Tag Archives: breeze blocks

Wednesday 11th June 2014 – THIS PLACE REALLY IS THE PITS

inspection pit les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd it is too. This is the start of the inspection pit just outside here.metal

You can see how it’s being built. There’s the plastic lining and the breeze blocks that will be built up, with the reinforcing metalwork in the corners.

You’ll also notice the sink in the far corner. Anyone who has ever had an inspextion pit will tell you that even in the best circumstances an insection pit will be infiltrated by water and we were forever baling out the pit at Davenport Avenue in Crewe. This way, the water will sink into the sink and I can pump it out with one of those rotary pumps that you fit on an electric drill.

So Terry came round this morning and we went stright off to Montlucon and Brico Depot. A pallet of 70 breeze blocks went into the trailer, along with another 18 breeze blocks with the round corner-holes for fitting the reinforcing metalwork. 88 breeze blocks – cost €105. And isn’t that an improvement on €2.14 plus VAT of 20% per block?

Back here we unloaded the trailer. And I’ll tell you this – the Kubota is a marvellous tool for this. No messing about – we left the van and trailer at the top of the hill and ran a shuttle with the Kubota and Sankey trailer. Three trips and we had everything exactly where we wanted it. That’s better than carrying the blocks one at a time down the hill. It’s a superb little thing.

We lined the pit with the plastic and fitted the sink, and then Terry mixed the concrete while I was down in the pit tamping down the concrete and fitting the breeze blocks. And once more, the solar panels powered the little concrete mixer to perfection. It’s amazing what I can do here with my solar panels.

That took us up to 18:00 and so Terry went home and I tidied up, and emptied the beihstuhl. We’ll put some more concrete in tomorrow and then build up the walls.

However, that depends on the weather. We’re having a thunderstorm right now.

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Thursday 18th October 2012 – IT’S BEEN BLOWING …

… a right old gale here today.

I’m having a world-record day for wind, that’s for sure. Even the wind turbine that is anchored to a plank and stuck up on a fence has recorded about 5 minutes of wind time, and that’s astonishing.

As for the others, the one on the barn has had over 17 hours and the one on the house has had over 21 hours.

And with the wind gusting to over 45mph the amount of energy created is phenomenal.

So much so that in the depths of darkest night I’ve actually seen the ammeters run backwards for the first time ever during the hours of darkness. 13.1 volts on the battery bank in the barn is unheard-of at 22:00.

Mind you, its playing havoc with everything else.

The bins with kindling in have blown over twice. I picked them up the first time but there’s no point in doing that again because they’ll just come down again.

It’s not raining, and not likely to either with this wind, and so they aren’t risking anything. Mind you my money is on a torrential rainstorm as soon as the winds drop.

I did mention yesterday that the weather is turning earlier than normal this year. I recall these windy conditions usually occurring in mid-November – in fact trying to watch a football match at St Avit back in 2008 one Sunday afternoon.

Yes, winter is definitely starting earlier this year.

I’ve also emptied half of the hard-standing now – I just need to clean out where the banks have collapsed and then I can do the next part of the job.

As for the bank itself, I’ve decided that I’ll go half-high with breeze blocks and then lay wire netting over the other half, pour cement over it so that it forms a kind-of ferro-cement and then lay stones over the top.

It should look quite pretty, but I’ve no idea how it will work out.

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Monday 15th October 2012 – I HAD AN …

… exciting, if unexpected afternoon out today.

Not this morning though.

I put in a good stint on the computer and wrote the match report for yesterday’s game at Pionsat, which is now on line.

It makes rather depressing reading but nevertheless it needed to be done.

And it took me all the way through to 14:30 – there was a lot to write.

Meantime, I had had a phone call. It seems that the window that Rosemarie had bought had turned out to be the wrong size – Terry had given her the dimensions of the hole, not the window.

It meant that the window needed to be taken back and exchanged – involving some fairly hefty negotiation and it seemed that I was required for that.

And so rather like Janet in Tam Lin, round I went to Rosemary’s I duly went this afternoon, “as fast as go can me” and we loaded up the window.

