Tag Archives: batteries

Friday 28th July 2017 – NOW HERE’S A FIRST!

Yes, I’ve been for a walk in the dark.

In fact, I’d just finished tea when Rosemary telephoned me. And with chatting about this and that, and all things considered, it was about 22:15 when we hung up.

A couple of weeks ago, that would have been broad daylight. But not so tonight. Cold, cloudy, windy – and dark! I can’t wait for it to be dark at a sensible hour so that I can have an hour outside with the new camera and see just how good its much-vaunted “low light” facility might be.

And Rosemary is just as bewildered as I am about what is happening in the UK right now. But don’t get me started on politics. I vowed that I would avoid them in this reincarnation of the blog.

I’d had a really good night’s sleep too. out like a light without a care in the world. And off on a mega-ramble too that was so exciting that I reached for the dictaphone to record it. And by the time that I’d put my hand upon the aforementioned, every single thought about where I’d been had completely evaporated.

Something that’s happening far too often these days.

After breakfast and a nice shower, I went off to the shops. And apart from a pack of button-cell batteries on offer in LIDL (I remember thinking when I had the remote-control issues the other day that I didn’t have any of those) I bought nothing exciting at all.

My trip – just to LIDL and LeClerc, came to a mere €23:00 and I was back here for 11:00.

But I do like the frozen vegetables in LeClerc, and when I come back, I’ll be buying a small freezer. The choice is endless and won’t that improve my diet!

Frozen veg is generally fresher than fresh veg, and you have much more choice – living alone means that you can only buy small quantities, and they don’t do small quantities of leeks, sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, that kind of thing.

And diesel – down to €1:10 at LeClerc – and queues a mile long too.

Lunch was on the wall as usual in the uncertain weather, and the Woman With The Dog came to say hello. As I said, people are noticing me now. I’m not sure whether that is a good or bad thing.

Apart from that, I’ve been on the blog doing the Canada 2012 updating. It’s not easy and I’ve only managed to unravel two pages – this one and this one – so far.

But never mind the slow progress – that’s two more pages than were done yesterday so we’re heading in the right direction.

The big question is though – will I finish this rewriting, or will the rewriting finish me?

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Friday 16th October 2015 – I WENT TO BED …

… at 22:00 last night. And so I didn’t wake up until 12:00 midday today. And I would probably have still been in bed even now had I remembered to switch off the Canadian telephone last night so the alarm wouldn’t go off at 06:00 Quebec time (12:00 French time).

By the time I’d finished having a shower and a shave and a good soak, Liz was back from work and so I had breakfast followed by a bowl of Liz’s vegan soup, and then Terry brought me home.

The jungle has taken over as you might expect, and so finding the house was an adventure. But that wasn’t really what annoyed me.

You remember that just before I went away to Canada I had that pile of scrap on my yard that needed the head gasket changed. It leaked oil all over the concrete pan that we did last summer, and I had asked the owner of that Hyundai to come along and clean it off while I was away.

Of course, it goes without saying that the amount of time that I had spent oh his car, and how much I had put myself out for him with what I did, he couldn’t be bothered to come along and clean it off. And now my concrete is thoroughly ruined.

I’ll tell you something – and that is the that this is the last time that I am EVER going to put myself out for anyone. No-one else’s car is going to come onto my concrete and if anyone else wants any work doing on a car then they can whistle.

Just one exception for this of course. Liz and Terry have done me a great service in all the years that they’ve been living here and their vehicles are more-than-welcome to come here. And that reminds me – I need to buy an engine crane. I’ve promised myself that for years and I’ve a feeling that one is going to become necessary around here in the immediate future.

The house is freezing. It’s 9°C in the bedroom and just 11.3°C in the attic. And a mouse has managed to enter the attic and so it (the attic, not the mouse) needs a good cleaning and disinfecting. That has really dismayed me.

But the positive side of all of this is that, in contrast to last year, the batteries are fully charged and the fridge, that I had plugged into the overcharge circuit, was running quite nicely. All of this despite the miserable weather that we were having. But I dunno what has gone on here while I was away but something is lurking about in the fridge so I need to clean that. It looks like Quatermass’s Experiment in there.

