Tag Archives: luton transit

Wednesday 10th October 2012 – AND SO AFTER …

… a really early night I was awoken at 05:00 by a torrential rainstorm.

Ahh well – I just can’t win.

Anyway we had more of the same this morning, but even so, I had a little job to do outside.

There are two banks of solar panels on the barn – one that keeps the good batteries in charge, powered by the solar panels on the end wall of the barn, and the other one which powers everything in there, powered by the solar panels on the roof of the Luton Transit.

That second bank uses some second-hand batteries that I bought in 2004 and which have done sterling service, but recently they have been sliding away into oblivion – not that I’m surprised. I don’t have a clue how old they are

I’ve bought some huge batteries for the house, and the plan is to move the ones currently in the house to replace those that are packing up.

Anyway, what with one thing and another I’m a long way from that point yet, and the batteries in the barn have now finally given up the ghost – they were showing 6.53 volts this morning.

However, there’s another lot of batteries around here – a job lot that I bought for peanuts in 2008 and which never seemed to do what they were supposed to do, and so I wrote them off.

But having a ferret around with a voltmeter, there were three that were still showing 10 volts, which, considering that they have had no charge at all since 2009, is pretty good going, I reckon.

Anyway, while 10 volts isn’t much to write home about, it’s far, far better than 6.53 volts so I changed the batteries over and I now have those three working the barn.

With the charge that they had received during the afternoon, I noticed tonight at 22:00 that the batteries were registering 10.55 volts. I’ll be curious to see what they drop down to in the early morning (the power meter has a “minimum volts” recorder).

I’ll be even more interested to see what they will be at tomorrow night after a full day’s charge.

Later on, I carried on clearing the hardstanding and doing a few running repairs on stuff that was on there and needing attention.

That went on until about 18:00 when we had the downpour to end all downpours (altogether, 10mm fell today) and so I decamped to the barn where, under the light of the LED strip lights, that function impressively well at 10.55 volts, I did some tidying up, just for a change.

Having tripped over something on the floor in the verandah this evening and dropped a load of rice everywhere, I’ve decided that tomorrow I’ll strip out the verandah.

Tons of stuff in there that I don’t need, and seeing as I’ll be on my travels on Friday I can sling it all in Caliburn tomorrow and drop it off at the dechetterie while I’m out.

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Thursday 21st July 2011 – THE POSTIE CAME …

… this morning and brought me the new battery for the laptop and so the first thing that I did was to fit that in place.

And it makes a big difference too – seeing battery time left of 4 hours and 15 minutes instead of a mere 87 minutes, as has been the case for the last few months. That’s worthwhile.

And this afternoon I’ve repaired the door here, repaired the electronic rain gauge and hung the solar lanterns on hooks – one by the front door and the other by the water butts.

And if that’s not enough to be going on with, we then had a mega-gardening session. All of the leeks are planted now, as well as whatever I recognised (and there was a lot that I didn’t recognise) in the seed trays. I even managed a little weeding too.

I might even be able to eat something out of the garden this year

As for the two solar arrays in the barn, one of the ones (the new one on the barn wall) has now fully-charged its batteries. It’ll be interesting to see how well that maintains its charge now. If it all works out as planned, I can change the system over so that all of the panels will be on the mounting at the end of the barn wall and do away with the Heath-Robinson structure on the roof of the Luton Transit.

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Monday 18th July 2011 – AND SO I’VE BEEN AND GORN …

… and now I’m back after my mega-voyage of this weekend.

Yesterday evening was, as you know, quite an exciting dash through the wilds of rural Burgundy, but this morning it was a totally different story.

There were hay lorries, tractors, all kinds of things on the roads. No wonder I like to travel at night. And the final straw was near Moulins where they had part of the N7 closed for resurfacing – it took an hour to travel 6 kms, such is the traffic on the N7.

Bback home here though, I encountered all of the storms and the rain. I’m not unloading Caliburn in this weather.

And the solar panels on the end of the barn, those that I fitted before I went? They are producing about 20% more than those on the roof of the Luton Transit. I was hoping for more but never mind – it’ll do.

I was however back home in time to attend Lieneke’s party, where I spent most of my time chatting to Tyas, Simon and Desiree. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them.

And as you might expect, it all caught up with me later so I came home and crashed out. No surprise here.

And do you know what? I have to go back and do exactly the same thing next weekend too!

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Wednesday 13th July 2011 – I’m having a change of plan …

… for tomorrow – and it’s just as well. I woke up this morning, once more before the alarms went off, but there was no way that I was going to get up. I could hear the rain thrashing down on my roof and it wasn’t a day for working outside. That’s another day lost of course but it can’t be helped. I went back to bed for an hour.

When I finally crawled out of the stinking pit I began to tidy up in here looking for the data head – but even though I even went as far as to move the bed settee, no luck. I wonder where that has gone. Just typical.