Being somewhat … errr … financially-challenged at the moment (I can’t get to my Belgian bank’s Montlucon branch right now and remember, I wasn’t anticipating being here at the moment), Rosemary very kindly put some diesel in Caliburn, and off we went.

Changing the window was no problem (except that they didn’t have one in and so it needed to be ordered) but no refund of any difference.

I don’t suppose anyone could complain too much about that – Rosemarie was half-expecting an argument.

Never being backwards at coming forward, I took advantage of Rosemary’s presence and we went off to Brico Depot where I loaded up Caliburn with a pile of grillage – the mesh mats that you use when you are laying concrete onto a hard surface without any hardcore.

I also bought 4 pylons – the steel mesh reinforcing that you put inside hollow breeze blocks to support the walls so that they don’t fall down on passing children.

These come in 6-metre lengths and so we cut them down to 8×3-metre lengths that I can use inside these hollow blocks that I have here to make pillars and so on.

Nothing like having a handy volunteer, is there?

After a coffee and a chat, I came home. It’s cold and damp despite the beautiful day that we had, so I’m not going out again. I’ll save my strength for tomorrow.

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Thursday 4th October 2012 – I STARTED MOVING …

… the stuff from off the hardstanding today.

I laid down a sheet of plastic behind the Mercedes 240D, covered it in cardboard (the plastic, not the Mercedes), and then stacked up all of the breeze blocks that were lying around.

And as I tool a wheelbarrow-load of rubble up to the rubble pile, I came back with a barrow load of breeze blocks and so the pile down here is growing while the pile up there is shrinking.

Mind you, it’s going to take ages to move it all – not least because I need to rake up all of the rubble from out of the sand and clay that came out of the wall.

And if it’s at all possible I need to remove the sand and clay and use that to fill in the paths between the raised beds.

But even so, I didn’t do too much because at about 15:30 the heavens opened and we had a torrential downpour. Impossible to work outside.

That was the cue to come inside and I had a good search for the mop and mop bucket (which I eventually found) and then I washed out and mopped up the cupboard that I had been building at the back of the stairs.

When that was clean, dry and dust-free I then made a start on crepi-ing the walls.

I’ve gone for crepi in there as it hides all of the imperfections and bad joints – it’s not easy working in a space that’s 1.5m x 0.80m.

I’ve painted about half of it before I called it a night – at 19:55. You can see how much I’m enjoying it, even if it is a swine to apply.

But at least, this idea of having work outside in the good weather, and work inside in the bad weather – that seems to be paying off as I always thought that it would.

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Wednesday 26th September 2012 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… day today where I heard the alarm go off properly but the accompanying cloudburst made me turn back over and … errr … wait for a while before arising.

So after the usual while on the computer I went outside and started work.

And in another major change to my usual lifestyle, I was still out there at 20:00.

First plan was to fit the new handles that I had bought the other day to the gardening tools that were lying around. The rake and the binette worked fine but this sledgehammer handle won’t work at all.

But anyway, using the newly-repaired tools, I hacked my way through a huge pile of undergrowth, ripped up piles of nettle and bramble roots, and laid a big tarpaulin on the floor.

Onto this tarpaulin I collected up all of the scaffolding that I’ve been using and laid it out on there. That was followed by all of the leftover plastic slates, and then I cleaned out all of the wood and the breeze blocks from where I had been working.

That gave me some more room to move around there and I could then hack out another pile of brambles.

There’s probably only about 30m² of land to clear back there and I reckoned that it wouldn’t take long, but I’m being rather optimistic about that. It’s going to take a while.

But it needs to be done because the next phase is to clear all of the stuff from where I park Caliburn and it’s there that I want to put it.

That took me up to about 19:00 and there was still a little job that I needed to do. The charge controller for one of the banks in the barn packed up ages ago and so I’ve been wiring the panels directly to the solar bank – not that there’s enough energy produced over there to worry the batteries too much.

But I need to measure the energy that’s going in, and so I disconnected the remote ammeter off the other bank and wired that to it.

Not so easy as it’s pretty cramped in there so I hope that it’ll work okay.

Still, we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?

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Wednesday 20th April 2011 – I’m blogging early tonight …

… because I’m thoroughly whacked and I’m going to bed in a minute.

base of greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve been working hard on the site for the greenhouse and now I have all of the breeze blocks in place. But it wasn’t half a maul, digging up tree roots, tree stumps and all that kind of thing. It took me ages.

