Tag Archives: chevrons

Wednesday 17th October 2012 – I WAS LOOKING ….

…. through the stats for the past few years (the records that I have here go back to 2007) and one thing that I noticed is that this recent deterioration in the weather is occurring about 4 weeks earlier than in the previous years.

I hope that it’s not a forewarning because it won’t be very nice if it is.

Yes, last night was absolutely taters – temperature in my room dropped to 15.5°C. Hard to believe that this time last year it was still well into the 20s.

Anyway, a howling wind (good news for the wind turbines) brought the temperature up a few degrees.

This morning, after recording a few stats, I cracked on with my web site. At the moment I’m on my way to see St Andrews, the Scottish Protestant Church in Québec.

And when I finished that I went outside and emptied Caliburn of all of the pylons and the grillage that I had bought the other day.

After lunch I carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing – something that is going to take me years.

One of the difficulties I’m having is actually finding room to put stuff. But all of the old chevrons have been moved (back to where I moved them from 2 years ago) and I’ve also uprooted tons of nettles and entire root systems.

And tomorrow it will be more of the same, I reckon.

Totally frightening, what was growing in the hard-standing.

But there is an added complication in that part of the bank of the side of the hard-standing has collapsed, so I’ll need to dig that all out and then to secure it all somehow, otherwise it will just keep on slipping down and that will be a nuisance, to say the least

This tidying up of all of the nuts and screws and nails and so on is progressing apace. And it’s amazing what I’ve been finding.

It’s also turning out to be quite profitable – so far £0:15 and a token for the spin dryer in the laundry.

Spend, spend, spend, hey? 

-1

Thursday 30th August 2012 – I DIDN’T DO …

… anything like as much as I was going to do today.

I was up early and spent a few hours on the computer as usual, but it was after that that it all started to go wrong

Finding a fully-charged battery for the Hitachi SDS drill was the first issue that I had, and once I’d managed that, then drilling the brick pillars has caused some of the bricks to split. That’s annoying to say the least.

But anyway the window frames are fitted and that’s something. Next plan was to fit the fascia boards to the end of the chevrons on the lean-to,

However, in an astounding achievement the type of which surely only I can be capable, it seems that having cut the wood to the right length, I somehow have managed to discard the piece that I want and I’ve painted the off-cut instead.

As Kenneth Williams once famously said, “I’m often taken aback by my own brilliance”

I didn’t get much done after lunch as the phone rang. The handbrake on Marianne’s son’s car has ceased to function and so could I look at it.

He brought it round and I dismantled the rear end (brake drums held on by the wheel bearings, how I hate that!) to find that the auto adjusters aren’t working. So no surprise as the handbrake needs 12 clicks to work.

I reset the adjusters but that didn’t do much so crawling underneath the car, it turns out that the cable adjuster (there’s one of them too) has slipped out of position. I reset that and now the brakes will stop that little Twingo on a sixpence.

But that cable is totally weird. Most cars have one single cable and there’s a slider at the centre of tha cable that’s attached to the handbrake arm so that the brakes pull evenly, and when you work the manual adjuster, the adjuster works on both brakes.

But not the Twingo.

There’s no slider at all but just a single fitting on the end of the handbrake arm, and two cables, one for each rear brake on each side.

Consequently although moving the manual adjuster will tighten up the cable, it doesn’t equalise the brakes. If one side is lack, then tightening up the cable adjuster will over-tighten the good side.

It took us ages therefore to adjust the brakes correctly, setting up the automatic adjusters individually by trial and error until they were equal, and then tightening up the cable adjuster.

And then of course we had the issue of refitting the hubs and bearings, and torquing up the nuts. That’s something I really hate doing.

Back on the lean-to afterwards (just as well I finished the car as we had a torrential storm straight afterwards), I’ve fitted one window pane (one of them survived having a ladder thrown on it) and the second one is ready to cut.

But by this time, it was 19:00 and I was well fed up, so I called it a day.

