Tag Archives: shower

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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Friday 27th March 2016 – WE NOW HAVE …

… a fully-varnished floor – three coats of varnish on there and I hope that that will do the trick and seal it all properly.

It does look nice, I do have to say. And at 90 minutes per coat, so it ought to. It’s much better than my first idea of putting laminate over the old floorboards and I do wish now that I had done this in the attic.

You’ll also notice the skirting board. That’s fitted all of the way round now. Glued and nailed on two sides, and just nailed on the third side whzre it’s packed out from the wall. I had some long nails and they went through the packing and right into the battens up against the wall, so the tack nails will hold the skirting board to that. Which is just as well, because this glue is rubbish. More Brico Depot garbage.

We also have a glass pane in the frame above the door.You can see the transit sticker on there, which I left on for the purpose of the photo.

What astonished me was that I managed to bring it home the other day, carry it upstairs via the obstacle course downstairs and then fit it into position, without dropping it or otherwise breaking it. That has to be somethig of a first.

And this is certainly progress.

We have some clothes rails now in the wardrobe/ I’ve emptied one of the wardrobes in the attic and hung the clothes in the wardrobe. This is a sure sign that the work has practically come to an end in the bedroom.

I’ve started to dismantle the big wzrdrobe in the attic, and I’ll finish that off, empty the other one and dismantle that, and them move the rest of the clothes and the chests of drawers downstairs too. I can’t believe how much room I’m going to have in the attic when I’ve done that.

It was however astonishing to see how much dust had accumulatred under the wardrobe. It was a case of shovelling it out rather than brushing it out.

Last thing was the shower. The verandah was a warm 24°C and the water was a hot 59°C so a heated shower was absolutely gorgeous. Now I’m nice and clean, with nice clean clothes and nice clean hair.

How long can I keep this up?

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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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Thursday 17th July 2014 – THIS IS RIDICULOUS.

Here I am, just after midnight in my little attic and it’s 29.2°C. And that’s with the fan going full-blast too. The temperatue up here reached 32.4°C during the day.

And if you think that that is warm, In the verandah we had over 52°C, and so you can guess what kind of day we had today – glorious sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. I even had another shower this evening.

It was hard this morning to get out of bed before 08:00 but I did just about manage it, and after breakfast we had the usual go on the website although I do admit to going to sleep for about half an hour.

Outside a little later, I was up on the scaffolding finishing off the 1st coat of paint on the woodwork and also, incidentally, finishing off the tin. After lunch, I opened another tin and slapped the stuff all over everywhere. That shouldn’t ever rot now which is just as well.

All of the stuff to do the guttering is now up there on the scaffolding, but I’ve had a change of plan about the fascia board. Firstly, its too heavy for me to lift into position on my own and secondly, because the ends of the chevrons were never squared off, it’s impossible to fit it properly no matter how much padding I use. I’m going to use the gutter brackets that I used for the barn, no matter how much I hate them.

Much to my surprise I have a few of those so I’ll use them as far as I can until Saturday when I’ll buy a pile more.

So after my shower I called it a day – 19:25. And so you can’t say that I’m not putting the hours in.

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Friday 20th June 2014 – WE FINISHED THIS CONCRETING TODAY

Or was it the concrete that finished us? One of the other anyway.

But in fact the concreting isn’t finished because, strange as it is to relate it, we ended up not having enough. There was 60m² of surface area at 150mm depth, which relates to not quite 9 cubic metres. Take off the surface area of the pit but add on the depths at the side of the pit, I calculated about 10 cubic metres. And as a result, se are about 1.5 cubic metres short.

And it doesn’t look very pretty either. But there’s a reason for this. I planned to have 2 lorry-loads, one coming at 14:00 and the other one oming later in the day, each one having 5 cubic metres of concrete. And so when we finished the shuttering and fitting the grillage at about 13:30, Terry suggested that I went and made my butty.

My reply was, of course, based on past experience, that the moment I turned my back the concrete lorry would pull up.

And so as I turned my back, the concrtee lorry did indeed turn up, and there was just Terry and me to receive it. Rob turned up shortly after and we were shovelling and barrowing like mad. 7.5 cubic metres on this load instead of the 5 that I asked for, so we had to move quickly. And even more so when the lorry came back, just 15 minutes later with the second load.