It’s hard work, all of this manual labouring in the garden. And tomorrow I need to start on building the framework for the greenhouse. That is going be exciting too.

This morning though I carried on with my Newfoundland pages and I’ve now arrived at the Avalon Peninsula. There’s still a long way to go though and it’s going to take me quite a while to finish this lot off.

And this afternoon I took some time off from digging the trenches. Now I know that I said that I don’t have much water left but notwithstanding, I did another load of washing and now all of that is up to date. But there’s a reason for this. I haven’t cleaned out the water butts for well over a year and there’s some sediment at the bottom of the tanks. Added to that, the tap has broken and so it needs to be replaced and for once I actually have handy a tap that would do the job

It makes sense therefore to empty the water butts (I have 2×203-litre tanks) while the water is low, putting the rest of the water into some clean containers, and then giving the tanks a good scrub and clean out and then replacing the tap, before the weather breaks (which is supposed to be Friday, so we are told). I can change the puzzolane filter too and also fit a sand filter if I can find someone who has an old pair of tights. I need to reorganise this water system a little.

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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 27th August 2010 – It’s been an exciting day today.

This afternoon I had a good wander around the vegetable plot checking up on things as it’s been a while since I’ve had a really good look, what with one thing and another.

cucumber cloche les guis virlet puy de dome franceOne of the things that I did was to check in the smaller cloche where I have the strawberries and the one surviving cucumber plant. That has just been growing and growing with plenty of flowers but nothing much else, however today I noticed for the first time that the cucumbers are set.

There’s just three of them at the moment, still quite tiny but it’s nice to see some kind of progress in there. If the way that the courgettes have burst into life is anything to go by, within a week they should be monsters.

After that I went and checked on the tomatoes in the mega-cloche. They are just growing and growing with tons of flowers and fruit and so I took an executive decision and topped them all. No point in growing stuff that is never going to ripen and letting perish the fruit that is already there. Topping them will hopefully concentrate all of the energy into the fruit and they may even ripen.

gherkin plant greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere’s a stray tomato plant in the greenhouse so I went to check on that. And fighting my way in past the gherkin plants I noticed that they are finally starting to do stuff.

And that’s about time too. Thousands of flowers and not the least sign of a fruit, and all of a sudden a few of those have burst into life.

Now what do you do with a gherkin? If I could get malt vinegar over here I might be tempted to pickle them but I can’t so I’ll have to think of something else. All  suggestions are welcome

I followed that up by pulling the veg for tea. I had a veggie-burger lined up and so I pulled up some carrots and spuds, and picked some beans, spinach, sage and rosemary. Add a garlic clove and an onion to that lot and it really was a nice tea. Quite enjoyable. And I sowed the last of my parsnip seeds in where I’d removed the carrots. I’ve no idea what they might do but they won’t do anything in the packet.

The rest of the afternoon I’ve been sawing wood. I need to move the wood to erect the dividing wall in the lean-to where the composting toilet is. I keep on moving this wood around and nothing ever happens to it so I’ve decided to remove it by cutting up for burning, no matter how long it takes (and it will take a while). Winter’s not far away, you know.

This morning though I spent until midday working on my website. It’s almost up-to-date – I reckon another week will see the monthly pages done up to August 2010, and about time too. Nevertheless I was interrupted by a buzzing coming from across the yard – the water boiler that Smon gave me sprung into action at about 10:00. The weather today was terrible (it’s still pouring down now) and there wasn’t enough current to really fire it up, but it ran for a total of 3.5 hours. And more of this anon.

Once I’d knocked off computing at midday I went with Caliburn round to Lieneke’s and tidied up there. It seems that Terry and Simon have finished.

sankey trailer caliburn hardstanding tractor les guis virlet puy de dome franceI rescued the breeze blocks, the sand and cement, a huge pile of buckets my tarpaulin and ladder and a host of other stuff, heaved it all into the Sankey trailer and brought it round here.

I reversed it down the lane (hard to think that 20 years ago I did that for a living) and parked it next to Terry’s tractor where it can live for a while.

