Tag Archives: SDS drill

Friday 13th May 2016 – NOW, THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!

Last night, I dropped off to sleep during the middle of one of the Boris Karloff “Mr Wong” films, and apart from a trip down the corridor in the small hours, that was all that I remember until 06:25. It was one of the best nights’ sleeps that I’ve had since I left France and I enjoyed it so much.

I’d been on my travels too, playing bass in a rock band somewhere and we had a concert to play, part of a huge music festival. And although we were set up and ready, our drummer (a friend of mine from way back) hadn’t turned up. He hadn’t sent a message or anything to say where he was or what he was doing, and because we weren’t therefore ready, our spot at this festival was slowly being whittled away by the organisers. And with him being my friend, my bandmates were having a little whittle at me about it. Everything was here from this drummer – his tent, his drums, even the roller skates for his roller skate hire business – everything except him.

So breakfast all eaten and done long before the alarm went off, a nice warm shower and clean clothes long before 08:30, even time to spend on doing some more blog updating before hitting the road at 09:30. And I apologise to Pellenberg for some of the things about it. Not because they aren’t true, but because it’s only half the price (like €10:00 per night) to stay here. I’m prepared to put up with the inconvenience at €10:00 per night.

First stop was the bank, where I had business to perform. And I learnt a thing or two there that I didn’t know either and that made me feel bettertoo. And afterwards, I went to LIDL where I bought myself a set of three new toys – some 800mm (massive) SDS drill bits, 16, 18 and 24mm, at €9:00 (for three, not for one) and these are so impressive.

Next stop was to Spit. This is a charity shop in Leuven that sells books, records, clothes and tons of furniture. It’s huge and full of stuff and I spent a pleasant hour in there looking for stuff. Not buying anything, of course, just looking. But I could have bought several items had I been of such a mind. There was some good stuff in there.

Lunch was at the fritkot at the Jacobsplein, and then off to the hospital for my check-up.

I gave a blood sample and it came back as 8.1. And that, surprisingly, is quite stable for the last couple of weeks. In fact, since I’ve been undergoing treatment, the blood count hasn’t dropped below 7.8. They reckon that I can go for a week without a transfusion because they are keen to see how I hold up. I explained that I’ll be doing a lot of driving but they seem to think that I’ll be fine.

I do like their optimism.

So they heaved me out at 16:00 – minus the transfusion – and I hit the road for home. And I don’t mean “home” as in Pellenberg but “home” as in the Auvergne because I’m coming back for a week. I need more clothes, more books, more stuff in general if I’m to stay here until September and I reckon I should grab it while the grabbing is good. My next appointment is Monday 23rd so I have a little 10-day window to do it.

But it was horrendous coming back. Totally horrendous. The traffic queue started just outside Leuven and lasted until well after Valenciennes. And then there were all kinds of perturbations on the Francilienne. All in all, a journey of less than 4 hours to Melun took just under six hours to complete. Ironically, before I set out, I was toying with the idea of going back via the old road to Auxerre but I reckoned the motorway would be less stressful.

Ohh woe is me!

If this isn’t bad enough, the Première Classe Motel where I’m spending the night (in view of my state of health I’m doing the trip back in easy stages and in comfort) isn’t actually in Melun, it’s in the neighbouring commune. However, there’s a street of the same name in Melun so that when you programme the street name and “Melun” into your GPS like someone around here did, you end up in the middle of some rather insalubrious council estate somewhere. That took me a good 20 minutes to sort myself out.

But as the legendary Marechal MacMahon once said – “j’y suis, j’y reste” or “here I am and here I’ll stay”. Or as Martin Luther put it – “hier stehe ich – ich Kann night anders” or “I’m staying here – I can’t do anything else”.

I’ve had enough for one day.

0

Thursday 11th July 2013 – WELL, THE ANGLE GRINDER …

… idea worked just fine.

Mind you, I had to strip it down, remove the safety guard and the side handle, and fit a worn-down diamond disc. Then I could just about get the thing in the hole that I made.

Although it took ages to work out the best way to use it and how to control it, I managed to carve a deep groove into the head of this stubborn lump of ironstone.

The SDS drill, in the stationary position and with a chisel attachment, fitted some way into the hole (after I’d stripped all kinds of surplus stuff off the drill) and after several good poundings I knocked a lump off the rock.

