Tag Archives: painting eaves

Thursday 17th July 2014 – THIS IS RIDICULOUS.

Here I am, just after midnight in my little attic and it’s 29.2°C. And that’s with the fan going full-blast too. The temperatue up here reached 32.4°C during the day.

And if you think that that is warm, In the verandah we had over 52°C, and so you can guess what kind of day we had today – glorious sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. I even had another shower this evening.

It was hard this morning to get out of bed before 08:00 but I did just about manage it, and after breakfast we had the usual go on the website although I do admit to going to sleep for about half an hour.

wood preservative under eaves roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceOutside a little later, I was up on the scaffolding finishing off the 1st coat of paint on the woodwork and also, incidentally, finishing off the tin. After lunch, I opened another tin and slapped the stuff all over everywhere. That shouldn’t ever rot now which is just as well.

All of the stuff to do the guttering is now up there on the scaffolding, but I’ve had a change of plan about the fascia board. Firstly, its too heavy for me to lift into position on my own and secondly, because the ends of the chevrons were never squared off, it’s impossible to fit it properly no matter how much padding I use. I’m going to use the gutter brackets that I used for the barn, no matter how much I hate them.

Much to my surprise I have a few of those so I’ll use them as far as I can until Saturday when I’ll buy a pile more.

So after my shower I called it a day – 19:25. And so you can’t say that I’m not putting the hours in.

-1

Wednesday 16th July 2014 – I’M DOING IT AGAIN.

It’s currently 03:30 on Thursday morning and I’m wide awake – not the lest inclination to go to sleep.

And I don’t understand why either because I haven’t had an idle day.

This morning I was up at the usual time and after breakfast cracked on with the website. Later, I went outside and, just as I feared, it seems that the little cement mixer that has done such valiant service here has given up the ghost. Switching on, the motor “pings” into action but the drive doesn’t engage (that’s not so unusual). Swinging the drum by hand, the usual method of working it, does nothing at all except to trip the 100-amp fuse that controls the battery. In other words, the 40-odd amps being generated by the solar panels plus 100 amps out of the batteries is apparently not enough to power a little 375-watt motor.

Clearly something isn’t right here and I’ll have to look into this.

lime mortar cementing under eaves les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I mixed a bucket-load of lime mortar by hand and spent a delightful couple of hours up on the scaffolding smearing that everywhere. All of the sealing-in is now done and it makes a much better seal that the mess that was there beforehand.

When I had finished the cementing, I started to paint the wood treatment product all over the wood underneath the roof – the plywood, the battens and the chevrons. I’ve done half of it, and tomorrow I’ll finish the other half and do the second coat. Yes – I’m putting as much as possible on everywhere because I can’t imagine that I will ever be up here again so it will have to last at least another 30 years.

We had a glorious hot day today and the temperature in the 12-volt immersion heater running off the surplus solar energy had gone off the scale (over 70°C). In the solar shower the temperature was 36.5°C and that meant that I could have the first solar shower since I came back from Munich. That, in turn, meant disturbing a bat that had taken up residence there.

And that was that. And here I am. And I’ll probably still be here tomorrow night too.

-1