Tag Archives: tidying up

Thursday 4th October 2012 – I STARTED MOVING …

… the stuff from off the hardstanding today.

I laid down a sheet of plastic behind the Mercedes 240D, covered it in cardboard (the plastic, not the Mercedes), and then stacked up all of the breeze blocks that were lying around.

And as I tool a wheelbarrow-load of rubble up to the rubble pile, I came back with a barrow load of breeze blocks and so the pile down here is growing while the pile up there is shrinking.

Mind you, it’s going to take ages to move it all – not least because I need to rake up all of the rubble from out of the sand and clay that came out of the wall.

And if it’s at all possible I need to remove the sand and clay and use that to fill in the paths between the raised beds.

But even so, I didn’t do too much because at about 15:30 the heavens opened and we had a torrential downpour. Impossible to work outside.

That was the cue to come inside and I had a good search for the mop and mop bucket (which I eventually found) and then I washed out and mopped up the cupboard that I had been building at the back of the stairs.

When that was clean, dry and dust-free I then made a start on crepi-ing the walls.

I’ve gone for crepi in there as it hides all of the imperfections and bad joints – it’s not easy working in a space that’s 1.5m x 0.80m.

I’ve painted about half of it before I called it a night – at 19:55. You can see how much I’m enjoying it, even if it is a swine to apply.

But at least, this idea of having work outside in the good weather, and work inside in the bad weather – that seems to be paying off as I always thought that it would.

-1

Wednesday 3rd October 2012 – I SET FIRE TO MY BRASSIERE …

… today.

As you know, i’ve been scything down the undergrowth next to the lean-to to create a load of space where I can store all kinds of stuff while I carry out stage 2, but I’ve been overwhelmed.

6 trees I’ve cut down, with enough firewood to keep me going for a month I reckon, and I’ve uprooted all kinds of shrubs and undergrowth

burning brassiere les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut there’s only so much of the shrubs and undergrowth that can be composted, and apart from that, there was nowhere else to put all of the brambles and so on.

And then, of course, I remembered.

Last year I bought a brassière from Brico Depot just for this purpose and so I spent a very enthralling afternoon burning all of the stuff that won’t compost.

And didn’t it burn well too? br clear=”both”>

So this morning after an early start and a couple of hours on the internet I went out to attack the jungle. Like I say, I cut down 6 trees.

But one of these trees was a proper full-sized tree and that took some moving. I must have spent about an hour digging up the tree stump.

mercedes 240D les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut the area to the side and to the rear of the old Mercedes is now clear, and the next job is to move all of the stones and rubble from the wall of the lean-to that you can see to the left.

Once they are all gone, I can rake over everywhere and level it all out and then lay the tarpaulin out.

Once the tarpaulin in properly in position I can then more all of the stuff from off the hard-standing out in front where I park Caliburn. It’s going to take me an age to do it all.

As if it didn’t take an age to do all of that today. In fact I was so carried away that it was 19:20 when I knocked off today.

In other news, my “new” mobile phone arrived. It’s not new, but a factory-reconditioned one with all bells and whistles and on examining it,

I discovered that not only did it have the bells and whistles, it also had the previous owner’s address books, it had her bank account details and bank card PINs stored in the memory.

What a crazy thing for the previous owner to do, especially with the number of phones that are stolen each year. And then not wipe off the data when you part-ex the phone.

And then for the eBay vendor not to do it makes me wonder what kind of “refurbishing” job that this phone has had.

Aren’t some people totally crazy?

-1

Tuesday 2nd October 2012 – I HAD A GOOD …

… and profitable day out in Montlucon today.

Not the least of the reasons being that a chance visit to the LIDL came up trumps with another 5 packets of these LED light strips. That’s all that I shall be needing anyway for the foreseeable future.

So having picked up Rosemary’s window at Lapeyre we went off to Brico Depot. I bought a tarpaulin to go on the ground where I’m clearing, and I also priced up a whole pile of other stuff that I need for this concreting that I’ll be doing (yes, I have another Cunning Plan).

