Tag Archives: wood

Tuesday 15th December 2015 – I WENT OUT …

… to Montlucon and the hospital today – and thereby hangs a tail. I arrived early at the hospital, before the patient who was in front of me in the queue, and as it happened, the echograph machine was free. “Okay then, Mr Hall” said the nurse “you may as well go in now”.

So in I went. “You’re Mr X” said the doctor
“No, I’m Mr Hall” I replied. “Apparently Mr X (or whatever his name was) isn’t here yet”

And the net result of all of this was that I was in, out and gone, and sitting in the hospital café having a mug of coffee even before the official time of my appointment. That’s not something that happens every day.

What does seem to happen every day, or, at least, has been happening every day quite recently, is that I was on my travels again during the night.

Last night, I was working in an office where we had to calculate the value of cars used by sales people and work out some charge for annual use of them. I was inspecting a Daytona-yellow Mark II Ford Escort built in, would you believe, 2008 and carrying an 08 plate. But the car was filthy with a good deal of surface rust and a huge dent on the roof down the offside that looked as if a scaffolding pole had dropped on it (we almost had this once with Caliburn). I reckon that to repair the damaged roof, it would cost about £800. I lifted up the bonnet and it was bright yellow painted-over-rust with a reasonably clean engine but with a major oil leak (just like my Passat). I told the owner that he needed to put a different oil in it, to which he replied that he wasn’t on the Mercedes plan!
And talking of Mercedes cars, four of us then went off to do some checking up on the road, and we were in my Mercedes (I do have a W123 240D around at my house somewhere). We ended up driving up a railway line, one track of which was in excellent main-line condition and the other track (where we were driving) being all abandoned and overgrown. As we were climbing up the hill, a beautifully clean and shiny green steam locomotive came charging down the hill pulling a huge load of shiny black oil tankers and being chased by a light locomotive. Of course we all wondered what was going on here and we reckoned that the light locomotive was chasing the train to try to catch up with it (as if that was ever likely to happen). It never occurred to us, even when we reached the top of the bank and saw the incredibly steep climb up which the train had travelled, that the light locomotive had been banking the train up the bank and had just come off. But as we pulled to a halt at the top of the hill to open a gate at the side of the line that would let us off the line onto a dirt track, we were overtaken by a wildly-out-of-control machine something similar to Cugnot’s famous fardier, also painted yellow. As the fardier pulled back in line, it overturned onto its side. I immediately dashed out of the car to take some photos, but all that I had was my mobile telephone and I just couldn’t get any of the photos to come out properly and I was so frustrated.

I was so engrossed by all of this that after the alarm went off, I went back to sleep and it was a wild panic that saw me dash downstairs 15 minutes later. And it’s a good job that I did because the nurse was early to give me my morning injection.

I had a shower after breakfast and then set off for the hospital.

After the hospital I went, would you believe, for a walk. The first time since I’ve been ill that I’ve managed to do that. There’s a huge new shopping precinct that’s recently opened just opposite the Carrefour and so I went in there for a wander around, and did some Christmas shopping too. And then off to the Carrefour itself to do some more Christmas shopping.

For lunch, I treated myself to a plate of vegetables and chips at the Flunch – a long time since I’ve done that but why not? I’m ill and I need to cheer myself up. And as an aside, diesel at the Carrefour is just 102:7 cents – when was the last time that you ever saw it at that price?

I went back home after lunch. I’ve brought upstairs another pile of wood and now there’s enough to keep me going for about a week once I return home. What with the food that’s already up there, I should be self-sufficient for a while. I also made a start on the tidying up and believe it or not, I can actually see a difference (even if no-one else might). However, there’s still quite a lot to do.

Back here, and it was raining too when I drove home. First time it’s rained for ages (or, at least, rained that I have noticed) and those new windscreen wipers that I fitted the other day don’t half do the business. I had the nurse soon after I returned and then I had tea. There’s no footy so I shall probably treat myself to an early night.

I think that I deserve it.

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Thursday 10th April 2014 – WHAT A WAY …

… to finish the day. At knocking-off time, the temperature in the verandah was still at 24°C and the water temperature was at 68°C. That can only mean one thing – a nice hot (water-cooled) shower. and it was gorgeous too.

Follow that up with a good shave and now I’m fit for anything (well, almost).

I had a bad night’s sleep for some reason or other and Marianne put in an appearance too. I’ve been thinking about her a little just recently – it’s almost a year since she passed on – but I never expected her to arrive.