And tea tonight? Courgette and lentil curry. You can see that things are going berserk in the garden right now.

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Thursday 9th August 2012 – WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY!

And I’m not just talking about the weather either, although that was certainly superb.

This morning was an early start and that found me in Montaigut-en-Combraille with Terry and Rob where we spent a pleasant 90 minutes visiting a semi-derelict building in the town.

We have big plans for this – well, actually we don’t, but the whole purpose of being there this morning was to measure it up and then draw up big plans for it.
Never mind a cunning plan, we will have several cunning plans for this place.

While Terry and Rob went off to chat amongst themselves I went off to the mairie to have a chat with the mayor of Montaigut-en-Combraille about what our intentions are.

Surprisingly (or maybe not, because times are changing in France when there is a question of foreign money being invested in these small semi-abandoned rural towns) she was quite co-operative and gave me loads of help, even introducing me to her deputy who was the kind of person who would really take an interest in this kind of project.

Back home, I started to turf out of the lean-to all of the accumulated breeze blocks, large stones and so on that I won’t be using again up there so that there would be plenty of space for me to move around.

But then the weather intervened – in the sense that by 13:00 the batteries were fully-charged and the water was heating up.

With all of this surplus energy around, out came the big drill and YESSSSSSSSSSS I finally pushed the core drill right through the wall and into the house.

I’ve even managed to feed the plastic pipe through the wall and so now, next time that it’s too wet to work, I’ll be running three sets of cables through the tube – a 230-volt power line, a 12-volt power line and a 12-volt light line, and then starting to wire everything up

This afternoon I was round at Liz and Terry’s doing the rear brakes on her car. Pretty straightforward of course but I was having issues with fitting the springs what with a lime burn on my thumb – how I managed that on Monday after all this time without one is another one of those total mysteries.

So tomorrow I’ll be fitting the woodwork for the windows and painting it all (I still have tons of this excellent LIDL wood treatment stuff), and then sorting out some wood to make a fascia panel across the exposed ends of the roof chevrons to keep the weather out of the ends of the chevrons.

That wood will be painted too.

I’ll measure up for the glass fit what guttering that I have lying around, and then on Saturday I’ll go into Commentry to buy the glass and the rest of the guttering.

Coming on in leaps and bounds now!

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Monday 18th June 2012 – I WAS POINTING …

… this afternoon. And I’ll be pointing it out to you in a series pf photographs so you will be able to see my point.

pointing jointing plastic recycled states les guis virlet puy de dome franceWell, it’s either pointing or jointing, one or the other, whichever takes your fancy.

Now that I have some sand here I was able to mix up some lime mortar and so I spent much of the afternoon on the roof of the lean-to filling the joint between the new lean-to roof and the stone wall of the side of the house.

There were a few big gaps too, but I put some plastic sheeting down – the type with nylon reinforcement – and filled over that.

Tomorrow I’ll need to put a second coat on there, as well as putting some rubberised paint over one or two of the galvanised nail-heads that are exposed. And that will be the roof finished.

And so will I be too!

pointing jointing lean to wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceFor the rest of the afternoon I cemented up the joint in the outside wall.

The rendering on that wall went, of course, up to the old wooden chevrons that fell off a long time ago. I’ve put stronger timbers on the roof and so the chevrons are higher up the wall, if you know what I mean.

I infilled the gap with a load of brick ends, stones and so on but the rendering still needed to be brought up by about 30 cms, as well as a few cracks making good, and that’s what I was doing until I noticed the time.

Yes, 19:10. 10 minutes after knocking-off time. You can tell how much I was enjoying myself.

This will also need finishing off tomorrow and when it’s all dry I can treat all the new woodwork.
… “what to?” – ed.

Once that’s been attended to I can push on and build up the side wall to the roof beam, leaving of course a space for a window (if I remember – not like I did for the roof).