So I cleaned off the attic a little and sat up here freezing, resisting the temptation to light the fire. Eventually, after chatting to someone on the laptop for ages, I decided to go to bed. Freezing in the bedroom of course, and so decided to slip into bed and undress under the covers as I warmed up.

Despite the cold, it was lovely to be back in my own comfortable bed and I wasn’t awake long enough to undress. I just went right out and that was that.

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Friday 12th December 2014 – AT 20:30 THIS EVENING …

… I was still outside working. And that’s something of a record, especially for winter when I usually knock off at 18:00.

The reason for this is that I’d finished my work on the front panel of the control board for the barn by 17:00 and as things can only be disconnected and disconnected when there’s no solar energy being received, I decided to attack it then and there.

It wasn’t easy either, helped by my losing everything that I needed, not finding what I was looking for, dropping everything else on the floor, finding that the holes in some of the terminals are the wrong size, finding that some of the cables that I cut aren’t long enough. And that was just for a start. There was much more as well.

Eventually, everything was installed and fitted, and most things seem to work. One or two things, however, aren’t doing what they should do, and I’ll have to have a closer look at them on Monday afternoon. But it’s been worth it all, and it’s really nice to have 12.8 volts in the barn late at night – this is an unusual experience.

Mind you, i’ll probably wake up tomorrow and find that the barn has burnt down.

Talking of waking up, I actually, much to my surprise, had a decent night’s sleep for a change especially as I had gone for an early night too. I slept right through until the alarm sounded at 07:30.

And I’d been on my travels too during the night. I was in a town near Lindau in Bavaria, and I’d met up with one of the women whom I’d met in Greece last year. She had found some rooms for us in a hotel in the town nearby, at €48:00, and although the hotel wasn’t too bad, she took me to see some hotels that she had rejected – at €18:00 per night – and these looked so much better than the one that we had reserved. I felt extremely disappointed about that, that was for sure.

While I was in my hotel room, I was trying to chat on the internet to a friend of mine but each time I switched on the chat program, it defaulted to one particular person, and that wasn’t the person with whom I wanted to chat. And I couldn’t remember how to switch back to the general chat so that I could see if the person with whom I wanted to speak was on line.

From there, I was wondering around and met a young woman with a child aged about 6 or 7. This woman had black curly hair, I remember, and she was planning on wearing a black dress and shoes to a dinner to which she had been invited. I suggested white tights too, and the little girl was all so enthusiastic.

All of this was so exciting that when the alarm went off, I turned it off and went straight back to sleep, and found myself exactly where I had been when the alarm had gone off. That’s not something that happens often.

But I really do wish that my life during the day is exciting as what goes on in my head during the night when I’m on my travels.

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Friday 21st November 2014 – AFTER MY EXERTIONS …

… yesterday, I planned to have a lie-in this morning. Consequently I switched off all of the alarms and dug myself in for a long siege. And if I ever lay my hands on that telesales operator who rang me up at 09:15, she will need new dentures and a pair of crutches. I was not in the least amused.

I had a leisurely breakfast, boiling the water up here for my coffee again, And then I didn’t do too much until Sophie the boulangère came with my bread, and we had an interesting chat for a while.

After lunch, I was trying hard to make up my mind to go out and work when the farmer came down with his cattle. It’s very late in the season for him to put his cattle out, but nevertheless he was here all the same. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of weeks ago I lit a garden fire in the lane and the pile of ash was still there. Consequently I had to spend a quick half an hour shovelling the ashes away so that his cattle could pass by.

It always happens like this.

victron 110 amp renewable energy gel batteries les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter that I started to unload the new batteries. While they aren’t as big as the other ones that I have been moving around just recently, they are still huge and heavy. And there’s something of a problem with them. The terminalsare not across one end of the battery, but down one of the long sides. This means that they won’t go into the battery cupboard as I had intended, and the only way that I can put them in is groups of three – so either 3, 6 or 9 and here I am with 8. Mind you, they are 110-amphour batteries, not 100-amphour ones.

