Tag Archives: air vent

Friday 31st July 2015 – I’M LOSING MY GRIP!

I’ve done something really silly today and I’m still bewildered as to how I managed it.

I was busy doing some electrical wiring when I glanced at the clock.

18:15! Blimey! The shops will be shut in 75 minutes!

So I quickly changed my clothes, leapt into Caliburn and head for the hi … errr … St Eloy.

The road down the hill from Montaigut was packed with traffic and I did wonder what it was all doing at that time of evening. But on the other hand, LIDL and Carrefour were comparatively empty. LIDL did have some 12-volt LED bulbs (it doesn’t now, of course) and Carrefour had some soya deluxe desserts reduced on special offer.

I picked up some cash ready for my voyage in 2 weeks time, and then drove home.

While I was organising a few things the stop-work alarm went off. 19:00.

What?

Yes, 19:00. It appears that it wasn’t 18:15 when I shot of to St Eloy but actually … errr … 17:15. D’ohhh!

I blame last night, though. I couldn’t sleep and I was still wide-awake and working on the laptop at 03:30. And with an alarm at 07:30, no wonder I’ve been feeling rather feeble today.

I had the usual sessions on the laptop and then after lunch, stripped off all of the masking from the door, fitted the air vents and wired in the socket at the head of the stairs on the landing so that I can plug the livebox in there. And that was where I was at.

But the air vents looks good in the door. The idea is that warm air heading up the stairs (once I finally have the fire going downstairs, whenever that might be) will go in through the vent at the bottom of the door, rise up through the shower room and out through the air vent that you might remember me drilling out all that time a couple of years ago. And that will stop condensation building up too.

So tomorrow, if the parts for this Hyundai haven’t come, I’m sure I’ll find some other things to do around the house. But do you realise – in 2 weeks time, I won’t be here?

But then again, I’m not all here now judging by my performance this evening, am I?

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Friday 12th July 2013 – IT’S POETS DAY AGAIN

And even though I’m allowed to pi … errr … push off early because tomorrow is Saturday, “early” was something like 19:30.

I don’t know why it is, but even though I’m working from about 12:00 until knocking-off, with a break for lunch, I don’t feel like I’m wasting any time at all.

It’s still taking forever to advance and I feel that I ought to be going twice as quickly as I am.

This afternoon’s work involved fixing in the air pipe from the inside, trimming it back and fitting the bell housing. You may wonder why I’m fitting a bell housing, but the answer to that is that the smallest bathroom ventilator fan that I could find has a 125mm diameter, whereas a length of 125mm pipe wouldn’t fit down the hole that I made in the wall. The bell-housing will have to be cut back too but not until the tiling is done – it needs to be cut flush with the tiling.

air vent space blanket insulation plasterboard shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceFrom there, I fitted all of the space blanket insulation to the bathroom wall and then fitted all of the counter-battening to hold it in place and to make the air-gap.

Next task was to cut a length of plasterboard to fit in the corner over where the pipes are, drilling out some holes so that the pipes will pass through and into the room.

That took ages to do but, much to my surprise, the smaller pipe fitted perfectly through the hole with no juggling about at all, and the larger one would have done too had I cut it to the correct diameter.

But still, that’s now on, fitted, and screwed into position.

Final job was to run the wiring into the correct position along the ceiling and down the far wall.

That means now that I just need to cut 4 pieces of plasterboard, disconnect and then reconnect the wiring, fit the shower base and build the false wall that will be up against the shower base.

Doing that, I will have done all that I wanted to do, and I can measure up for the tiles.

Mind you, at this rate, it’ll take another 3 months, I reckon. I just don’t know where the time goes to.

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Wednesday 26th June 2013 – HERE’S ANOTHER …

electricity shower room stud wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… photo of the new temporary electrical circuit here at Pooh Corner.

At first glance it looks very much like a close-up of the previous image but in fact a closer perusal will reveal the addition of a pair of American 110-volt sockets.

As you might recall if you are a regular reader of this rubbish and have been following these pages quite closely since right back at the very beginning, my house is powered by solar panels and wind turbines creating energy at 12 volts DC.

As a result I spent an inordinate amount of my time sourcing 12-volt appliances, because I can run these directly off my supply without the need for a transformer.

That calls for a 12-volt DC circuit around the house and that means that the cables will be carrying a heavier amperage (500 watts at 230 volts is just over 2 amps, but 500 watts at 12 volts is just over 40 mps).

And the heavier the amperage, the thicker cable – I use 6mm cable instead of 1.5mm cable.

Because North America runs on 110 volts instead of the European 230 volts, then more than twice as much amperage is required to power an identical appliance, and so the USA uses thicker cable.

Consequently all of their plugs and sockets are much more suitable for my purposes when it comes to a 12-volt system as they are built to handle heavier amperage and thicker cable.

So that’s what I’ve been doing this afternoon, expanding the 12-volt power circuit into the shower room.

All that remains to do now is to fit the wiring for the light circuit, drill two large holes through the outside wall for the air exchange, and then I can wallop the rest of the plasterboard onto the walls.

This morning though, once the sun had climbed well into the sky, I doused the weeds outside the house with this radical weed-killer that Liz gave me. I’m not quite sure just how well its going to work but it has to be better than nothing at all. I really do hope that it lives up to expectations.

I had a little relaxation in the evening and watched a John Wayne film – Fort Apache. This is one of what is known as “The Cavalry Trilogy” and is famous for two particular reasons.

  1. it’s probably the earliest mainstream film to look at the American genocide – if not holocaust – of its ethnic citizens from the point of view of the victims
  2. most of the action takes place over ground which I know extremely well, because you might remember that back in 2002 I drove for a couple of days through the Utah Desert and in particular through Monument Valley and The Valley Of The Gods where most of the action takes place. I recognised almost all of the sites and it brought back some very happy memories.
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