Tag Archives: balloon frame building

Friday 13th May 2011 – It’s been a long time …

breaking dawn sunrise les guis virlet puy de dome france.. since I’ve had one of these. It was one of those rare nights that they call a nuit blanche around here where I didn’t go to sleep at all. And I’m not quite sure why either, because I had a busy day yesterday too.

And so I sat in the window, reading a book to pass the time and at approximately 04:45 the sun started to come up, so I took a photo of the breaking dawn. I then went back to reading until breakfast time.

It’s been absolutely years since I’ve had one of those.

Today I’ve spent most of the afternoon on the phone. Katherine has sent a parcel back from Canada and it’s gone missing. The Canadian Postal Service’s website is useless and the telephone system is one of those digitalised ones where it is not possible to speak to a human, and it tells you nothing that the website doesn’t tell you.

Of course, I’m not one to take that kind of thing lying down and after many struggles I ended up speaking to the Personal Assistant of Rob Merrifield, who is the Canadian Government Minister for Posts and Telecommunications. We had a lengthy chat and this evening I’ve received a mail from her to say that someone from the Canadian Postal Service will be in touch with me.

We shall see, of course, because I have heard all of this before, but the only way to deal with incompetence and obfuscation is to go to the top. Once a few Government ministers have had their ears bent by a few dissatisfied customers, things might change.

Mind you, I’m not holding my breath. It’s not like the time that the lavatory attendants closed the public conveniences on Crewe Bus Station, to the inconvenience of everyone. But I didn’t take it lying down – I stood up and went over their heads.

home made balloon frame greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceNow that I’ve been to the sawmill at St Gervais d’Auvergne I can crack on with the balloon frame greenhouse and I spent the rest of the day cutting the wood ready for assembling the framework.

It’s coming on quite nicely now, and the net job will be to give it a couple of coats of the LIDL wood treatment, but that’s not for today.

So after finishing off the framework for the greenhouse I came in and started tidying up. I have a caller tomorrow – someone who wants to sell me some solar panels so that I can sell electricity to the EDF. I hate these canvassers.

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Thursday 12th May 2011 – How long is it…

citroen wood burning gas lorry st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… since I featured an old vehicle on my blog? I can’t remember now but it may well have been about a year ago, and it might have been a Citroen lorry. And so here’s another old Citroen lorry that I saw on Thursday.

Now despite the fact that it’s a rare-enough lorry as it is, this vehicle is practically unique and there probably won’t be another one quite like this anywhere that would be still running on the road.

citroen wood burning gas lorry st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceDo you see what looks like a boiler at the side behind the cab? That had me puzzled for quite a while and I thought at first that it was a tar-spreader.

I ruled that out though because the jets are in front of the truck, meaning that to do its spreading it would have to travel in reverse while it was working and that wouldn’t be very likely.

citroen wood burning gas lorry st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceAnd then the penny dropped. We are at a sawmill, aren’t we? Yes, and what this is is a lorry that runs on wood-gas – like they did in the war when there was no petrol. And he was here to fuel up with his wood chippings because, astonishingly as it might seem, he still runs it on wood-gas.

The owner had gone off to chat with his friends otherwise I probably would have been still there now chatting to him. But it’s a good job that I had to go out – I would have missed this lorry otherwise.

home made balloon frame greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter the customary couple of hours on the web pages I went out and carried on with the framework for the greenhouse, but I didn’t have enough chevrons. In fact, doing a considerable bit of mix-and-match, I was just 10 cms short.

So after lunch I had a good root around here, sorted out a pile of stuff for the dechetterie at Pionsat (there were four dustbins full of tin cans), went down there to dispose of it, and then went to the sawmill at St Gervais for some wood.

And it was at the sawmill that I saw the lorry.

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Wednesday 11th May 2011 – That blasted hornet …

… flew into my attic at 06:45 this morning. GRRRRRRR. I’m not standing for that and after a while when it settled on the floor I dropped an atlas on top of it. After a few minutes it staggered into the air a nd staggered out ouf the window, which I then closed and went back to bed. And I’ll close them again tonight when I go to bed. I’m not having this again.

home made balloon frame greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd after being on the computer I went to hunt down some old demi-chevrons that I had lying around and made one of the sides of the greenhouse. This is how it will look, but with some diagonal sloping facings from back to front.

