Tag Archives: hitachi SDS drill

Friday 8th August 2014 – WOW!

What a storm!

It was totally stonishing. About 8mm of rain fell in about 30 minutes round about 22:30. It’s a long time since I’ve seen anything quite like it. I even had to close the roof windows as it was pouring in on me where I was sitting, and that’s not supposed to happen.

Mind you, it had been brewing all day. When the boulangère came by this morning, she mentioned that there might be a storm a little later. And it wasn’t long after that that we had the fist lightning flashes. They kept it up from about 12:00 until about 15:30 so I was pretty reluctant to go up on the scaffolding during that period, otherwise it would have been me frying tonight. That’s the one disadvantage of having metal planks.

When i considered it safe to do so, I went up there. Well, not quite – I had to round up all of the tools and fittings that I needed for the job. And that took several attempts to make sure that i had everything up there that I wanted. I drilled the hole, a 16mm hole, with the Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill and that went into the stone like a knife through butter. It’s a shame that the batteries are becoming tired in it now, because it really is one of the most useful tools that I have around here. I must sort out some new batteries for it.

Fitting my home-made eye wall anchor was straightforward – with a little persuasion from a hammer it went into the hole that I had drilled, but tightening it up was something else. With a little too much force, I reckon, I sheared off the wedge that splits the interior of the anchor. Then of course I couldn’t extract the broken one, and so I had to drill another hole and start again. This time I didn’t use quite so much force when tightening it, so I managed not to break it.

Fitting the turnbuckle was straightforward, but then actually fastening the guy wire was almost impossible as the length of the turnbuckle put it too far away from the scaffolding for me to reach it properly. I was lucky that the wire was quite long, as I was able to put a loop in the far end, pass the wire around the hook on the turnbuckle and then around a pivot (the framework upon which the wind turbine is mounted) and with a rope in the loop that I made, pull it back towards me again.

With it securely tied around the scaffolding, I could perform a major feat of gymnastics, balanced right on the edge of the scaffolding on the toes of one foot, and reach right out to the wire to fasten the wire rope ties (three of them) to hold the wire together.

Then dismantling the temporary fittings that I had made, I could tighten up the turnbuckle. And to my surprise, it pulled the wind turbine perfectly vertical instead of leaning over about 5° to the north.

All of this took me until about 18:20 and so for the remaining 40 minutes I did some (but not much) weeding in the vegetable plots. And as I knocked off, it started to rain. “Perfect timing!” I said to myself. And then we got the lot a few hours later.

i’m glad that I’ve fastened the wind turbine with a second guy wire. With just one, it was pulling it out of the vertical and of course, one isn’t very secure. Ideally it needs four and while I can think of a way to do the third one (and i might even do it some day) the fourth will be difficult. Nevertheless, progress has been made.

On Monday, I’ll start to attack all of the rest of the jobs that need to be done while I’m up there. Let’s see how long it takes me to finish them.

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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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Tuesday 15th November 2011 – IT’S NOT AS EASY …

… as you might think putting up this wind turbine and despite a good day’s work I’ve hardly scratched the surface of it.

First job was to reposition all of the planks on the scaffolding so that they are where I want them to be, and then to put the ladder where it should be as well. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either.

After that it was to cut up an old scrap scaffolding pole (I bought a couple of those with just this kind of purpose in mind) to make the horizontal battens on the wall. There’s an overhang on the roof of about 70mms and so I’m having to invent something to stand the upright pole 70mms out of the wall, and that’s not easy.

Next task was to drill the holes for the mounting brackets to take the horizontal battens. And with the hard stone that we have around here this was playing havoc with the batteries on the Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill.

And then I had an idea.

I have a mains SDS drill – about 750 watts-worth but it’s pretty lightweight and not any better than the Hitachi. That’s always been down here but back in Brussels a few years ago I recalled buying a really heavy-duty 1050 watt SDS drill – with rotostop and everything. And that would make short work of drilling the holes.

  1. And so I had to hunt that down somewhere around the house or the barn and eventually, much to my surprise, I actually discovered it.
  2. And then it was to wire in the 1500-watt mega-inverter that I bought for the barn.
  3. And then it was to trail an electrical cable all around the side of the house from across the barn.
  4. And then look for an adapter because the drill is still wired to a European plug.

But now you see why it’s taking me so long.

But once I was up and running, that drill went through the stone like a hot knife through butter.

After much manipulation I have one of the horizontal battens on now, and that cement mastic stuff is excellent. But I’m going to have to take it off because I’ve thought of an improvement and I shall be doing that tomorrow.

What with having to manipulate the heavy upright pole (and that wasn’t easy either) I was exhausted and in any case heaving heavy pipes around 10 metres up in the air by the light of a torch is not recommended.

We talked the other day about the film Tony Rome. Now that film is from the mid-60s and one of the things that was going through my mind was “is this the earliest ‘mainstream’ film to have a reasonably-explicit lesbian love scene in it?”

I spent all afternoon trying to think if there was one any earlier than this but nothing came to mind, apart from some subculture stuff in the 1920s

Secondly, I was watching an episode of The Prisoner this morning at breakfast – “It’s Your Funeral” – and one of the actresses in it caught my ear. And I mean that too because while I didn’t recognise the face, the voice was ringing in my ears telling me something.

And it wasn’t until much later that the penny dropped. It was no one other than Annette Andre, which might mean nothing to you but her most famous role was as Philia, Michael Crawford’s sidekick in the film version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

That film which, although excellent in its own right, was notorious for dropping Frankie Howerd from the lead role in favour of the dreadful Zero Mostel and featuring a cameo of Buster Keaton, two things done simply so that the film would have a wider audience in the USA. 