No suitable wood for shuttering though  – I’ll have to have some cut at a sawmill.

Grand Frais, the Fresh food place came up trumps with everything that I need for my pickling, except the malt vinegar for the shallots, but then again at NOZ they were selling white vinegar flavoured with tarragon and that will do just as nicely.

So after dropping off Rosemary’s window and helping her with her shutters I came back here and did a little tidying up in the barn.

I found the other missing sledgehammer and a few other gardening tools, and I also worked out why the desk light in the barn, over the battery bank, isn’t working. Seems that the wire has become disconnected and its probably been like that for years too.

So when I finished that I took off the flourescent light and fitted one of these LED strip lights in place.

At first I was disappointed but then I realised that I had disconnected the good batteries and I was trying to burn some old ones, and I had a reading of just 7.8 volts.

With 12 volts it should be pretty impressive I reckon, but that’s for another day.

-3

Monday 1st October 2012 – BY THE TIME …

… that you read this I shall be well tucked up in the Land of Nod. I’m thoroughly exhausted.

This morning nothing much happened but with a good run at the website I managed to do all of the photos and write the text for FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s famous victory yesterday against Briffons-Perpezat.

You can read the text here if you like.

mercedes 240D les guis virlet puy de dome franceRosemary came round at lunchtime.

So while I moved the scaffolding and cleared out the weeds, brambles and small trees from around the Mercedes, she dug up the onions and garlic and pulled some dried beans off the plants.

Tons of all of that stuff she harvested too – a good fruitful exercise

But doing this garden is driving me nuts. The brambles have torn lumps out of me, the nettles have stung me to death and so on and some of the tree roots took ages to dig up

But it’s looking all quite good there now. Just that one big tree to cut down and rip up.

Tomorrow I’m off to Montlucon with Rosemary to Lapeyre to buy her window and a few other bits and pieces that I need, and then I’ll be carrying on in this patch of land, sorting out the stones and levelling everywhere off.

Then I can bring everything round there from off the hardstanding.

At the Anglo-French Group this evening we had the biggest crowd for ages with two new attendees. Nice to see some new faces.

Anyway, that’s it. Off to bed before I fall asleep.

-1

Thursday 27th September 2012 – TODAY WAS A DAY …

… of finding things.

We started off, quite dramatically, by finding the missing mobile phone.

The good news is that the SIM card might actually still work.

The bad news is that the phone won’t, which is hardly surprising seeing as it’s been outside in the rain for the last 6 weeks and I found it in a puddle right where a load of water would regularly drop on it.

What’s surprising about this is that it was just outside the barn door, right where I walk at least twice every day without fail, and how I haven’t seen it before today is a total mystery.

Even more surprising is that if I heard it “bleep” 5 weeks ago up here in the attic – which I’m sure that I did – then there’s nothing wrong with my hearing, I’ll say.

Back in 2006 my dear departed friend Liz gave me an old Nokia ‘phone. It never worked properly and despite buying a couple of new batteries, the battery life worked out to be about 18 hours on stand-by.

For that reason I never really used it, and went to all kinds of lengths to replace it.

However I did lose count of the number of times it’s been pressed into service in an emergency and as I found it in Caliburn the other day when I was a-hunting the dictaphone, it’s now currently back in service.

At least until the new phone arrives.

I wanted an unblocked Samsung (so I just have one set of leads) tri-band (to use in North America) with bluetooth (for the hands-free kit in Caliburn), camera (so I don’t have to keep carrying the Nikon on odd little trips out) and memory slot (so I can use it as a walkman).

But I quickly abandoned that idea. The prices are unbelievable.

In the end I settled for another Nokia – a factory-refurbished 6230 for just £22 seeing as there are no chargers with it – and I have all of that anyway.

So in the mood for finding things, I then found the missing timer switch off the tabletop washing machine – just as I was fitting the machine with a plug with a built-in switch, of course.

The plug off there I fitted on the chop-saw that I bought ages ago and that works a treat too.