6 of the batteries are now fitted in place and connected together. That was when I ran out of time and also out of strength – moving those six was bad enough. On Monday I’ll make a start on the control board for the wiring in the barn.

I went to Intermarche when I knocked off work, and finished off my shopping. 25 minutes it takes from here to Pionsat to do my shopping and then to go back home. And the prices aren’t so bad when you consider the saving in fuel and time. I bouhgt myself another kilo of grapes, and I’ve just sat here and ate them. I love grapes, especially at this time of year when they are very ripe and very sweet. I might even go back to Pionsat tomorrow and buy some more.

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Thursday 20th November 2014 – I’VE BEEN TO PARIS TODAY

And Terry came with me too.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have recently bought some huge 200 amp-hour batteries for my solar system here and I’ve been rebuilding the battery box and I’ve gradually been installing them one by one as the battery box takes shape.

I’ve been so impressed with these as you know – almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin. But anyway, my wholesaler sent me a circular the other day to tell me that they were having yet another battery sale. The price for the 100 amp-hour batteries was extremely interesting and my ears pricked up, especially as the batteries in the barn are struggling along on their last legs as you know.

Having a decent secondary solar system in the barn is of course very advantageous for many reasons, and so I bit the bullet and placed an order.

There is also a new range of data loggers that look much better than anything that I have around here and so I ordered two of those so that I can give them a whirl.

I would have had all of this delivered, except that the company is now starting to sell solar water heaters and they had an exhibition model on display. This is what I want for here, and Terry is very interested too, and so we decided that we would go, pick up my batteries and so on, and have a lengthy chat about solar water heating.

And so at 06:00 Terry phoned me up to wake me, and at 06:45 we were on the road to Paris.

We arrived on the edge of Paris at about 10:00 and then spent 90 minutes covering a distance of just 20kms to our destination. Not traffic queues and not roadworks either, but my satnav has a fetish with the A86 autoroute. No problm with that in itself, but there’s a height limit of 2 metres on that road, and Caliburn is 2.17 metres. Every road that we took brought us back to the A86.

After a wile I gave up, headed for the centre of Paris and then the road out underneath La Defense. But of course the sat-nav can’t pick up a signal in the La Defense tunnel and so I missed the exit. It was certainly not my lucky day today.

Eventually we arrived and spent a good hour or so there. And the upshot was that I have now come home with a solar hot water system. I couldn’t miss out at this price, even if I don’t have any running water yet.

On the way home, I took a different way and of course in the end after much binding in the marsh, we came to the A86 – not once but three times. This was totally beyond a joke and so I headed west on the A14 to Le Havre and came home via Rambouillet. And if that wasn’t enough, I hit a part of the kerb with a hell of a whack at some speed and I’ve smashed a wheel trim (and probably a few other things too)

The rest of the journey was incident-free but we did come home via Brico Depot in Montlucon, where I bought the insulation for the battery box and a few other things, and then the LeClerc for a bit of shopping.

So, what a day! Nearly 900kms and spending all that money but my renewable energy system will leap ahead in spades if all of this works out.

But I do need to work out this route. It’s doing my head in.

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Wednesday 19th November 2014 – AND YET ANOTHER …

… visitor today. I really don’t understand why it is that I’m so popular.

It was Simon’s turn to pay me a visit. His wife is an estate agent and she has just sold a house to someone. The previous owner of the property was an English couple and it seems that they have left an old van behind on the property and the new owner wants it to be taken away.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I seem to spend a great deal of my time towing vehicles around and recovering vehicles from all kinds of places. And anyone who has lingered around for any great length of time will know that I’ve always been up to no good with old abandoned vehicles in one way or another.

But an old van! Of course, Thoughts about a Citroen “H” or a Peugeout D4A immediately sprung to my mind, but in fact it’s an old RHD Ford Transit. But never mind – it will have plenty of company here. After all, there are two other old Frod Transits around here, and that’s not counting Caliburn. I’ll have a play with it and if all else fails, I’ll break it for spares and weigh in the body shell.