So after breakfast and the website I went outside in the gorgeous windy weather and attacked the garden again. I want to put another raised bed in – that’s my next trick – and it needs to be ready for when I sow the potatoes. But there’s loads of wood all over it from a tree that collapsed a couple of years ago and all of that needs moving.

But to do that, I have to clear out all of the brambles and weeds that have grown all over everything and that’s not easy at all. It’s taking quite a while to shift and there’s still a pile to go, but at least I’m not going to be short of wood this winter. The kindling bin is stacked to overflowing and I’m preparing another, and the pile of small wood has grown to more than what it was at the start of winter. Added to that, the pile of big wood has almost doubled in size, and there’s more still to come.

This afternoon, seeing as it was quite windy, I went round to see the farmer in Le Quartier who is having wind turbine issues. And I didn’t even need to leave Caliburn to see what the problem is.

The installation is a load of rubbish and the company that did it – that one in Montlucon that I showed you a while back and which has now (of course) closed down – should be thoroughly ashamed of itself.

The two houses are in a hollow sheltered from the wind on two sides. On the third side is a large tree at each house – in one case just 25 yards from the turbine, and on the fourth side are all of the farm outbuildings.

So on three sides there is no wind at all and on the fourth side is nothing but turbulence. And as the turbines are only a metre or two above the roof line (instead of a maximum of 12 metres off the ground as allowed by law), the friction of the ground on the wind will slow the wind right down.

Quite frankly, the installation is a disgrace.

To make matters worse, just 200 metres away is the crest of a hill that is on the farmer’s property. A pair of 12-metre masts on there with these wind turbines on top would provide enough power to light up the whole village.

To give you some idea, of the two wind turbines (installed since January 2013) one has produced 12.5 KW of electricity and the other 13.2 KW. And that’s from an installation that has cost €8,000 each.

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Wednesday 9th April 2014 – IT’S BEEN A WOODY DAY TODAY.

Yes, I’ve been dealing with some timber issues.

But first, I was up even before the final alarm sounded. I’d made breakfast and coffee and was back up here with my food by the time it went off.

I was on the web pages at 08:45 too and that has to be something of a record and I did two full pages before finishing at 12:00 and then it was off outside. And first thing that I noticed was that two more courgette plants are rearing their pretty little heads.

Now, if you remember the story of the raised bed that will contain the soft fruit, that was hacked out a few years ago of what was the jungle. But with all of the old weeds dying off and the new ones not quite established, it was possible to clear quite a large area around it, and so I attacked that today.

Surrounding the bed are lots of those horrible ground elder trees that sprout up like forests in just a year or two. I’ve hacked down about a dozen of those and they are stacked out to dry for a couple of years. One day, I’ll pull up the roots too.

Now, the sunlight streams onto the soft fruit bed almost all the day, which is what should happen.

There was an apple tree that had been flattened and was growing horizontally. I had a couple of tree stakes and so I’ve now staked that tree upright in the vertical – and it’s blooming now.

When I cleared the ground for the bed, I stacked some of these ground elder trees and od course they are now bone-dry. I ended up with two barrow-loads of small kindling that will do me for much of next winter and there’s still plenty to go at. I need to clear some space though in order to have a decent garden fire.

Final job was to water all of the plants in the garden. A hot day today, so they needed it.

And I can see that I’ll have to start some weeding soon.

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Monday 30th December 2013 – AS YOU MIGHT HAVE EXPECTED …

… seeing as how today was the day that I started back to work, it didn’t rain this morning. In fact, for the first hour or two I thought that we were going to have some bright sunshine all day, but that idea was soon dispelled, even though the rain did manage to hold off.

And as I said yesterday, I’ve been shelf-filling today. And indeed they are almost full. You’ve no idea how much stuff I’ve been finding that Ive had lying around the place. Quite a bit of stuff that I had forgotten about.

I’ve also put the old computer stuff up there on one of the shelves. I can’t think when, if ever, I might use it again but Marianne’s stuff is quite important I suppose. I don’t want to lose it or have it damaged.

Tea was another one of those meals that wouldn’t get going for ages and when it did, it went berserk. I have a lot to learn about this stove

Anyway tomorrow, I’ll do some more stacking for a while and then knowk off early. New Year’s Eve.

And guess what the weather is doing?

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Friday 14th January 2011 – Ouch!