And it’s amazing how much room there is on there. I still reckon that the money I spent on having that done was money well spent. There’s room for another couple of cars on there I reckon if I tidy up a little bit better.

But the exciting bits involved the water heating.

Of course the day that I get everything ready for blast-off is the day when the weather turns miserable. The immersion heater in the house ran for a grand total of two minutes. But it was trying its best to fire up as the charge in the batteries bounced along the critical voltage. It was quite a windy day so I reckon that if there had been a wind turbine on the roof it would have worked a treat. I’m going to have to sort out this wind turbine.

As for the water boiler, even though the solar energy levels were pretty miserable it fired up in early morning once the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and ran for a total of about 3.5 hours. And the water, all 2.5 litres of it, was boiling away merrily to itself. So much so that with it being POETS Day ….
“POETS Day?” … ed
“Yes, that’s right. P155 Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday!”
… today I had a lovely hot wash and shave out of that boiler at 17:30 when I knocked off. And had it been less windy, I would have gone for the hybrid shower – the solar water (that struggled to reach 30°C) diluted by the 2.5 litres out of the boiler. Now THAT would have warmed it up.

I topped up the water with cold water once I’d emptied it, and it carried on warming itself for a short while until the sun went down and the solar charge stopped. And when I went to do the washing up after tea at 22:00 it was not very far short of being hot enough to do the washing up. A couple of minutes on the gas ring sorted that out.

All in all, I reckon that this is major progress and I’m really pleased with all of this. This place is slowly starting to take shape one way or another. I just want a nice sunny day now so that I can see what the immersion heater will do. But with all this rain that’s going on right now that isn’t going to be for a while.

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Tuesday 17th August 2010 – Tomorrow the World!

gherkin plant greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceDo you remember that plant that I showed you a photograph of the other day – the one that had taken over the greenhouse? It’s actually a gherkin plant and here you can see it leaving the greenhouse and setting out for Montlucon.

At the rate that it’s going, it’ll get there before any UK Council Worker or British Rail porter will, that’s for sure, and who knows where it will head for next?

I’ve been gardening again today. Or at least, this afternoon.

stone cladding breeze block wall lieneke roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe had done as much as we could on the roof today. The cement on the stone cladding on the side of the house hadn’t quite set and you can’t put too many stones on a cladded wall like this in one go, and the tiles that we had ordered for the roof hadn’t arrived.

We hadn’t had instructions from Lieneke about the inside of the lean-to either, and with Terry and Simon needing to price up some more material, we decided on a half-day on the roof.

I dug up the garlic and weeded the onion bed – that was the first thing. Strangely, only half the garlic had taken and the other half was in its single clove. The latter I replanted in one of the herb troughs to see what happens. But there’s nothing like enough garlic – I’ll need to bear that in mind.

And while weeding, I noticed the onions. Nothing like enough of them either but they are there all right.

I also tidied up all of the wood at the front of the barn – the left-over new stuff at least. I need a rainy day so that I can have the time to stack it correctly inside without having to worry about working on Lieneke’s roof. In fact I have tons of jobs to do really – let’s hope that this week will see us finish the roof.

collapsed stone wall rebuilding lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou’ll notice a couple of little changes in the lean-to too. I’ve moved a couple of sheets of iron and now the end wall is totally exposed. I’ve fitted (at the top, at least) two demi-chevrons that will guide me in forming the top of the long wall.

There was a full drum of waste in the mixer when we knocked off and it was a lovely chalky mix and so I did a pile of pointing, including that corner of the other lean-to where I lived for a while and which was getting damp.

I cleaned out the mixer with stones again. built a couple of thin walls and poured the mixture in between. I hadn’t quite sealed the wall as you can see and so some of the stuff leaked out, but it’s progress all the same.

A solar shower (the summer sort-of came back today) and that was my lot.

The automatic water-heater switched on too – and a temperature of 45.5 degrees. This is looking quite optimistic.

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Monday 16th August 2010 – We start off today …

roofing inside lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome france… with a couple of photos that features the inside of the roof, by way of a change.

Don’t mind the loose lath that is on top of the wall just there – we will be moving that in due course. But the rest of it looks pretty impressive.