The aim from there on is to put a balcony there at the front, so that I can enjoy whatever view I might have. But that’s something of a longer-term project.

This morning though, I was working on a few web pages of my voyage to Canada just now. There are three days’ worth, namely

You may not think too much of the content, especially Day Two, because what with me being in an airport terminal or three I let loose some pretty good and pretty explosive rants. You ought to know just how stressed out I become in airport terminals.

It’s a good job that I always travel alone.

You might think that when I calm down and review everything that I write, I would moderate many of my comments (I dictate the events of my voyages onto a dictaphone as they are happening or immediately thereafter) but I won’t ever do that.

The whole point of what I do with the rubbish that I churn out is to capture the excitement of the moment. The stress and tension is all part of the excitement and there wouldn’t be any point in churning out anything that has been edited.

tansy les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou might also remember me a year ago posting a photo of a plant and asking if anyone could identify it.

It’s back again this year. And back in spades too, and when Liz was here the other day she took away a cutting to show around her friends to see whether any of them could identify it.

Clotilde seems to think that it’s a plant called tansy. And if it is, then that’s a surprise because I don’t ever recall buying any.

She reckons that it’s useful as a companion plant as it has a high success rate in repelling Colorado beetle, and as an ant, mosquito and tick repellant.

Another use for tansy was to rub meat with the tansy leaves to repel worms and to prevent the meat from spoiling.

And it seems that the first president of Harvard was buried in a coffin packed with tansy leaves, and when his coffin was opened 200 years later everything inside – the tansy leaves as well as his own corpse – was in an excellent state of preservation.

Another, less publicised, use is to dispel the occurrence of flatulence prevalent in vegans although it is highly toxic when eaten to excess. 

It seems that this tansy, if that is indeed what it is, is going to be a very useful plant.

-1

Tuesday 10th January 2012 – I THOUGHT THAT …

chevrons water resistant lean to roof les guis virlet plywood puy de dome france.. I would start today by showing you where I got up to last night.

Three sheets of plywood in position and tacked down ready to be properly fastened. to the chevrons

So first job this morning was to remove the rest of the temporary roofing, put two more chevrons on the roof and fit another sheet of plywood. Then I had to fit two chevrons at the near end either side of the wall, and fill in between them with concrete.

“Concrete in early January in the Auvergne?” I hear you say.

Yes indeed – you can see what the weather was like, and I was sweating while I was doing it too.

While the concrete was setting, I cut down the chevrons to 3650mm with my new saw which is ever so impressive – almost as impressive in fact as my galvanised steel dustbin.

I’m fed up of having nothing but rubbish around here so in the UK the other week I bought an expensive thick-bladed rough-cut saw and it went through those chevrons like a knife through butter. Should have bought one like this ages ago.

And why 3650mm of chevrons?

Well, the width of the lean-to on the slant is 3400, the sheets are 2440 by 1220 and so one sheet lengthways and one sheet sideways makes 3660 – enough to cover the lean-to with sufficient overhang without having to cut anything (and wielding a circular saw up a ladder is not an ideal solution for anything).

There’s sufficient room to put a barge board and fascia panel and to fit some guttering.

A good overhang is important too because they don’t do damp course around here. if the base of the wall is too exposed, the rain that falls at its foot will soak up in the stone and mortar. Apart from the issues of damp, there will be cracking the former and dislodging the latter from its position in winter by the “freeze-thaw” process. When water freezes, its volume is greater so water soaked up into the pores of stone or cement expands in the cold and cracks the stone or forces the cement. the force is so powerful that it was recognised as an established stone-breaking process thousands of years ago

Anyway, when the chevrons had been cut I mauled up another sheet (and they aren’t half heavy doing it like that) and manoeuvred it into position sideways across the ends of the far two sheets that are on there lengthwise, and then screwed it down.