I also uncovered three battery chargers – two of them being the 7-Day Shop ones that I use for charging up AA and AAA batteries. And not just the chargers either – a further mega-search turned up some power cables for them.

So they are now fitted with North American 110-volt plugs – I use them for my 12-volt DC domestic circuit because they can handle high amperage and they are sufficiently different not to be confused with 230 volt stuff – and they are ready for action.

The third battery charger that I found is also for AA and AAA batteries, and why this is so interesting is that it has screw-holes on the back so that you can fix it to the wall.

This is quite an ancient machine too and I was pleased to see because I have a cunning plan for it. It was that I intended to screw it into the back of Caliburn and wire it into the ignition system so that there will always be some batteries on charge there.

No power cable, though.

But seeing as I was in the mood I turned out the barn and actually managed to find it, which astonished me.

While I had the ignition system dismantled, I took the opportunity of dismantling the power lead for the coolbox that I installed in Caliburn. I threw away the cigarette lighter plug (I hate those) and wired that directly into the ignition circuit.

And so we’ll have cold drinks wherever we go too.

I also unearthed a pile of connectors that I’d been looking for for ages, and a few other exciting bits and pieces as well. And I did a few other things, but I can’t rightly remember now what they were.

But I shan’t know myself at this rate, will I?

On the subject of finding things, by the way, I know that this might not be relevant but Heather came round this afternoon.

She has just come back from the UK and had brought me my order of porridge oats as well as some Rich Tea biscuits for Rosemary.

It’s the first time that Heather has been round, so she had to call at the doctor’s on the way for the Yellow Fever and Plague vaccinations before she arrived.

But at least I can now make some more muesli.

-2

Monday 10th September 2012 – OH DEER!

Oh deer indeed.

And to the deer that ran out in front of Caliburn somewhere between St Gervais d’Auvergne and Gouttieres on the way back from our Anglo-French Group meeting, Caliburn and I are really sorry.

But it’s a good job that I’m a vegan otherwise you would be in the pot right now.

Caliburn has a slight mark on the front bumper, which shows that he’s much more solidly built than the Chevy Malibu that I hired in Canada in 2003 (mind you, it was a stag that I hit back then) but I’m very much afraid that the deer went in all directions.

Ahh well 🙁

So apart from that dramatic end to the evening, what else?

After the usual bits and pieces on the computer, I went out and attacked the wall again.

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut astonishingly, only 3 buckets of mortar went into the wall. And for a whol assortment of reasons.

  1. I had to take down part of the scaffolding. That’s major progress in itself
  2. But before I could do that, I had to move a pile of stuff.
  3. Once that had gone, I had to hack down a pile of brambles and small trees to make some working space
  4. I had to clear away all of the sand and cement  that I’ve raked out of the wall and was piling up against the foot of the wall. That took ages, and I DO mean “ages” too


But I did make two startling discoveries

  1. I knew that I had another garden rake somewhere, a big heavy duty proper one with real metal prongs.
    And I would love to know what I was doing with it because it was under the stones that fell when the wall collapsed back all those years ago.
    The handle has long since rotted away but I’ll buy a new one on Saturday at Cheze.
  2. I now know the secret of why the lean-to is collapsing.
    There’s a whole network of tree roots from the walnut tree that has infiltrated into the wall below ground level. Much of the day was spent extracting them, and I need to think of a permanent solution to deal with that issue.
    Also, this is the bit where the wall is really bad.
    Rainwater has infiltrated and washed the old mortar away and many of the stones are loose. They need extracting where possible and replacing with larger stones/
    Either that or they need to be well packed in with other stones so that they can’t move and the forces above them are spread out horizontally.

So now you know why that’s why it’s taking me ages.

But anyway, at 18:45 I called it a day and had a quick a solar shower and following that, legged it to St Gervais d’Auvergne where we had the biggest crowd for quite a while.

And that is always pleasant.

-1

Tuesday 4th September 2012 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I was up before the alarm went off.