You’ll also notice the black damp-proof membrane up there. That’s to stop the snow drifting in underneath the tiles and falling inside, something that’s a real problem around here in winter.

roofing inside lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see that we have extended the walls by mounting breeze blocks all the way up and we’ve put chevrons on there.

You will also notice the cross-beam that we fitted to the wall of the house the other day. The chevrons are supported on that. The cross-beam goes all the way across the wall of the house and it’s a good job that there were three of us to lift it as I remember it being flaming heavy.

roofing tiles lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceFrom the outside, however, it looks even more impressive. We had quite a few tiles left over from when we did the roof of the house and so we nailed the laths to the chevrons and popped the tiles onto the roof of the lean-to.

We didn’t have quite enough as you can see if you look at the top left-hand corner, and so we’ll have to go and pick up some more tomorrow. But we aren’t ‘arf cracking on with the job and we can be proud of this.

So my day has been spent in non-stop cement mixing – load after load after load, with a slight break to go to the quarry for more sand. So I’ve mixed a ton and a half of sand since the other day. No wonder I’m exhausted.

And so when we knocked off I went round the garden, weeded the carrot patch, pulled up some carrots, beans, spinach and a courgette, and sowed some lettuce and parsnips.

After crashing out I made tea – lentil courgette and split pea curry, with carrots spinach and beans. All followed by fresh strawberries. And it was gorgeous.

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Tuesday 10th August 2010 – Awwwwwwww Bambi!

deer les guis virlet puy de dome franceKeen readers of my outpourings will know that I have something of an interest in the local wildlfe. There’s such a lot of it about of course, and examples thereof feature in these pages at regular intervals.

You might remember the fox that I featured on here a week or two ago, but anyway here’s a deer that I noticed down across the fields about 400 metres away as I was tidying up after finishing work this evening.

deer les guis virlet puy de dome franceI thought at first that it might be Bambi but judging by those antlers, maybe not and he would probably be quite offended at the thought. He’s maybe come to challenge Strawberry Moose
for possession of the local herd but Strawberry Moose would soon see him off.

Anyway, he’s cute (I hope that it’s a “he” anyway) and I’m glad that I have a high-quality lens on the new Nikon D5000. He certainly merits a photograph or two on my blog.

rebuilding stone wall sloping roof lieneke roofing les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn other news, we are making progress on the roof of this lean-to.

The front part of the wall has all been built up level, inside and outside, and we’ve put the horizontal wooden beam in position, embedding it into the cement and packing behind it with stones and cement.

The wooden beam is important because first of all it gives us a nice straight level and secondly, we’ll be fixing chevrons and laths to it in the long run so it needs to be good.

kwikstage scaffolding roofing lieneke sloping roof les guis virlet puy de dome france We have also been making good progress with the inner lining of the far wall. We are lining it in breeze blocks, and you can see the slope that we are starting to put into it. When the breeze blocks are all in place we’ll be putting a cladding of stones on the outside.

Terry and Simon have been doing the masonry work and I’ve been spending most of the day mixing the cement and doing all of the fetching and carrying.

It’s wearing me out but it’s clearly doing me some good. It’s been a long time since I felt as exhausted and I’m going to bed just now before I fall …..

ZZZZZZZZZZ

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Monday 9th August 2010 – As you know by now …

birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… my favourite photography spot is at the birdwatching point near St Gervais d’Auvergne where there is one of the most marvellous views in the whole of France.

And just as I crested the rise the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone right onto the radio mast on the summit of the Puy de Dome.

It was well-worth a quick stop to take a photo even though, like most photos, it just cannot do justice to the view that we had. Nevertheless I reckon that it has come out rather well and I’m quite happy with that.

I say “we” because I was with Marianne the local journalist on our way down to Liz and Terry’s. They had very kindly invited a few of us round this evening for a drink and a chat. And it’s always nice to be with friends.

lieneke new roofing edge tiles woodwork les guis virlet puy de dome franceMind you, I’d been with Terry – and Simon too – for most of the day as we have restarted work on this roof of Lieneke’s.

