Tag Archives: wood stove

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 – WE HAD THE FIRST …

… snows of winter today.

1st snows of winter 2010 les guis virlet puy de dome franceI woke up to find a light scattering all over the place. Not much, and it didn’t last long either but the first snows nevertheless.

It’s rather ominous.

So after breakfast I chopped a couple of bucketloads of wood. In the lean-to that I have been slowly repairing there’s all kinds of bits of wood in there so I’m slowly hacking it into manageable pieces for the little stove. I get through about half a bucket each day and there’s plenty to go at.

In fact this little woodstove heats up the place quite quickly burning all of the offcuts and I haven’t had the gas fire on at all yet.

I also noticed that the heavy chipboard lid that I was using to cover up my breadbin outside – that’s given up the ghost too. So I made a new lid to measure out of an offcut of waterproof plywood covered in a couple of plastic binliners.

This afternoon I fitted the wind turbine onto the pole and I’ve attached that to the fence. I’ve not yet wired it in as the light went, but that’s a job to do tomorrow hopefully. And I need it too. We’ve had no sun for a couple of days.

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Tuesday 7th September 2010 – We’ve been 8 days …

… without any measurable rainfall, so my plants would welcome something, but I think that … errrr… 43.5cms in the last 24 hours was something rather excessive. During the five hours between my being awoken by the most tremendous storm and the time I had breakfast, 30.5mm of that rainfall had fallen.

Solar energy was badger all as you might expect – we had a right proper November cloud here all day.

After working on the computer I went outside but it was far too wet to work so I spent until lunchtime sawing wood. There’s a nice neatly cut pile ready for the little stove but strangely enough the pile that’s left to be cut doesn’t look any smaller at all. And I need to reduce that as I want to put a wooden wall right where it is. I shall be here for ever doing that, I reckon.

This afternoon it stopped raining so I laid off the woodcutting and scratched out a load more loose “cement” from my wall. I then made a mix of mortar to point up, and that was the signal for the heavens to open up. I put the cement on, though, even though I ended up being soaked to the skin.

I dug up some veg for tea, and noticed while scraping caterpillars off the broccoli that they are forming some nice heads. But all of the vegetation is starting to die down, I noticed. That is rather frightening if you ask me. Winter can’t be too far away.

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Monday 22 February 2010 – Only one more day …

…and this furniture removal will be over. And I can’t say that I’m sorry either. Today we took the final two loads to the new flat in St Eloy and then afterwards the first of the loads to the dechetterie. And just for a change the guy who was working there was extremely helpful and did his best to sort us out, including getting his own hands dirty.

But amongst the rubble set aside for the next visit to the tip (the first one of tomorrow) was an incredible find. Long-term readers of my ramblings will recall the discovery at the Montaigut brocante in the summer of 2008 of a parabolic heater attachment for the 920 series of Camping Gas bottles, together with an almost-full bottle. In the rubbish for the tip was a cooker attachment for the 920 series of bottles, complete with an almost-full bottle. I have issues about standardisation when I’m living in Caliburn and I’ve been trying to settle on a heater and cooker system that uses the same gas bottles. I’ve had to resort to those tube canister things with a stove and heater but they aren’t all that satisfactory. But with this find to go with the heater, I’m now set up exactly as I want.

Lieneke is here too and I went for a chat with her after I finished with Claude. It’s nice to see her again and we had a good old chinwag. after that I came home and lit the fire in the woodstove and got a nice roaring blaze after many tribulations. But then someone called me on the phone and kept me chatting for ages and the blasted thing went out.

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Sunday 7th February 2010 – We’re back in the usual routine.

A nice lie-in on Sunday morning interrupted by a torrential downpour. So out of bed by 09:45 (which is early for me as you know) and breakfast followed by tidying up the verandah. After that it was back up here and try out the new power supply for the old Lenovo that gave up the ghost back in the summer. Hunting around the other day for a replacement I came across one on eBay at a grand total of £7.45 plus £3.50 postage. And much to mysurprise it actually works! So now I can recover the data that wasn’t included in the last back-up.

st eloy les mines nord combraille football club de foot puy de dome franceThis afternoon it was down to St Eloy to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI play the Miners. And they lost 4-1. Mind you the scoreline is a totally unfair reflection of the result and they were so unlucky – they hit the woodwork three times. But in truth they offered litttle up front with no Cedric, even though the Nord Combraille goalkeeper was a pretty busy man rushing out after all of these through-balls. Pionsat had a patched-up defence and an injury to Yann made things even worse. By the time the final whistle went, Pionsat’s back-line consisted of Gregory the left-winger playing at left-back, Sebastien who plays midfield for the 2nd XI at centre-half partnered by Pierre from Brico-Depot who usually plays on the right wing, and someone who I had never seen before playing at right-back. Nevertheless it was a really good match and I quite enjoyed it despite the scoreline. Two of Nord Combraille’s goals were absolute peaches.