So Simon was here for ages this morning and we had quite a lengthy chat. There’s asomething bubbling away underneath the surface here, and he’s noticed it too. I thought that it wasn’t just me.

This afternoon I had some paperwork and a few phone calls to make, and then I finally started work. I’ve rearranged the battery box that I built and I added another new battery in there. That’s now 1300 amp-hours worth of batteries. I need to take out the 5 old Hawker batteries and add in the other four new batteries, but in order to do that, I need to replace the insulation with something more substantial. This means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot.

No fire tonight either.

The temperature here dropped down to 14.4°C during the night but climbed back up to 16.8°C today – helped no doubt by me using the gas stove that I brought up here last night to boil the water for my coffee.

But I was right to light the fire last night. The temperature outside dropped down to 2.4°C last night and that’s the coldest night that we’ve had in this latter part of the year. Winter is just around the corner.

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Tuesday 11th November 2014 – BANK HOLIDAY TODAY …

… and so I had a lie-in until all of 09:25.

And then I spent all day working on the laptop and that was all that I did today. I didn’t even cook anything for tea. The only piece of excitement was Terry phoning me up.

But one thing that I have noticed relates to these new batteries. I had the inverter running for 14 hours today and at the end of the day, there were 12.6 volts in the battery bank. I’ve never had that with any of the old batteries that were here. And don’t forget that at the moment there are only three of the large batteries there out of the 8 that I bought, together with 5 of the small older Hawker batteries. I’m quite looking forward to having all of the 8 big new batteries in place.

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Wednesday 5th November 2014 – ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE DAYS …

… where things don’t go according to plan. And I need to have this place finished for my guests too.

This morning though, it all started quite well, although it might not sound like it.

The last few weeks I’ve noticed that the battery bank hasn’t been charging as quickly as it ought to be, and discharging quicker than it ought to. Furthermore, the overall charge has been slowly dropping overnight when nothing has been running.

I had a look inside the battery box and, sure enough, another one of these Hawker batteries has burst. And again, just as you might think, it’s the one that is at the input/output end of the battery bank. The burst was causing the battery to overheat and that was where all of the power from the battery bank was going.

It was therefore time to bite the bullet and start to install the new batteries that I bought a while ago – those enormous 200 amp-hour batteries that I can hardly lift up. This involved expanding the base of the battery box, and I’s started on that a while ago, but hadn’t finished. Nevertheless, by rearranging the surviving Hawker batteries and knocking out three of the breeze blocks that form part of the side of the battery box, I could fit three of the large batteries.

So that is what I spent all of this morning doing – reorganising the battery box so that I could fit the three large batteries in. And moving the three batteries from the barn to the house was quite something. lifting 58kgs from a standing start is one thing – actually carrying it is quite something else.

It involved a very late lunch, and with tools and rubbish and all kinds of things littering the nice, clean and tidy floor from yesterday.

Just as I had finished my very late lunch and about to go and tidy up everything, the phone rang. Someone has suffered a calamity and needs my urgent attention. And this event has occurred in Rouen, no less. Keen readers of this rubbish will recall that I had to go on a breakdown to Rouen just before I went off the Canada, and now I need to go back. I have to be there for round about 06:30 tomorrow morning and so this means that I need to set off round about now and find a place to settle down somewhere on the outskirts of the town ready for things to happen.

So much for my nice, tidy living room floor – and my plans to have both myself and the house all nice, clean and tidy for my visitors. And that reminds me – I wasn’t able to contact them to tell them what was going on and so I’ve been leaving messages all over the place. I hope that they will find at least one of them.

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Saturday 3rd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN A LITTLE PREMATURE …

… about these batteries, so it seems. The problem has been that it’s not been quite dark when I’ve taken the readings and when I’ve been out the next morning to check, the sun has been up for an hour or two, so the voltage reading is being distorted by the amount of energy being received.

