Tag Archives: frozen water

Tuesday 30th December 2014 – WELL, THAT WAS A WASTE OF TIME.

Remember yesterday when I was busy putting that piece of wood in to fill that unexplained gap in the woodwork and ended up falling down the stairs?

This morning I started to fit the plasterboard into position, and after a good hour or so at the cutting, measuring and fitting, and also fitting in some bracing which was unaccountably absent, the light suddenly went on in my head. Yes, where is the insulation in the wall?

Off came all of the plasterboard that I had cut and shaped, and off came the bracing that I had fitted, and on went 40mm of polystyrene insulation. And now I can see why there was that unexplained gap – it was for passing the insulation through and out behind the stairs. Still, it’s too late to do much about that now.

Before I had started on the plasterboard, I had taken the masking off the floor under the stairs on the landing, and put the first coating of varnish on there. I’d put the second coat on and fitted the stairs too. So that’s another job out of the way.

I’ve even had a bit of good luck too. Aeons ago, when I lived in Brussels, I bought a pack of 100mm wide 25mm thick planed wood planks to make some shelves, but I never used it. I discovered two of the planks and tried them as end-stops for the plasterboard stud walls. They seem to be perfect for this job and so tomorrow I’ll have a go at fitting tham.

I’ve also rerouted a pile of wiring so that it will run under the false ceiling on the landing and then down with all of the other wiring between the stud wall that has the shower room on one side and the head of the stairs on the other side, and I can’t think why I didn’t do this ages ago.

As for the water issues, the front tap thawed out slightly today and the leak isn’t anything like serious. It’s losing about half a litre every hour, but more when the tap is open. The rear tap is still frozen up so I can’t isolate the front tank.

Mind you, the frozen tap is doing that so it’s the same thing really, and as for the leak, the front tank needs to be emptied anyway so that I can change the tap so it’s neither here nor there. I’ve emptied 40 litres out of it today into various containers and I’ll keep on doing that for now until the weather warms up and I can isolate the front tank.

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Wednesday 15th February 2012 – THIS WATER ISSUE …

… might have solved itself.

And for several different reasons too.

frozen water drainpipe les guis virlet puy de dome francef you see that icicle in the photo here that I took a week or so ago (the weather was nothing like that today of course) it started to melt today. And so I simply stuck a bucket underneath it.

Meantime, I took one of those plastic drinks bottles, the type with a very long pointed neck, and cut the bottom off. Then I stuffed a load of fine fibreglass mesh up the neck.

Each time a bucket was filled, I poured it through my home-made filter into one of these proprietary jug filters and let it filter through there, and then I decanted it into my water container.

I managed to capture about 40 litres over the course of the afternoon and that’s eased the situation considerably.

However like most things, solutions don’t come on their own. Like London buses, after you’ve been waiting for hours, three turn up all at once.

And so it is with this. By the end of the afternoon the water butt had started to unfreeze itself.

Not that that’s a quick solution, because I looked inside the rear tank and that’s a frozen mass of ice, but I still managed 5 litres out of there as well.

And the third solution? Well, after all the freezing weather that we’ve had just recently, it’s p155ing down outside. All the snow will be gone by tomorrow if it carries on like this, and then we will be in the floods again. Then we’ll be having a different kind of water problem.

Despite a constant stream of interruptions today, I’ve now started on the final row of the tongue-and-grooving in the bedroom.

That involved finishing off the previous row, moving piles of stuff around the room, and then mixing some polyfilla to fill in the joins between the wood and the insulation that is already in the ceiling.

Maybe if I have a decent day tomorrow I can crack on with this. It would be nice to have it finished for the weekend.

One thing that has helped is that this row is by far the narrowest of them. When I’ve been doing the other rows and cutting down lengths of tongue-and-grooving, I’ve always been left with leftover bits that wouldn’t fit anywhere.

I’ve been labelling them with the size, and these are all fitting into the row that I’m doing now. This will save me a load of time cutting up full-size lengths.

For tea tonight I had ratatouille, green beans and baked potatoes. This time the potatoes were done properly and it was one of the nicest meals I’ve had for ages. It was definitely a good plan to move the kitchen up here for the duration.

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Sunday 26th December 2010 – AT LONG LAST …

 we’ve had a gorgeous Alpine day – not a cloud in the sky, not even for a minute. And my batteries now have some charge in them – although not a lot.

frozen water butt les guis virlet puy de dome franceMind you, we earned this day today, for last night the temperature fell to the lowest ever figure that I have ever recorded – an unbelievable MINUS 13.5°C and my water butts are frozen absolutely solid.

But I’m glad I decided to sort out a pile of really dry wood from out of the barn. That’s been burning for all of the day and the temperature has been hovering around the 18-19 degree mark which, given the temperature outside, has been pretty impressive and I’m pleased that I have this little stove.

So it’s still holiday time so all I’ve done is to watch some DVDs and to watch some sport on the computer – Boxing Day is all about sport after all. But I didn’t manage an evening meal yet again as it’s absolutely taters in the verandah.

But I’m not complaining as I don’t mind the temperature dropping to -20°C mark as long as I get some sun for my batteries.

So when I’ve finished watching the Houston Texans play the Denver Broncos I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is also a day of rest as I catch up on my Sunday day of rest which I missed due to Boxing Day intervening.

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Wednesday 15th December 2010 – AWWWWW – BAMBI

bambi deer field les guis virlet puy de dome franceI can’t remember now what it was that I came up to my room for this afternoon but a quick look out of the window revealed Bambi in all her glory, foraging for food in the field next door

You have to feel sorry for the wildlife just now in this kind of weather. Absolutely perishing, well under zero, and not a chance of getting anything out of the garden unless you use dynamite.

