Tag Archives: inverter all night

Wednesday 1st July 2015 – NOW, HERE’S A THING

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a solar shower. It’s an old enamel shower base with a wooden frame built around it and infilled with corrugated plastic roofing sheets. On top of it is a black plastic box filled with water and connected to a shower standpipe and covered with an old caravan window.

It all sits outside absorbing the heat from the sun and a couple of times a week I can have a shower. Some times though, I have to put a few litres of hot water into it to bring up the water to a comfortable temperature.

Today, though, this was the first time, so my records tell me, that I have EVER had to put cold water into it in order to cool it down to a comfortable temperature. It’s thoroughly crazy, this temperature. And even with the cold water in there, it was still flamin’ ‘ot.

Mind you, it wasn’t like that this morning. It was all overcast and cloudy. Not good weather at all, even though it was hot. And I’d left the electricity on all night and had the fan going in the bedroom to cool me down while I slept.

I was on my travels too. back at school, school uniform and all. Properly back at school although, strangely enough, I didn’t recognise any of my fellow pupils. One person who was there though was Zero whom I mentioned the other day. What’s she doing at my school?

This morning after breakfast I cracked on with the radio programmes – doing the additional notes for the Radio Arverne sessions. The first lot is half-done and I’ll finish off the rest tomorrow. Then I can start on the second show.

And ironically, by pure and utter coincidence, a major topic has appeared right out of nowhere and landed on my laptop as it were. Something very important and very topical. “A sign from the Gods” I said, and stashed it away ready for use in a week or so.

I was interrupted by the postie who brought me my circular saw. “What happened yesterday?” I asked her, and she gave me a blank look. It seems that although La Poste promises to deliver on a certain date, it receives the parcels at the central tri, in my case at St Eloy, but they don’t come out to the Post Office at Pionsat until the following day. Meantime, to cover their tracks with Amazon, they pretend to have delivered the products the previous day.

Thoroughly dishonest.

After lunch, I attacked the bathroom door. It’s now sanded down so that it fits, a washer stuck in between the top and bottom halves of the hinges so that it doesn’t scrape the floor, and the mortise latch for the door is now fitted and the handles are attached.

Even more so, the closer in the door frame has been chiseled out and the closer frame fitted, so we now have a door that opens and closes properly. This really is progress.

Tomorrow I have to drill out the bottom of the door for the air vent and cut down a floorboard or two to make all of the door jambs. When that’s all done, I can mask everywhere off and varnish all of the wood.

But it is so impressive, this door. I’m well-pleased with that.

Then I had my shower, and went off to Marcillat. It seems that I’ve been co-opted onto the management committee of Radio Tartasse and I’m not sure why. Clearly something’s afoot, and I’m not talking about that thing on the end of my leg either.

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Friday 18th July 2014 – I DIDN’T GET OUTSIDE …

… to work until 16:30 this afternoon, and there was a very good reason for this. That is that when I went outside at 11:30 to pay the boulangère, it was already 31°C and continued to rise during lunchtime to over 34°C.

Working up on the scaffolding would have been impossible in that – just being outside was exhausting.

Even with the fan on here (and I had it running all through the night) the temperature still reached 32.3°C but at least in front of the fan it was reasonably comfortable after a fashion.

When I finally did make it outside and up on the scaffolding, I found to my dismay that sometile during the last four Years Brico Depot has changed its supplier of plastic rainwater goods. The new guttering brackets don’t fit on the metal supports that were left over from when I did the barn in 2010. Furthermore, the guttering ends that I bought the other day don’t fit in the gutters that were left over from the barn.

THat led to a session of mix-and-match with whatever was lying around and what I could safely replace from elsewhere, and now there are 5 of the 8 guttering brackets fitted and one of the gutters, complete with an end. I’ll be shopping tomorrow for the rest.

There’s also another added complication in that I can’t reach the end wall of the house from the scaffolding – the scaffolding that I have isn’t long enough. Therefore when I’ve finished fitting the gutters, I’m going to have to dismantle part of the scaffolding and re-erect it on the other side of the bay that I’ll be leaving in position – always provided that it doesn’t fall down.

But it looks as if another trip to Liverpool is on the cards

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Monday 8th July 2013 – LAST NIGHT WAS …

… so hot that it was well gone 02:00 and I still hadn’t been able to lie down. Over 25°C up here, it was.

And so I did something that I’ve only ever done once, I think, before.

That was to leave the inverter running all night and I dug out the mains desk-top fan and left that running on the “low” position all through the night.

On that position the fan makes just a gentle humming noise and I think that that rocked me gently off to sleep.

