Tag Archives: rutland wg901

Tuesday 13th September 2016 – AND I DID TOO!

Last night I was saying that I hoped that I would have a good night last night.

And what actually happened was that I went almost straight to sleep and there I stayed, without moving even once, until 05:40. That’s about 7 hours sleep straight through and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a sleep like that.

And not only that,I was on my travels. And quite significant they were too. I remember having a long and involved chat with someone with whom I’ve been speaking at length on the internet just recently – she put in an appearance – and I was also dealing with wind turbine issues at home. The small Rutland WG901 had lost its tail in a high wind and the bearings had seized, causing it to smoke as it tried to rotate. By some incredible feat of gymnastics up the top of a ladder I managed to remove it and replace it with the spare Air 403. Although I hadn’t anchored the mast correctly (and I’ve yet to understand at all why there where two masts) the turbine went round, but the guide light on the charging panel changed from green to orange. A closer inspection showed that the voltage across the battery system was a mere 9.0 volts rather than the 12.7 that it was supposed to be, so there was clearly something wrong. Leaving the fridge running while I was away couldn’t have accounted for that.

But anyway, enough of that. I eventually headed for breakfast and then Rachel and I set out for the tyre depot where I was going to work on Strider – but it didn’t quite work out like that, as indeed you might expect, given the way that things have been going just now.

As well as all of the stuff that had been booked in to be fixed, there had been a breakdown on the Trans-Canada Highway and a holidaymaker from Ontario had limped in to the place with a rather sick car first thing this morning.

It’s only natural that the folding stuff takes priority over any other kind of arrangement and so what with that, and a steady stream of other work that came in, very little was done on Strider before lunch. Rachel and I went off to the restaurant here for lunch, and I had home fries with onions, peppers and mushrooms and a side order of baked beans. I treated Rachel and her friend to lunch, seeing as how Rachel has been treating me to meals for the last week or so and then we headed back.

By this time someone else, driving casually past the tyre depot, suddenly remembered that their car needed a safety inspection so that was another unscheduled job that needed attention. But we eventually managed to get around to Strider and finish the work and perform the safety check.

Of course he passed and so I could go down to Service New Brunswick in Florenceville to have him licensed. And now he’s fighting fit and ready for the road, which is good news, especially as I fuelled him right up. Petrol doesn’t keep like it used to and there’s been nothing put in since the last lot in October last year, so some fresh stuff wouldn’t go amiss. I made sure that there wasn’t much in the tank when I laid him up, so that there would be a full tank at the earliest available opportunity.

Having done that, the next stop was Great Satan. Documentation rules for visiting the USA have changed quite considerably over the last year or so and I needed to know whether I was in order or whether I had to find some more paperwork. But a very friendly (and doesn’t that make a very pleasant change!) couple of US border guards went through the documents that I had, and nothing more was required. I was issued with my entry permit on the spot.

Back at the tyre depot I helped Darren replace some track rod ends on an old Ford saloon that was in for a safety inspection. Had this been the UK, the bodywork would have been a long way short of passing but this is not the UK and we have seen on these pages some examples of what is considered acceptable over here. It wasn’t the worst that we have seen, and not by a long way either.

We all came home after this and as soon as we entered the house I crashed out for well over an hour. I’m definitely not as young as I used to be, am I?

But now that I’m awake again, I’m making plans. Tomorrow with a bit of luck I’ll be off to the seaside. I want to relax in the sun and hear the crash of the surf.

0

Friday 19th October 2012 – THE HURRICANE …

… finally calmed down during late afternoon.

But not before several really impressive records were set. We didn’t quite manage the maximum wind-speed – the 66.7mph gust from May is safe for another while yet- but everything else was historic.

So much so that the Air 403 wind turbine on the roof of the barn generated more electricity today that in the rest of the 15 months that it’s been there.

The Rutland WG901 on the house surpassed the previous record and showed me the magic result on the timer
“Time since I took the last reading – 25 hours and 16 minutes”
“Wind time since last reading – “25 hours and 16 seconds”.

As well as that, the temperature here in the attic is now back up to the 20s – and I should think so too. I was freezing the other night.

