Tag Archives: indespension plant trailer

Sunday 30th October 2016 – IT GOES FROM BAD …

… to worse.

Luckily, it’s something that hasn’t happened to me (except only indirectly) but I’m involved in this as much as anyone else.

Terry needed to move the mini-digger and asked me ages ago if he could borrow my Indespension plant trailer to do the job, to which I agreed. Then a day or two ago he told me that he would be round at my place this morning, but the penny didn’t drop.

Later this afternoon, I had a phone call. There’s a puncture on the trailer. Well, I had no idea that he was planning to move it today. And where is the puncture? Why, it’s about 200 miles away from home. I had no idea that he was going to go that far.

Of course, there’s no spare wheel. That was one of the things that I had intended to resolve over the winter, as well as fitting all of the rear lights that I had bought for it so that I could bin the trailer-board on the back, but as you know, I was otherwise occupied with my serious health issues and I’ve never been home since.

If you have insurance on your trailer you can call for assistance, but that’s another thing that never entered my mind seeing as how I am in no position to move it anywhere right now.

And of course, it’s Sunday, so now Terry is stranded. But luckily there’s a hotel near to where he is.

Tomorrow he needs to take the wheel off the trailer and take it to be repaired or replaced, but to do that, he needs to take the digger off the trailer. But there’s no diesel in the digger so he’ll have to go off and organise that first thing tomorrow. Except that he doesn’t have a fuel can.

As you can see, it’s another thing that has come to try us just now. When is all of this going to end?

I was asleep really early last night but my neighbours awoke me when they came in and they had the television on – not loud, I hasten to add, but I could hear it vaguely in the background. And once I did drop off, I had to go off twice down the corridor.

I’d been on my travels too, but I don’t have a clue about where I went or what I did. It all evaporated the moment that I awoke.

And wasn’t I organised today? Breakfasted, down to the boulangerie for my baguette and back here, all befor 07:45. that’s something of a new world record. But I spent most of the day drifting in and out of sleep. I had a good chat with Liz and Rosemary today and I’ve also been attacking the website. You remember that I travelled along the Trans-Labrador Highway when it was completed in 2010 and my account of that journey has been on line for a few years.

But as you recall, if you are a regular reader of this rubbish, that I’ve done the journey twice since, once in 2014 and again in 2015 – both time is the opposite direction from east to west. There have been so many changes to the route that I’m going to write another book about it. And so I’ve started to merge all of the reports and photos into one.

That’s going to take me a good while, I reckon. Not the work of five minutes, that’s for sure, so don’t expect to see daily updates on line. .

It’s Sunday and so for tea tonight I had a pizza. Spinach and mushrooms and it was delicious. Best that I’ve had.

But now, I’m going to try for an early night. My body clock will be up the spout because of the change of hour, so I hope that I’m not disturbed.

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Saturday 6th December 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE …

… just once today. And that was about an hour ago to take the statistics. And much to my surprise, I’ve had just half an amp of electricity today – and that was in the barn. It just shows you the importance of inclining the solar panels at the correct angle. Even though there are 6 solar panels on the roof of the house and just two on the barn, the roof panels are inclined at 48° (the pitch of the roof) whereas the ones on the barn are inclined at 71°, which is exactly what they ought to be (degrees north of the Tropic of Capricorn).

I had a late night last night, just for a change these days, and although I woke up when the alarm went off, one look out of the window convinced me that I was wasting my time. It was snowing just then, and had been for a while, and so I went back to bed.

When I finally did raise myself from the Undead, at 09:20, the snow had changed to light rain, and we had 5mm throughout the day. After breakfast I attacked the next month’s rock music radio programmes and they are now complete. It took me ages though because I’ve had to manufacture another concert as well as a speech, and everything was at different speeds and volumes so all of this needed arranging.

I’m beginning to understand how it was that when the radio station did the engineering, they made such a mess of it. I know the results that I am trying to achieve and it isn’t at all easy. The engineers don’t have a clue so they must have found it impossible.