And just as well because with having visitors today, it gave me chance to tidy up a little in here and then go downstairs and steam-clean the kitchen.

As an aside, by the way, this unit that I bought the other week and assembled on Sunday, it’s really doing the business and I’m quite impressed with it. I think that this was a really good purchase.

So Rosemary came round for her lesson in pointing and to be frank I think that we spent more time gossiping than working. Nevertheless, she made a reasonable mix and managed two bucketfuls into the wall with a finish that wasn’t too bad at all.

However, I think that she understands that it takes longer than one might think, until you’ve been doing it for a while anyway.

One thing though for which I’m glad that she was here was that I had to change the wires over on the wind turbine.

That involved lying a ladder on the roof (at an angle of course) and then slotting another ladder into the space between the rungs and up the wall so that I could climb up on it.

Not for the faint-hearted, that but I couldn’t think of another way to do it. I needed an assistant for that as who knows what might happen when I’m on my own.

And bravo too, for her being only ever the third person to be brave enough to use the composting toilet.

Anyway, that’s that. I’ll have an early night and then attack the wall in earnest tomorrow. The quicker I start, the quicker I’ll finish.

-1

Tuesday 28th August 2012 – DESPITE MY …

… early night last night, I somehow managed to sleep right through the alarms this morning.

It was 09:22 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it

It was raining too – which makes a nice change. It’s been a while since I’ve had any. But it didn’t rain for long, but long enough to put 100 litres or so into the water butts and I am grateful for that.

The garden and my water butts needed it.

Despite this being a day where I was at home, I didn’t do any pointing at all.

I have done 75% of the painting of the woodwork for the window frames though – two coats on one side and one on the other – I’ll have to do the second one on there before I fit it all in

And while I was waiting for the coats of paint to dry, I was doing other things.

home grown potatoes beans carrots les guis virlet puy de dome franceOne of the things that I did do was to dig up some carrots and pull some beans. Proof, if any were needed, that thanks to all of Rosemary’s help my garden is coming up with the goods..

Add them to the new potatoes that I uprooted the other day, and then some cauliflower that I bought on Saturday, a veggie-burger fried with onion and then some vegan cheese sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous.

What a wonderful tea it all was too!

Another thing that I did was to empty Caliburn out. His load bed is now empty. I’m taking Rosemary to Brico Depot tomorrow and also to Lapeyre so I may well need the space.

I need some more guttering and also some more glass to replace that which … errr … met with an accident, and I need a very narrow springy trowel to replace the one that I broke here on the wall.

Finally, I’ve been tidying up downstairs too looking for my mobile phone which I appear to have mislaid somewhere. I didn’t find that but I did find the missing LED light strips, which pleased me greatly.

I’ve also thrown away about 1 big bin-liner full of rubbish – and there’s plenty more to go at too.

That took me to 19:00 and then I knocked off.

Montlucon tomorrow and then Thursday I can get cracking again.

-2

Friday 24th August 2012 – WELL, FOLKS …

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… here it is. The wall’s all finished!

I was rather optimistic about my “couple of hours” – in fact it was more like 3.5 hours before it was all done.

But the hardest part of it was of course the clearing up afterwards that took the time – I don’t do clearing up as you know.

Anyway, there you are – all done and dusted. The tools have been put away and the araa has been cleared of rubbish the best that I can do.

As for the bits of old cement and so on that I dug out of the wall, they are on a tarpaulin at the side of the house. Soon I’ll be doing some concreting and I’ll be needing hardcore.

As for the weather behaving itself, the moment that I finished putting the last trowel of mortar into the wall, it started to rain. Bang on cue, you might say.

Anyway, seeing as it was 18:10 when I finished, I called it a day and boiled up some water for a shave and a good wash.

Following that, I crashed out, to such an extent that I didn’t make tea. I’d probably be asleep even now if Radio Tartasse hadn’t rung up – apparently the music files for the radio programme are corrupted so can she copy them again?

That’s where I was this morning, in Marcillat-en-Combraille, recording the Radio Anglais rock music programmes for Radio Tatasse. That was fairly straightforward after last month’s debacle.

