Tag Archives: shower

Saturday 10th July 2010 – There was no mistake this morning …

… about the weather. I awoke quite early to the sound of what was without question a driving rainstorm. And when I went out a little later we had had about 4.5mm of rainfall through the night.

That may not sound like a lot and over a surface area of 6.5 square metres (the verandah) where about 155mm of rainfall would make 1000 litres, then the 30 litres of rain from today is pretty small beer.

But off just one side of the barn roof, which has a footprint of about 16m x 3.5m, or 56 square metres, then almost ten times that is quite a lot.

You’ll see the impromptu drainage system that I’ve rigged up (don’t worry that it is neither straight nor square – this is just a temporary lash-up) and if you look closely at the 203-litre water butt, you’ll see that it’s overflowing. And quite right too!

So much so in fact that I’m going to change some of the drainage around on the house so that the drainage on the lean-to (all 8 square metres of it plus the part of the house roof that falls onto there) will drain into the water butts at the verandah.

Terry has found me some puzzolane and I’ve also thought of yet another amelioration to the water supply and so I reckon that next week I’ll have a good go at this.

Lieneke woke me up this morning. She needed to talk to Terry and so I gave her all of his contact details. It involves The Folding Stuff so it’s pretty important. And after computing for a while I did a couple of odd jobs. I now have a bracket for holding the ramps onto the towing dolly and I’ve also done something with the guttering on the far side of the barn.

I haven’t shown you anything of the solar shower yet. I spent some time this afternoon working on it and now that it is sort-of finished for the moment, all can be revealed.

We’ve started off with a black IKEA storage box, of which I have more than a few lying around here. I’ve drilled a hole in the bottom and fitted a connection with a tap. And then we have a simple shower pipe and head from my old place in Brussels.

But that’s not the most exciting part of it. I’ve erected a metal framework using an old set of shelving units and put the storage box onto the top, covering it with an old caravan window. It’s nothing exciting, but it all seems to work.

I’ve an idea about filling it too but that calls for yet more engineering, but seeing as it was 19:15 when I knocked off (and I still managed to find the time to fit in a solar shower from the old system) I called it a day instead.

But I’m intrigued to see how this new siting of the solar water will fit in with the temperature readings that I have been keeping. It’ll attract the sun much earlier in the day for a start, that’s for sure.

And in other news, my brassica have now been attacked by the Cabbage White Butterfly and four times a day I’m engaged with stripping the caterpillars off the plants before they strip the plants. So far it’s a draw but it’s hard work.

And in other other news, it seems that I was rather careless when potting up some seeds. I now have a huge tomato plant growing in the middle of the greenhouse.

-2

Friday 9th July 2010 – As I have said before ….

… if you are the kind of person who is always in a hurry or rushing around for appointments and the like then you don’t want to be living around here.

Not with leviathans like this roaming around the lanes round here anyway.

I encountered these two beasts on my way back from Commentry. The other side of Ronnet it was, and it wasn’t until we reached the Abbey of Bellaigues that they took the high road and I took the low road. About 6 miles of 25kph with nowhere to pass them. Ahhh well!

This morning I was awoken at 06:04 by a storm – howling winds and all that kind of thing. I was half-expecting torrential rain but when I finally crawled out of my stinking pit (09:40 – I was having a lie-in after my efforts on the roof) there wan’t a trace of anything.I surely can’t have dreamt it all?

So a couple of hours catching up on the computer and then off to Commentry for shopping. And nothing really interesting at all. But even more interesting – I’m trying to set up my water filters and can I elephants find any puzzolane. I asked inter alia at the local builders’ merchants and he had to look up in his catalogue before telling me that he didn’t have any. In case you are wondering what puzzolane is, it’s a certain type of volcanic lava – lightweight, porous and made of carbon and it’s a superb natural water filter.

In the Puy de Dome there are over 80 dormant volcanoes all of which have produced puzzolane, and not for nothing is this region littered with commercialised natural springs – Volvic being the prime example but there are many others. All the ground water is filtered through the natural puzzolane layers. So why can’t I get hold of any?