I’ve also been spending some money again. This plant trailer that I bought with the mini-digger is a decent bit of kit, that’s for sure, but as I said the other day, I don’t know who has been playing with the electrics. The rear lights are add-ons – these really cheap and nasty 3-function lights that cost coppers each. And they don’t work either so there’s an even cheaper and nastier trailer board attached.

I hate trailer boards, especially on good-quality equipment, and so having a good browse around on the internet I’ve found a pair of rear lights – 5-function rear lights – that are such a good fit that they might even be the original equipment.

As well as that, I’ve bought a pair of these tiny LED real numberplate lights and a pair of side marker lights, the type that are on stalks so that they can be fitted on the mudguards to mark the extreme width of the trailer.

Apart from that, I’ve not done much else. It’s not been the weather for it.

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Wednesday 3rd December 2014 – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I talked about this snow.

snow 2014 indespension plant trailer les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis morning there was about half an inch on the deck of the new Indespension trailer and other similar surfaces. There was also a layer on the leaves on the plants and so on, but it hadn’t stuck to the ground.

And as the day wore on, the snow gradually disappeared, washed away by the thin drizzle that fell throughout the day.

I’ve been working on the power board in the barn. I’ve found two melamine-covered chipboard planks that were part of an old cheap chest of drawers. They are 25cm wide and so, together, were about right for the 55cms that I need to cover the power board below where the charge controllers are. I’ve mounted them on 37mm laths so that they stand off the back part of the power board and the cables can pass behind.

I’ve invented a kind-of hinge set out of a couple of L-shaped joinery brackets, so that these smaller boards will drop down so that I can work on the cables behind if necessary, and the upper board is installed.

solar power renewable energy control board les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the lower board, that has the laths and the hinges, and I’ve also drilled 3x8mm holes in it. I then cut some 80mm lengths of 8mm threaded rod and passed them through the holes.

I’ve fitted some plastic pattresses front and back on each of the threaded rods. And if anyone wonders why it is that I have fitted the terminal connections within pattresses, then drop a spanner down the back of the power board with no pattresses and 660 amp-hours of batteries wired in, and see what happens.

solar power renewable energy control board les guis virlet puy de dome franceI bolted the rods firmly in place so that there is 25mm of threaded rod out of the back and about 35mm out of the front. Attached to the rear of the threaded rods will be connections for all of the electrical equipment that will be permanently in place, and in the front will be the more temporary types of electrical equipment.

Two of the lengths of threaded rod have been connected together with a negative battery cable, as I’ve found in the past that I need about twice as many negative connections than positive connections.

And why is this?

That’s because there’s a fuse box off a Vauxhall Astra wired into the positive circuit. I like these because they are easy to take off scrap cars, and have one thick lead in, four of the giant fuses, and four wires out. I have four 12-volt electrical circuits – an upstairs lights and upstairs power, and a downstairs light and downstairs power. These circuits feed off the fuse box of course, but each one needs to have the negative circuit connected to the power board individually.

So that’s as far as I have reached today. Tomorrow I’m out, and so I’ll crack on with the power board on Friday.

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Monday 1st December 2014 – THAT HANGING CLOUD …

… that arrived at Chamalieres yesterday followed me home last night. When I went out late last night to check the stats, there it was hanging all over my little mountain.

It was still here this morning and it’s been here all day. In the barn I had the grand total of 0.350 amp-hours of solar energy, and here in the house it was about 1.5 amp-hours.

All day it’s been drizzle and tonight at 21:00 the temperature had dropped to 1°C – the lowest temperature so far. That means that tonight it will probably drop below freezing outside. Anyway, I had the fire lit in here and cooked the last portion of my last week’s curry. As an aside, those small sealed storage jars that I bought at IKEA are doing the business. Filling them up with hot food is creating a powerful vacuum and the food seems to be keeping much longer, as well as tasting better.