So tomorrow is shopping at Commentry and maybe even the swimming baths at Neris-les-Bains. A good soak and a good relax should do me the world of good, I reckon, after all of my exertions.

Sunday is the pellerinage at La Cellette and the pot d’acceuil at St Maigner with Marianne, followed by the Virlet brocante and then Liz and Terry’s for rehearsals for the rest of the Radio Anglais programmes, and that’s the weekend done.

And do you like my Sunday?

That, would you believe, is a day of rest.

-6

Thursday 9th August 2012 – WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY!

And I’m not just talking about the weather either, although that was certainly superb.

This morning was an early start and that found me in Montaigut-en-Combraille with Terry and Rob where we spent a pleasant 90 minutes visiting a semi-derelict building in the town.

We have big plans for this – well, actually we don’t, but the whole purpose of being there this morning was to measure it up and then draw up big plans for it.
Never mind a cunning plan, we will have several cunning plans for this place.

While Terry and Rob went off to chat amongst themselves I went off to the mairie to have a chat with the mayor of Montaigut-en-Combraille about what our intentions are.

Surprisingly (or maybe not, because times are changing in France when there is a question of foreign money being invested in these small semi-abandoned rural towns) she was quite co-operative and gave me loads of help, even introducing me to her deputy who was the kind of person who would really take an interest in this kind of project.

Back home, I started to turf out of the lean-to all of the accumulated breeze blocks, large stones and so on that I won’t be using again up there so that there would be plenty of space for me to move around.

But then the weather intervened – in the sense that by 13:00 the batteries were fully-charged and the water was heating up.

With all of this surplus energy around, out came the big drill and YESSSSSSSSSSS I finally pushed the core drill right through the wall and into the house.

I’ve even managed to feed the plastic pipe through the wall and so now, next time that it’s too wet to work, I’ll be running three sets of cables through the tube – a 230-volt power line, a 12-volt power line and a 12-volt light line, and then starting to wire everything up

This afternoon I was round at Liz and Terry’s doing the rear brakes on her car. Pretty straightforward of course but I was having issues with fitting the springs what with a lime burn on my thumb – how I managed that on Monday after all this time without one is another one of those total mysteries.

So tomorrow I’ll be fitting the woodwork for the windows and painting it all (I still have tons of this excellent LIDL wood treatment stuff), and then sorting out some wood to make a fascia panel across the exposed ends of the roof chevrons to keep the weather out of the ends of the chevrons.

That wood will be painted too.

I’ll measure up for the glass fit what guttering that I have lying around, and then on Saturday I’ll go into Commentry to buy the glass and the rest of the guttering.

Coming on in leaps and bounds now!

-2

Saturday 4th August 2012 – NEVER MIND A PERSONAL BEST …

… this must be something of a new world record.

Believe it or not, I was up and about this morning at the stupid time of 05:50 and I’ve absolutely no idea why. It’s not as if I’d wet the bed or a mouse in the attic had been doing a clog dance or something like that.

Anyway, I had a really leisurely start to the morning and spent a load of time working on the website. I’m currently discussing the Battle of Québec, as it happens.

13:30 I nipped off into St Eloy-les-Mines to do some shopping and also to buy some bricks.

Cheze had them in stock – but at €0:94 a piece which is ridiculous if you ask me. Anyway, I bought just enough to do the surround for the second window that I’ll be fitting in the lean-to. It wasn’t until much, much later that I remembered that I had bought the original lot from Point P.

Just by way of a change, I did some work this afternoon – putting back into position the stones that I knocked off the wall the other day, cementing them into position and then concreting them in place.

But now I’ve run out of gravel, would you believe? It’s clearly not my destiny to finish this wall.

But no gravel means that I can use up the pile of scrunched-up brick that used to be two internal walls in the house until I knocked them down.

They were just lying where they fell all over the floor and so this means that I’m clearing them out of the way, which is A Good Thing. They make nice lightweight concrete too.