However, it’s possible to program the charge controller to show Minimum Volts, and that’s what I’ve done. And that reading isn’t anything like what I was hoping it to be. But the barn is lit by a few of these 1-watt LED lighting strips and they are plenty bright enough even with a lower-than-expected voltage so no harm is being done. The batteries are certainly good enough to power them and I don’t need anthing more than that for the time being.

So apart from that, what else?

I had a late night last night and so it was a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning. But I did, and at a reasonably-respectable time too.

And I worked on the web site too and uploaded a pile of pages – the effort of the last couple of weeks on the North Shore of the St Lawrence River. If you go to this page and follow all of the links, you’ll see the … gulp … 18 pages that I’ve uploaded.

And I’m nowhere near the end quite yet either.

This afternoon I’ve been tidying up a little. That’s right – only a little. As you know, I’m off on my travels on Sunday night as I have a few things to attend to in Brussels. And for that I need to find a few papers and a Bank Card – hence the urgency.

Anyway, much of the stuff has been found and I can now head off tomorrow night in reasonable peace, once I’ve cleaned out Caliburn. The back of the van is in a desoerate state after having had all of that mess inside it.

So apart from that, not much else to tell you about. I haven’t done too much else.

What is a real shame though is that my little attic doesn’t look very much different after my tidying-up session, despite the two bags of rubbish that I took out. All of this is very depressing.

And the glorious, clear skies that the weathermen promised us today. Ptah!! That’s very depressing too!

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Thursday 1st May 2014 – THIS BLASTED WEATHER …

… is getting on my wick; Non-stop rain again for the I don’t know how manyth consecutive days. 7.5mm today. Well over a week since I last saw the sun and yesterday, I had about as much solar energy as I would get in a wet winter weekend in Weymouth.

On the positive side, though, the two batteries that I put in the barn seem to have sprung into life. We had a little more solar energy today and they have not only charged themselves up but they seem to be holding the charge too. That’s a little relief and means that I’m not so rushed about doing the new floor in downstairs and installing the mega-batteries.

Still, that’s a job that is high on my list for when I come back here.

Apart from that, I had a nice early night last night and when I woke up – to the sunshine – I thought that this would be a good day. I lay in bed for ages reflecting on this and that and then decided to haul myself out of bed as it was late enough.

This was when I found – to my chagrin – that it was just 07:15 – even earlier than if I had set the alarm. That filled me full of gloom, I can tell you.

With it being Bank Holiday I’ve not done a tap of work. i’ve been up here all day working on my website and slowly pulling myself along the North Shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. I’ve no idea whan I’ll reach the end, but then I’ll have plenty more stuff to be dealing with.

Not only that, I’m making plans for my annual trip to Canada. Looks like I’ll be going as usual round about the end of August and I’ll try to fit in another trip around the Trans-Labrador Highway if I can. Lots of stuff that I missed out on my first trip that I need to fill in.

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Wednesday 30 April 2014 – POOR CALIBURN!

He’s a bit down on his springs at tha moment.

And that’s hardly surprising either because inside there are 29 industrial batteries and about 2 cubic metres of aluminium – that being the bodywork off the 2 caravans that I scrapped here a few years ago.

I rang up the metal factors at St Ours this morning and they are interested in it all and so that’s where it’s all going on Friday afternoon.

Once I’d finished the website work I went off and started to round up the batteries. And then I had to check them over. There were three or four that still had something left in them and so I’ve done some battery-swapping in the barn. That’s left me with a decent battery that I’ve fitted in Caliburn to work off the solar panel on the roof rack, and that will come in handy.

All the rest have gone into the back.

Once I’d done that I started to look for the aluminium. And that wasn’t easy either as that was all over the place too with all kinds of weeds and trees growing through it. But I’ve gathered up as much as I could find (which was certainly more than I thought that I had) and that’s all loaded up too.

The local farmer with the wind turbines came round too. He’s decided to cut his losses and sell them if he can. I said I’d make certain enquiries.

All of that while it was pouring down with rain. 16mm we had today, most of it down the back of my neck.

And now I’m cold and wet, just like the weather. I’m going to have an early night now and it’s Bank Holiday tomorrow so no alarm clocks for me!