And that was how I proceeded – cut a groove in a lump of rock with the angle grinder, pound away with the SDS chisel, and then use the core drill until it grounded out again.

hole in wall shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt took ages too and then of course eventually the angle grinder and the chisel bottomed out and that was that.

But I did find a 500mm 22mm SDS drill and so I used that to punch a whole row of holes, rather like perforations, around the groove made by the core drill. And at about 16:30 this afternoon I broke through and that was that;

Now the pipe is in place, cemented in from the outside and with the filter fitted. It’s mostly filled from the inside but of course the air vent and fan won’t be fitted until the tiling is done.

While I was waiting for all the cement to dry, I had a little (yes, just a little) tidy up in what will be the bedroom and I found loads of stuff that I had been looking for. But now I’m whacked, and that is that.

But back to this morning.

Cécile and I were up early and loaded her car with all of the stuff she’s taking to her mother’s, which was uite a considerable amount.

I then ran her into St Gervais d’Auvergne to post a letter at the Post Office, where we ran into the guy who runs the sawmill. It’s always closed in July and August while he does the harvest, but he did mention that he had a workman down at the mill just then.

Upon hearing that news, I took full advantage and came back with a load of demi-chevrons.

A really good investment, Caliburn’s roofrack.

So now Cécile has left the area, probably for good, and I’m back here making rapid progress now in the shower room.

What’s going to happen next to jam a spanner in the works?

-7

Tuesday 9 July 2013 – I WAS RATHER OVER-OPTIMISTIC …

hole in wall aeration bathroom les guis puy de dome france… with this idea that I might be able to finish this wall today.

You can see that the smaller pipe that will be the aeration for the composting toilet, that’s in place, but there’s no sign of the larger one that will be about 6 feet above it, and I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to do it.

I’ve come up against a solid lump of ironstone and while I was able to drill over half of the wall thickness, I didn’t even make 10cms today.

This lump has a triangular point that is sticking out right into the path of the core drill and the inside of the core drill has grounded out against it.

I’ve drilled all round it with a long SDS drill and I’ve been pounding away at the triangular lump with an SDS chisel and point, but the hole is too deep to do much good and the triangular point is stopping the chisel and point from having a good grasp of the rock.

What I can see me having to do is to grind off part of an angle-grinding disc so that it will fit down the hole, and I’ll have to see if that might do anything. It was really frustrating, I can tell you.

Of course you might be wondering why I don’t go in from the outside.

I must admit that at one time I was ‘arbouring thoughts about that but with not having a small arbour any more, I need to stand off the wall about 1 metre.

With this enormously heavy and powerful SDS drill about 7 metres off the ground on a ladder, you can see that it’s not really possible.

But I had another good night’s sleep last night with the fan going all night for a second time (it was 27°C up here) and the much-maligned and totally underrated Percy Penguin put in a rare appearance in my dreams. My subconscious is clearly trying to tell me something. And awake before the alarm went off, I was all set for a good day’s work on the computer – at least until Rob came around.

hole in wall aeration bathroom les guis puy de dome franceBut just look at this. Those of you will remember that my good friend Liz died in March 2009 and I bought some fruit trees to plant in her honour.

What with one thing and another though, they’ve remained stuck in the buckets in which I originally planted them and so they are pretty cramped, but one of them has actually produced a fruit.

How astonishing.

But what else?

Ahh yes! When I knocked off I had a look at the water filters and, as I expected, they were choked solid with muck and all kinds of things.

Anyway, the sandbag, the puzzolane and the stainless steel filter have been thoroughly rinsed and cleaned, and the fibreglass mesh has been replaced.

Now it passes water even better than I do, and that is saying something.

All I need now is some rain. But not until I’ve finished this blasted wall, please.

In other news, there’s talk of a furniture removal from Le Quartier up to Gateshead in the very near future. I can’t really spare the time but I would really enjoy the trip.

-5

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.

-7

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 – *@ç#%§µ ¤£&€ù+§ cheap flaming useless tools!!!

damaged arbour sds dtill les guis virlet puy de dome franceThat’s the arbour off the core drill kit that I bought (and spent a lot of money on) 18 months or so ago. The drill end is totally burnt out.