Hottest day for a couple of weeks to and so it was drying before we could lay it properly. And so with all of this, it’s no wonder that the job doesn’t look very pretty. Still, it’s down and that is what counts. I’ll have to finish it off some other time – probably with the cement mixer.

The water in the solar heat exchanger was a healthy 35°C and so I took the opportunity to have a nice warmish shower. So now, just for a change, I’m all clean and dry. I came up here and crashed straight out. And I’m hardly surprised.

-1

Thursday 12th June 2014 – I CAN’T SHOW YOU …

… the photo of how far we got today in the pit. Just after Terry left, we had a thunderstorm and so I covered it up quickly – I don’t want it to turn into a swimming pool quite yet.

But we didn’t get much done today. Terry had things to do this morning and so didn’t come until 11:00. In the meantime I did some tidying up and sorting out of the stuff that we will be using as the work progresses.

We had the cement mixer running for 5 hours, working of the solar panels again and that’s impressive, as I’ve said before. We infilled the first row of breeze blocks and then added another rown on top, and started a third. That was when we ran out of cement.

We then went to the quarry at Montaigut for a trailer load of sand seeing as I’m almost out of that too. Once we had unloaded that, Terry went home seeing as the weather had now turned and there wasn’t much point in carrying on.

After that, I dragged the car transporter out of the undergrowth. Terry has his van Controle Technique tomorrow and I’ve been offered a job of work going to Montlucon to recover a car. The bad weather and thunderstorms didn’t put me off having a shower afterwards.

In the night I had another bad attack of cramp, one of rhe worst that I’ve ever had. And while I was crashed out on the sofa just now, I had another one. They didn’t half hurt.

And my tea tonight was off. I had to open a tin of something instead.

-5

Monday 9th June 2014 – I HAD TEA TONIGHT …

… sitting outside on a garden chair. Yes, at lunchtime, Tery and I moved the chairs and table onto the concrete, and doesn’t that make a nice little terrace? It’s very nice and comfortable.

I had a very disturbed night last night. It was far too hot in here so I left the inverter running all night so that I could have the fan going, but I had to turn it off after a while as I couldn’t get off to sleep.

And during the night I was in prison. And I was too, even down to being in a cell and choosing my bunk. That was frightening to such an extent that I was glad to wake up.

After breakfast I was out straight away and attacked the waste land next to the Subaru. I cleared as much as I could with the long-handled secateurs and then when Terry turned up we attacked it with the digger. The little Kubota did really well pullind the Sankey trailer with the soil and rubble in, up to where we tip it.

By the time lunchtime came around we had dug out and flattened a parking space at the side of the Subaru and so we pulled the Minerva across the way into what will be its new home for a while.

That is necessary because where the Minerva was parked, that is where we will be laying the next load of concreting, so it had to be cleared.

Once we had done that, we moved the rest of the stuff and then dug out the rest of the earthern bank so that it’s now level with where we dug out the other day.

Terry went off home after that and I tidied up. And then I took advantage of the solar hot water. It was 38°C which is no surprise seeing as we had the hottest day of the year today – 38.4°C. I must have drunk 3 litres of liquid during the day.

While I was emptying the trailer on one of my trips, I met Nicolette who was taking the dog for a walk, and we had quite a chat. It’s been ages since I’ve had a good chat to her.

Up here in my room it was 31.8°C, and so it was no surprise that I ended up eating outside tonight.

Tomorrow I’m going early into St Eloy so that I can order all of the breeze blocks that I need to build the retaining wall and line the inspection pit, as there will be one of those here too, and I’ll also order the concrete cubes that I need to build up the columns that will support the roof

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Saturday 7th June 2014 – I DIDN’T GO ANYWHERE …

… today. And that’s just as well because although I did manage to crawl out of bed at 07:50, I didn’t go to bed until about 04:30 and I’ve no idea why.

Nothing happened during the night (just for a change) and after breakfast I started on the Radio Anglais stuff. I have to do two months of everything this next fortnight as Liz is going to be away for a while. I’ve done two live concert programmes for the rock music stuff and it’s not so easy, especially as I’m now doing the engineering myself. And I do have a great deal to learn.

I’ve had the fan running all day as temperature in hzere touched 30°C briefly, and I’ve also had a shower – the first one of the year that has not been heated. It was 37.6°C and beautifully warm, and now I smell of coconut.

I’m off to bed now for an early night, and I’ll see what tomorrow will bring.

-3

Thursday 5th June 2014 – WHAT A SHOCK!