I’m struggling for water now. Today I had to undo the top of one of the water butts (luckily I expected this kind of weather and so I fastened the tops on with wing nuts) and smash my way in through God knows how much ice on the top of the water. I filled 4 kettles like this but of course at tea time they had all frozen up in the verandah because it’s well below zero in there too and has been for all of the day.

It’s almost impossible to go outside in this. Luckily I threw all of the wood into the lean-to in the summer so at least I’m out of the wind in there while I cut up the supplies for the evening.

And it’s emptying out quite well in there and when the weather eases I can definitely build the stairs that I promised so that I can climb up to the next level in comparative ease.

space blanket insulation polystyrene battens les guis virlet puy de dome franceMeanwhile back at the ranch, I didn’t manage to finish the wall. Nothing like, in fact.

In between the phone calls I had to deal with the wiring for the second set of plugs and that took quite a while – most of the day in fact Threading it through the conduit is … errr … exciting and of course whenever I do anything involving electrical wiring there’s always a pause after each connection while I go round to see if anything has been set on fire. Not my strong point as you know.

>But at least the wiring on that side of the room now is all done and I can press on tomorrow assuming that I don’t have any more interruptions.

But this cold weather is starting to drag now. I’ve never known it as cold as this in December. Who said “Global Warming”?

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Wednesday 1st December 2010 – THIS WEATHER DIDN’T IMPROVE ANY TODAY.

heavy snowfall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI woke up to find snow everywhere – a good 6 inches must have fallen through the night and the temperature stayed below zero all day.

I was getting low on water in the verandah so I had to hammer my way through the ice in the water butts – the tap was frozen solid. Definitely a good idea it was to fasten the top onto the butts with wing nuts rather than screws.

wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter the customary chopping of a bucket load of wood to replenish the stocks up here I carried on with the wardrobe.

And I’m definitely sick of Brico Depot wood. The horizontals I made out of the left-over demi-chevrons from the roof – those that I bought from the sawmill – but the Brico Depot demi-chevrons I was using for the uprights – they just split and collapsed. It’s the sawmill in future for me for my wood.

Much of the wardrobe is done but I ran out of light and so I went into the barn and carried on tidying up the wood that used to be the laths off the barn roof. The long bits or those with decent ends I’m saving at the moment but there are also tons of short bits or broken-off bits. I moved a few bucket-loads of those down to the lean-to where I’m keeping the wood that I’m burning. I’ll cut those up tomorrow morning and add them to the pile.

Yes, tomorrow. I can’t see me going anywhere tomorrow. I’m properly snowed in here and there’s no sign of a snow plough.  

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Tuesday 15th December 2009 – Today was one of those days …

… where nothing seemed to go right. it was freezing cold this morning and I was absolutely right about the weather – totally grey and overcast and only 4.5 amp-hours in total.

I don’t know why anyone pays any attention to the weather forecast around here – it’s so easy. All you need to do is to look out of the window. If you can’t see across the valley then it’s raining. If you can see across the valley then it’s going to rain.

So Terry came and the sink wasn’t any use for him but he did help me to move the plasterboard and I forgot the gas bottle. After that I finished cutting the lets in the verticals, in the pitch dark because it’s impossible to see anything in the gloom. After lunch I fitted one of the verticals and it took me hours. It’s not very-well done but I was freezing cold and fed up. I drilled right through the join and into the wall so I could fit an anchor bolt that would tighten everything together and hold it to the wall but the bolt stuck and wouldn’t go right in – and then I couldn’t get it out either. Trying to lever it out with a crowbar and I dropped the nut and I can’t find that now.

Then I fitted the battens and the insulation but by now (like 15:10) it was far too dark to properly fit the counter-battens. Dark at 15:10 – it’s depressing – so I did a bit of tidying up and then smashed my way through the ice in the water butt to get some water.

It was 6 degrees in my attic – which might not sound a lot but it was minus 5 outside and getting colder by the minute. And it’s still grey and miserable outside. We are stuck in this deep westerly depression which is a very rare phenomenon. It’s almost as deep as the depression I am stuck in. At least if it was an easterly depression we were stuck in there would be some sunlight.

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Monday 14th December – It’s gone flaming cold now

Yes, outside it is minus 4 and I shudder to think what it might have been if we didn’t have this thick cloud cover. Yes, another thick cloudy day which means that I’ve had no solar charge yet again. I wonder when the sun is going to come out. According to the weather forecast banner on my website we are promised a clear sunny day tomorrow but knowing the weather and the weather forecasting around here I’ll believe that when I see it. It also promises me minus 9 as well tomorrow and I’ll believe that – one day last January we had minus 15.

This morning I wasn’t in a hurry to wake up but once I was up and about I discovered that all of my water has frozen up. That’s the trouble with storing the rainwater above ground. It was a bit icy yesterday and I was going to defrost it after the football and fill all of the kettles but with the match being delayed it was too late when I got home. Luckily I have a couple of litres that I’ve filtered and that will keep me going.

And so I started cutting the lets on two more pillars but Claude came round for a natter instead. And then it was round to Liz and Terry’s to give them a hand followed by the Anglo French group in St Gervais. When I got back home, it was just 4.5 degrees up here in my room. But it’s amazing just how quickly the place warms up with a bit of heat.

And I’ll be going to bed soon. Terry is on his travels tomorrow morning and I have an old stone sink to give him. While he’s here he’s going to help me lift some plasterboard upstairs to the first floor and carry my gas bottle round to the side of the house. He reckons it’s going to be an early start. I don’t much like the sound of that.

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