Tag Archives: solar light

Thursday 16th February 2012 – WHEN I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… der der der der der …

but doesn’t that have all the makings of a really good blues song?

However, to coin a phrase, since I’ve been on the Prozac I haven’t had the blues for years.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning the temperature in here was a massive 15.4°C. And it’s been a long time since it’s been that warm in here without a fire. It just goes to show, firstly, how much things have warmed up outside, and secondly, the benefits of heaping a pile of scrap wood on the fire just as you go to sleep

It was warm outside as well – all of 2°C – and it’s been a long time since it’s been that warm as well. 4mm of rain we had through the night and while it hasn’t washed away the snow, it’s now a messy sticky quagmire outside. 

First job was to look at this solar spotlight thing that I bought a few weeks ago and which didn’t want to work. Once I’d worked out how to dismantle … “dispersontle” – ed … it, the rest was easy.

The battery wasn’t fitted correctly. It was only a 600mAh battery though, and so I charged up a spare 2500mAh battery and fitted that.

This evening it lit up at last. It’s not very bright but from where I’ve installed it, it lights up the pathway from where I park Caliburn down to the side of the house. And that was what I wanted it to do.

Next job was to fix the anemometer that didn’t want to record its data. A flat battery (that’s the third it’s had since I bought it in the autumn!) and a badly-seated mounting sorted that out, but each time the battery is relmoved, you need to recalibrate the computer, and I can see that being a pain with three batteries in five months

The rest of the day, in between the phone calls, I spent on the roof of the bedroom. I cracked on as well and I reckon that there’s about 3 hours’ work to do there.

Once that’s done, I need to deal with the sealing of the joints in the plasterboard – and now I have the water to do that. I also have to seal the window so that I can build up around it.

Tonight I had a gorgeous tea. Baked potatoes of course, but I put a baking tray in there, lightly oiled, and cut up an onion and some garlic to fry on it. Then, a small tin of mushrooms and a ladle of tinned vegetables. All finished off by some curry and gravy powder into the resultant liquid. It really was nice.

But a downside of this warm weather is that with having to heat up the oven sufficiently to cook the food, the temperature soared to an astonishing 24°C. It’s now 5 hours since I last put any fuel on the fire, I’m sitting here in shirt sleeves (not even a pullover) and it’s still over 20°C.

And in other news, I was chatting on the phone to this Canadian guy whom I’m working with. We were talking about fires and I was saying that I was looking for a woodstove that has an oven and also a water boiler, to fit in the cabin that I’m going to build on my plot of land in Canada.

“Ohh – I have an old one of those that I took out of here a few years ago. It’s in my shed – I’ll sort it out for you”

Blimey!

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Sunday 8th August 2010 – It was Sunday today.

And there was a vintage vehicle exhibition and brocante at St Maurice pres Pionsat as well.

And so I stayed at home.

Mind you it was … errrr …. 11:30 when I woke up and so I’d missed a good deal of the day. And then with working on my web site until 14:00 I missed a good deal more. But I went into Pionsat to the baker’s – and it was shut! It seems that last Sunday was a one-off seeing as how it ought to have been Pionsat’s brocante last week. But as I was quietly GRRRRRing to myself, out of the door came the boulangere, and so she sold me what I needed. It must have been my lucky day!

Back at the ranch, seeing as I wasn’t going anywhere I lit a huge bonfire and burnt a pile of stuff that has been lingering around here, and I also burnt the dried weeds that I had pulled up when I was working with Lieneke. In fact one of the reasons why I’m still awake now is that the fire is merrily burning away and I can’t go to bed leaving it unattended. But make the most of the sunny day – it won’t last, this weather.

modular home made composting bin les guis virlet puy de dome franceI also installed the compost bin properly in its proper place this afternoon after the temporary installation last night and added the compost from the collapsed plastic composting bin. At the moment it’s four sections high and the three that are currently unused are in shot. I’ll have to think of a place to put them.

You can also see the chassis for the Citroen 2CV that formed the basis of the Lomax kit car I once owned. There’s also a solar garden light and one of the solar cookers for the composting toilet. The others have now been incorporated into the compost and given a liberal dosing of potash.

Nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus are the essential ingredients for any fertiliser. There are plenty of nitrogen and phosphorus in the contents of a composting toilet and wood-ash is a good source of potassium. So all the essential ingredients for my garden are right to hand. Now all I need to do is to work out how I can move the methane digester and add the contents of that to the compost. I reckon that I ought to neutralise its contents with plenty of wood ash and sawdust first though but that will just add to the weight.

Nevertheless, things are slowly moving around here. The composting bin was another thing that I’ve been meaning to do for ages and I’m glad it’s in position now.

I was so engrossed that it was 18:30 when I knocked off. And on a Sunday too! A nice hot 41°C shower rounded the day off quite nicely. Tomorrow I imagine that we will be back on that blasted roof.

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