After lunch I had to move the old scaffolding that was there (the one that I’d liberated from a skip in the dechetterie at Commentry in 2000), and seeing as how it had been there since 2001 that wasn’t easy either. It involved cutting down a few trees that had grown into the way (so there’s the firewood for next winter and isn’t this new saw really good?), clearing the ground away and removing all kinds of bits and pieces.

waterproof plywood lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce I’d done that, I then had to erect the new kwikstage scaffolding that I had brought back from the UK the other week.

That took ages, and I don’t know why, and then I just about had enough time to lift up another sheet of plywood and screw it across the bottom of the other two sheets before it went dark.

And you can see where my concreting from this morning went.

18:10 when I finished and I was shattered. But it wasn’t being shattered that stopped me – it was the losss of light. I’d still be there now if there was light enough to work.

But I have a feeling that I’m going to pay for all of this tomorrow. I’m not as young as I was.

And so tomorrow I need to cut three pieces to make the covering for the final part of the roof, climb all over the roof screwing all the sheets down properly, and then cover it with a layer or two that breathable plastic membrane to keep out the damp (a good buy, that industrial hammer-stapler).

If I can get that done tomorrow that will be where I want to be. And then I can start nailing down the plastic slates.

0

Monday 9th January 2012 – THERE’S NO POINT …

… in having an early night and going to bed early (well, 00:15 is early for me anyway) if you wake up again at 4:45 and can’t go back to sleep.

Mind you as day started to dawn and I knew that it was soon time to get up, I managed to fall asleep again, and it was 10:15 when I finally woke up. So much for my good resolutions for New Year.

First thing that I did after breakfast was to sort out a design fault on the electric board that I had made the other day. The wires to the inverter were bent at an unnatural angle and the live was touching the earth tag. I had to tape over the ends to insulate them and then drill a hole in the board to run the wires round to the back so that they are lying straight and parallel.

wall anchor hook and eye wind turbine guy wire les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce I’d organised that I stripped off some of the temporary roof on the lean-to, put some scaffolding up there and put a ladder up from there to the top of the wind turbine mast.

There I turned round the bracket that we had turned when we raised the mast last month and straightened out all of the guys.

I drilled into the wall, fitted a wall anchor with an eye, attached a turnbuckle and then fastened a guy to it all and wound it up to take the tension so that the last is held firm in that direction. That’s one out of the four guy wires sorted out.

After lunch I made a major advance – I started to put the plywood on the roof of the lean-to. It was flaming difficult too – it’s not easy pulling those sheets up on my own, I’ll tell you that, but I have three now fastened into position.

I’m being careful with the supporting chevrons, having learned my lesson from elsewhere where I’ve been working. I’m putting the sheets into position and then fitting the chevrons underneath them so that the sheets are supported in the middle and that the edges of each adjacent sheet meet up over a chevron.

I recall all kinds of bouncing sheets when I was nailing the tiles on when I did it in other places. I don’t want to do that here.

But starting to put the roof on the lean-to. Isn’t this progress?

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Friday 2nd December 2011 – IT’S FRIDAY …

… but it’s not Five o’clock, and it’s not Crackerjack either. But it is the last Friday that I’ll be spending here for a week or two. I’m hoping to go to the UK at the end of next week.

And despite having gone to bed quite late last night, that didn’t stop me being wide awake at about 07:00 this morning. This sleep thing is becoming ridiculous.

Liz and I arrived at Radio Arverne’s place in Gerzat at about 10:40 for our 11:00 appointment and eventually it was about 11:47 before we started recording.

We did the four Radio Anglais programmes for December and then Bernard sprung it on me. Would I write another Christmas Special for an hour, to be broadcast in … errrr …. 2 weeks time?

I shall have to get my finger out, won’t I?

We got back to Sauret-Beserve 20 minutes late after all of that and I shot off to Montel-de-Gelat and the sawmill to pick up a load of timber.

I had to wait around there for ages as well as they didn’t (despite what they said on the ‘phone) have any treated wood so they treated it while I waited, and that took ages too.