What’s been happening here is that the arbour has not been a precise fit in the chuck of the SDS drill. With the 4 hours of constant pounding that it received yesterday, the percussion effect of the play slowly but surely enlarged the groove in the arbour until it burnt through.

Mind you, as I said yesterday, the impressive thing about this is that everything else – the inverter, the batteries, the wiring, even the LIDL drill, stood up to everything that I could throw at it.

I expected loads of other things to burn out before the arbour would give way.

And it took me hours to dismantle the SDS drill too before I could extract the arbour, and I can tell you absolutely everything about how an SDS drill works now because I’ve seen it first-hand.

Anyway, once I’d freed the arbour I cleaned and greased everything and then reassembled it.

I’m not sure how the automotive circlip will stand up to the pounding but then that would be hammered to death in the con-rods and pistons anyway with much more force than an SDS drill so it should be okay.

rail cascading off verandah roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceTook hours, as I said, and it didn’t make any difference to my work programme because I couldn’t have drilled anything anyway.

Look at the rain cascading off the verandah roof. We had the most amazing tropical thunderstorm, as you can see.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen rain like we had this afternoon although believe me, we have had some here for sure in the past as you know.

Not much good for working in but impressive all the same. And for a while there was no solar energy getting through at all. No chance of doing any drilling today of course, but there is still plenty of work to be going in with.

Later on in the afternoon I did manage to get into the shower room. I started cutting and shaping the horizontal supports for the stud wall between the shower room and the bedroom.

I cut and shaped four of them before I ran out of demi-chevron (and I wasn’t going outside for another one in that weather) and I managed to screw one of them in place before the batteries in the Ryobi Plus One drill and screwdriver went flat.

It just wasnt my day at all.

Mind you, it was 19:40 when I finished off so I suppose it was time enough. But I need to get cracking tomorrow.

I’m wasting far too much time and I don’t have too much to spare.

-3

Monday 1st July 2013 – THERE’S A HOLE …

hole in wall shower room les guis virlet puy de dome france… in my shower room wall. 48mm in diameter, 18 inches from the floor and almost (but not quite) all the way through to the outside, dear Liza, dear Liza.

. I took advantage of the absolutely beautiful summer’s day to power up the mega-SDS drill and carve a hole through to the outside to act as the air vent for the composting toilet – something that is quite important for not for nothing is this place known as Pooh Corner.

And if you were around a year or so ago when I took months to drill the hole through from the lean-to into the house, it took just four hours to end up a mere 9 centimetres from the outside wall … "and it’ll probably take you another year to do the rest" – ed.

So why didn’t I carry on and finish it?

The answer is simple. The core drills that I use for punching my way through stone are about 15 cms long and I have three extensions – a 6cm one, a 40cm one and a 60cm one – giving me 21cms, 55cms and 75cms respectively.

hole ssaw arbour stuck in SDS drill les guis virlet puy de dome franceWith the 60cm one and the core drill it would make short work of the 55cm walls but it is so heavy and awkward that I start off with the small one, then graduate to the middle one, and then I finish off with the larger one.

But damn and blast! Would you believe it (well, knowing me, you probably would), the 40mm extension is jammed solid into the chuck and try as I might, can I heck as like move it? .I was there for a good hour or so trying to extricate it from the chuck and  no luck at all.

Never mind for now, though.

I’m still impressed that I can run a 1400-watt SDS drill for four hours punching my way through blocks of Grès de Lapeize without even a hiccup. And with the fridge working too. And as well as having electrically-heated hot water to wash in afterwards.

That’s despite all of the doubters and prophets of doom that I had when I first started this project back in 1999.

And despite all of the criticisms that I’ve had to bear, from people whom I thought were friends but behind my back were having a nice little laugh at my expense with their friends in “a certain newsgroup”.

As you know, that was something that angered me intensely, as I have said before … "and at great length too" – ed.

Anyway, enough of me ranting.

By 18:00 I called it a day in the shower room and went outside. With the weedkiller that Liz gave me and the pressure sprayer that I bought on Saturday, I attacked the weeds again for an hour and a half.

They are looking quite sad after my last effort but we are promised sunshine until tomorrow night and so a second helping won’t go amiss.