After lunch I went to the bank to pay some cash in and then to the funeral parlour to enquire after Damien. His funeral is at 15:00 on Friday and hence the change of plan – I’ll have to miss the Friday in Brussels and go once the funeral is ended. I can’t not go to see Damien off. I’ll just hope that I’ll have time to go to the bank before I pick up Marianne. I can book my flight tickets another time.

Back here I carried on doing a little tidying but at about 17:00 the rain stopped. That was the cue to go outside.

solar panel barn wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe framework on the barn is now finished and I have one of the solar panels in place. It’s not quite fastened up but it’s certainly there. And that took me until 20:30 and I bet you can’t remember when was the last time I’d worked so late. I know I can’t.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to get one of the panels off the roof of the Luton Transit and put it on the end of the barn. That will be two banks of two (one on the barn wall, one on the Transit roof) and while I’m away I can see how well the performances relate.

I’m hoping to have at least half as much again off the ones on the end of the barn.

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Friday 2nd July 2010 – Up until about 21:00 this evening …

… the weather was magnificent. In fact it was far too magnificent to work.

solar panel mounting kwikstage scaffolding barn les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis morning we put up a small scaffolding at the southern end of the barn and while Terry was drilling and screwing into the wall for the mounting brackets I was sawing and cutting scaffolding pipe to make a framework to mount the solar panels that are on the roof of the Luton Transit.

I’ll be fitting them permanently onto this end of the barn along with the wind turbine that we took down from the north end of the barn.

But we were defeated by that most unusual phenomenon – overheating batteries. When they went flat in the Hitachi SDS drill (and what a good purchase that was!) they were too hot to take a charge. Mind you, it was only 37°C today – the hottest of the year.

guttering barn roof kwikstage scaffolding les guis virlet puy de dome franceNot to be outdone however we started on the guttering of the barn as you can see. I told Terry that there are four classes of people in France

  1. the peasants – the ones with the leaky roofs
  2. the lower class – the ones with roofs that don’t leak
  3. the middle class – the ones with guttering on their barn …

    4. “What’s the fourth class?” asked Terry

  4. “The ones with drains to take away the water!”

But having seen how dry the house walls have become since I put guttering up, then my barn will have it too. I’m sick and tired of being up to my neck in mud. But I’ll have to wait a bit for the drains though.

The chevrons are much too short for the roofing (I went for a long overhang) and so a fascia board is out of the question but they did have at Brico Depot yesterday some galvanised straps with the facility for a sliding attachment. If you bend the straps so that the sliders are at about 60° there’s still a good 9 inches or so on the straps and they fit nicely onto the chevrons and you can bolt the gutter mounts to them and they are then perfectly vertical.

We did what we could bearing in mind that we had no joints (moving the scaffolding out to give us clearance was fun) but by 15:00 it was no longer possible to work up there. The combination of a searing hot metal roof, blinding sunlight and tools too hot to touch made us call it a day.

I did a little some while later and then history was made by my not only having a solar shower  (and this LIDL garden shower thing needs some attention) but a solar shave as well. And no surprise – the water temperature was a phenomenal 46°C

We had a barbecue round at Clare’s tonight. Esther hosted it and very kindly invited me, and of course Strawberry Moose met some of his admirers. James and Julianna drew some good pictures of him too.

But by 21:00 we were having thunder and lightning and we even had some rain. But nothing like as much as we need. And right now the sky is a clear cloudless starry night promising much more sun for tomorrow. I have to go to Commentry to look for joints and downpipe and then it’s a toss-up as to whether I come back to do the guttering or go for a swim.

We shall see.

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Thursday 10th June 2010 – Look what I’m having for tea!

home grown strawberries les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, strawberries. The first of the year, and all grown with my own fair hands too in my own garden.

Unfortunately there aren’t not all that many. It looks as if the local wildlife has been helping itself to them but nevertheless there were five left, and these, together with some soya cream, is a sure sign that summer is here at last.

Or is it?

rain fall in wheelbarrow les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt was raining again this morning and although it stopped for several hours, at about 18:00 it started up again in earnest and it’s still chucking it down now.

A quick look inside the wheelbarrow will tell you everything that you need to know about the amount of rainfall that we’ve had this last couple of days. Remember that this was empty just a couple of days ago when we were shovelling all of these stones around.

Liz came round this morning with my beans and vegan cheese and that’s good news. There are also some tins of curry and so it’s back to my Saturday night ritual again. We had quite a chat and it was a shame that she had to go.

And after that I carried on with the tidying up outside. Now that I have a hardstanding (or a wetstanding, or a notwithstanding) I’m moving over there everything that was propped up against the side of the barn. In a couple of weeks we’ll be putting up a scaffolding against the barn in order to do the barn roof, and I’ve been waiting years to do this. For many reasons actually – not the least being that I can finally move the solar panels off the roof of the Luton transit and onto the wall of the barn.