At lunchtime too, I had a go at making my own hummus seeing as I’ve run out of vegan cheese and I’m not too keen on this vegan pate. 12 spoonfuls of chick peas all mashed up, three spoonfuls of sesame seed paste, a pile of fresh garlic, some olive oil and some cumin powder and there I was. And it wasn’t all that bad either.

indespension plant trailer les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for work today, this morning I braved the weather to go out and do some work on this new trailer. The lights on the trailer don’t work at all, and I’ll be resolving that issue in due course. It came with a huge trailer board but the light lenses weren’t so good on that, so I had a hunt around and found and old trailer board that still had some bits of light attached to it. I did a bit of mix-and-match with that and now the big trailer board is working properly.

I also cut a bungee strap in half, threaded the two halves through the holes in the traile board, knotting them at the cut ends, and now the trailer board can be hooked properly onto the trailer pro tem, until I can fix the lights on the trailer.

There was a number plate, off the old LDV that I used to have, on the old trailer board, and so now that’s attached to the trailer. The law here in France is that large trailers have to be licensed separately and carry their own number plates. In the UK, that’s not the case. Trailers carry the registration number of the vehicle that is towing them. With this trailer being an old British trailer, it doesn’t have its own number, so I stuck the LDV number plate on it.

That way, the trailer has its own identification and as the LDV is still on the British computer (it was scrapped in Belgium) any information about the trailer will eventually find its way back to me so until I can sort out some paperwork for it, that will have to do.

And then, apart from that, I’ve been up in the upstairs of the barn sorting out the wood and panels to make the power board in the barn – I want to start on that. I also found a decent but of wood for the portable power board, so I’ve been working on that. That should be finished tomorrow morning and then I can start on the power board in the barn.

High time I made use of these new batteries that I bought the other day.

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Thursday 14th August 2014 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again today.

I went out this morning to go to visit someone who was finishing off the work on his house as there were some bits and pieces up for sale. One of the items on sale was a solid, proper Indespension Plant Trailer – 4-wheeled close-coupled low-loader with built-in ramps, 3 metres long and built to carry a tank. It has low loader sides but they can be raised by boards so that the trailer can carry sand and gravel too and it isn’t half an impressive beast, especially when you consider that it will carry all of my scaffolding too as well as the Kubota tractor and whatever else is lying around here.

But not only that – it was what was on the trailer that caught my eye. I had a goot poke around at that and although it’s old, it was in good condition, not leaking and not smoking, and the price for the trailer and the load would have been what I would have had to pay for one of the brand new trailers that I had been looking at if I had to go to the UK to pick it up. Consequently, I bit the bullet and that was that.

I’ve got to go back with some money and then I can take a photo of my new toy and you can see what it is that I bought. UNtil then, I’ll leave you all in suspense.

Back here I put the second coat onto the fascia panel and the beams of the roof on the front of the house (at least, as far as I could reach). Then I went to lunch.

While I was eating my butty I was interrupted by a visit from a couple of people from the Mairie. They were newly-elected councillors familiarising themselves with the area, and they had a little moan about one or two things here.

And that was my clue. I explained firstly that the untidy and unkempt land isn’t mine but is actually the commune’s land. And why I can’t move my stuff around any better is that the commune hasn’t maintained the land for years so I can’t move stuff past it. ANd so if the commune wants me to do something, they need to do something first.

Furthermore, I had applied to the commune to buy the land. Readers with long memories will remember that I deposited my application on 8th May … errr … 2009 – over 5 years ago. And the commune has taken no action about my demand.

This led to an animated discussion that went on for an hour or two, and finally they saw my point. They promised that they would bring up the matter of my application at the next meeting of the council.

We shall see.

After they went, I spent a pleasant hour or so sanding down the facade of the house where I’d drilled through for the air vents and then filled it. That’s comparatively smooth now and almost ready to paint, but a sad discovery was that the crepi had dried out and so was no use at all. I need to buy some more now before I can paint the facade.

I then spent a while sorting out all of the electrical fittings and making a bracket to mount the outside light that I want to fit. And by the time I had everything ready, it was time to knock off.

It was a dull day today with just a couple of odd sunny spells – at least until about 22:30 when we had today’s torrential downpour. This summer is really getting on my nerves now.

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