I forgot to tell you about last night’s dream as well. I was in the EU offices in a long corridor with hordes of people trying to get through a turnstile into the inner sanctum of the building and it was taking hours. But there were two office of member states, Ireland being one of them and I can’t remember the other, and they had access through the rear of their offices into the interior of the building. I knew all of the girls who worked there so grabbing my friend, we went through the Irish Permanent Representation offices into the main part of the building, much to his surprise, the surprise of the girls there and the surprise of everyone else.
From there I was in an exam and I needed to remember the proportion of energy in the UK (at least I think that it was in the UK) generated by coal. I’d taken some papers with me into the exam and they had notes upon them (contrary to the rules) and I spent a few anxious moments looking through the papers, not finding what I wanted and wondering if it was indeed 18% or some other figure.

-5

Saturday 28th July 2012 – WHAT A WIMP!

Yes, I’ve been spending my money again today.

And it’s this really hot weather that has made me do it – I mean, it was so hot this morning that I saw a midget buy an ice-cream in LIDL – and then sit in it.

At Brico Depot today they were selling small desktop fans, 40-watt ones, for all of €14:99. And having roasted to death up here for a week, I have to do something about it for the 12-volt lorry fan that I use just isn’t doing the business in this kind of weather.

So what a change it was tonight, actually being cool

.

I did make it to Montlucon as expected, and didn’t really buy anything exciting until I got to Brico Depot. Apart from the fan, they also had 850-watt SDS drills with rotostop.

The 1200-watt one that I have here is too heavy and powerful – it’s aching my shoulders out and at times stalling the 1200-watt inverter. It probably sounds silly but with a smaller, less-powerful drill I might well finish this hole in the wall quicker, as I won’t have to make so many pauses.

But I also went there for a pile of bricks to do the next window (I’m having two in that wall, if for no other purpose than making the wall lighter and for using less stone) and so having bought a pile of lime mortar, they had no common bricks. In fact, they have stopped selling them.

I’ll have to go elsewhere for them, and I wish I hadn’t loaded up the chalk now.

Back home, I watched an old black-and-white cowboy film Santa Fe Trail – notable for its complete rewriting of history and its treatment of the slave-liberators as … errr … the baddies.

It was enjoyable from an entertainment point of view though, but irony of ironies, the film’s most famous line is the one “we are soldiers – we aren’t politicians. We’re supposed to just obey orders”.

It’s spoken by A certain Captain Custer (we’re talking long before Little Big Horn here), the co-star, played by a certain Ronald Reagan.

What a small and strange world this is!

-3

Thursday 19th July 2012 – I DIDN’T QUITE MANAGE …

… an early start this morning.

I was awake for much of the night with had another bad attack of cramp and that wore me out. So it was 09:00 when I finally rose out of my pit.

We did the usual bit working on the website and then for the rest of the day I was outside.

We had a few minutes on the wall with the SDS drill but the day wasn’t really bright enough to run that for any length of time and so I fixed the solar water heater instead. You may remember me saying that the tank fell down on my head yesterday afternoon while I was having a shower.

lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I was working on the wall again.

Long-term readers of this rubbish will remember that the other two walls that I built, I erected stones in the vertical position at the outside and inside, and filled in between with a very lightweight concrete – a kind-of concrete wall with stone cladding.

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing here with this wall now.

Part of the wall had been built with very light breeze blocks – real cinder blocks even – so I’m smashing those one-by-one to use as the infill and then pouring concrete over the pieces to hold them in.

It will be a lightweight wall, but it won’t ‘arf have some strength.

I’ve made quite a lot of progress and I reckon that given a good day on there tomorrow I shall have about half of the wall finished.

All I’ll have to do then is to point it, of course.

-2

Wednesday 18th July 2012 – WHAT A NICE …

… surprise!

Yes, sounds of friendly voices and laughter down the road at Lieneke’s – good to hear her having fun.

And then silence, followed by a couple of voices out here. “Hmmm – I recognise those voices” I thought to myself;

And, yes, Claude and Françoise came to say hello. It’s been over 2 years since they were here, my neighbours from up the road who moved back to the Midi. And they’ve come back for a week’s holiday and to tell me all their news.