Back at Pooh Corner, having unloaded Caliburn, I made a desultory start on tidying up. But the weather clouded over and it looked like rain so grabbing hold of a few offcuts and odds-and-ends I’ve rigged up a kind of downspout system for one of my spare 203-litre water butts to catch the rain that might fall on the barn roof.

And badger me if, when I came in and read my messages, that Krys hadn’t written to me to suggest that I think about a way of collecting the rainwater that falls on the roof. Great Minds or Fools, Ms Stephenson?

And now it’s 00:30 – 7 hours after I fixed this downspout – and it’s rumbling away with thunder and flashing away with lightning and not a drop of rain has fallen. All my plants and I could do with a heavy downpour, especially through the night. I can’t wait to see the water cascade off the barn roof and into the water butt.

And another solar shower this evening. That’s 6 consecutive days. I was never this clean when I lived in my apartment in Brussels!

-3

Wednesday 7th July 2010 – We’ve almost finished this roof

We started off by changing many of the chevrons and fitting the laths. All of this lot, in fact. But despite what it looked like, it didn’t take long at all and it was finished before midday, even with the little alterations we needed to make.

But I now know why there was a very large overhang on the other side. The two sides of the barn roof are different length and we’ve put the sheets on the wrong side of the roof. Hence we were struggling for space here and I had to cut the ends off some of the chevrons on this side.

>But after an early lunch we started to put the sheets on and by 16:00 we were finished.

All that remained for today was the fitting of the ridge sheets but that was another story. I managed to fit half of one and that took half an hour. It was no fun mauling them over the apex of a hot tin roof in a scorching sunlight. They wouldn’t bend where they were supposed to and when they did the screws weren’t long enough to fasten them down.

There was no point getting frustrated and so in the end we called it an early day. We’ll have another go tomorrow and use some longer stainless steel screws, some silicone washers and a couple of speed clamps. And if that doesn’t work we’ll use a pilot drill and some pop rivets. But I’ll get them on somehow.

Once they are done, there’s just trimming the sheets, fixing the guttering and then dismantling the scaffolding and that will be that. And I won’t half be relieved. I was so knackered that after Terry went I sat in a chair and crashed out until 18:00. But another solar shower (the fourth consecutive one) brought me round.

And that’s Friday’s job – working on the solar shower.

-3

Sunday 4th July 2010 – Even though it was Sunday today …

… I’ve been working today. Yes, it does occasionally happen.

In this photo you can see the huge stack of wood that I treated with xylophene wood treatment – the stuff that kills all of the nasty beasties.

In fact it didn’t take all that long to do – not if you line all the bits up adjacent to each other and attack them with a paint roller soaked in the stuff (that’s what the black container is for). All you do is to whallop the stuff on, turn the wood on its side and do the next side and then keep on going until all of the sides and all of the pieces are done.

Before that I was up a ladder repositioning a gutter mounting bracket and then taking down the mast for the wind turbine – that’s going to be mounted elsewhere as you know. And I took the opportunity to hunt down a spare blade (and that wasn’t easy either) to replace the one that broke a while ago.

Lieneke came around for a chat too – she’s going to talk to Terry about some work. And once she had gone it was shower-time, and we aren’t talking about the Open University Students Association either. 36°C the water was at 18;20 when I knocked off and so I took full advantage. After all, I missed the swimming baths yesterday.

This morning though I didn’t do too much. After all it is Sunday. 2 telephone calls one after the other summoned me from my reverie at some ungodly hour … “you mean 10:10” – ed … and after breakfast I entered the stats onto the computer, something I hadn’t done since March and there was a lot of catching up to do.

And talking of stats, on the 1st of July I started a new record book as the old one is now full. August 2007 I started keeping records and there were just four items that I recorded. Today there are about 35 entries that I need to make each evening. But filling the first book is definitely progress.

-4

Wednesday 30th June 2010 – We talked the other day …

… about a malfunctioning shower (and we aren’t talking about people from the Open University Students Association either) so I thought that you might like to see a pic of the current shower installation.

It’s an intake pipe wedged into a hollow brick (which acts as a weight when I throw it into the solar tank) and which is connected to the intake of an old caravan footpump that is fastened onto an old pallet.

The outlet is connected to a garden hose and that was what I used to shower myself with tonight. The water was a lovely 37°C too and it didn’t half feel good.