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Thursday 23rd January 2014 – I FINALLY MANAGED …

… to pick up Cécile’s letter this morning, after all these weeks.

And so seeing as how I was going to have a morning out, I decided to make the most of it, especially as it was once again p155ing down.

First stop was the Mairie. I need a form to say that I’m still alive (and judging by the smell around here, you would be excused for wondering) and the best person to do that is the Mayor of the village. They have a nice big and official-looking stamp that gives a really impressive look to any kind of document.

Then off to Cécile’s. I need to put an accompanying letter with this form and so I typed one out last night and saved it onto a memory stick. Also, Cécile sent me an authorisation to collect her mail, and so both of these needed printing. I have three printers here – one stopped working when it fell off the desk, the second only prints in blue and only when it feels like it, and the third one, that I rescued from Marianne’s, that ran out of ink on me.

So round to Cécile’s and her printer and – guess what?

Quite right. Hers ran out of ink too but there’s an override button on it and so we ended up with documants in light grey ink.

Nevertheless, the authorisation was accepted at the Post Office and I collected the letter. And then off to Pionsat and the Post Office there. That’s a real Post Office and so I posted my letter and form, and also a packet for Malou. When I was stuck in Brussels with no ‘phone charger for the old Nokia, she very kindly sent me one. And she’s a big fan of Edith Piaf and Marianne had a German version of the film La Vie En Rose. Malou speaks German fluently, and so that’s now on its way to Luxembourg.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, that was the morning gone. And so I’ve spent all of the afternoon firstly, picking up the bits of wood from the construction project to use as firelighters, and then sweeping up the sawdust for the composting toilet. It’s impressive that I can actually do that.

Secondly, I started to load up the new shelves. The little cheap lightweight shelf unit that I put in the downstairs room as a temporary measure, that’s now completely empty. There’s a pile of stuff gone out of the barn onto the new shelves, and a pile of stuff out of the verandah has followed it. And, much to my surprise, the shelves aren’t even half-full. There’s tons of room for more stuff.

This evening, seeing as I was in a contemplative frame of mind, I watched The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah rather prolongs the violence unnecessarily, I reckon, but apart from that, it is one of the most magnificent films that has ever been made and the performances of William Holden and Ernest Borgnine have no parallel in anything that I have seen elsewhere. It’s a film that is in my Top 5 Films of All Time and quite rightly so.

So what’s the plan for tomorrow then?

When I dug out the flooring to put in a large battery box, I made the box the size to suit the Hawker batteries that I use. However, one or two of them are starting to creak a little and I can no longer obtain the replacements, and so I bought a while ago some massive 200 amp-hour batteries.

The battery box isn’t big enough to take them and so I’m going to be making a start on digging out some more flooring and enlarging the box.

And why 200 amp-hour batteries? Why not go for anything bigger? The answer to that is a simple question of logistics. I can just about manage to pick up a 200 amp-hour battery on my own. Anything bigger and it will be beyond the realms of possibility, and I have long-since given up the idea of doing anything that I’m not able to do on my own.

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Thursday 20th December 2012 – WELL, FOLKS …

… I’m feeling a little better today.

I can cough without feeling that I have that piece of sandpaper stuck down my throat, although coughing does make my ribs ache. All I need to do now is to stop this runny nose before I run out of kitchen roll.

Apart from that, I’ve not been doing much. Spending an hour or two every so often writing the radio programmes – it’s difficult to concentrate to write a whole stream of stuff, and reading a few books.

But you’ll be pleased (or maybe disappointed) to learn that I’ve not had any interesting dreams just now these last few days.

I’ve also had a few phone calls from friends – such as Liz, Marianne and Rosemary, and that’s nice too. Cheers me up no end.

I hope that I’ll be feeling better by Saturday though because I have to go out and do some shopping. Must get the sprouts in for Christmas

And talking of Christmas and Rosemary, I forgot to mention that I’m still eating lettuce out of the garden. Yes – I built up a raised bed with some old planks and laid an old caravan window across the top.