So anyway, after the usual messing around on the computer I went outside to rectify the damage.

I picked up the kindling bins and the kindling and reorganised them (I don’t know why I bothered though – they blew over again) and picked up all of the stuff that had been propped against the end of the barn (and that blew back down twice more)

Major work though was with the Air 403 wind turbine fastened to the fence.

The screws have given way under the fierce battering that they took from the wind and the whole affair was blowing around like crazy. Screws clearly don’t work.

As I didn’t have any bolts long enough, you can see the benefits of having lengths of stud iron (or threaded rod as it’s called these days) lying around. I cut a few lengths of that and made up some bolts, and now it’s all properly bolted together and I hope that that won’t move again.

With no bread and still no boulangère I went into Pionsat to find out why she doesn’t love me any more, and I soon found out, much to my dismay.

The boulangerie is closed.

According to the notice on the door, it’s closed “until further notice” following an accident on the premises involving the oven. That’s upset my plans and no mistake. I shall have to think again about this.

Back home I finished off emptying the back half of the hard-standing. I need to buy some weedkiller to deal with the weeds on there, and on Monday I’ll start digging out the soil that has collapsed.

This is going to be a very long job.

-2

Tuesday 13th March 2012 – A FEW MORE …

… records tumbled today.

We had the glorious weather again, so much so that the water that is heated by the surplus energy from the solar panels, the “dump load”, was heated to such an extent that it went off the end of the temperature gauge – ie over 70°C.

That’s the first time this year.

The water in the solar-heated tank (a black plastic box with a glass lid) reached 26.5°C and that’s the highest so far (but still a far cry from the 45°C of midsummer) and if it hadn’t have been so windy, I would have put some of the water out of the dump load into the solar-heated tank to bring the temperature up to about 38°C and I would have had the first solar shower of the year.

But it was far too windy – I would have died of exposure I reckon, and the fact that showering outside in the all-together is the way that it’s done around here, it would have been indecent exposure too.

Talking of the wind, it’s died down now, after the last few days, but once again I had more wind energy created today than the cumulative amount of wind since I installed the power meters 2 weeks or so ago.

Mind you, I don’t think that we will have that again tomorrow.

But here’s an interesting and little-known fact, one that I can now prove. And that is that you can often have more power from a low-powered wind turbine than you can from a high-powered one.

Confused?

Well, let me explain.

Most electric motors, and wind turbines are no exception, have magnets in them and these operate the coils of the motor. Of course, the bigger and more powerful the motor, the bigger and more resistant are the magnets. And so you need more force to overcome the resistance in the magnets.

When you have a low-powered wind it will overcome the resistance in the magnets in a low-powered motor, and make the motor turn. However, there will not be enough force in this low-powered wind to overcome the resistance in a big magnet in a high-powered motor so that this motor won’t turn.

And there I was today, watching the little Rutland 90-watt wind turbine quite happily ticking over and giving me 10 – or 15 watts for much of the day while the big 400-watt wind turbine was doing nothing at all.

And then, all of a sudden there would be a stronger gust of wind and the big Air 403 wind turbine would start to turn, and once it had built up steam it would be there with 50 watts, or 80 watts, or even 113 watts on one occasion, while the smaller wind turbine was giving out 30 or 40 watts.

But be that as it may, the smaller wind turbine chucked out in total three times as much energy as the larger one over the 24-hour period under review. And it’s done that consistently over the last few years.

There are lessons to be learnt here of course – namely a collection of low-powered turbines will do more good than one big one over a continuous period, especially in a place like this.

0

Friday 20th January 2012 – I CAN’T SEE …

… a thing right now in my room.

There’s a gusting wind blowing up outside and it’s in just the right direction to blow right down my chimney so every couple of minutes a load of smoke is blown back down the fire and out of the air vent into the room.

I’m being done up like a kipper just now.

But I was right about the weather – it’s rained for most of the day. And it is indeed nice to see the rail cascading off the new roof on the lean-to onto the ground, well away from the wall, and everything inside the lean-to being bone-dry for a change.