You’ll see that it’s divided into a front and back section. The front sction is for a window and the rear will have a door in it.

Building the four sides like this, fitting them together and then installing the windows is how I intend to do it, but if you imagine that instead of fitting windows I were to clad it with OSB and then put overlapping thin planks horizontally over the OSB, then that’s how you build a North American balloon-framed house.

Once you master the technique you can build anything out of it. I started off by building the beichstuhl as a balloon-frame and then graduated to building the verandah. After the greenhouse, I’m going to build a garden shed and then I might even graduate onto a double garage. You never know.

Late this afternoon we had clouds – and this evening there was some rain. I thought at first that we might even have an amount of rain worth collecting but it didn’t last long. I’ve given up worrying about the rain anyway – things will just have to take care of themselves.

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Tuesday 19th April 2011 – I’ve been in the garden again this afternoon.

This time though it’s the heavy engineering stuff.

You may remember that between the greenhouse and the mega-cloche was a patch of land covered by a tarpaulin – where I was going to erect the aluminium greenhouse. But following a donation by Simon of the old windows from his workshop, I changed my plans.

I promised the aluminium greenhouse to Liz and Terry and I was planning to build a balloon-framed structure that I could fit the windows into.

digging base for greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnyway, to cut a long story short, this afternoon I cleaned up all of the rubbish that had accumulated there, removed the bits of aluminium greenhouse, rolled up the tarp and set to digging out a square trench.

With the land sloping downhill quite steeply there, I’ve had to dig out so that the square trench is more-or-less level, and I’m setting a row of breeze blocks into the soil there – the purpose of those being to make some kind of horizontal level and keep the wooden frame of the greenhouse out of the damp soil.

Once I’ve finished the breeze blocks I can make a start on building the framework for the greenhouse. The back wall will be covered in the cheap tongue and grooving that is on sale at Brico Depot – I’ve tons of that. The roof will be plastic corrugated sheeting like the verandah, although I’ll invent a system of roof openings to allow the air to circulate, and I’ll build a door for the uphill side. Everything else will be Simon’s windows.

This morning though Liz and I were in the recording studio at Radio Tartasse doing our programmes for the month of May. And Henri, the old guy who helps out there, had a chat with me about the Tacot – the old narrow-gauge railway that used to run from the lime kilns at Marcillat to the steelworks at Commentry. He showed me on the map the traces of the old line, and said that next month he would bring me all of the paperwork that he has on it, including a book on the subject.

Won’t that be exciting?

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Friday 14th May 2010 – Tomorrow, if I remember,

salvaged hardwood windows les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ll post a photo of a whole pile of wooden windows. They are about 6 feet tall and about 18 inches wide – something like that, and there’s probably a dozen of them. They were in Simon’s house when he bought them and he ripped them out for double glazing and asked if anyone would like to take them away.

As you know, in my drive for self-sufficiency I’m growing my own food (assuming that this perishing weather relents and we have some decent late-spring weather) and a greenhouse is an essential. I have the cheap little LIDL plastic one and someone gave me a complete aluminium greenhouse but minus all the glass. However a big pile of wooden windows fitted into a frame like an American balloon house (and how I built my verandah) and stood on breeze blocks and that’s an admirable greenhouse, especially as I can make it to measure.

And see – I did remember the photo!

My day of rest following yesterday’s exertions was broken in the afternoon as Terry decided to try his hand at driving his van. We went round to the Lady from Luxembourg who is looking for a handyman and I introduced them to each other. She was impressed with the size of Terry’s equipment and has signed him on, which is good news for Terry. He’s registered himself with the French authorities as a handyman and so now he needs some clients.

Once that was out of the way we went to Mazan to see Simon. He’s looking for a digger to dig the hole for his septic tank and I know a man (Bernard, the President of the Pionsat football club) who just happens to have one. Simon was out though, but his windows were in and he did say that I could have them, and there were two of us with Terry’s big van (which was empty). And so the rest is history.

Shopping at St Eloy les Mines was boring – there was nothing of note – and that was my day today.

Tomorrow the removal has been put back until 10:00. It seems that I’m not the only one who doesn’t recognise the existence of 09:00 on a weekend morning.

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