It’s been an expensive day today – and I didn’t go shopping either. GRRRR What did happen was that the postie came by today bearing some major bad news.

Firstly, when the solicitor charged with handling the sale of Reyers was asked to settle all of the outstanding Brussels taxation issues, well, indeed he did. But he did that on the 29th of September, the day that the cheque for the sale was cleared, and of course the property taxes on Expo were due on October 1st. And so I had a red reminder today for €1200 that I had not taken into account in my budget.

Secondly, a couple of years ago I went into the taxation office here and asked that the taxes that I am to pay on Les Guis and on Montaigut should be paid by direct debit instead of by demand. I told the tax office that I travel around a great deal and was afraid of missing a payment or two, and the tax office very kindly helped me to complete the forms.

And when I went into the tax office that time, I was brandishing around a tax d’habitation form. And so you can guess what has happened. Just how many brain cells do you need to have, to work out that if someone tells you that he travels around a great deal and is afraid of missing a payment or two, he means ALL HIS TAXES? And so that was another €733 that bit the dust.

While I was out, I reckoned that I may as well go and buy the plank that I need for making my false beam, the one that the electric cables will be running behind. So to St Gervais and the sawmill. And he will cut me a plank of the required width and thickness, but to a maximum of 4.15 metres. That’s no good. The room is 4.47 metres and the plank of course needs to be in one piece – it will look silly as a beam if it is in two pieces.

And so I shot off through the wilds to Montel-de-Gelat and the huge sawmill there. And I arrived about half an hour before closing time. They have planks in stock – 4.50 metres long by 18mm thick. Absolutely ideal for what I want. But the width – 150mm whereas I want 120mm ideally.
“Can you trim one down for me?”
“No”
“No? Why not?”
“Because this is the week when the cutting mill is closed for machine maintenance.We can do it for you next Friday”.

I’m clearly having no luck at all today.

wood pile lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceI said the other day that I would take a photo of the lean-to with all of the wood. It looked like this in November last year, and all through the following 12 months the pile increased in size as I flung more and more bits of wood in there.At one stage in the summer I couldn’t even get into the place. But anyway, you can see that it’s emptying out quite nicely.

The wall on the left is the eastern wall of the house and the kitchen will be built against this wall. The dark grey cylinder is the large gas bottle that will power the gas cooker. I’ll anchor it to the wall and drill through the wall in order to pass a gas pipe through. The other cylindrical object is an old immersion heater that Claude gave me to play with.

In the bedroom I did some more of the tongue-and-grooving but that came to a dead stop too as I ran out of 20mm insulation. I’ll have to go to Brico Depot tomorrow and buy a load of that so that I can carry on next week. There’s not much else I can be doing until I buy my plank.

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Monday 23rd August 2010 – It seems that …

… my inolvement in Lieneke’s roof has come to an end.

All that remains to be done is the plasterboarding, followed by the pointing up of the end wall, and then the tidying up. No labouring of any description is required and so after opening up the house for Terry and Simon I was paid off (well, not actually paid off because I’m not actually being paid). And I am not displeased by this either, as you can imagine.

First thing that I did was to stack all of the wood. There are tonnes of new wood lying around here that I haven’t managed to put away over the last few months and all of that is now neatly stacked and I know how much of it that I have. That took all of the morning.

After lunch I was in the barn, finishing the tidying up of the workbench, fitted the new vice that I bought in July last year, and did some more sorting-out of stuff. I can actually move around now inside the barn and that is progress. And the stuff that I have rediscovered ….

Tomorrow I’m going to make a start on the composting toilet and get that fitted. That involves making a box to put the bin in, and building a couple of walls. So all of these demi-chevrons and cheap tongue-and-grooving will start to disappear.

High time I organised the hygene around here.

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Tuesday 17th August 2010 – Tomorrow the World!

gherkin plant greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceDo you remember that plant that I showed you a photograph of the other day – the one that had taken over the greenhouse? It’s actually a gherkin plant and here you can see it leaving the greenhouse and setting out for Montlucon.

At the rate that it’s going, it’ll get there before any UK Council Worker or British Rail porter will, that’s for sure, and who knows where it will head for next?

I’ve been gardening again today. Or at least, this afternoon.

stone cladding breeze block wall lieneke roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe had done as much as we could on the roof today. The cement on the stone cladding on the side of the house hadn’t quite set and you can’t put too many stones on a cladded wall like this in one go, and the tiles that we had ordered for the roof hadn’t arrived.