I can’t believe my luck with the weather for that 10-day spell when I decided to go for broke and do the lean-to roof. It’s not like me at all.

So I did some sawing of the wood this morning, but a downside of this now is that I’m cutting it faster than I’m burning it and I’m now running out of room to store it. I suppose that I shall have to make a larger woodpile, or a taller one or something.

I could, I suppose, even dig the trench that I need to dig at the side of the house by the “other” lean-to, drop the drainage pipe in there that needs to go in there and connect it into the drainage system, fill the trench with gravel, cover it over with a weed blanket and then build the real woodshed where it is supposed to go, but that’s not the work of half an hour.

After the woodcutting (which I managed to do without any interruption for a change) I did some more tidying up, starting in the lean-to.

First job was to rescue the remaining Hawker deep-discharge batteries and charge them up.

And here I’ve hit a problem, in that the battery box I made for the previous batteries is too small – the Hawkers are taller. But anyway once they were out of the way I tidied up in the lean-to, collected all of the stray solar panels and stacked them in a corner, and then hung up the smaller gardening tools so that I’m not tripping over them.

Having moved a couple of solar panels out of the barn I could then get in there and make some space to put the old Rutland wind turbine tidily out of the way.

This led to the discovery of a circular saw, not the 600-watt one that I can’t find anywhere at all, but the old 1050-watt one that was all rusted solid having been left in a container that filled with water through a leak in the barn roof when I was ill and which had subsequently been partly-dismantled for spares.

Of course, now that I have a 1200-watt inverter all things are possible, so I gave the saw a good spray with WD40 and reassembled it with some other bits and pieces. And much to my surprise it fired up!

Even more surprising was that the inverter didn’t even bat an eyelid.

The saw needs some “attention to detail” before I can use it to cut wood, but this is definitely progress.

This afternoon, with the weather deteriorating, I restarted work in the bedroom – the first time for God knows how long. I’ve fitted the false beam at the side wall – the beam that hides all of the electrical cable – and I’ve also packed out one of the plasterboard panels that didn’t quite mate with the others.

It was then that I lost the light and so I spent the last hour tidying up in the barn again.

And despite all of this time that I’ve spent tidying up, a I really can’t see any difference at all.

This evening by way of an experiment, I brought a kettle of water up here and put it on top of the woodstove. And after about 2.5 hours it was gloriously warm and I had a lovely hot wash and shave in front of the fire.

Definitely the highlight of the week, that, and I can’t think why I hadn’t done that before.

Next step is the coffee pot on the stove, and put the produce in a thermos ready for the following morning.

I ought to be much-better organised than I am.

-3

Sunday 17th April 2011 – The full moon tonight …

full moon rutland WG901 wind turbine les guis virlet puy de dome france… was really beautiful. As I was cooking my pizza I had half an eye on it slowly moving around. Later when I was doing the washing up it was just appearing above a rare scattered cloud and it had the little Rutland WG901 wind turbine in a perfect silhouette. I couldn’t resist it.

But rare indeed are the clouds these days. I’m going to be tempting fate by saying that apart from two days where there has been a minimum amount of rain, the odd drop or two, there’s been no rain here at all for 14 days. Now that’s guaranteed to produce a thunderstorm, isn’t it?

And talking of full moons, I reckon I should be spending tomorrow planting, rather like Neil Young’s mates in Thrasher I’ll be hiding behind hay bales and planting in the full moon tomorrow. There are the spuds to put out for a start, as well as a few other things. And there’s definitely more than a few signs of life in the cloche now.

It was Sunday today and so a day of rest. But not really – I was up and about before 10:00 and I did some tidying up in here first as well as doing some research into my Newfoundland pages. But the weather was so gorgeous that I went outside and did some tidying up and general nonsense.

After lunch the water in the home-made immersion heater was at 50-odd degrees, what with the blue cloudless sky and all that, so that was the cue for a load of washing, especially as it was a blowy kind of day. While that was doing itself I went down to Pionsat to watch the 1st XI play St Bonnet. They were a loud-mouthed lippy team when I saw them at home, giving the referee all kinds of grief. Today, the official referee didn’t turn up so Damien ended up refereeing.