But as to why there’s a garden hose attachment on the outlet pipe is because a couple of weeks ago LIDL was having one of its usual sales and on offer was a garden shower that you connect to a hosepipe. Bill picked up one of those for me and I’m going to hunt it down tomorrow so I shall be all set up.

It really is nice having a decent shower, and I needed it too. Terry and I finished the roofing on the one side in record time. It’s amazing how quickly you can do things like that when you find a rhythm. It looks really good on the barn too, this metal sheeting. And now we have started to dismantle the scaffolding ready to put it up on the other side. That’s always a dirty job dismantling the scaffolding – there’s always tons of accumulated muck and dust that falls off it

And Grandma Parisian came for a nosey this evening – she couldn’t stop herself. “Blimey – you aren’t half courageux” she said. That’s the first time she’s spoken to me for years.

In other news, the US Government has banned interaction with its enemies – such as the Taliban etc. And you might be wondering why this is significant.

Astute readers with long memories will recall the Casablanca Conference of 1943, in which Roosevelt (an American again – isn’t this a surprise?) suddenly sprang on the world (and on his own allies with whom he had never discussed it) that the United Nations would not negotiate with the Axis powers and would only accept “Unconditional Surrender”.

What happened then of course was that a whole host of German resistants (or insurgents as we call them these days) who had been working hard from within to bring down the Nazis decided that seeing as the United Nations wouldn’t talk to them either if they took power, they gave up their struggle. This prolonged World War II by a couple of years – just because the Septics wouldn’t negotiate.

And here they are, doing the same thing in Afghanistan. If the Taliban (called the Mujahadeen when they were our friends fighting the Soviets) now decide that they want to talk peace terms they can’t because the Septics have outlawed any negotiations.

So they will still keep on fighting and prolong the war and the casualties.

You really can’t believe the Yanks. It was said of the Bourbon Kings of France that “they learnt nothing but forgot nothing” and you can say the same about the Americans. And we are only talking from 1943.

How can a nation be so totally stupid?

-6

Friday 25th June 2010 – If you compare this pic …

… with the pic from yesterday you’ll notice something of a change. In fact we’ve put the new woodwork on the roof.

Putting the chevrons onto the ends of the beams was exciting. The beams were so perished that there was little to nail to. All these years of exposure to the weather have taken their toll. The chevrons however went on quite easily but getting the old ones off was quite something else. I’m going to have to buy a bigger crowbar.

Some parts of the main woodwork have been attacked by the damp and by the beasties and so I’m going to have to treat them to some xylophene. In two places I’m going to have to put some strengthening pieces into take some of the weight. I think that I am just in time with this roof – it wouldn’t have held out for much longer.

Disposing of the old wood was quite easy as you can see. But it’s made something of a mess of my garlic bed

The original plan was to keep the old wood as it might be trimmed off to do for the shorter lengths that are required for the other side. But most of it is in a pretty poor state and there won’t be much to salvage. And I won’t be short of firewood either.

Seeing as it was Friday we knocked off earlier and just as Terry was leaving, Lieneke my Dutch neighbour came round. She was impressed with my new parking space and she was also impressed when I told her about Terry’s new business. She’s going to have a chat with her husband over the weekend and then have a chat with Terry on Monday. As I have said before, there are three secrets of success for the kind of business that Terry is undertaking with his homme a tout faire and they are “talk” “talk” and “talk”. Everyone around here has jobs that need doing but they don’t know how to go about them or they don’t know who to approach for advice and assistance.

Lieneke had the usual conducted tour of the premises and after that I set about having a solar shower seeing as the water in the bucket was a delightful 41°C. But the water pump in the new (well, new last year) shower kit has stopped. The impeller that pushes the water round is only an interference-fit (or push-fit) onto the shaft and it has worked its way loose. Cheap substandard Chinese rubbish. Whyever couldn’t they make a splined shaft? Is that really too difficult?

In the end today I went into reverse-technology mode.and dug up the old footpump-action pump out of the caravan and used that. It was quite nice being outside and showering but I’m fed up of these electric pumps – it’s the third one that has failed on me. Trying to find a decent reliable low-volume submersible 12-volt pump is proving to be quite difficult. I reckon that at the end of the day I’m going to go into even more reverse-energy mode and go for a gravity shower – that involves building a framework 2m high so I can put the bucket on that and then stand underneath it.