And while I was there I was chatting with the staff and it turns out that the office girl is the wife of the Montel goalkeeper whose photo that I took was published in the paper the other week, and the office manager plays for Pontaumur and one of my photos of him scoring against Pionsat was published a few weeks before that.

There were two clients there from Pionsat too. One of them had an old Transit pick-up that was clearly custom-made. A PTAC of 3.3 tons for a start – that’s impressive. And he had so much wood dropped in it that it was sagging right down at the back end and he crawled all the way back to Pionsat at 40kph. 

And when I returned home and unloaded my wood I realised that I had forgotten the demi-chevrons that I need to finish off the greenhouse.

D’ohhhh.

And so I went upstairs and crashed out for a while instead.

-2

Thursday 1st December 2011 – GOING TO BED EARLY …

… does you no good at all if you roll over onto your staples at 04:00. It’s flaming painful and you can’t go back to sleep again.

And so I was up early again and breakfasted, and then I went out to cut more wood. That’s a couple more of the old chevrons and the tree trunks from 2 years ago all ready to burn in my nice new wood stove, with which I am almost as impressed as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

But then I had another idea and I cleared a space near the big front gates and laid out a couple of pallets. And then I moved one of the wood piles – the one that was at the side of the lean-to. That’s now on the pallets right at the front of the house and will be easy to get to in the winter, whenever that might be.

That pile of wood was formerly at the side of the lean-to on a concrete pad that was formerly the base of a chicken coop. This concrete hardstanding is now covered with plastic roof tiles – I did a safari around the garden and hunted down all that I can find ready for doing that roof, whenever that might be.

I also took out the plywood from the back of Caliburn and I’ve stood that upon the concrete pad. Even though it’s for exterior use, I’ve covered it up with a tarpaulin to protect it for a while from the weather.

All that’s left in Caliburn is the window and that’s rather heavy. But I have a cunning plan for that, more of which anon.

When it went dark I fetched a shelving unit that I had forgotten and I have put it in what will be the bathroom. I’ve started making a tour of the upper floors rescuing tools and so on, so that I know where everything might be.

But that’s not so easy as there’s just so much stuff. I really ought to have a good tidy up sometime.

0

Monday 24th October 2011 – AND JUST WHAT ON EARTH …

…is happening here?

Yes, it’s absolutely ages before midnight and here I am blogging already.

What on earth is going on?

The fact is that I’m absolutely whacked. Three nights without much sleep have finished me off and I shall be in the arms of Morpheus before much longer.

But I dunno why I’m having these sleep issues. I know that I habitually keep late hours but what has been going on just recently is absurd.

moving cattle trough lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I carried on with moving the cattle trough in the lean-to. Here is a photo of how it looked after I’d been bashing away at it for an hour or two the other week.

What it looks like now is something else completely thanks to Terry lending me a concrete cutting disk and a huge sledgehammer yesterday.

They made quite short work of the bit that I can get to, and the rest of it will have to be done when I can get to it.

I did say that once I’d done that I would be starting on the pointing of the wall. However we’ve had a howling gale here today with winds gusting up to 20mph. I know that that isn’t particularly fast but if anyone thinks that I’ll be standing on top of a ladder 10 metres or so above ground in a wind like that then they are mistaken.

According to one of the litttle-used functions on the anemometer, we had 20:42 hours of wind in the last 24 hours and that is quite phenomenal. The wind turbines have been earning their keep today.

What I did do instead was to make a start on the framework that I’ll be using to make the dividing wall in there. That involved cutting up a few chevrons and shaping them,and cutting lets into the rafters of the ceiling in the lean-to.

And while I was doing that, the wind dramatically dropped. “Time for me to go and get the ladder out and make a start on the wall” you are probably thinking. But “not bloody likely”, as Eliza Doolittle once famously said, because we had a torrential downpour and it’s still raining now.

Instead, I did some tidying up and sorting out until knocking off time at 19:00 (I’m still on summer hours).