That was the cue for all kinds of histrionics.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire st bonnet puy de dome ligue football league franceAnd just how stupid are some footballers?

It was 1-1 and one of the St Bonnet defenders had already been given a yellow card for dissent. He actually scores a goal a few minutes later to put his team in the lead and to celebrate, goes up to Damien and says “how about that then, you **** **** ****?”

So he’s sent to the dressing room as you might expect, St Bonnet are down to 10 men, the missing player being a defender of course, and Pionsat win 3-2 accordingly

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire st bonnet puy de dome ligue football league franceAt least, there can’t be any disputes about any of Pionsat’s goals – they are all excellent well-taken efforts especially the second one, which was a peach and worth the price of admission on its own.

But somehow St Bonnet still moan and groan all the way through the final 30 minutes of the match, and carry on long after the final whistle has been blown, but of course it isn’t going to do them any good and I don’t know why they bother.
br clear=”both”>

So now, with the football being over, it’s back home to finish the washing and while that was doing, I did some more tidying up but this time in the little roon underneath the barn. There’s tons of stuff in there and it all needs to be sorted out.

So tomorrow I have the website to work on for a couple of hours, and then planting my stuff for the second half of April. Tomorrow night is Anglo-Francais night at St Eloy as well – it’s a busy day tomorrow.

-1

Friday 31st December 2010 – Happy New Year everyone.

And this year seems to have gone out with a whimper. I managed once more to sleep right through the alarm clocks – all of them – and so it was rather a late morning start. But once breakfast dissolved itself I set about chopping some more wood.

gibson EB3 bass guitar ibanez acoustic bass guitar pile of kindling wood woodstove les guis virlet puy de dome franceNot that I need it (I’m rather overflowing up here right now) but with needing some space in the lean-to and being depressed about the general overall quality of the stuff, I’ve stood some more outside and covered with some more of that clear plastic roofing stuff. The idea being that if ever the sun reappears, it might dry out the wood under the sheeting.

I also chopped up a huge bundle of kindling as there was plenty of that in the way too and it needs to be moved on.

Once that was done I connected up a couple of batteries to the Rutland WG901 wind turbine on the barn roof. We’ve had quite an amount of wind just recently and it seems to be a shame to waste whatever electricity is generated, especially when I have a few batteries loitering around and doing nothing. I’m planning to move the solar panels and the main batteries up that end in due course, but that’s not going to be for a while, until I get a huge load of 32mm saddle clamps.

Arno’s bed is now moved, and once we finished he invited me back home to look at his house. He asked me if he could give me something for my diesel, which was nice of him, and so we settled on a nice hot shower. I explained my difficulties about having a shower, to which he retorted “Yes – you aren’t a member of the OUSA Executive Committee any more” – keen reader of my blog is Arno. But a shower meant a lot to me just then. Nice and clean for New Year, and it saves me having to drive all the way to Neris and paying €3:00 for an entry. So that was fine by me.

I’ve also finally managed my Christmas dinner this evening – it was warm enough to stay down in the verandah for the one hour and 45 minutes it took to cook it. A slab of soya protein, with vegan sausages, roast potatoes, sprouts, chicory, carrots, broccoli and some thick gravy. Over a week I’ve been waiting for this, and it was well worth it.

What was even nicer was that it was followed by some Christmas pudding (I got to that today as well) and soya cream. And that was lovely too. It was just a pity that I’ve had to wait all this time to get to it.

And so that’s the year all done and dusted. And for 2011 I wish every one of you exactly the same as you wished on everyone else for 2010. 

-1

Wednesday 24th November 2010 – WE HAD THE SECOND …

… snows of winter today.

A bit more than yesterday as well. And although it melted fairly rapidly we had quite a pasting early in the afternoon while I was on my way to Liz and Terry’s. That didn’t stay long either though but the temperature has now plummeted and I slid Caliburn on a patch of ice on the way home.

Winter is definitely here.

rutland WG 901 wind turbine attached to fence les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve finished off fitting the wind turbine to the fence and it’s now wired in. And of course we are never ever going to have a breath of wind ever again.