That wood-burning boiler that Terry bought does not weigh 270 kilos. In fact it weighs in at well over 300 and it’s blasted heavy and awkward. But with the aid of two scaffolding planks and a carpet we got it into the kitchen. It’s just as well as it’s Claude-moving starting tomorrow and Terry’s van needs to be empty!

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Saturday 6th February 2010 – We all went shopping today

Liz and Terry wanted a new wood-burning voiler for their house and so yours truly was co-opted onto the buying committee in order to lend his translation skills and his muscles. And it was just as well as the boiler weighs in at 245kg – about a quarter of a ton.

But shopping with Terry is … errr … exciting. The liveliest moments are when Terry knows absolutely and definitely what he wants but Brico Depot doesn’t have it in stock and can’t see why he wants it anyway. But in the end we sorted something out and tomorow when the tiles have dried out we can unload the boiler and put it in the kitchen. I’ve had spinach for tea in preparation.

And it’s that time of year again. The footy season has restarted and the 3rd XI were in action against Marcillat. Pionsat had 11 players, Marcillat turned up with only 9 and even so Pionsat were at one stage 3-1 down. The final score was 3-3 but only thanks to a somewhat “severe” penalty and a load of injury time, mystery time and Manchester United time. The Marcillat players were furious at full-time and I have to say that I can understand their position.

Tomorrow afternoon it’s the local derby against hated local rivals Nord Combraille and the Miners are hosting the game in the big super-stadium. That’s luxury for you. I’ve not seem a footy match in there yet so there’s a first.

And I’m up to my neck in mud and rain again. It’s just like old times.

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Wednesday 28th October 2009 – One thing that you need to understand …

… when you read my adventures is that I never ever make any mistakes. What I do is that I learn a lot, and sometimes learning can be expensive. In the olden days in the Wild West (yesterday in South Carolina, Rhys) greenhorns were continually being cheated at cards by people called “Doc”, and whenever anyone ever said anything, the response always was “you have to pay to learn“.

And so it is with house renovations.

And having got the preamble out of the way, let us now discuss the woodstove.

I lined the base with damp sand as required, and assembled a fire inside. “You need a 6x6x6″ fire, and be careful that it does not touch the sides“. How you do this when you have a fire that is 5.5×5.5×5.5” no-one actually said. But anyway I did my best and it toook ages to get going, but I slowly warmed it up. And when I was happy that it was burning I started on the grouting of the bricks I laid the other day (much more useful that laying eggs, I can tell you)

Halfway through the grouting the phone rang, so I opened the door to climb down the ladder to the phone, and “Blimmin’ ‘eck!” You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face with the smoke, and the fumes were overpowering. All through the house, even in my little room, was a pall of black smoke. I was appalled. as was the smoke.

Normally I would expect that the hot air would rise up the stovepipe and carry the soot and ash with it. When they burst out into the chimney the hot air would rise creating a current of air from the chimneys below, which would pull up the soot and ash. But not a bit of it. The soot and ash had descended in the chimney and come out at the bottom. So much for free circulation. And so much for the woodstove too.

I was toying with the idea of lining the chimney and putting the stovepipe all the way up to the outside, and I wish I had done it now. I can’t get the pipe in now that I’ve done the walls and so basically the woodstove will have to be put on hold while I think about this.

It’s not the end of the world though as I have the bottled gas heater, but I was hoping to get away from fossil fuels and go for a more natural source. What is going to be a major problem is that if the soot and ash can get from the attic to the living room it can also do the return journey when I light the fire down here. And that will be “an issue”.

what i saw downstairs when I lit the wood stove
Today’s image is entitled “What I saw when I opened the door”.

On the phone, as it happened, was a member of OUSA’s Executive Committee who wanted a chat. Of course I shan’t name names as talking to me is punishable by a “visit” from Pol Pot’s sibling, a whine from Caligula and her horse, and a thorough dressing-down from Turdi de Hatred (not to mention a thorough dressing up, in fairy boots if I remember correctly, by Lee “I’m a prostitute” Potty-mouth. But I digress – something that you ought to be used to by now)

I’ve now done all the grouting and the filling, and I started poncing (But not in fairy boots) this evening. Tomorrow will be finishing off the poncing, cleaning up the room and making a start on the wallpapering. D-Day is getting closer.

