round. He’s got a puncture on his old Clio and was wondering if I had a spare 155×13 tyre. I have a couple but they are for the diesel Escort and I’m not going to part with them so I offered to run him into town or to a scrapyard to pick something up. But no, did I have anything? In the end I found 2 165×13 tyres on Volkswagen wheels that belonged to the Passat before I had a lucky find with those 175/70×14 Golf wheels and tyres. So they are the wrong size and on different wheels and they have been hanging around outside for 7 years in all kinds of weather. But they are free so he’s taken them and will change them himself onto the Renault wheels with a crowbar.

Now I did some crazy things with cars and the like in my youth but I drew the line with tyres long before this particular point was ever reached. Second-hand tyres of good quality from a scrapyard is fair game but perishing (in both senses of the word) Uniroyal and Courier remould tyres – well, it’s a problem in the making, this is. And I’m not quite sure how a crowbar will affect the rims of the wheels, especially when you need to rely on the integrity of the rims to keep an airtight seal with tubeless tyres.

This afternoon I fitted one of the offcuts from the verandah roof over where the plant-pot beichstuhl is. There’s no roof over where I’ve fitted it although the scaffolding planks on the scaffolding overhead so protect it somewhat. But with a driving wind causing everything to swirl about, I had a good soaking while I was riding the porcelain (or in this case, aluminium) horse this afternoon. Time for action!

In between all of this, I did a load of washing. After last night’s brilliant and clear skies the sky forgot to cloud over this morning and for a couple of hours we had a brilliantly clear sky. I seized the opportunity to do a load of washing but the clouds caught up before I had finished and now everything is receiving a final rinse from Mother Nature out on the washing line. And more rain is forecast.

I nipped round to Claude’s this evening to give him and Francoise a bottle of champagne for New Year, seeing as I forgot to give it to them on Christmas Eve. Beethoven is ill and they are going to have to take him to the vet’s. He’s 16 and in reasonable health and has bags of character. I’m not into dogs but in his case I could make an exception. I hope he’s going to be ok.

And that was that. I had a nice tea with some roast potatoes, and now I’m going to do nothing except listen to the torrential rain beating down on the roof.

Happy New Year to you all. And I wish for you for 2010 everything that you wished on everyone else for 2009.

-6

Monday 16th November 2009 – This evening I had to go into Montaigut en Combraille …

… to return a guitar lead to Robert the drummer. I’d borrowed one from him to try out this Carlsbro combo that I bought. Where he lives is just 20 yards from the town church, and it was looking so nice bathed in the orange lamps of the square that I reckoned it was worth a photo.

Montaigut is a deceptive town, there’s a main road that runs right through the middle of it and that road carries a great deal of heavy traffic – it’s the N144, the main road between Montlucon and Clermont Ferrand. It looks dirty and dingy and full of abandoned shops and houses.

But the main road was only built through it in the 1920s. Prior to that all of the traffic passed through the real centre of the town, the centre that most people don’t even know exists. It was formerly a mediaeval walled city complete with castle (now long-demolished) and narrow winding mediaeval streets that are difficult to walk through, never mind drive through.

This morning I set the alarm – for the first time in 12 days – but it was still difficult to crawl out of my stinking pit. And I started on a desultory tidying-up. I’ve found some more scaffolding buried in the undergrowth and all kinds of bits and pieces. I’m busy sorting out the wood that we ripped off the roof, seeing what is salveable and what is just fit for burning.

I’ve also added another compost bin – we have a black plastic dustbin with an old caravan window over the top. You might be wondering what I’m doing with this but it concerns the beichstuhl arrangements. I shan’t go into the gory details as you are probably eating but if you remember back a few weeks ago, it involves a plant pot, a load of biodegradable bin liners and the fact that I’m a vegan. Keeping the soil fertility going is quite important.

Tonight is the 3rd Monday of the month and that’s when we meet at the hotel at St Eloy. A sign on the door said “back at 19:00” but by 19:40 we were fed up of waiting and so we went to the bar down the road instead. It seems that Mark is something of an expert at pointing stonework using chalk. Terry has asked him to give him some lessons so Mark is going round there on Thursday morning. I’m always keen to learn whatever I can at times like this so I’m going round there too. After all, my place is in need of a good pointing too and so I’ll make a point of learning all I can.

-6

Thursday 17th September 2009 – I STARTED ON THE HEAVY ENGINEERING TODAY

I’ve fitted the first of the new floor beams, and also one of the uprights that will enclose the head of the stairs.

And I’ll tell you now – that Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill that Terry ordered for me from Screwfix is phenomenal. It went right into the stonework of the house – with a bit of effort it has to be said – but nevertheless it drilled the holes for 4 big anchor bolts and it’s held them firmly.

So, what’s the plan?

Well, it all revolves around windows of which there aren’t all that many. The stairs up to the attic rise from bottom-right to top left as you can see and there’s a window at the bottom of the flight.

What I’m doing is to make a U-pattern staircase that will go from the centre of the attic (just where the window is in fact) down to the left and then round back on itself. This will be enclosed by a wall around the upright and a couple more of its friends.

To the right of the upright will be covered over with flooring and that’s the bit that I will be using as my office. It’s 2.1 metres from there to the front wall of the house.

The stairs are going to be narrower – 65cms instead of 1m so with an allowance for the woodwork the double width of the U shape will be 1.50m.

And where the stairs will stop at the floor below will give me a an empty space of 2.1 m by 1.5m which will have a window in it (the window that is currently at the foot of the existing staircase) and that empty space will eventually become the bathroom (but not any time soon).

Do you understand that?
If so, would you mind explaining it to me?

Mind you, it wasn’t straightforward. I had to open the window-that-will-be-the-bathroom-window to heave a few old chevrons out – but the blasted thing fell to pieces in my hands. I know that it needs to be replaced and indeed it will be but I hoped it would last for another year or two.

So there I was having to patch and screw it back together before I’d even got started. And mauling huge beams up into the attic isn’t my idea of fun either. In the end I ended up cutting that one down to size outside.

After I’d finished and had my well-earned cup of coffee I had to nip into Pionsat and empty the chemical beichstuhl.I hate doing that when there are people around so finding the village square overrun with the fairground attractions rather put me off my stride.

Hence I nipped round to the other publics across the way from the village hall and of course it’s Thursday – dancing lessons night – and half the Anglo-French group were there with Mark standing outside. It was just not my lucky day.

And talking of it not being my lucky day I’ve now run out of vegan chocolate cake. I wonder if Terry needs any more wood moving.

-2

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: beichstuhl

Monday 5th September 2011 – I AM NOT ALONE

Tuesday 16th August 2011 – It’s quite useful …

Thursday 30th June 2011 – This morning …

Saturday 28th May 2011 – The first thing …

Tuesday 17th May 2011 – I now have a new beichstuhl

Wednesday 11th May 2011 – That blasted hornet …

Thursday 5th May 2011 – Considering that it’s only …

Wednesday 13th April 2011 – I’m having a change of plan here.

Thursday 23rd December 2010 – IT WAS HARD TO GET UP …

Thursday 31st December 2009 – Fiat even more Lux!

Monday 16th November 2009 – This evening I had to go into Montaigut en Combraille …

Thursday 17th September 2009 – I STARTED ON THE HEAVY ENGINEERING TODAY

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