Seeing as I’m still on summer hours, this morning I was working on the website and I’ve put on line the reports for the 1st XI and 2nd XI matches from this weekend.

But Saturday night’s photos haven’t worked at all and I’m going to have to spend money on a decent lens to take better photos in the dark.

Tomorrow Liz and I are radioing, at Radio Tartasse. I wonder if I will have woken up by then.

Good night, everybody.

-3

Tuesday 18th October 2011 – It’s been progress on all fronts today.

This morning I had a good go on the website. For the last couple of days I’ve been making a start on the pages for the month I’ve just spent in Canada, and I’m actually on Day 4.

You might therefore be thinking that in another 10 days or so at this rate I’ll be finished, but I bet it will be nothing like. The first three days were pretty uneventful – it was on the fourth day that everything started to happen. I can see this being more like 10 months before it’s done.

stone wall repairing collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I’ve been up the wall again. Not as much progress as I would have liked, but the chevrons at each side of the wall that I have been doing – they are now nailed down to the beam and the outer and inner faces to the wall are now completed.

I’ve been infilling with crushed breeze block and a weak concrete mix and I’m about halfway up the centre of the final part of the wall. It won’t be long now until that’s done too.

It’s a shame that I couldn’t finish it this evening although I was doing my best. I was beaten by the dark (and I really DO mean dark) because it was 19:25 when I finally knocked off.

We also had some excitement elsewhere around the premises. I have a pile of dustbins, buckets and so on all around here in crucial places catching the rainwater to be used in the garden or in concreting and the like. A few days ago, the friendly frog who lives around here hopped into one and couldn’t get out. Luckily I noticed him and was able to liberate him.

This afternoon he had managed to do exactly the same thing. I saw him there when I went to wash my hands, and so I fished him out.

But badger me if, this evening when I went to fetch some water for washing up, he hadn’t gone and done exactly the same thing again.

That’s three times I’ve rescued him – if he ends up in there again tonight, well I’m afraid he’s on his own.

And we had some wind today – and serious wind as well, gusting up to 26kph which is not far short of a record for here since I’ve had the anemometer installed. All I need now is to fit the wind turbine up there and I’ll be happy. It’s high time it was in the place where it ought to be and doing the business  

-1

Friday 7th October 2011 – I WAS WORKING …

… on the lean-to wall again this afternoon

And I bet you are waiting for me to say that I was building it up. But you would be wrong for I was actually demolishing it.

Well, part of it anyway.

It all started off with me searching for stones, and that entailed rooting around on the floor in the corner near they might have fallen. To do that I needed to hack my way through the brambles and trees and so on and that took a while.

Once I managed to get over there, I uncovered quite a few as well, but I also uncovered quite a few cracks in the wall that I hadn’t noticed. And they are going to need dealing with.

So having rescued some of the stones I also set about rescuing the wooden beam that acts as a lintel for the support of the roof chevrons. That was bought new in 2002 or whenever it was but I never got round to positioning it. Anyway, it’s now roughly in place and tied onto the chevrons over where I’m working,so that it doesn’t fall down again.

But getting it up there led to knocking down a pile of stones that were there. But that’s not a problem – if they won’t stand a clout with a wooden beam they needed recementing.

But the tragedy was when I was reaching over to hold the end of the beam up – I put my foot on the wooden board that I’d used as shuttering when I started to repair the front of the wall all those years ago – but that broke free and fell taking a few breeze blocks and a pile of stones with it as well, and all in all it’s something of a mess.

But then again, that can’t be helped. I’m going to have to start lower down the wall on the outside I reckon and point all of that corner of the wall to hold it all together before I build up any higher. I’m going to have to do it anyway sooner or later but that corner is definitely melting slowly away and urgent attention is required.

>But what was impressive was that  the concrete infill that I used back in those days to repair it – that’s all held up and it’s stronger than the actual stone wall itself. I’m impressed with that.