We hadn’t had instructions from Lieneke about the inside of the lean-to either, and with Terry and Simon needing to price up some more material, we decided on a half-day on the roof.

I dug up the garlic and weeded the onion bed – that was the first thing. Strangely, only half the garlic had taken and the other half was in its single clove. The latter I replanted in one of the herb troughs to see what happens. But there’s nothing like enough garlic – I’ll need to bear that in mind.

And while weeding, I noticed the onions. Nothing like enough of them either but they are there all right.

I also tidied up all of the wood at the front of the barn – the left-over new stuff at least. I need a rainy day so that I can have the time to stack it correctly inside without having to worry about working on Lieneke’s roof. In fact I have tons of jobs to do really – let’s hope that this week will see us finish the roof.

collapsed stone wall rebuilding lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou’ll notice a couple of little changes in the lean-to too. I’ve moved a couple of sheets of iron and now the end wall is totally exposed. I’ve fitted (at the top, at least) two demi-chevrons that will guide me in forming the top of the long wall.

There was a full drum of waste in the mixer when we knocked off and it was a lovely chalky mix and so I did a pile of pointing, including that corner of the other lean-to where I lived for a while and which was getting damp.

I cleaned out the mixer with stones again. built a couple of thin walls and poured the mixture in between. I hadn’t quite sealed the wall as you can see and so some of the stuff leaked out, but it’s progress all the same.

A solar shower (the summer sort-of came back today) and that was my lot.

The automatic water-heater switched on too – and a temperature of 45.5 degrees. This is looking quite optimistic.

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Friday 13th August 2010 – When we knocked off this evening ….

rebuilding stone wall collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome france… there were still two buckets full of mortar left in the cement mixer.

And so “waste not, want not”, I took it round to my house and built up some of the wall of this lean-to that I have been slowly repairing.

You can see that I’ve built up around the central beam of the roof.

But I had an idea about this. Building with stone uses a lot of cement and you always end up with a filthy mixer full of dried cement and the like so I heaved a bucketful of gravel and a bucketful of water into the mixer to clean it. The gravel will scour the drum and the water will move it round.

rebuilding stone wall collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceI built a very narrow wall on the outside of the wall and a very narrow wall on the inside of the wall, with a large gap in between them. And when I finished and went back to the mixer the drum was quite clean with a load of what looked like very liquid concrete swilling around in it.

I tipped that into a bucket leaving the mixer nice and clean, and took the bucket down to my lean-to and poured the concrete solution into the gap. All nice and runny and you could hear it slurping its way down the fissures in the rocks and soaking into all the dry joints. It’ll take a while to set but when it does it will have done wonders for my stone wall. I shall be cleaning out the mixer like this every night.

roofing chevrons lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs far as the house roof goes, we are making enormous progress and if things hold out we may well be finished on schedule – and won’t that be a first?

You can see in the pic that we have built up all of the walls so that they are of the right height and all of the carpentry is now on. It won’t be long before the roof is finished, and then we will need to build up the outsides of the walls with a stone facing. Once that’s complete we will need to seal the top of the roof into the wall of the house and then just a few more small jobs will finish it off.

Mind you I didn’t want to get up this morning. I had slept through the alarm and was having a very pleasant dream for a change when Terry rang me to make sure I was awake. It’s sad when you have dreams like that – you don’t ever want them to end.

But it’s the weekend and I’m having a weekend off. I reckon that tomorrow I’ll go shopping in Commentry and then for a swim at Neris. The warm weather has let me down for the last few days and I haven’t been able to have a solar shower. If I’m not careful I’ll be picked up on radar soon.

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Monday 9th August 2010 – As you know by now …

birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… my favourite photography spot is at the birdwatching point near St Gervais d’Auvergne where there is one of the most marvellous views in the whole of France.

And just as I crested the rise the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone right onto the radio mast on the summit of the Puy de Dome.

It was well-worth a quick stop to take a photo even though, like most photos, it just cannot do justice to the view that we had. Nevertheless I reckon that it has come out rather well and I’m quite happy with that.

I say “we” because I was with Marianne the local journalist on our way down to Liz and Terry’s. They had very kindly invited a few of us round this evening for a drink and a chat. And it’s always nice to be with friends.

lieneke new roofing edge tiles woodwork les guis virlet puy de dome franceMind you, I’d been with Terry – and Simon too – for most of the day as we have restarted work on this roof of Lieneke’s.

