And Terry came with me too.<\/p>\n
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have recently bought some huge 200 amp-hour batteries for my solar system here and I’ve been rebuilding the battery box and I’ve gradually been installing them one by one as the battery box takes shape.<\/p>\n
I’ve been so impressed with these as you know – almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin. But anyway, my wholesaler sent me a circular the other day to tell me that they were having yet another battery sale. The price for the 100 amp-hour batteries was extremely interesting and my ears pricked up, especially as the batteries in the barn are struggling along on their last legs as you know.<\/p>\n
Having a decent secondary solar system in the barn is of course very advantageous for many reasons, and so I bit the bullet and placed an order. <\/p>\n
There is also a new range of data loggers that look much better than anything that I have around here and so I ordered two of those so that I can give them a whirl.<\/p>\n
I would have had all of this delivered, except that the company is now starting to sell solar water heaters and they had an exhibition model on display. This is what I want for here, and Terry is very interested too, and so we decided that we would go, pick up my batteries and so on, and have a lengthy chat about solar water heating.<\/p>\n
And so at 06:00 Terry phoned me up to wake me, and at 06:45 we were on the road to Paris.<\/p>\n
We arrived on the edge of Paris at about 10:00 and then spent 90 minutes covering a distance of just 20kms to our destination. Not traffic queues and not roadworks either, but my satnav has a fetish with the A86 autoroute. No problm with that in itself, but there’s a height limit of 2 metres on that road, and Caliburn is 2.17 metres. Every road that we took brought us back to the A86.<\/p>\n
After a wile I gave up, headed for the centre of Paris and then the road out underneath La Defense. But of course the sat-nav can’t pick up a signal in the La Defense tunnel and so I missed the exit. It was certainly not my lucky day today.<\/p>\n
Eventually we arrived and spent a good hour or so there. And the upshot was that I have now come home with a solar hot water system. I couldn’t miss out at this price, even if I don’t have any running water yet.<\/p>\n
On the way home, I took a different way and of course in the end after much binding in the marsh, we came to the A86 – not once but three times. This was totally beyond a joke and so I headed west on the A14 to Le Havre and came home via Rambouillet. And if that wasn’t enough, I hit a part of the kerb with a hell of a whack at some speed and I’ve smashed a wheel trim (and probably a few other things too)<\/p>\n
The rest of the journey was incident-free but we did come home via Brico Depot in Montlucon, where I bought the insulation for the battery box and a few other things, and then the LeClerc for a bit of shopping.<\/p>\n
So, what a day! Nearly 900kms and spending all that money but my renewable energy system will leap ahead in spades if all of this works out.<\/p>\n
But I do need to work out this route. It’s doing my head in.<\/p>\n