Yes, there I was in the middle of the night at Dorval ready to pick up mu hire car when the company told me that it no longer had any Dodge Grand Caravans. The last one had been sold in the middle of the week, and there was now no longer ay car to offer me. Consequently they offered me a refund but that was no use whatever to me. I wanted a car and I would never have one over the counter at the ame price that I could book one in advance on the internet.

I was all of a clammy sweat when the alarm went off.

Rob turned up at about 08:45 (I’d alrzady been out working for 20 minutes) and Terry turned up at 09:00. By 09:30 we were sitting there waiting for the cement mixer which, true to form, didn’t turn up until 11:15.

It wasn’t anything like easy to come down here in reverse in his lorry but he managed it and 20 minutes later he had gone, minus 5 cubic metres of concrete.

Terry and Rob had left by 13:00 by which time we had done all we could. We were about half a dozen shovelfuls of concrete short.

Nevertheless we had the first row of breeze blocks of the retaining wall in poqition, the first row of concrete pillars and all of the reinforcing pylons in position.

This was a work and a half though and I’m pleased that I had two good friends to help me do all of this.

Hottest day of the year too (the water in the dump load was boiling) and I had a solar shower – I needed it too, especially after spending a couple of hours in the garden planting my aubergines and weeding the onions.

Now I’m having an early night as I’m having an early start tomorrow.

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Wednesday 28th May 2014 – I’VE BEEN DIGGING …

… today. But not, as you might be thinking, with a shovel or a spade.

Just for a change today we had a nice day and I was up with the cock (but enough of my personal habits). And a little later, Terry came round. With his van. And the big trailer. And with our mini-digger, because if you remember, we own a mini-digger between us.

While Terry was sorting himself out I was rescuing the very sad Sankey Trailer from out of the undergrowth and coupling ut up to Caliburn, and then we set to work.

A few years ago I had someone from the football club pay me w avisit with his digger and he dug out a couple of ruined houses so that I could make a car park. He hadn’t done it exactly as I had wanted but he had been and gone while I was at the shops and so I wasn’t going to stand in the way of anyone who can work at that speed.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that Terry brought the digger around and we carried on where the prevuous guy had left off.

It took much longer than I anticipated as firstly I wanted to save all of the big stones to build a nice stone wall, and secondly, we had to keep on taking Caliburn and the trailer up to the precipice and shovel the soil out by hand.

Terry left at about 16:30 and hopefully he’ll be back to help me carry on on Friday, and I had a play around with the digger as I had never used one before. And I had an enormous amount of fun and I can certainly see a pile of uses for this.

I was all hot and smelly afterwards and even though the water was only 32.4°C in the solar shower I had a shower as I certainly needed it.

I crashed out for a while afterwards and then had a long chat with Rosemary on the phone. She needed a little cheering up.

So tomorrow is a Bank Holiday and I’m having a Day of Rest.

But it was sad to see the state in which the Sankey Trailer finds itself. The floor is dropping out of it and the chassis is rotten. It’s not got long for this world.

-4

Saturday 17th May 2014 – TOTALLY ASTONISHING!

Yes, Pionsat go to Lapeyrouse, 3rd in the table, to continue their desperate struggle against relegation whereas Lapeyrouse desperately need 3 points to keep their slim promotion hopes alive.

First things first, though. It was nice to see Matthieu finally back where he belongs – between the posts of Pionsat’s goal. Two years, is it, since he broke his leg?

, Lapeyrouse scored three times, but even more astonishingly, Pionsat scored 4 times. Two of them were throroughly excellent goals and Nico’s will be goal of the season I reckon.

Frederic’s opener was another superb opportunist effort out of nothing and the fourth goal (I didn’t see who scored it) was down to Frederic’s perseverence on the goal line chasing after what looked like a hopeless cause.

Had St Priest lost this evening, Pionsat would have been safe but they managed a surprise draw at St Gervais. This means that Pionsat need 1 point next weekend (against Lempdes who have already achieved promotion) to be totally safe, unless St Priest drop points at home to Beauregard.

But Pionsat can look at 2 totally silly, needless goals that they conceded the other week – that has what has made them suffer. Had they won that match instead of lost it, they would have been home and dry a few weeks ago. It’s the story of the last couple of seasons.

So I had another disturbed night in which I was very active on my travels, but it was all wiped away as soon as I woke up so I can’t remember where I was. But I did another rock programme for Radio Anglais this morning to put myself out in front a little.