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Monday 26th October 2009 – I didn’t do an awful lot today.

In fact, it was a day of interruptions.

Starting as we mean to go on, I wasn’t upstairs 10 minutes before the phone rang. The man from Nazar …. errr… DHL rang to seek directions to chez moi. I carried on with tidying up last night’s wiring efforts and Terry rang, asking if he could borrow my compressor.

Then Terry came round – and he helped me finish the wiring. I was struggling to get the 2x10mm cables for the heater element through the conduit – not something it’s easy to do yourself, so while Terry started it off I went to look for my patent cable dragger. And by the time I came back with it, Terry had threaded it through on his own. It pays to have an expert around the place.
In fact, I had a friend who was acknowledged as an expert by everyone else.
But in that case, it was spelt ex-spurt and ex is a has-been and spurt is a drip under pressure.

After that the man from DHL turned up with a little package for me, and then it was lunchtime.

Once lunch was over I played the usual game of “hunt the keys for Caliburn” and when I eventually found them I drove Caliburn round the back here and loaded him full of scaffolding to take round to Terry tomorrow – all the time half-expected to be confronted by The Ghost Of Farmer Parrett and his pitchfork again.

attic concrete base woodstove tile brick edge
In the attic I did manage to do some work today. All of the chimney is now connected up, sealed and clamped together, and I’ve also done something to the concrete base.

If you follow the comments to the various entries (they are often the most exciting part) you’ll know that Krys and I have been discussing the edging to the concrete. I wanted to put a raised edge around it although Krys thinks (and rightly so) that it will be difficult to keep clean.

I’m still worried about flying embers though, but there’s no point in soliciting advice if you don’t intend to take any notice, so what I did was to put a raised edge around the front and most of the sides, and leave the back open so I can brush out around there.

And what did the man from DHL want? Well, he brought me my new lens that I talked about the other day. And that was quick delivery – I wish Amazon would be this quick from the States. And €36 customs and charges – that’s an enormous rip-off if you ask me.

I’m disappointed with the lens though. It’s very small and you would hardly notice it. Freud had a thing or two to say about camera lenses, something along the lines of them being substitutes for part of the anatomy in the same way that guns and sports cars might be. And I was hoping for a whopper. The filter size is 49mm, which I don’t have, so that means a 20-quid order to the 7-Day Shop.

The lens is a manual focus (not a problem because with the footy, the focus is always “full on”) and that reminds me of a story I heard about the two blondes on the beach, being approached by the beach photographer.
“Keep still” said one. “He’s going to focus!“
“What? Both of us?“

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Friday 23rd October 2009 – Even more Fiat Lux

attic woodstove 230 volt LED lightYou might think that this photo is rather blurred and underexposed, but it was taken with just 2.4 watts of light.

This morning I wired in the 230-volt lights but for some reason (presumably because of my bragging yesterday) I couldn’t get them to work. While I was musing on the subject Terry and Liz turned up so Terry (who is a sparky in his day job) had a quick look and noticed that I’d wired the light switch up wrong.

D’oh!

So once we’d got the wires in the right hole we had some light! All 2.4 watts of mains LEDs and you can’t dispute the brightness of those. This pic was taken from outside the room at 20:00 when it was pitch black outside.

You can also see the pot-bellied stove too. It’s all assembled and in place and it’s tiny. I’ve been cutting wood to a length of 30cms and I’ll need to cut that in half again in order to get it to fit in the aperture.

And would you believe that the chimney that came with it is the wrong size! The aperture is 107mm and the chimney pipe is 117mm. After much messing around I cut down another piece of chimney, sliced it downwards, fitted it inside the aperture (there’s a rim to stop it going into the fire) and lined the slice and the joint with fire cement. The natural springiness sprung it back into a tight fit and the fire cement should seal it, and then I sleeved the chimney over the top. Tomorrow I need to get a joining piece for where I had to cut the pipe and then I can fit the chimney stack completely.

I’ve also grouted the tiling. Krys was right when she said that grouting covers a multitude of sins. But there must have been more than a multitude with the tiling that I did.

Terry, while he was here, had a good look at my door.
“Do you know” he said, “that you can buy doors that come supplied with the doorframe?”
“Hmmmmm. I can see the advantages of that“.

