… lie-in this morning. Due entirely to the fact that the battery in the mobile phone went flat during the night so the alarm didn’t go off.<\/p>\n
Nothing at all to do with my nocturnal ramblings during the night. I was walking up the hill from the traffic lights at Burland crossroads up towards Hurleston Reservoir and Car Transplants. There wasn’t a road up there – just a dirt track between a couple of fields. And in the fields were a couple of guys working away and, quite interestingly, a couple of Alsatian dogs were conveying messages between the men and whoever it was who was in charge of them. At the top of the hill was a car – the type of early 50s American car with a V8 flathead engine and which was leaking oil out of the sump. I suggested that they went up to Car Transplants to see what they could find there, but they needed to sort themselves out because they were insisting that it was a ’57 model but of course it wasn’t. 1952 at the outside, I reckoned, but they insisted.<\/p>\n
After breakfast I carried on with my studies but we had a change of plans round about 12:00. Bright sunshine streaming outside and the batteries fully-charged so I grabbed the chopsaw, the workbench, the extension cable, the plastic sheet and the wheelbarrow, and I attacked the woodpile again.<\/p>\n
I can’t remember whether it was 5 or 6 huge barrow-loads that I cut but it was also two boxes full of kindling. You can now see the difference that I’ve made, and the woodshed is now looking like it ought to look. There was half a bin-bag full of sawdust too.<\/p>\n
One thing that I did do was to cut up four or five window frames. A few years ago I came across a skip loaded up with old house windows and, with permission, I rescued them (you can’t live around here without a van – I don’t care what anyone says). The wood wasn’t up to much but I salvaged quite a few window panes that I’ll be using to make cloches and repairing windows around the barn. <\/p>\n
But the wood – all oak – makes good firewood. A couple of 12-inch lengths on that on the fire will keep the place going through the night. I don’t understand the mentality of people who throw away decent firewood like this.<\/p>\n
After that, I came up for my lunch (it was now about 17:30 by the time I’d tidied away everything) and instead, I just crashed out on the sofa for a good hour.<\/p>\n
But this chopsaw is proving its worth, especially when I have the surplus electricity to power it. We had 34 amps of surplus solar energy again even with running the chopsaw, which at times brought the voltage down to 11.6 volts. But that’s not important because of the intermittent use of the chopsaw. Generating a (very) theoretical solar maximum of 70 amp-hours, it soon builds the batteries back up. It would of course be a totally different matter if the use of the chopsaw was persistent or continuous.<\/p>\n
So I’m off to bed. I have a test tomorrow on my course so I need to be at my best. And then we’ll see what the weather is doing. <\/p>\n