I went shopping in St Eloy and bought nothing special except some tomato plants seeing as I have just one that seems to have run aground now and stopped growing. But back home with solar water temperature at 30°C, I chucked 5 litres of water out of the dump load (for that was a healthy 62°C) into the tank and had a most delicious shower. Now I’m all clean and smelling of coconut.

I’ve also continued my play around with Audacity and I’m making progress. Trouble is that large files are taking so long to load and are thus so slow to edit. I need to work on something that has a built-in DVD drive rather than an external drive. Maybe that might speed things up.

Finally a word for Bangor City who progress into Europe next season after their victory over hated local rivals Rhyl at Nantporth this afternoon. Let’s all hope that they can find the consistency that they need to make some progress in the Europa Cup. it’ll be nice if they can make it to round Two.B

-4

Thursday 17th April 2014 – I HAD A BAD START …

… to the day today. Waited until all of the alarms went off – and then went back to sleep. It was 08:44 that I finally surfaced this morning.

That meant that I didn’t have as long on the website as usual, and I was back outside by just after midday.

I had another design change to make to the shower unit and when I’d done that and screwed it all together I gave it the first coat of wood treatment.

After lunch I cut the shower base to fit, and then gave it all the final coat of treatment.

While I was waiting for that coat to dry I made a list of what I needed to buy for the fittings, and then I had a look around to see how many of them I actually had. This led to a full-scale sort-out and tidy-up of all of the plumbing accessories and I found that in fact I have all that I need. However, it was too late to assemble it by the time that I had finished.

I found enough time to clad the sides of the shower unit with the sheets of corrugated perspex.

Or at least, two of them, because the problem of what to do about a door solved itself when I opened the door to the lean-to, as you can see. Even the bolt on the door goes right into the correct place, and that can’t be bad.

Mind you, it was all of 19:45 by the time I finished, but at least the shower unit won’t take much to finish off when I start back to work.

Yes, “start back to work” because it’s Easter and I’m having 4 days off.

-2

Wednesday 16th April 2014 – I DIDN’T REACH …

… anything like my goal today, more’s the pity.

I had something like a late night last night and so this morning I wasn’t really feeling up to it, although I did have the usual couple of hours on the web pages.

Before lunch I managed to assemble both sides of the solar shower unit.

You’ll notice the extra-long leg on the side that will be furthest away from the wall. Because of the slope of the land I need to build it up like that, and then cut away the surplus length.

You might also notice that the top rail is fitted the wrong way round. I did when I came down from lunch and so I had to change them round. THat wasn’t easy as the head stripped in one of the screws and I was there for about three quarters of an hour drilling it out.

But I was sidetracked for about three quarters of an hour. Checking on the dump load for the excess solar charge (which is a home-made 12-volt immersion heater), and we’ve been having some right excess loads just now – 180 and 190 amp-hours for the last few days, I noticed that the extension cable that leads to the immersion heater was red-hot.

Not up to carrying the load of 35 amps that’s been going along it at times, so I’ve had to resite the immersion heater so that it doesn’t need an extension cable. The wires aren’t getting so hot, but I still don’t like them and so I’m going to make something of a design alteration – instead of using one cable and bridging the two terminals of the element, I’ll remove the bridge and use two cables. That way, only half of the current will be running down each cable. Either that, or use thicker cable.

But I’m impressed with the load that it’s been carrying and the heat that’s been put out.

Back at the solar shower, I had a change to the design. And a positive one too.

I had completely forgotten that I had an old enamel shower base that I picked up in Brussels. I stumbled across that today by accident and found that it’s 80cm x 80cm. That will go quite nicely in the 90cm x 90cm shower unit, but two of the corners need trimming off, which I shall do tomorrow.

So here’s a photo of the framework of the solar shower unit. It’s all assembled now and bolted to the wall of the lean-to where it will live for the next couple of years.

The shower base isn’t installed yet – as I said, it needs trimming to fit. And the woodwork hasn’t been treated, which was what I really wanted to do tonight so that the second coat of wood treatment would have gone on tomorrow first thing.

But it wasn’t through lack of effort. It was 19:45 when I knocked off today – long after my usual knocking-off time.

But I do want to finish it as much as I can tomorrow. We’re on a four-day week this week with it being Easter starting Friday and I’m not working on a Bank Holiday under any circumstances.