Tomorrow is a day off – no village Open Day to attend. I’ll have a lie-in and maybe go to Pionsat for a prowl around the brocante and see how Marianne is doing with her stall for the Amis du Chateau de Pionsat.

-1

Thursday 26th July 2012 – PHWOARRR! WHAT A SCORCHER!

12:30 am and still 30°C up here in my attic. I shan’t be sleeping much tonight.

In fact it was so warm up here this morning that I breakfasted yet again with the fan working. And I needed it too.

And then off to pick up Liz for our Radio Anglais sessions for Radio Tartasse in Marcillat en Combraille, and we melted there too.

Back home later, I was on the computer again in the attic and in the heat, and apparently the weather is going to break tomorrow afternoon. So cue some washing.

That I did while I was lunching – lovely hot water at 62°C in the home-made 12 volt immersion heater – that should get everything clean, and I’m glad that it’s all done. I’ll just have to remember to take it in when the weather threatens.

Now that I have a big load of sand and a pile of stones, no reason why I shouldn’t be attacking the wall. But first, I forgot about the load of stones in the house and so I spent half an hour pulling a pile of suitable stuff from out of there.

I’ve also found another load of stuff that was buried in there – including the missing box of 4×40 screws. And how long have I been looking for those?

lean to repairig stone wall window frame les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut eventually I was back up the ladder and back on the wall and after a couple of hours or so outside, the wall is now built up (at the outside, at least) to the level of the window sill.

Furthermore, the outside is almost filled up to the framework of the window on the right-hand side. Tomorrow will, with a bit of luck and if the weather holds out, see me finishing off that part of the wall if I can put in a good shift.

But then, I’m not so sure. I’ve promised someone that I would do something tomorrow, and I’ve no idea what it was now. So apologies in advance if I’ve forgotten anything.

And maybe I’ll receive a reminding phone call, in which case I’ll be doing something different.

-3

Saturday 14th July 2012 – IT’S ONLY 23:15 …

… and I’m thoroughly whacked.

I’m also extremely tired, but that’s another story. Anyone would think that I’ve had a really hard day, but in fact I’ve done probably not much more than nothing.

I didn’t even have an early start either – it was 09:30 when I crawled out of Quatermass’s Pit.

And on that subject, I wish that the weather would improve so that I could do some washing. We’ve had more torrential rain again to day and if it carries on I’ll be uprooting my vegetables and planting rice instead.

After a leisurely morning’s breakfast I started on the radio programmes but it wasn’t long before I was sidetracked.

The Music folders on my external hard drive are in a mess and having sorted out the photos last weekend, I decided to organise the music. Strangely enough, that freed off a couple of gigabytes of space on my hard drive and there’s room to move about now.

And that wasn’t all either.

In 2002 I was in Utah and spent a very pleasant half a day prowling around the Escalante (or Escalente) Desert in Utah. Today though, it’s in the news.

All over the American newspapers today though was an article about someone else who had been prowling around the Escalante (or Escalente) Desert for three weeks totally lost and being found in the nick of time by some searchers.

I had a look at my web page, and realised that it was one that had only received the briefest of updating when I did a major update of my website in February 2007.

Sensing that the page would receive a few hits today (and I wasn’t wrong either) I spent the afternoon rewriting it and bringing it right up to date.

So much for the radio.

Anyway, I’m off to bed. I’m out with Marianne tomorrow and I need to be on form. I’ve no idea why I’m so tired right now.

-2

Thursday 12th July 2012 – I’M OFF …

… to bed in a minute – at a ridiculously-early (well, for me, anyway) time too.

And for two good reasons too.

  1. I have to be up early as you know. Terry and I are off to Montlucon to see what we can find in Brico Depot
  2. I’m thoroughly exhausted and I’ve already crashed out once this evening.

Just for a change I was up and about before the alarms went off and while I was having a leisurely breakfast Rosemary rang up. “It looks as if it might be a comfortable morning so I’ll come round now if you like”.