Up at the usual hour of 07:30 as well (although I didn’t feel much like it) and after breakfast I carried on with the website for at least … ohhhh … half an hour, before the first interruption of the day.

Despite having his internet fixed on Friday morning, it’s gone down again so Rob was looking for the use of my cable for half an hour or so…

Ohh yes – who’s next? Yes, there’s this local Reactionary rag called the Trou des Combrailles – the local hippies and activists feuding within its pages.

They are doing an article on wind turbines and they want to feature something about me in it, so someone was sent to interview me.

Apparently they are against wind turbines because they “look ugly”, so I asked the reporter chappy if he would rather have a nuclear power station or a coal-fired generating plant up there on the brow of the hill,

However, in common with most NIMBYs (and these environmentalists are no different that anyone else) they would rather have their electricity from a nuclear power plant next to someone else’s back yard rather than something ecologically and environmentally-friendly near to them.

Eventually I managed to attack the shower room wall seeing as how we had some kind of good clear weather.

And after much anguish looking for my other arbour (which I eventually found) it was all systems go.

breather pipe shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe hole that I started is now finished off, with the pipe cemented in place and with the outer filter fitted.

It just needs to be cut to length though on the inside of the wall and so I’ll do that when the plasterboard is in place.

As for the second hole, well…

The long arbour and the huge core drill are so heavy that I couldn’t lift the SDS drill. How I wish I had a small arbour!

There is one but that’s for an ordinary drill and so I tried that. The very small one is only a 10mm chuck but the other one is 13mm and that fitted, but I broke off the chuck key.

Tightening it up with a screwdriver didn’t work and so it was the SDS drill or nothing.

Of course, it’s a rubble wall on the interior and we collided straight away with a big lump of ironstone and that brought everything to a juddering halt.

But using the battery SDS drill with a 300mm (and then a 500mm) drill bit I spent a couple of hours breaking up the ironstone in situ and once that had been done I could attack it with the big SDS drill and the huge core drill.

By the time 19:00 came round and the power started to drop off (it IS 1400 watts, after all) I’d done well over half of the core drilling. And there was dust everywhere (and blood on my new wooden floor – drat!)

My hair was a real mess and so in the end I cut it all off and gave it a run over with the sheep shearer. After that I had a hair wash, a long chat with Marianne and another one with Cécile (her mum has had another fall and is now in hospital – a wise decision for Cecile to return).

Now I’m whacked and that is that.

Tomorrow I need to have another go with a standard SDS drill to break up some more of the rock in the wall and then, if nothing else goes wrong, finish off with the core drill.

If I can get all of that done I might have time to strip down the water filters and have a play with them.

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Monday 20th August 2012 – I WENT TO …

… sleep last night with the new electric fan still working. First time I’ve ever left the inverter running through the night.

It clearly did the trick as this morning as it was quite overcast and there was even a hint of rain.

I’d had a decent night’s sleep too for a change in this weather and I think that I might try this again tonight. And I’ll need it too because the weather warmed up substantially again this afternoon.

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceAll this afternoon I’ve been working on the wall again.

7 buckets went into it today and substantial progress is being made, although you would hardly think so from looking at it.

Nevertheless in one corner I can actually now work off the floor and not on a ladder, and that should speed things up. You’ve no idea how uncomfortable it was working on either a too-short ladder or a too-long ladder.

I had a visitor too – the young guy who rents the field at the back of the house came to check up on it. We had a chat and it seems that his response to my working in his field is that “well, it’s your wall” – which is a nice pleasant change from how things used to be.

In fact he told me that he didn’t even mind my working there when his cows were there, although he did mention that they might knock me off my ladder

But I’m glad that I sorted that out anyway – for a start it means that I don’t have to move everything out of the field in the evening.

And later on this year, I might even put up the scaffolding at the back of the house and finish off tidying the roof, seeing as he doesn’t seem too bothered.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in 2009 we did the back of the roof by me hanging on to an overhanging ladder that was anchored to the apex of the roof.

There’s a tiny window opening in the back wall and I’ve reached there, and peering in through the window it’s definitely true – the back wall has been built in two parts – the outer and the inner.

That makes me feel an awful lot better – if the outer does fall down, the inner will still be there. Mind you, after the amount of extra stones and mortar that has gone into this wall, there won’t half be a row if it does fall down.

Apart from that, this morning I was on the computer – not doing the web site but doing the radio programmes. I’m way behind with them after yesterday and I need to catch up.

And while I was typing this, another bat flew into my attic – teach me to leave the doors and windows open, won’t it? Luckily this one I managed to move on intact, not like the one from last year.

Makes a change from the bats in the belfry – they are always there as you know.

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