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Saturday 17th October 2009 – In a major departure …

attic floor concrete base woodstove… from my usual habits, I did some work this morning. I built a framework on the floor, lined it with a plastic sheet, and then concreted it. This will be a slab that will be tiled and the woodstove will be placed on it. Once I take away the framework, the slab will be held in place by the laminate floor that I’ll be fitting.

I’ve had to make the slab with a lot of stones so that it will knit closely together – after all, it’s only 2.5cms thick – but I made it too wet. There is nowhere for the water to drain away of course, with it being in a plastic sheet, so the water has floated to the surface and pockmarked it in places. But it’s not a problem as I’ll fill the pocks with tiling cement in due course.
fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire riom>After the shopping we had the footy tonight. And GRRRRRRRRR again to Pionsat. The match against Le Quartier was cancelled so I had a wasted drive down there and back again. I drove down again for the match at 20:30, only to find that it had kicked off at 20:00. As I got out of Caliburn, Riom broke down the field and scored, and as I walked into the ground, Pionsat went up the other end and they scored. I had also missed a penalty, but Riom didn’t miss it, and they ran out winners 2-1.

In other news – do you remember my footy photo from last weekend? It seems that the local newspaper, La Montagne, has published it. That’s a few of my photos the newspaper has used now. No money, of course (and I could do with some right now) but at least some of my work is getting an airing and they wouldn’t use them unless they thought something positive of them. And who knows where it might lead?

And tomorrow I’ll be tiling the back wall behind the slab. That’s where I’ll be stacking the wood so tiles will enable it just to be wiped down to clean. That’s a better idea than wallpaper. And that’s a novel idea too – working on a Sunday.

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Tuesday 13th October 2009 – There’s some disappointing news for Krys tonight.

I don’t have a photo of today’s work in the attic. That’s because you can’t really see what I’ve been doing.

In fact I’ve been doing some of the finicky work up there. I put on the plasterboard cladding around the door pillar (I forgot that last night) and then cladded all the exposed ends of plasterboard with plywood. I know that you are really supposed to put plasterboard across all the ends and then join them together with this “L” profile strip, but Terry and I talked about this last night and he mentioned that four-letter word “skim”.

Now my plastering technique is awful so skimming anything is out of the question, but wood is quite nice and I can do that.

After that I built the window inset for the hole in the wall that I made yesterday and then cut the perspex to fit. And it looks quite nice too.

Once I’d finished that I boxed in the window at the end of the room near where the woodstove is going to be installed. And talking of the woodstove, Liz and I unpacked it this afternoon (Liz came round to visit and to borrow a spare telephone as hers has stopped working for some reason). The stove is ever so dinky and even though I chopped up the wood into small 30cm (12 inch) lengths, I can see me having to cut it up smaller.

And the stove needs to be run in, too. You have to light a small paper fire and gradually increase the heat – gradually as in something like 20 days. It’s quite a task.

But I’ll be needing the heat very soon. The temperature outside dropped to 4.4 degrees last night and in the heat exchanger it dropped to 1 degree. Winter is here. In fact I nearly had the heater on in here tonight but I put a fleece on instead. I’m going to have to sort my nightie out if the temperature drops any lower.

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Monday 28th September 2009 – WE HAD TECHNICAL ISSUES …

… with tonight’s image otherwise you would have seen that I now have plasterboarding on three quarters of the walls of the attic.

You would also have seen some extra wooden battens in the corner of the room opposite where my desk is going to be. That’s because I’m going to build a cupboard in there. I’m going to miss my target of the end of the month – I’m about two weeks behind – so I may as well do this kind of work while I’m at it as it won’t make much difference to my schedule.

But the insulation is certainly doing its job up there. 2 degrees warmer than in my room and at one stage I had to open all of the windows in there as it was so warm. It’s going to be interesting in there in the winter. Especially as Simon has now returned and he has my woodstove with him. I must go and rescue it this weekend.

It’s just as well I spent the last winter cutting down all of those trees, and this stove will also give me an incentive to do some more woodcutting this winter too.

But talking of timber, I’ve been putting together a project for a Dutch mushroom farmer whom I met at the timber yard when I was there with Liz. He wants 3.5Kw of electricity each day – that’s quite a lot, and so a 12-volt system is quite out of the question. Imagine all of the heat in the cables.

I’ll have to develop the 48-volt system and run on mains power with a really decent inverter. That should be exciting.

Back in the attic, tomorrow I’ll be finishing off the plasterboarding, except for one small corner. That’s where the cables are that run from the solar panels through where the bathroom will be and down to the control panel.