That’s kept the weather out and while the leaves are quite small, they are still there and quite edible. That’s something of a surprise, especially with the horrendous weather that we’ve had.

We’ve had seven consecutive days of rain and since I’ve been back (2 weeks) we’ve only had one day of sunshine. I wish that the weather would improve because I could do with recharging my batteries some day soon – and those of the solar energy systems too

No wonder I’m all sad, depressed and miserable with all of this.

Talk about being under the weather – there’s a lot of weather to be under right now 

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Wednesday 10th October 2012 – AND SO AFTER …

… a really early night I was awoken at 05:00 by a torrential rainstorm.

Ahh well – I just can’t win.

Anyway we had more of the same this morning, but even so, I had a little job to do outside.

There are two banks of solar panels on the barn – one that keeps the good batteries in charge, powered by the solar panels on the end wall of the barn, and the other one which powers everything in there, powered by the solar panels on the roof of the Luton Transit.

That second bank uses some second-hand batteries that I bought in 2004 and which have done sterling service, but recently they have been sliding away into oblivion – not that I’m surprised. I don’t have a clue how old they are

I’ve bought some huge batteries for the house, and the plan is to move the ones currently in the house to replace those that are packing up.

Anyway, what with one thing and another I’m a long way from that point yet, and the batteries in the barn have now finally given up the ghost – they were showing 6.53 volts this morning.

However, there’s another lot of batteries around here – a job lot that I bought for peanuts in 2008 and which never seemed to do what they were supposed to do, and so I wrote them off.

But having a ferret around with a voltmeter, there were three that were still showing 10 volts, which, considering that they have had no charge at all since 2009, is pretty good going, I reckon.

Anyway, while 10 volts isn’t much to write home about, it’s far, far better than 6.53 volts so I changed the batteries over and I now have those three working the barn.

With the charge that they had received during the afternoon, I noticed tonight at 22:00 that the batteries were registering 10.55 volts. I’ll be curious to see what they drop down to in the early morning (the power meter has a “minimum volts” recorder).

I’ll be even more interested to see what they will be at tomorrow night after a full day’s charge.

Later on, I carried on clearing the hardstanding and doing a few running repairs on stuff that was on there and needing attention.

That went on until about 18:00 when we had the downpour to end all downpours (altogether, 10mm fell today) and so I decamped to the barn where, under the light of the LED strip lights, that function impressively well at 10.55 volts, I did some tidying up, just for a change.

Having tripped over something on the floor in the verandah this evening and dropped a load of rice everywhere, I’ve decided that tomorrow I’ll strip out the verandah.

Tons of stuff in there that I don’t need, and seeing as I’ll be on my travels on Friday I can sling it all in Caliburn tomorrow and drop it off at the dechetterie while I’m out.

-2

Tuesday 9th October 2012 – I’M TRYING …

… to think what I did today.

And it took me a while to do that. Thinking is not my strong point, especially at this time of night.

One thing that I have done is to put my back out. I had to move 8 batteries today – 200 amp-hour ones and each one weighing 60kgs. They are in boxes so I couldn’t get at the handles, and lifting them off the ground into the wheelbarrow was not a good idea.

An even worse idea was taking them out of the wheelbarrow and stacking them in the barn., but I’m glad that I did fix the wheelbarrow the other day otherwise I would have been in real difficulties.

This morning was exciting though. Someone has ordered a pile of photos from me.

A few years ago, knowing that a famous football ground in North Wales was going to be demolished, I wandered around there photographing everything that there was to photograph.

And sure enough, as I expected, someone has decided to write a book about the history of the ground and has seen my photos on the internet. Consequently, I spent all morning editing and enhancing the images.

This afternoon, apart from moving the batteries, I moved a few other things too, but a torrential rainstorm, as predicted, put a stop to that.

Anyway, that gave me the opportunity to finish painting the walls of the cupboard on the 1st floor and that’s now looking quite good.

Fitting the flooring should take about an hour or so, and then I need to make the shelves. That will be a big boost to everything around here when that is finished.

-3