Before I tell you anything at all about what we’ve been doing, let me first post a photo of what we’ve actually done so far. Here i this photo you can see that we’ve finished off the main roof. It’s all properly edged and trimmed and you can see the new woodwork that we’ve fitted to support the slates.

building up sloping stone wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut back on the new task today, what we need to do is to build up this edge to a level and then slope the sides upwards to reach the roof.

There was a flat roof here but a flat roof is no good around here, as a couple of modern builders will find out this winter. We have tons of snow and it lies on a flat roof without falling off, gradually melting and as the melt water is locked in by the snow on top the only way for the water to go is downwards. It percolates through the roof and the joints and then drops into the room below. A sloping roof is an essential – and a good slope at that. 40° is not excessive.

building up stone wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe built the scaffolding up at the end and at the sides and ripped off the old roof Once that had been done Terry built a brick pillar at the far edge to make a level with the half of the wall nearest the camera and with the stone pillar that was halfway along the wall

While Terry was shopping for breeze blocks Simon and I filled in the old window space with stones and I may say that we did an excellent job of that And when Terry returned I carried on mixing while Terry and Simon built up the rest of the wall

While I was clearing up, I had a visit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses – the second time that that has happened The first occasion was ages ago and two nice young women; today was some guy with a beard I don’t have an issue with them as long as they don’t harass me If they believe in what they are doing and don’t try to proselytise then that’s fine by me. At least it keeps them off the streets.

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Tuesday 20th July 2010 – I’m just thoroughly exhausted right now.

Terry rang me at just after 08:00 to make sure that I was awake – he was just setting out. And it was 20:10 when I came back into the house this evening.

This roof that we are fixing is turning out to be a right horror story. We’ve been cutting out the side beams today and fixing extensions to them so that we can make an overhang to stop the water penetrating into the roof. At least we were – until we discovered that the principal beam had rotted away. It’s full of insect holes – and I mean the real galleries rather than plain ordinary and common-or-garden woodworm but at the outside end there was simply nothing at all to inspect.

So we ended up having to take a 4.5 metre beam, cut a load of lets into it for the chevrons to fit into, then drag it up the scaffolding on the ladder, fit it under the roof, turn and pivot it into position, hold it up while we made a few adjustments, whack it in with a hammer and then cut some stud-iron into long bolt-shaped pieces to bolt everything together. And all of that into an attic where the OUTSIDE temperature was 35°C. God knows what the temperature was inside that roof and I have never sweated so much in all my life.

This roof is all thoroughly rotten and the only reason it’s still standing up is because the woodworm are all holding hands in the beams. If they let go then we will all be goosed. Looking under the eaves you can see that the chevrons are just crumbling away. Patching it up is a major mistake because what will then happen is that in the first strong gale or heavy snowfall all of the strains and stresses in the roof will come hard up against the solid wood that has been fitted, the flexing will stop dramatically and all of the old wood will just shear off. The only solution really is to strip the whole lot off – every last piece – and start from scratch but for that you will get no change out of €20,000.

It’s comforting me quite a lot actually because I had always thought of my house as being something of a ruin. Yet compared to a few houses that I’ve seen just recently it’s in comparatively good condition all things being considered.

And another thing too – seeing the conditions in which a few other nouveaux arrivants are living, then my aspirations for my house and the long-term plans I have for it will make it into something quite luxurious. At the moment things aren’t so hot (although my attic is quite a little palace comparatively-speaking, and that’s certainly hot right at the moment) but I’m ripping up and discarding, without any hesitation at all, some situations that others are finding to be quite acceptable. I suppose that I really DO have some expensive tastes after all. What with one thing and another, all of this is cheering me up!

But once that had finished I did some more work on my guttering and water filters and they are all sealed up. Heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow and I need to catch all of the rain that I can.

And in other news, I’ve been severely critical in the past about TNS – or The New Saints – or They’ve No Support – a football team in the Welsh Premier League that is in many respects just one man’s ambition and is hawked around from town to town in North-East Wales. The club qualified for European competition (the Champions’ League in fact) at the end of last season and tonight they thrashed Bohemians of Ireland 4-0 to reach the 3rd Qualifying Round and a match against Anderlecht of Belgium. So good luck to them from a long-time critic.

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