-4

Tuesday 15th April 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

… cutting all of the wood for the outside shower unit. it took me until 19:20, mind you, but it’s all there ready, cut and shaped.

All that now needs doing is for the two sides to be assembled and to be screwed to the wall of the lean-to and then to fit the bracing that will make the back. One side and the back can then be clad and I’ll have to invent a door for the other side.

Fitting a floor and a roof should be straighforward and then that will be finished.

So what else?

Not much, really. I haven’t been anywhere or done anything, and had no visitors either.

But we have had the wind – tons of it too. The wind turbine on the house is still going round even as I speak. And it’s been one of those days where more energy has been produced by a small wind turbine rather than a large one, strange as it might seem.

But the reason for that is simple. Wind turbines have dynamos in them, and a dynamo is really a copper-coiled circuit and a magnet. The more powerful the dynamo in the motor of the wind turbine, the bigger and more powerful the magnet, so it needs more wind to start it. A smaller and less-powerful dynamo in a wind turbine will turn quite happily in wind speeds that aren’t powerful to overcome the resistance of the magnet in a larger wind turbine.

It’s quite often a fallacy to think that the bigger and more powerful a wind turbine, the more wind energy it will generate.

And I made a mega-tea tonight. Red-pepper and lentil curry, with enough to keep me going for four days too.

-5

Sunday 13th April 2014 – I HAVE JUST SEEN THE BEST…

…ever goal that I have seen in my lifetime.

And no wonder that the Nord Combraille goalkeeper is sitting there looking disconsolate. If you think that blond Frederic’s goal against the Chimps last night was totally unexpected and out of the blue, then Matthieu Malnar’s goal against the Miners this afternoon was ten times better than that.

The Miners are in Division 4 because their second team can’t win promotion from Division 3 so they can’t be promoted, yet they are streets ahead of everyone else in that Division.

A glance at a few of their results will tell you that – 12-0, 10-0, 6-0, 5-0, 6-2, 4-1. Putting Pionsat in that pool is most unfair because their relegation due to league reorganisation was bad enough, but now they are blocked for promotion too with Nord Combraille ahead of them.

However, Pionsat lost today as expected, but just by 2-1, which is a moral victory against the Miners.

And our two goals conceded have a familiar ring about them
First one was from the Pionsat midfield trying to play the ball out of trouble instead of whacking the ball out of play or upfield – or anywhere, really.

Losing possession is the inevitable result against a big skilful side such as this, and the Miners didn’t need too many chances to punish this kind of Pionsat play.

If I had a quid for each time Pionsat had done this I would be in the Bahamas, not the Auvergne, and Pionsat wouldn’t be in the basement of the Puy-de-Dome league either if they cut out all of this.

The second goal was scored with just seconds to go on the clock. Pionsat won a free kick and so everyone from Pionsat pushed up from the defence into the Miners’ half.

The free kick was cleared with a huge kick out of the Miners’ defence and with no defenders in position to intercept it, it was a race brtween a Pionsat full-back, Christophe in the Pionsat goal, and a midfielder from Nord-Combraille.

And that was how they finished, but in reverse order.

Matthieu had already threatened to do something earlier in this game.

Slowly easing himself back into the game after his couple of years out with injury and short of match fitness (which is no surprise – you can’t do any training with what he’s had) he found himself in a bit of space as a ball was hoisted over the Nord Combraille defence.

His snap shot found the keeper struggling and that was ohh so close to a goal there

But then we have this moment of magic.

Pionsat go to kick off after conceding the second goal, with probably not five seconds remaining on the clock. Michael takes the kick-off and lays the ball off to Matthieu.

Matthieu looks up, sees the keeper standing round about the penalty spot, and exactly from the halfway line, launches an outrageous lob on the half-volley. it sails over the keeper’s head into the net and that, my friends, was that.

He can probably try that another 100 times and I bet he won’t even get close to what he did just then.

This morning it was 07:29 when I woke up. On a Sunday too! Mind you, it was about 09:30 when I finally crawled out of bed. And I spent the morning on the website too. After all, it IS Sunday.

And after the footy, with having water at 68°C and the temperature in the verandah at 42°C I had another nice hot shower so I’m all clean again.

And that is that. What a lazy Sunday!

But I’ll be talking about Matthieu’s goal for the rest of my life I think.

-4

EPIC HALL

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