Tonight was a very important meeting, the AGM of the Pionsat Football Club. And it went totally out of my mind and I clean forgot about it..

-4

Thursday 24th June 2010 – So as I said last night …

… we finished the erection and we started on the stripping.

We had enough scaffolding left over to do another three bays and so it goes right round the corner and halfway along the short wall where I’ve done the car parking. In fact, we reckon that with another half-a-dozen 3-metre uprights, some more planks and some 4-foot cross pieces we could even do a full half-size of my barn – a run of about 23 metres.

So once we had the scaffolding up we ripped off the slates – not that they needed much help from us, it has to be said, and then had a go at the laths. The laths were mostly in reasonable condition but we ripped them all off on this one side, but some of the chevrons are horrible and I’m surprised that they have lasted.

But stripping off the roof revealed the usual mouse nest complete with mice, and this time the added excitement was due to uncovering a pair of wasp nests. And they weren’t too pleased either.

Tomorrow we’ll take off the chevrons on the roof this side, and see how far we get fitting the new timber. Saturday we are chantiering, Sunday we are preparing our radio programme so it won’t be until Monday that we can start putting the roof covering back. I bet you any money that we’ll have torrential downpours all through the weekend.

While I was wandering around checking on what had been left out I came across this beastie. He was clearly hopping mad at the work that we were doing and he didn’t like the broken slates at all. In fact at one stage he was trying to climb up the scaffolding pole but he was experiencing something of a difficulty getting his leg over.

He’s clearly an armed serviceman type of amphibian (“a frogperson?” – ed) in his camouflage clothing.

And that reminds me from back in the mid-2000s when I went to Cosford Air Force base with a friend. Standing guard on the gate was an airman in full camouflage kit – with a high-visibility jacket. Why didn’t he just take off the camouflage gear?

But I’m not going to be up long. I’m aching all over, partly due to this heavy cold that I’ve managed to catch and partly due to climbing around all over roofs. Mind you, I did manage my first solar shower today (well, a solar hair wash actually) as my hair was full of dust from the old slates.

And I was thinking too. Last year when we did the house roof it was glorious weather for most of the time and my boulangere had gone on holiday. This year we are starting the barn roof, a full two weeks earlier than last year’s house roof, yet we are now having glorious weather and my boulangere has gone on holiday.

I suppose that must mean something, but I’m blowed if I know what.

-5

Friday 11th June 2010 – Liz rang me up at lunchtime …

… and we had a really good chat about a lot of things. But after a few minutes, she said “but that’s not what I want to talk to you about really. Someone wants to hire the scaffolding tonight so we were wondering that if you weren’t doing anything you could come round and help us dismantle it and put it on the trailer”.

And so what of I did have anything else to do? Hiring out the scaffolding involves the receipt of The Folding Stuff and we need as much of that as we can get.
“I’ll be there in half an hour!”

On my way to Liz and Terry’s I stopped off at my favourite photo spot, the bird-watching point near St Gervais d’Auvergne, and it goes without saying that there wasn’t a single one of any kind of bird that I would be interested in spotting.

The view over to the Puy de Dome and the Puy de Saucy was so obscured by clouds that it wasn’t really worth photographing, although I did notice that someone was setting fire to something in the distance.

It didn’t take us long to dismantle the scaffolding, especially as the client, who was clearly in a rush, came around and helped. And now that is out and earning some dosh and that can’t be bad.

Liz kindly fed me and we had another chat. I took advantage of the shower there and then it was home time.

And I have a pile of things to do this weekend. I’ll be rushed off my feet.

-1

Friday 30th April 2010 – Well I was wrong about the rain.

We didn’t get 10mm at all. In fact we had a mere 9.5mm, most of which came around midday. So I nipped downstairs and uncovered everything so that everywhere can get wet. I uncovered the cloche but forgot to cover up the thermometer in there and now that’s wet too – I’ll have to see about drying it oit.

I stayed in, did some work on the computer in the morning and then started the unpacking. I’ve managed to put it (or most of it, anyway) away and I can actually see the floor no without walking on anything.