Firstly, they are no longer in the Midi.One thing that we forget, living out here in the wilds, that there is no stress at all except the stress that you make for yourself. Being in an urban environment you are involved with everyone else’s stresses. 10 years out of all that, and Claude couldn’t re-adapt.

Now they’ve found a quiet rural place in the Haute Loire.

All kinds of other changes too, and so we had quite a chat today about all of it. It’s nice to see them again.

Today was easily the best day of the year so far – totally glorious and 36°C outside. so why only 83.2 amp-hours of surplus energy?

holesaw bathroom wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceFirstly, I’ve had the core drill going for about an hour and I’ve made another 5cms of depth – now up to 42 centimetres.

The problem with this is that the drill is so heavy and the motor is so powerful and I’m working up a ladder, and so I can’t do more than a couple of minutes at a time without stopping for a rest and trying to stop my arms vibrating and my ears buzzing.

But at one point, being completely fed up, I used a long drill to break up the granite that’s in the wall and you can see that that has broken through in a few places.

From now on it should become easier and easier. But that sounds like famous last words, doesn’t it?

The second reason is that I had the electric vegetable steamer working again (just as well that I had some electric vegetables, isn’t it?).

I cooked the remainder of the potatoes to add to the mega-curry that was on the menu for tonight, and seeing as it did such a good job, I let it have a go at some rice as well.

And I’ll tell you what – I have never had rice that was cooked so well or tasted so nice. If this vegetable steamer holds the pace, it’s going to be an excellent little machine.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, I carried on building my wall today.

I didn’t actually build too much of it though. I didn’t think that I had enough stones to do it all (all those breeze blocks in view will eventually be ripped out and replaced by stones) and so I had a good scavenge around to see what stones I could find.

I’ve managed to unearth quite a pile – I hope that there will be enough by the time that I finish, whenever that may be.

lean to rebuilding stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see that I’ve hung a window frame up there. It will be pretty dark, especially as I forgot to install the roof-light that I had to hand, and so I need to be able to let the light in.

A glass door will go on the front, but a window in the side will do the rest.

I’ll build up underneath the sill with stones and then put brick pillars down the side. It should look quite nice when it’s done, whenever that might be.

With it being such a nice day, I finished off with a solar shower – the water was certainly warm enough. But I’m not sure what happened because at a certain moment the whole assembly dropped on my head. I’ll have to fix that tomorrow.

I also had a chat with Percy Penguin this evening. It’s her birthday today!

-2

Wednesday 4th July 2012 – This was another day …

… where I didn’t really do all that much. An early start, though, and plenty of time on the computer even though I wasn’t feeling myself … “quite right too – disgusting habit” – ed … but at 12:00 Terry came round for a chat – he’d been working at Lieneke’s this morning.

One thing that we did was to look at that hole that I’ve been trying to drill for about 6 months. We came to the conclusion that I had grounded out on of all things a piece of granite which had somehow contrived itself to be in the wall. You wouldn’t believe that! Anyway, we took a gamble and hammered away at it for an age with a SDS drill and we managed eventually to shatter it. Drilling became a lot easier after that.

However I didn’t manage to do any more because Lieneke came round for a chat and it’s always nice to see her. She’s staying for 3 weeks, she says, and that’s good news.

After this I went to Marianne’s to erect one of these IKEA-type wardrobes for her. She’d been struggling for a while to do it but the Ryobi drill and the IKEA drill-bit soon solved that problem.

church st maurice pres pionsat puy de dome franceOnce we had organised that, we went off to St Maurice for her walk. We had 5 clients and we spent most of the time in the church there.

It’s really interesting as churches go because the original part is a tiny 12th-Century church that has been considerably expanded over the years in several different architectural periods, as you can tell.

12th century church st maurice pres pionsat tribune balcony puy de dome franceAnd yet the original bit, now largely abandoned, is still pretty much intact and original although it does have I suppose what in a theatre would be the circle – an upper floor balcony-type seating arangement dating from the 16th Century as a first attempt to increase the capacity.

I’m not quite sure that I’d want to go and sit up there, close as I might be to my maker. It’s not the soudest structure that I’ve ever seen.

church st maurice pres pionsat puy de dome franceAstonishingly, when an architectural survey of the church was undertaken by the bishop in 1842 he called it “worthless” and recommended its demolition. The congregation did move out into a temporary place of worship.