Well, I need all the help I can get in the garden and one volunteer is better than 10 pressed men so I had to steam-clean the kitchen, tidy up in here, empty the composting toilet, all that kind of thing, at a rapid rate of knots.

And then a car pulled up. It was not Rosemary but Bill who had come for a chat. His van has just failed its Controle Technique, but not with anything serious and so we needed to devise a cunning plan to fix it.

Just then Rosemary appeared and so Bill wandered off while Rosemary and I attacked the garden.

Stopping for lunch for an hour or so was the only break that we had, but by the end of the day several of the beds are all weeded out, some (but by no means all) of the leeks are replanted, and then we attacked some of the jungle that was in the way.

After Rosemary went home, I carried on for an hour or so and that was my lot I’m afraid. I was finished off. Nevertheless, substantial progress was made today in the garden.

I’ve also made a smart discovery too.

I’m using a Xantrex C60 charge controller wired in backwards to act as a dump load controller. Normally, a charge controller senses the voltage levels in the batteries. When the solar panels and wind turbines have fully charged the batteries, the charge controller then cuts off the charge.

With certain charge controllers, you can fiddle about with them so that instead of switching off, they switch on. And then instead of having them wired as
INPUT ENERGY —> CHARGE CONTROLLERS —> BATTERIES
you can wire them
INPUT ENERGY —> BATTERIES —> CHARGE CONTROLLER —> DUMP LOAD (although I still keep my input charge controllers as a safety measure.

My dump load is a home-made 12-volt immersion heater – a huge 500-watt heater element suspended in 25 litres of water, and this is how I heat my water in summer.

The Xantrex controllers have a facility to have a data panel wired in so that you can see the amount of current passing through and I just happen to have a spare data panel that I dismantled from the charge controller that stopped working the other week.

I wasn’t sure if it would work on the one that I’m using as a dump load controller, what with it being wired in backwards and so on, but I gave it a go and in fact it does, which is really exciting news.

I’ve had 22.2 amp-hour worth of excess charge heating my water today. That’s quite impressive considering that the weather has been cloudy for all of the day. I wonder what it will show in a bright sunny glorious day.

But we aren’t ever going to have one of those ever again.  

-2

Sunday 8th July 2012 – 11.5 mms …

… of rain fell last night. And apart from the very start of the downpour I heard nothing at all because I was in bed by 23:40 or so and that was that until Marianne rang me at 10:00.

Well, almost, because if I ever find out who it was who telephoned me at about 04:00 or thereabouts, I shall go round to visit them with a piece of lead piping.

Despite my early night it was still a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning and I was late for Marianne, but eventually we arrived at La Cellette and set up Marianne’s exhibition even though I wasn’t feeling much like it.

la cellette string quartet rick the trailer hire guy st fargeol puy de dome franceNane was there and she made me a cup of coffee and that made me feel a little better, and Rick the trailer guy was there with his string quartet – they were doing the music today and a very good job they were making of it. That made the day so much better too.

The crowd was rather disappointing though, but better than last year when, rather astonishingly, no-one turned up at all.

This afternoon I finally finished sorting out all of the photos – all nicely arranged, stored and documented – and I’ve sent the ones off that this author guy wants. That’s that out of the way and hopefully the cash will be in the bank in early course. Some photos were in triple, if not quadruple, examples and I’ve cleared tons of room out on the external drive that I’ll be storing them on from now on.

But there are files stored on there from when I first started backing up on external drives, back in 2002, and what might be a good idea would be to go through them all and make a proper continual stream of files instead of having them stored by reference to the hard drive that they used to be on. Another thing that I might do is now that the big desktop computer is redundant, to take one of the 500GB drives out of that and fit it into a caddy that I have lying around here, and make an external drive just for photos. You’ve no idea how much space these photos take. The first few years of digital photography, 2001-2005, take up less than 1 DVD of space. In one week in Canada in 2010 I used more space than that.

And before I forget, for I’ve already forgotten twice, a big thank-you to Rhys as the phone that he sent to me arrived on Friday and it works fine.     

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