With the weather having cooled down I went to training tonight and had a good run around for an hour and 15 minutes. It’s totally worn me out, which is a good sign. It shows that things are doing something. And I managed to have a shower too, which is another good reason for going. Clean bedding tonight!

But no footy on Saturday – it’s Labour Day! They don’t even think that the shops will be open either. That will be an inconvenience. On Sunday the 3rd XI are playing Effiat in a right bottom-of-the-table encounter.

But right now, I’m off to bed before I fall asleeep.

-5

Monday 24th August 2009 – WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS?

I’ve made a start on eating my cucumbers and I put my hand inside the cloche (well, a few lengths of old concrete shuttering made into a deep frame and covered by a caravan window). This is what I discovered.

Maybe it’s a melon, I dunno. There’s all kinds of things in the cloche. However it’s quite exciting to see it.

This morning the weather had clouded over and cooled down. With this threatened storm I fixed the guttering on the lean-to so that it’s all complete on there. I was going to do the house. I have 3 long ladders here but in a masterpiece of logistics I’ve managed to have half a section of each of the ladders attached to something semi-permanent, meaning I have 3 half-ladders ( and not a single whole one) available for climbing up the side of the house.

I dunno how I manage it.

When the “storm” arrived (ha-ha-ha) it was as I expected – no more than a handfull of raindrops. Not even anything resembling a shower ( and having served on the Open University Students’ Association’s Executive Committee in many capacities for as long as I did, I can recognise a shower all right). Not even 1cm of rain to fill my water butts (although even as I type, I can hear raindrops outside).

This afternoon I carried on with my control panel. Terry suggests I put all the wires into trunking and he’s quite right. In fact I’ve already planned for that.

But two things that I did do was firstly to run the permanent wires down to the back of the control panel and attach them to the bolts behind the panel so they won’t ever be disturbed (even though if they stay around me for long enough they’ll be disturbed all right) and secondly I put some plastic junction box thingies over the ends of the bolts that protrude through the control panel so that they will be protected against short circuits if ever I drop a spanner across the ends.

I’ve put fuses (1×100 amp for the inverter that is still in Pompey being repaired, 2×30-amp for the lighting circuits and 4×70-amp for the two power circuits ans two auxillary circuits) in the fuse box, wired up an American socket (I use American plugs and sockets for my 12-volt circuits as they are designed for heavy duty high-amperage cable) and started to wire the power cable in.

I use 6mm cable for the power circuits and 2.5mm cable for the lighting. No risk of voltage drop with me.

Tomorrow I’ll finish up the basic wiring and then connect the 4 batteries and the solar panels up to the system that I’ve been building. Then I can run a power circuit and a lighting circuit as well as a 230-volt circuit up to the attic and I can get started up there.

And not before time too.

-5

Wednesday 19th August 2009 – WELL, HERE WE ARE ….

… one roof, all duly finished.

Well, not quite.

You can see that the guttering isn’t attached correctly, but that’s due to the lack of bits at Brico Depot the other day. When they get those in, I can fix the guttering correctly.

I haven’t fixed the facing tiles for the rear side of the roof either. The scaffolding didn’t quite reach that far and I didn’t fancy a full-stretch leaning over the side. I’ll hack down the brambles in due course and put a ladder up to do them.

I’ve dismantled the scaffolding and done some of the tidying up but it got to 17:30, the water in the solar shower bucket was at 39.4 degrees, and there was some alcohol-free beer in the fridge. So I called it a day. I reckoned I deserved it.

And right on cue, we had a thunderstorm – one of these summer storms that we have quite regularly. In 10 minutes or so, 2mm of rain fell. I couldn’t resist going outside to watch the water cascading down all the guttering and off down the hill.

By my reckoning, 2mm of rain over a footprint of 49 square metres is just about 98.0 litres (thanks, Krys). Now before I had my guttering, all of that would have fallen to the ground at the foundations and soaked into the walls. No wonder this place is flaming damp. But wait another year or two when I have my rainwater tanks installed.

But talking of cubic metres, I am reminded of the two Irishmen talking on a building site.
“What’s a cubic foot, Mick?”
“Dunno, Paddy. But claim for it anyway!”

-2

EPIC HALL

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