Tag Archives: 1st snow 2014

Thursday 5th February 2015 – 12.8°C IN HERE THIS MORNING.

Hardly surprising, seeing as how downstairs it was all of 1.4°C. And (even at 10:00) it was minus 4.5°C outside.

decorator's door landing les guis virlet puy de dome franceConsequently, I have this morning fitted a decorator’s door to the head of the stairs on the landing.

These are great things, thrown together out of a bit of old plastic sheet and scrap offcuts of wood. Their main purpose is to stop the passage of dust into areas that are being painted, but they also work for keeping in the het and keeping out the cold. IN fact, you can feel the difference either side of the door so it’s clearly working. And as the temperature dropped downstairs, on the first floor we remained at a rather comfortable, if not balmy, 4.5°C

So having done that, and done some more tidying up, what was next?

windowsill bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceAhhh yes. We now have a windowsill in the bedroom.

This is from an offcut of pine board and normally it would be having about 3 coats of varnish on it. But that’s a waste of time with the temperature in the bedroom at 4.5°C.

The board took ages to fit as it needed to be carefully cut and shaped, and it’s come out quite well. But one unforeseen problem was that the window wouldn’t open with the sill in position. But that power belt sander that I bought the other day is superb, even if it did break the belt. Ith having something like some sun this afternoon I could use it. It did a really good job of sanding down where necessary and now there’s about 3mm of clearance under the window.

After lunch I tracked down some thin wood offcuts such as scrap tongue and groowing and nailed them to the wall inside the window and then started to clad the inside of the window with tongue and grooving like I did to the window at the head of the stairs. I have some of the t&g left over from when I did the bedroom ceiling and together with the offcuts from other projects, I should have enough to do a decent job there

I’ll post a pic when I’m finished with that.

I knocked off at 18:30 and it was just 9.3°C in here. And it’s snowing heavily outside too. If that’s not enough, the 10-day long-range weather forecast is promising not much let-up in the weather. It’s a good job that I don’t really need anything from the shops, as I won’t be able to go to fetch it.

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Tuesday 2nd December 2014 – REMEMBER THE OTHER DAY …

… when i said that I reckoned that winter was just around the corner?

1st snow winter 2014 les guis virlet puy de dome franceWell, I wasn’t wrong. At about midday today it started to snow – the 1st snow of winter 2014/15.

It might not look like much, but it snowed steadily throughout the afternoon and when I knocked off at 18:00 there was a think layer that was doing its best to stick. And had it been light, I would have taken a better photo of it.

I wonder what it’s going to be like tomorrow morning.

portable power board les guis virlet puy de dome franceI finished off the portable power board this morning. Well, it’s almost finished because it needs a backing on it to keep the cables and the backs of the sockets covered up.

There’s the inverter on there of course, a 600 watt one, together with an electric meter and a timer. Then we have three types of socket – a pair of 12-volt sockets, a single European 230 volt socket, and a pair of UK 230 volt sockets.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I use British plugs and sockets on my 230 volt system because the plugs are fused, and that’s a useful thing to have.

This afternoon, I started on the new power board in the barn down at the southern end.

The bad news is that I dropped my Ryobi Plus One handlamp and broke it. That’s a tragedy because it’s the best light that I’ve ever had and I shall miss it very much.

The good news is that the power board is up and in position. The Xantrex charge controller that works the bank of solar panels is installed, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been. I forgot how rigid the ware was and it took me ages to bend it into position and thread it through the series of holes through which it needs to pass.

Threading the wires through for the wind turbine was easier, and that’s in place together with the meter that reads the voltage and the amount of charge.

There was an hour left and so I settled down to connect up the new batteries to the system.

And here’s a thing.

Which company sells batteries that take a certain size of bolt that is supplied, so you can look at it and know which size of battery cable to order – and then sells you a meter that works off a shunt connected to the negative lead between the battery and the grounding circuit – and which takes a larger bolt?

Of course, you can’t buy battery leads with different-sized terminals on each end, so tomorrow I’m going to have to cut one lead in half and solder larger terminals onto the cut end. And my soldering is rubbish too.

I have to say that I’m not at all impressed with this company

With the snow, I lit the fire again tonight and made a mega-aubergine-and-kidney-bean whatsit. There’s enough in there for four days as usual and tonight’s helping tasted really nice. Somehow, cooking in the oven tastes so much better.

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