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Thursday 17th September 2009 – I STARTED ON THE HEAVY ENGINEERING TODAY

fitting new joists stud wall attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve fitted the first of the new floor beams, and also one of the uprights that will enclose the head of the stairs.

And I’ll tell you now – that Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill that Terry ordered for me from Screwfix is phenomenal. It went right into the stonework of the house – with a bit of effort it has to be said – but nevertheless it drilled the holes for 4 big anchor bolts and it’s held them firmly.

cutting mortice joint into floor joist les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo, what’s the plan?

Well, it all revolves around windows of which there aren’t all that many. The stairs up to the attic rise from bottom-right to top left as you can see and there’s a window at the bottom of the flight.

What I’m doing is to make a U-pattern staircase that will go from the centre of the attic (just where the window is in fact) down to the left and then round back on itself. This will be enclosed by a wall around the upright and a couple more of its friends.

To the right of the upright will be covered over with flooring and that’s the bit that I will be using as my office. It’s 2.1 metres from there to the front wall of the house.

fitting new floor joists attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe stairs are going to be narrower – 65cms instead of 1m so with an allowance for the woodwork the double width of the U shape will be 1.50m.

And where the stairs will stop at the floor below will give me a an empty space of 2.1 m by 1.5m which will have a window in it (the window that is currently at the foot of the existing staircase) and that empty space will eventually become the bathroom (but not any time soon).

Do you understand that?
If so, would you mind explaining it to me?

Mind you, it wasn’t straightforward. I had to open the window-that-will-be-the-bathroom-window to heave a few old chevrons out – but the blasted thing fell to pieces in my hands. I know that it needs to be replaced and indeed it will be but I hoped it would last for another year or two.

So there I was having to patch and screw it back together before I’d even got started. And mauling huge beams up into the attic isn’t my idea of fun either. In the end I ended up cutting that one down to size outside.

After I’d finished and had my well-earned cup of coffee I had to nip into Pionsat and empty the chemical beichstuhl.I hate doing that when there are people around so finding the village square overrun with the fairground attractions rather put me off my stride.

Hence I nipped round to the other publics across the way from the village hall and of course it’s Thursday – dancing lessons night – and half the Anglo-French group were there with Mark standing outside. It was just not my lucky day.

And talking of it not being my lucky day I’ve now run out of vegan chocolate cake. I wonder if Terry needs any more wood moving.

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Thursday 13th August 2009 IT OCCURS TO ME …

space blanket insulation interior attic les guis virlet puy de dome france… that I haven’t posted a pic of the interior of the attic. so here’s one to put the record straight. It’s as well that I post one now as this afternoon I started work up there.

You remember that I mentioned the other day that I had to face the walls under the eaves at the front, to keep the bugs and the weather out. At the rear though it’s not possible to do it like that so I’ve been facing the walls under the eaves from the inside. And they needed it too – you can actually see daylight in a couple of places.

So what I’ve been doing is ramming stones up underneath the insulation on top of the house walls to block up any holes and then infilling with mortar. Some rain and some animals might get under then eaves at the back but at least they won’t get into the house.

This morning I attached the downpipe for the guttering to the side of the house. I tried the new Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill and it went into the wall like a hot knife into butter. This is going to be some purchase.

And you might be wondering why that was all I did this morning. But most of the morning was spent turning the inside of Caliburn upside down looking for the downpipe fasteners.

kwikstage scaffolding lean-to les guis virlet puy de dome franceTomorrow, Terry’s coming round and we are going to take down most of the scaffolding and fit the plywood sheets onto the roof here. And that will be Terry finished round here (until we start on the barn roof, but I haven’t mentioned that to him). All that will then remain will be to fit the membrane, the slates, the fascia panels and the guttering, and we’ll be done!

Then I can get cracking on the inside of the house. I want to be settled in before October.

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Monday 10th August 2009 I WAS HAVING A …

kwikstage scaffolding lean to roof les guis virlet puy de dome france… quiet leisurely breakfast this morning when a car pulled up outside. “A bit too early for the postie” I thought so I wandered off to see who it was. And lo and behold! It was Terry.

“Come on, let’s have this roof off” he exclaimed, so before I could even begin to tell him about my change of plan we were ripping the slates off. Ahhh well!

I uncovered an ants’ nest (I wondered where all these ants had been marching to – now I know) but Terry won the prize, uncovering a mice nest, complete with mice. These were summarily evicted too. We uprooted a couple of rotten chevrons (most of them are fine and they will be staying put) and then we put up the scaffolding.

After lunch we xylophened the wood on the end of the main roof and then painted it with the LIDL wood preservative. Tons of the stuff went on.
“This won’t ever rot again” I suggested.
“It’ll rot sooner or later” said Terry.
“Well, as long as it doesn’t do it before I’m dead” I said
“No problem there” said Terry, brandishing a hammer.

>We edged off the wood with tiles just as I had done on the other side and then piddled off to Simon’s to see about his electricity. He had his kids there, a lad of 12 and a girl of 8. And Strawberry Moose made another friend as you can expect.

And at the Anglo-French group, Nathalie made a welcome return. It was nice to see her after all of this while. And next week, as the venue at St Eloy is closed, Amandine wants to invite us round to her house at Moureuille.

I forgot to mention too that Terry brought me round my new toy. A bargain pack of Hitachi battery-powered drill, torch and – wait for it – battery-powered SDS drill. I’ve been after one of those for years and Screwfix had them on special offer. So I’ve treated myself. I can think of a million uses for one of those.

And talking of Screwfix, Terry’s had to nip to the UK to pick up his latest purchases so I’m on my own for a couple of days again. But don’t worry – he’s left me plenty to do.

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