It’s a weird place to put the wind turbine that’s for sure but it’s destined to go on the end of the house once the pointing is finished. And in any case that alley between the house and the trees is something of a wind trap and it’s going to be interesting to see what we can produce from it.

Meanwhile, of course, the wind turbine is being “run-in” so it’s a good idea to mount it, especially seeing as how we haven’t had a drop of sun for about three days now.

home grown beetroot bottled les guis virlet puy de dome franceRound at Terry and Liz’s Liz showed me how to pickle my beetroot and I now have 5 jars of it simmering away. I also took along a few of my chilis to dry out but I seem to have forgotten them. I also gave Terry a hand to put up the scaffolding – he’s fitting windows into his barn roof and I have to sing for my supper.

Not that I’m complaining of course . We had an absolutely excellent stew with dumplings, complete with home-made bread.

Tomorrow if it’s fine I’ll pull up my onions and start to dry them. But if the weather is bad (and what are the odds on that?) I’ll work inside the house.

-2

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 – WE HAD THE FIRST …

… snows of winter today.

1st snows of winter 2010 les guis virlet puy de dome franceI woke up to find a light scattering all over the place. Not much, and it didn’t last long either but the first snows nevertheless.

It’s rather ominous.

So after breakfast I chopped a couple of bucketloads of wood. In the lean-to that I have been slowly repairing there’s all kinds of bits of wood in there so I’m slowly hacking it into manageable pieces for the little stove. I get through about half a bucket each day and there’s plenty to go at.

In fact this little woodstove heats up the place quite quickly burning all of the offcuts and I haven’t had the gas fire on at all yet.

I also noticed that the heavy chipboard lid that I was using to cover up my breadbin outside – that’s given up the ghost too. So I made a new lid to measure out of an offcut of waterproof plywood covered in a couple of plastic binliners.

This afternoon I fitted the wind turbine onto the pole and I’ve attached that to the fence. I’ve not yet wired it in as the light went, but that’s a job to do tomorrow hopefully. And I need it too. We’ve had no sun for a couple of days.

-2

Monday 22nd November 2010 – BACK AT WORK TODAY

And you have no idea how difficult it is, crawling out of bed at something like 08:30 in the morning when you haven’t had to do it for a while.

What made it worse was the weather – really a case of groping my way outside because we had a typical Auvergnat hanging cloud again and you couldn’t see a thing.

First thing that I did was to pull up my beetroot. That didn’t take too long and some of the roots are enormous. Liz is going to show me how to pickle them later this week and I’ll be looking forward to that.

home grown potatoes les guis virlet puy de dome franceNext was the turn of the potatoes and I seem to have rather a lot of them. I’ve had a cursory skim over about a quarter of the potato patch and I’ve pulled up a huge bucket full. But a few of them were damaged by the lifting so I reckon I’m going to have to make a huge potato curry.

I didn’t stay down there long because the heavens opened after about half an hour and it wasn’t very pleasant at all. And having to run up the field to answer the phone at about 11:30 or so, only for it to stop ringing as I put my hand on it – that didn’t help matters either.

But after that I fought my way into the barn, tidying up a load of wood as I passed, and sorted out a scaffolding pole to mount the wind turbine. That’ll be fixed to the fence for a while until I finish pointing the house wall, whenever that might be. And mounting it to the fence won’t be any time soon either as the weather is just impossible right now.

After lunch I tidied up a little in the bedroom downstairs to get ready to start work in there again, and I’ve used some of the old planks from the stairs to make a temporary floor in what will be the bathroom.

Now I have an inside toilet – a dry toilet of course, that’s made from a stainless steel waste bin (I bought two of those from IKEA) lined with a biodegradable bin liner and part-filled with sawdust. It’s only merely placed in the bathroom – it’s a long way from being fitted – but it’s a major advance as I don’t fancy trekking to the outside in the snow that we are likely to be having any time soon

I’ve also had a phone call from a potential customer interested in a wind turbine – that old guy who I met on an ALDI car park in Commentry a while back. He wants to power his house heating with it, which is rather optimistic, so we had a chat and if he wants to go any further he’ll call me back.

-3