However that place deteriorated even quicker than the church did and so when that was condemmed they moved back into the church and instead of demolishing it, they planned its enlargement.

It just goes to show that Bishops and all these kinds of people can’t recognise a religious treasure when they see one, as I have said on a previous occasion. It really is a magnificent church and to think that the bishop wanted to demolish it.

Some people have no taste.

-2

Thursday 26th January 2012 – I DON’T SEEM …

… to have done very much today.

Mind you, that’s not very much of a surprise considering that I managed to sleep through all of the alarms in here this morning and was … errr … somewhat late in raising myself from the dead.

In fact, much of the morning was spent sorting out the wood that is leaning against the end wall of the barn, and then sawing up a dozen or so lengths.

two storey wood shed les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe strange thing is that while the woodpile is slowly increasing, the number of lengths of uncut wood standing up against the wall doesn’t seem to have decreased.

Perhaps I have hit upon the secret of the self-reproducing wood supply – something that reminded me of the story of the Irishman, granted two wishes by his fairy godmother, asked for a bottle of Guinness that refilled itself every time he poured some out of it.
“And your second wish?” enquired the fairy godmother.
“I’ll have another one of those bottles”.

LED light 12 volt domestic circuit electric wiring les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I carried on with the wiring in the upstairs of the lean-to.

Most of that time was spent looking for equipment of course, but I now have two lights and two pairs of 12-volt power sockets. They are all wired up, but they aren’t wired into the circuit of course – I need to drill a 40mm hole right through the stone wall into the house to do that, and that’s something that is going to have to wait for a bit.

I’ve a drill that will do it – a 1050-watt SDS drill, but with the current that it draws, you need a brilliantly sunny day. And while a strange golden thing did pop out from behind a cloud for 5 minutes, it’s been about 9 days since we have seen the sun.

It shows just how lucky I was with that little dry spell earlier in the month that enabled me to do the roof of the lean-to.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its several predecessor forms will recall that I bought 2 x 400-watt wind turbines from the manufacturers in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 2002. One of them flies proudly above the barn but the other one is in the back of the barn because the blades on these turbines are rather brittle and I’ve ended up having to make up one set out of the two that I had originally. And the manufacturers never ever replied to any of my mails asking about buying s new set of replacement blades.

So a couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and contacted a company in the USA that makes parts for home-build wind turbines, and I’ve bought a set of blades from them, complete with hub, to fit on the other wind turbine.

In what was left of my working day, I’ve assembled the blades onto the hub unit and what I intend to do tomorrow is to resurrect the abandoned wind turbine and stick the blade and hub assembly onto it, and then shove it onto a pole somewhere where it will catch the wind.

These blades have the lowest drag co-efficient of any after-market wind turbine blades and so I’ll be interested to see just how they perform.

-4

Wednesday 18th January 2012 – WELL, THAT GOT RID OF THEM!

Yes, I had two visits from solar panel installation sales companies, and neither stayed for very long.

And serve them right too. I hate these cold-calling canvassing companies.

And there’s another one coming tomorrow as well. I can’t believe that I’m being snowed under with these blighters. They clearly don’t have anything better to do.

But this morning started with me being up and about before the alarm, and that doesn’t happen very often.

And after breakfast I had a mega-woodcutting session, so now the woodpile is looking quite impressive again, as it ought to be. I’ve heard it on the grapevine that winter is just lurking around the corner

But in the bright sunlight of the early afternoon I fired up the huge SDS drill and carried on drilling the core hole through the stone wall into the lean-to, but I wasn’t there for long because as I went out, the sun went in and the clouds came out.

That drill is 1200 watts, remember, and it needs plenty of sunlight for it to run continuously.

export order to canada les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I prepared an order of product to be exported to Canada

When I was there in September, you might recall that I had computer issues, and I met a guy who helped me repair it. He was telling me that he can’t easily find 230-volt electrical components in North America, but of course I can over here in Europe and so I’ve started a new role as supplier of his 230-volt products.

That involved, this afternoon, screwing 108 transformers to 2 pieces of plywood (left over from my roof), making a sandwich of the lot and wrapping them in a cardboard box ready for shipping.

Yes, this new little venture can be quite exciting if it comes off.