They need to be disconnected and run through some kind of trunking and that requires some careful thought as it’s fraught with all kinds of problems such as short circuits and the like. It’s the kind of thing that needs to be done at night when there is no current in the cables but I don’t think clearly enough after 19:00 at night.

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Saturday 19th September 2009 – WELL, THAT’S ME SPENT UP!

540 euros in Brico Depot and not an awful lot to show for it.

Running through the list there’s

  • a pile of insulation – 20mm stuff because they had run out of 40mm and so I’ll just double up the thickness
  • some filler for the cracks in the plasterboard
  • some plasterboard tape
  • some fibreglass wallpaper
  • some fibreglass wallpaper glue
  • some blue wall paint (I forgot the gloss for the woodwork)
  • piles of tools for puttying and wallpapering
  • some floor tiles to build a plinth for the woodstove
  • all of the cement and grouting
  • some light switches
  • a telephone socket (and, yes, I forgot the telephone cable)

That was the first load. The second load was

  • 38 metres of tongue-and grooving – not the rubbishy stuff at 3.37 euros that I use for building or the better stuff at 4.95 euros (they had run out of that too – GRRRRR) but some other stuff at 6.17 euros
  • some wood battens for the tongue-and-grooving
  • some varnish
  • some nails
  • some underfelt for the laminate floor

And no woodstove either.

The cheapest on offer is 190 euros but I don’t much like it. As Krys suggests, Machine Mart is the place to be and Terry sent me a link to their site. And Simon is still in the UK. How can I contact him?

It’s a lot of money but realistically all that I now need for the attic is a couple of sheets of bare plasterboard for around the head of the stairs, and a supply of skirting board. And two panes of glass but I’ll explain that in due course (and no, I haven’t broken a window). I have everything else.

Outside in the car park I was doorstepped by a couple of Dutch people who wanted to talk to me about solar energy. It takes Dutch folk completely by surprise when I talk to them in Dutch (well, Flemish but it’s near enough).

But it’s a sign of the times that the Dutch want to become involved in solar energy. There is no word in Dutch for “cheap”. The word that they use is “goedkoep” which literally means “a good buy” – implying that if you do see something cheap you immediately have to purchase it.

The Dutch were the original settlers of New York, which is why I’m absolutely astonished that the USA is known as “The Land of The Free”. The problem with the Dutch is that they have no word for “gratis”.

Having said that, however, I sympathise with Michael Caine, who famously said in Goldmember “There’s only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures – and the Dutch”.

Only one footy match tomorrow – in the Cup and at Briffon, a village in the foothills of the Mont Dore about 100 years away from here. I’ll need a native guide and a pile of native bearers to get there I expect.

By the way, for those of you who have been following the discussion and debate in the “comments” to some of the entries on my blog (and you can always join in), you will be delighted to know that the verb “to sand” in French is “poncer”.

I will be doing a lot of poncing next week.

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Monday 7th September 2009 – I HAVEN’T MADE MUCH PROGRESS TODAY …

counter battens attic wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… and I can’t understand why.

I was working quite relentlessly all day without a pause, except for lunch. I’m rather disappointed with what I accomplished (or didn’t accomplish, as the case may be.

I have about half of the studding on the walls of the house. This is to create the air gap for the insulation I’ll be fitting. I was hoping to have at least three walls studded and the insulation fitted today.

But the place isn’t half going to be insulated – Terry thinks too much and maybe he’s right – but I shan’t be worrying about the cold. Even in my little room I noticed in the winter that putting the light and the computer on raised the temperature by a degree or so. It’ll do more than that in here.

And talking of heat, Bill came up with a nifty idea. I’m trying to find a cheap small pot-bellied wood stove for my room. But everything is too big and too expensive seeing as it’s just for a temporary measure. Bill suggests an “insert” – what the French put in their open fires – supported on bricks and connected up to the flue in the wall. I’d rather have a pot-bellied stove but there might be some mileage in Bill’s idea if I can’t source a stove.

And work is not going to progress very much this week. Terry needs a hand on Thursday and there’s Liz’s vegan chocolate cake involved, and tomorrow afternoon Marianne the local tourist guide and author who used to live in Alsager and who taught in the school across the road from where I lived in Crewe (you’ve no idea how small the world is) is giving a walk around La Cellette and the abandoned railway line.

In other news, at the Anglo-French group tonight someone asked the question that if you could drive between the UK and the mainland, on which side of the road would you drive. The answer is of course easy. Going towards the UK you would drive on the left to help you become accustomed to the English method and coming from the UK to Europe you would drive on the right in order to become accustomed to European methods.

Simple, isn’t it?

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