I’m tidying up a few other things too so I’m clearly not well. And when it clouded over at about 17:50 I called it a day and came up here. In fact I crashed out for half an hour.

In other news, I see that the new Conservative Government is planning to remodel University education. The Minister has considered several University models, including major part-time suppliers, ans has decided to try to remodel things on the lines of that well-known supplier of distance education, the … errrr … University of London.

As I said a few years ago when they set up a committee to consider part-time degree education and it consisted of staff from that other well-known supplier of distance education the … errrr … North Staffordshire University, the days of the Open University having any kind of significance and playing any kind of major role in shaping Government policy, these are long-gone. The OU has lost its relevance and has received yet another kick in the teeth.

Increasing prices and tuition fees brought an angry response from the National Union of Students. But of course they are a small-minded militant body made up of kids still wet behind the ears. So where was the response from the Open University Students’ Association – that body of 180,000 grown-up and mature students? The answer is of course “nowhere”. Either no-one considered the OUSA to have any relevance (which is a damning indictment of OUSA) or else whatever OUSA did say was considered to be not worth reporting (which is a damning indictment of OUSA).

It seems that OUSA has outlived its relevance too. But we all knew that, and a long time ago. A couple of years ago when the Labour government considered the idea of increasing costs and reducing subsidies, the response of that grown-up and august body of mature students was to … errr … sign a petition! I mean! We did things like that in Primary School when we were 10 and 11. Was that really the best that OUSA could come up with?

I once worked in a multinational multi-government organisation and we used to receive petitions from all kinds of people in all walks of life, on a regular basis. And do you know what we did with the petitions that we received? Well, we never bought any toilet paper, that’s for sure. That’s how petitions are treated in organisations such as that.

And the strawberries were delicious!

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Saturday 22nd August 2009 – THIS IS ABSOLUTELY ASTONISHING!

solar energy record amp-hours les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe solar panels on the roof of the Luton Transit that feed the power to the barn (and originally to here with some very dodgy wiring) have been there since August 2007 and the most solar energy that they have ever received is 90.8 amp-hours, back on 22 April 2009.

Bearing in mind that fact that was some 2 months before the optimal date for capturing solar energy, you would expect that figure to be broken some time in midsummer but as yet it’s not quite managed it.

By contrast, the 3 panels on the roof of the house that are currently wired in capture a theoretical 21 watts more and although they are not angled optimally into the sun, they are situated in a much better location for catching the sun, so I had high hopes for these panels. But not 120.6 amp-hours worth.

That’s a pretty astonishing figure from just 390 watts, and with another 390 watts to come from the second bank of panels, you can understand why I’m optimistic about this set-up if I can generate these kinds of figures. This would represent just under 3KwH of electricity (1 KwH is about 88 amp-hours or so) being generated today on both banks of panels.

This morning I was awake long before the alarm went off and spent the morning tidying up, sowing some lettuce seed into a container in the verandah and rescuing some oregano and mint (with not having the time to do any gardening just now the whole place is going to pot!).

Lunchtime saw me in St Eloy shopping (or trying to shop if there was anything to buy – the place is rapidly going downhill) and when the DiY shop opened I went to get my polystyrene sheets for the battery box.
“We don’t carry that” said the owner. “You need to go to the builders’ merchants”
“Ok” I replied, heading for the door
“But it’s a waste of time going now. They are closed!”
This blasted country gets me down at times. The concept of customer service is getting to be as bad as the UK’s. Builders’ merchants closed on Saturdays when everyone has the weekend to do DiY, hotels that close for the summer holidays when they should be open for summer holidaymakers, restaurants “closed for lunch” (I’ve seen that!). No perishing idea.

If someone were to open a decent DiY in St Eloy they would clean up. And if Screwfix or Toolstation got their acts together and started to operate here they too would hit the jackpot.

So I piddled off the 40km to Commentry and the Bricomarche. Not only were they open (and that’s a surprise) and not only did they have my polystyrene (and what a price too! I needed oxygen after that!), they also had the missing bits for the guttering as well as the bits that I need to make a sump in my rainwater collection plan.

So …gulp … 68 Euros the lighter, I returned home, fitted the sump into the rainwater collection circuit (I’ll post a pic of it one of these days) and fitted the polystyrene into the battery box.

I put the other 6 batteries in there and I’ll remove away from the front door the 4 I’m currently using, and put them in the box. But that’s for tomorrow.

And while I was sitting drinking a coffee, an old beat-up little white Citroen pulled up at the back of the house. A couple had a look at the back of the house, had a good chat and then drove away. I wonder what that’s all about.

I suppose I’ll soon find out. But it’s been all go today, hasn’t it?

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