-1

Thursday 24th November 2011 – I’VE NOT DONE …

… a great deal today.

I started off by sweeping out the front of the lean-to where I’d been working these last few days, to make a bit of space.

And once that was clean I started to cut up some of the tree trunks from the trees that I had cut down a few years ago. It’s late November and winter is of course only just around the corner, and there’s no point in having a decent wood stove if I don’t have any decent wood to put in it.

But the saw that I’m using isn’t up to much and I need to get a really expensive one.

But it was round about then that the fun started.

I had someone from Canada ringing me up about supplying him with product and so I had to sort that out. And that got me sorting out another pile of orders too for other things and I ended up spending about 2 hours on the phone.

Not that I’m complaining though. With a trade card and a SIREN (a French trade registration) I’m getting some astonishing deals all along the line and it’s about time I started to make a bit of money. So more power to my elbow, say I

In between the rest of the phone calls (yes, we were having another one of those days) I managed to put a few lengths of tongue-and-groove on the stud wall just so that it looks like there’s something positive coming out of today.

It’s a shame that the light goes so early otherwise I’d be still out there (and you would have a photo of it). It’s not like me to be so enthusiastic as this.

I could of course put light into the lean-to but there’s an issue with that. I can’t find my metre-long SDS drill bit that I need to make a pilot hole in the right place. And this is what I bought it for, would you believe?

Mind you finding anything at all around my place is next to impossible as I’m sure you all know already.

-2

Tuesday 15th November 2011 – IT’S NOT AS EASY …

… as you might think putting up this wind turbine and despite a good day’s work I’ve hardly scratched the surface of it.

First job was to reposition all of the planks on the scaffolding so that they are where I want them to be, and then to put the ladder where it should be as well. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either.

After that it was to cut up an old scrap scaffolding pole (I bought a couple of those with just this kind of purpose in mind) to make the horizontal battens on the wall. There’s an overhang on the roof of about 70mms and so I’m having to invent something to stand the upright pole 70mms out of the wall, and that’s not easy.

Next task was to drill the holes for the mounting brackets to take the horizontal battens. And with the hard stone that we have around here this was playing havoc with the batteries on the Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill.

And then I had an idea.

I have a mains SDS drill – about 750 watts-worth but it’s pretty lightweight and not any better than the Hitachi. That’s always been down here but back in Brussels a few years ago I recalled buying a really heavy-duty 1050 watt SDS drill – with rotostop and everything. And that would make short work of drilling the holes.

  1. And so I had to hunt that down somewhere around the house or the barn and eventually, much to my surprise, I actually discovered it.
  2. And then it was to wire in the 1500-watt mega-inverter that I bought for the barn.
  3. And then it was to trail an electrical cable all around the side of the house from across the barn.
  4. And then look for an adapter because the drill is still wired to a European plug.

But now you see why it’s taking me so long.

But once I was up and running, that drill went through the stone like a hot knife through butter.

After much manipulation I have one of the horizontal battens on now, and that cement mastic stuff is excellent. But I’m going to have to take it off because I’ve thought of an improvement and I shall be doing that tomorrow.

What with having to manipulate the heavy upright pole (and that wasn’t easy either) I was exhausted and in any case heaving heavy pipes around 10 metres up in the air by the light of a torch is not recommended.

We talked the other day about the film Tony Rome. Now that film is from the mid-60s and one of the things that was going through my mind was “is this the earliest ‘mainstream’ film to have a reasonably-explicit lesbian love scene in it?”

I spent all afternoon trying to think if there was one any earlier than this but nothing came to mind, apart from some subculture stuff in the 1920s

Secondly, I was watching an episode of The Prisoner this morning at breakfast – “It’s Your Funeral” – and one of the actresses in it caught my ear. And I mean that too because while I didn’t recognise the face, the voice was ringing in my ears telling me something.

And it wasn’t until much later that the penny dropped. It was no one other than Annette Andre, which might mean nothing to you but her most famous role was as Philia, Michael Crawford’s sidekick in the film version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

That film which, although excellent in its own right, was notorious for dropping Frankie Howerd from the lead role in favour of the dreadful Zero Mostel and featuring a cameo of Buster Keaton, two things done simply so that the film would have a wider audience in the USA. 

0