So having decided on something of a plan, I mixed a pile of mortar to start on the pointing, only to be denied by a torrential rainstorm. At least my tarpaulin roof is holding well up, and gave me some shelter while I used the mortar that I had just mixed to point the inside of the wall that I’ve been building up this week.

But talking of rain and so on, the temperature dropped to 5.8°C last night – the coldest for ages. I have all of the windows closed, the fridge switched off and a jumper on.

And I don’t know what happened to the cacophony of alarm calls this morning. I somehow or other managed to sleep all the way through it and it was 10:33 when I woke up. But all the photos are now up to date thanks to another morning session on the computer, and I can now turn my attention to other things.

-2

Thursday 23rd June 2011 – It’s been another day …

… that I have spent working up here, and I’ve never been so busy. After the usual couple of hours on my web site it was back to the correspondence and, for a change, sorting out the photos. This last three days I’ve sent 60 e-mails and received just as many. I’ve also had plenty of phone calls too.

Apart from that, I’ve bought a new wind turbine, been in endless discussion about having a 3-metre wind turbine specially made for me, bought a new anemometer and ordered the spare parts to repair an anemometer that is lying around here doing not very much since a chevron fell on it while we were stripping the barn roof.

And so all in all I’ve been rushed off my feet.

Tomorrow is more of the same and I’ve also been invited out to another one of these previews of an exhibition – this time in Marcillat en Combraille. Clean bib and tucker I suppose.

In other news, while the rest of the world is hurriedly dismantling “disPERSONtaling” – ed its nuclear reactors, the crazy Brits are going to build some more. “We need … secure, low carbon, affordable energy”, says Energy Minister Charles Hendry. Where’s he been hiding this last three months?

Surprisingly, with about 30% of England’s population living within 30 miles of London, there’s not a single nuclear power plant proposed for there. Why not? If nuclear power is so safe? Why not site them where they are needed, in the major centres of population? We’ll soon here who is for and who is against when they have one on their own doorstep.

Apart from that, one thing that the British government hasn’t mentioned is that the preferred bidder for the British Nuclear Fuel industry is EDF – Electricite de France. France is running down its own nuclear reactors and has no plans for any more. And so where does anyone think that the UK’s nuclear electrical energy output will go once the French take over?

The Brits just don’t get it, do they? Dustbin of the world.

-4

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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Friday 29th April 2011 – I finally got onto the greenhouse today.

Just for a change, the weather this afternoon was quite reasonable (well, mostly), and so after the customary couple of hours on the Newfoundland website I went and hunted down some wood.

building greenhouse chevrons les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe big thing though is that I don’t have enough. I’m building the front and back out of chevrons, and the two sides out of demi-chevrons. I need about 10 of each but I only have 6 chevrons and 4 demi-chevrons so I’ll have to go to the sawmill next week.

But with 5 of the chevrons I made the back of the greenhouse. It’s going to consist of two uprights 2m40 high and 3 cross-pieces 3m20 long. The cross-pieces will be let into the uprights at ground level and at 1m95- That makes about 1m88 for the windows, which are 1m875 tall.

The third cross-piece will be let in at the top and this leaves a run of about 38cms the whole length. I’ll be dividing that into 4 pieces (72×38) and buying some cheap glass to fit into there.

But making it out of chevrons is going to make it heavy so I’m going to have to take the pieces down to the greenhouse base and assemble it in situ. I don’t fancy my chances of assembling it and then having to carry it down there.

But learning from when I made the verandah, I need to prepare the uprights and then pre-drill them before I assemble the thing. Trying to manoeuvre it all into position and then drill it will be almost impossible. It was bad enough with the verandah and that was smaller as well as being made with just demi-chevrons. I’ll be joining the front, the sides and the back all together with stud iron (or threaded rod as they call it these days) as I doubt that there will be coach bolts long enough.

And tomorrow it’s shopping.

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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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