Before I tell you anything at all about what we’ve been doing, let me first post a photo of what we’ve actually done so far. Here i this photo you can see that we’ve finished off the main roof. It’s all properly edged and trimmed and you can see the new woodwork that we’ve fitted to support the slates.

building up sloping stone wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut back on the new task today, what we need to do is to build up this edge to a level and then slope the sides upwards to reach the roof.

There was a flat roof here but a flat roof is no good around here, as a couple of modern builders will find out this winter. We have tons of snow and it lies on a flat roof without falling off, gradually melting and as the melt water is locked in by the snow on top the only way for the water to go is downwards. It percolates through the roof and the joints and then drops into the room below. A sloping roof is an essential – and a good slope at that. 40° is not excessive.

building up stone wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe built the scaffolding up at the end and at the sides and ripped off the old roof Once that had been done Terry built a brick pillar at the far edge to make a level with the half of the wall nearest the camera and with the stone pillar that was halfway along the wall

While Terry was shopping for breeze blocks Simon and I filled in the old window space with stones and I may say that we did an excellent job of that And when Terry returned I carried on mixing while Terry and Simon built up the rest of the wall

While I was clearing up, I had a visit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses – the second time that that has happened The first occasion was ages ago and two nice young women; today was some guy with a beard I don’t have an issue with them as long as they don’t harass me If they believe in what they are doing and don’t try to proselytise then that’s fine by me. At least it keeps them off the streets.

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Friday 21st August 2009 – YOU CAN SEE IN THIS PHOTO …

battery box control panel les guis virlet puy de dome france… why it is that I need to move the batteries. They are blocking up the front door. And if I’m going to start some kind of serious work inside, I need the front door off so that I can bring messy stuff in that way rather than in through my little room.

Today, I put a row of breeze blocks down on the concrete base that I laid yesterday. I can’t build it right up as just right now I don’t know how high the suspended floor is going to be. But tomorrow I’ll be putting a layer of 40mm polystyrene on the base and around the sides, and dropping 10 batteries (thats 920 amp-hours in total) in there.

I’ve also started building the control panel as you can see. There are three charge controllers on there right now. From right to left, we have the charge controller for the 2nd bank of solar panels (the one for the first bank is currently nailed to the front door and will be moved onto the control panel in early course), then in the centre is the charge controller for the wind turbine, and on the left is the charge controller for the overload.

In case you don’t know, when the batteries are fully-charged the charge controllers shut down the charging circuit. And that’s a waste of energy. So what I’m doing is having an overload controller that will divert the surplus current into a “dump load” – in this case a 12 volt water heater element. So that way I’ll have plenty of hot water.

There’s also a bus bar or two on there. These are for connecting loads of heavy duty wires and cables together. Bus bars range from sophisticated professional jobs down to flattened copper pipe and self-tapping screws, but for many years now I’ve been developing the “ring terminal onto long bolt with butterfly nut” and it works just fine, so there’s no reason to change.

There will be a few other things on there too, like a mains inverter, a couple of clocks, some circuit breakers, a fuse box and all that kind of thing. Here is one I made earlier, but that has undergone considerable … er … modification since then.

And what do you think about the wallpaper in the house? The house as you know is built of stone and they plastered over it on the inside, and then put up some wallpaper of … er … stone. Why didn’t they just knock the plaster off?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Claude’s son came round this afternoon. he’d been rummaging around in one of his dad’s many sheds and came across a trailer board.

Well, a sort-of trailer board. The lenses on the lights were smashed and all the cable was missing but I cleaned it up, cleaned all the contacts and rewired it, and now there is in theory a working trailer board. I say “in theory” because there are no bulbs either but I have a 12-volt piazzo tester and when I connected it up to the contacts for the bulbs it did what it was supposed to do at the time it was supposed to do it.

So all Pascal needs to do now is to buy some lenses (they are “standard trailer – small” and some bulbs, attach it properly to the rear of the caravan, and there you are.

I checked and adjusted the brakes on the caravan too and during the course of the evening I learnt that
1) The caravan is over 40 years old
2) Pascal has never towed a trailer (or indeed anything, for that matter) before.
All I can say is “good luck” to him, taking that over the “Cote de Maille” between Puy-en-Velay and Montelimar at night.

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